I’ve got a love-hate relationship going on. The battle has been raging in my head for months, even years, as I’ve contemplated this article. The battle is not resolved; in short, I cannot take a side and will leave my conclusion vague. It’s just not a black and white topic. Let’s consider for-profit road racing (or for-profit racing in general). Is it an answer to market demand, or a perversion of a relatively pure endeavor that simply lines someone’s pockets?
First, full disclosure: I’ve profited from a racing event. I was paid for my services as an announcer at last year’s local triathlon, and would have done same this year if not for a scheduling conflict. Second, in today’s hyper-charged political atmosphere it seems prudent to state the obvious; I’m in favor of capitalism, though I’d like to see it take a bit more ethical path at times. I’ve nothing against business or earning a fair wage for one’s work. Without that concept, we’d all be in trouble.
Let’s look at the typical local club or charity race. The proceeds land in the lap of a non-profit organization of some sort, be it the local running club, which presumably pours those funds back into its mission, or the charity, which we’ll presume is legitimate and worthy. Let’s be clear that even in the smallest races, someone makes a profit. The shirt vendor, the medal vendor, the port-o-john service firm, even the hired-in-announcers, they all provide something that is needed. The investment they made to be able to provide those services wasn’t free. It’s only fair they be compensated for services they render. And in larger non-profit races, paid staff are the norm, and with good reason. You can’t pull off the Boston Marathon by volunteering nights and weekends.
In short, there is a cost of doing business. Sponsors and donations help, but at the end of the day there are things you have to pay for, because you cannot convince the entire global supply chain to sponsor each leg of their path down to your event. So when we refer to a non-profit race, we’re not fooling ourselves into believing that we’ve got some lily white angelic enterprise devoid of accounting. But at the end of the day, what’s left over goes to what we define as the public good.
Now let’s look at the typically for-profit race. From a business standpoint, it’s entirely the same thing. Vendors must be brought in, services must be procured, expenses incurred. It’s really no different. Many of these races even elect to allot a portion of the proceeds to a charity, to give the impression of (or do real) public good. But at the end of the day, what’s left over goes to the benefit of an individual or individuals.
Is that wrong?
One can argue about motives and resulting services. There’s a for-profit race series that drags its carpeted bags into Worcester now, as they’ve done for a few years. This year they elected to expand their event, adding a full marathon and a 5K to their existing half marathon. Knowing the history of this particular promoter, I choose to stay far, far away. But multiple reports from the scene came rolling in, and the picture wasn’t pretty. Six port-a-johns for well over a thousand racers. Complete mayhem at the start. Lack of marshals on the course. Awards delayed, not as advertised, not posted, heck, results not even posted. More than one person whom I’d warned about this event, but had chosen to run it anyway, came back saying, “Well, you told me so.”
It’s easy to point at this and insinuate that the promoter was cutting costs to line his pockets more thickly, and perhaps he was. But that’s a shallow approach that, while it may or may not be true in this case, doesn’t stand the litmus test. There are non-profit races that are poorly executed as well, and which suffer from cost-cutting in order to raise more funds; the pocket lined more deeply in that case is a charity, but we still expect a good product. And there are for-profit races that are well run.
I like to think of a race as pure competition, but the reality is that for most it is not really a race but an event with little competition involved, and the staging of said event is, in the end, a service. (How shall we entertain ourselves this weekend? Shall we go to a concert, or to a road race?) The for-profit promoter is, after all, providing that service. Shouldn’t he or she get paid for that?
One can argue about marketing and value. I cringe at the ads I see in running publications, where running comes in a distant second, third or even fourth, in the priority of what is being billed. Party! Bands! Visit our theme park! Pay to embarrass yourself in our mud pit! Be a rock star! Best schwag! Did anyone remember the fact that it’s a race?
Here it’s pretty accurate to point at the for-profit industry as the pusher of these agendas. Are they sullying the sport? Maybe yes, maybe no. I can’t fathom why people would pay to be chased by zombies, whatever they are, but more amazing to me is that people actually pay to be the zombies. As Don Henley sang in The Last Resort, “…Jesus, people bought ‘em.” Are you more angry at the spammers and telemarketers, or the fact that there are enough people that actually respond to spur them on? Are you more annoyed at bizarrely marketed “races” or the fact that people will pay far too much for a half marathon that claims to be an “excellent value” on a glitzy website?
So whether a race is run by a non-profit or a profit organization, there’s a wide range in quality of execution and value for the dollar. There are gems and duds in both categories. The appeal of any race is a collection of all attributes, including the organizers’ attitude. Are they in this to stage a great event for runners, or are they in this because it’s a way to make money? Attitude comes through loud and clear to anyone who takes more than a passing glance at these events. But there’s no law on defining the right attitude, and many don’t look deeper than that passing glance.
But there is an ethical issue of for-profit ventures drawing lifeblood from non-profit resources. No race survives without the contribution of many, including both race volunteers and the general public which allows it to happen. I’ve yet to see any race, non-profit or profit, where every staffer is a paid employee. No, they’re volunteers, recruited to donate their time and efforts for “The Cause”. The Cause might be just that they want to help provide a race for the runners. The Cause might be that the for-profit race does donate to a charity they like. The Cause might just be because they enjoy the activity. But think about it: they’re working for free so that someone can walk away with profit in their pocket. There are words that describe such an employer-employee relationship, and wars have been fought over them. Perhaps that’s a stretch, but it’s something to think about.
And then there is the issue of the general public’s willingness to allow these events to happen. Rare is the race held entirely off-road on private land. Most use public streets and therefore by definition disrupt public activities. The public allows this to happen on the expectation that this is a public event for public good. The public might take a dim view knowing that their inconvenience was caused by someone’s money-making enterprise.
I am reminded of two relevant tidbits. The first is the appearance in this area several years ago of drop boxes from a firm that collects and remarkets used books. The firm has an interesting business model: their service is the remarketing, and they “buy” the books by paying non-profit groups to host their drop boxes. So non-profits benefit, books are recycled, and people have a source for both disposal of and purchase of such books. All good. Except that they weren’t too clear at first about the fact that they’re a for-profit company. Make that less than totally transparent, and the drop boxes that use the word “donate” leave people feeling duped. Make that known, show the value in what you do, and all is well, though the word “donate” still seems a little misused.
The second is a political cartoon from the 1992 Presidential election, when Ross Perot made a go of it. Sadly, I can’t find an image of this classic doodle (apparently even Google can be foiled) but it showed a man walking away from a mailbox apparently having just mailed a political donation to Mr. Perot (this being the days before online fundraising), looking somewhat regretful, with the caption along the lines of how he just realized that he’d sent money to a billionaire.
And so it goes in the road racing world. What are you supporting? To whom are you sending your money? Where is it going? What is their motivation? What is the quality of the product you get in return?
As for me, I make exceptions, but make a solid effort to target club-run events. Support your sport, hang with the people who love running in and of itself without glitter and glitz, and you’ll save a heap of cash in the process.
As in the rest of life, caveat emptor.
27 June 2012
13 June 2012
It Just Doesn't Matter
All the engineering, calculating, pondering, supposing is well and good, but at the end of the day it’s the time on the clock, and the rest just doesn’t matter. Tonight that proved true yet again, as yet again I find myself foiled on a goal.
It’s been nearly four years since I pegged my five kilometer personal best. That was on a course that I helped design, so I know it was accurate. Measuring it today with online satellite photo tracing pegs it within a hundredth of a mile of five clicks, the error being on the long (safe) side. Oh, and a minor detail, the last tenth of a mile is net downhill from the start, a bonus for nabbing a few extra seconds. Result: a personal best that’s stuck for a long time.
Make that a personal best that I have a vendetta to demolish. And I know I can do it. Four weeks ago at Bedford, I did it en-route to a twelve-K. Knocked at least ten seconds off that best mark, probably more depending on how you extrapolate, but since there was no official five-K split, nor was it even marked, it just doesn’t matter. Doesn’t count.
Tonight the opportunity availed to take another stab at it. Having passed on joining my Greater Boston brethren for the Newton 10K Grand Prix event this past Sunday due schedule commitments, I figured I’d come out of my post-Buffalo shell by popping into a local five-K that conveniently appeared only a small detour from my week’s business travel. Said local five-K advertised itself as flat, fast (assuming a train didn’t arrive and stop the whole thing mid-race as apparently happened last year), USATF certified, and last year’s results indicated the field would have plenty of fast guys to key off. As a bonus, it started with a lap and a half on the track, a perfect way to gauge early pace. Sounded to me like an excuse to take a stab at that circa-2008 five-K mark.
By now you’d think I’d know better than to expect to pop out of car after six hours of driving and run fast. Fatigued and winded on the warm-up, I fashioned in my head Excuse Number One. And I haven’t done any track work or really anything faster than tempo pace since Buffalo, and very little even at that clip, so to think a PR five-K was in order, well, I fashioned that in my head as Excuse Number Two. One of the guys I ran my warm-down with post-event laughed and reminded me that real distance runners always have plenty of excuses.
Excuses aside, it wasn’t a bad outing. Getting the body moving was far more of an effort than I’d hoped, and while that first lap clicked in ahead of needed pace, by the mile mark I’d settled down to ordinariness. There were enough fast guys, but none nearby to really inspire dropping it into the next gear, so I settled for holding on to a pleasingly consistent, though certainly not spectacular, pace for the remainder. True, the end result was twenty to thirty seconds behind the crushing PR I’d envisioned. But it was only six seconds off that 2008 downhill four-years-younger mark. And for winning the forties age group I walked off with a funky hand-made ceramic mug, hopefully not laced with lead-based glaze (I will inherently trust them). All in all, it was a decent, though not exceptional, evening.
Then it gets interesting, because I am at heart an engineer, and I cannot stop myself from fiddling, measuring, calculating, pondering, mashing and re-mashing until the numbers turn blue. Why bother, you might ask, if the course was USATF certified? Well, having been a race director, and having seen how the USATF measurement system works, where, for example, they prefer a bicycle measurement device, subject to the ability of the rider to go in a straight line, over a wheel, very easy to control and generally very accurate, I’m always curious. I saw how the USATF measurement stretched my local ten-K considerably over the wheel measurement I’d personally made with utter loving care.
Not being one to carry a wheel in my trunk (other than the one I’d slap on the car itself if needed), the only real weapon in this endeavor is the trusty online satellite photo measurement web sites, explicitly a no-no in the USATF book. But truth be told, they’re pretty accurate if you’re careful with your tracing – this is easy to test by tracing out your local track. And so I traced, and traced, and traced some more. And the result surprised me, because it came out not just a hair long, expected with the inaccuracies of the trace and the built-in margin of error in the USATF methodology, but quite a bit long. Even after double-checking and looking hard for discrepancies, well, gee, ain’t that a hoot. If that trace was right, adjusted, tonight would’ve been a big PR, on the order of fifteen seconds or so.
Next, I pulled up the USATF course certification map to verify what I’d measured matched what we ran. And here I found another surprise: the race director had started the race from a point notably further back than the hard-measured point on the map. Only a hundredth of a mile difference to be sure, but that one I could take to the bank as real. At my pace, that buys an adjustment of a whopping four seconds, which would still leave me short of that elusive PR, but would make it my quickest five-K since that long-ago day. Four seconds is four seconds, right?
And then we get to the quandary, the ethical questions, the ‘whaddayagonnadoaboudit?’ point. I have a longstanding policy of basing my personal race rankings on the most accurate measurement I can come up with. But typically I don’t adjust when it’s a certified course, unless I know there was some absolute discrepancy. So I’ll take the hundredth of a mile error in the starting line, and I’ll take the four seconds, and I’ll take the best-since-way-back-when, and plug that result into my ever-growing table of race results. But beyond that, all the pondering, positing, prognosticating, and prevaricating, well, it just doesn’t matter. The time on the clock is the time on the clock. No matter how I slice it, I can’t call this that PR I so heartily seek. Even if I think in my heart of hearts that it was real. It just doesn’t matter. The quest must go on.
But hey, the mug is really nice, and it was a fun time, plenty of nice folks to warm up, warm down, and chew the fat with, and there was free pizza afterward, so does it really matter?
It’s been nearly four years since I pegged my five kilometer personal best. That was on a course that I helped design, so I know it was accurate. Measuring it today with online satellite photo tracing pegs it within a hundredth of a mile of five clicks, the error being on the long (safe) side. Oh, and a minor detail, the last tenth of a mile is net downhill from the start, a bonus for nabbing a few extra seconds. Result: a personal best that’s stuck for a long time.
Make that a personal best that I have a vendetta to demolish. And I know I can do it. Four weeks ago at Bedford, I did it en-route to a twelve-K. Knocked at least ten seconds off that best mark, probably more depending on how you extrapolate, but since there was no official five-K split, nor was it even marked, it just doesn’t matter. Doesn’t count.
Tonight the opportunity availed to take another stab at it. Having passed on joining my Greater Boston brethren for the Newton 10K Grand Prix event this past Sunday due schedule commitments, I figured I’d come out of my post-Buffalo shell by popping into a local five-K that conveniently appeared only a small detour from my week’s business travel. Said local five-K advertised itself as flat, fast (assuming a train didn’t arrive and stop the whole thing mid-race as apparently happened last year), USATF certified, and last year’s results indicated the field would have plenty of fast guys to key off. As a bonus, it started with a lap and a half on the track, a perfect way to gauge early pace. Sounded to me like an excuse to take a stab at that circa-2008 five-K mark.
By now you’d think I’d know better than to expect to pop out of car after six hours of driving and run fast. Fatigued and winded on the warm-up, I fashioned in my head Excuse Number One. And I haven’t done any track work or really anything faster than tempo pace since Buffalo, and very little even at that clip, so to think a PR five-K was in order, well, I fashioned that in my head as Excuse Number Two. One of the guys I ran my warm-down with post-event laughed and reminded me that real distance runners always have plenty of excuses.
Excuses aside, it wasn’t a bad outing. Getting the body moving was far more of an effort than I’d hoped, and while that first lap clicked in ahead of needed pace, by the mile mark I’d settled down to ordinariness. There were enough fast guys, but none nearby to really inspire dropping it into the next gear, so I settled for holding on to a pleasingly consistent, though certainly not spectacular, pace for the remainder. True, the end result was twenty to thirty seconds behind the crushing PR I’d envisioned. But it was only six seconds off that 2008 downhill four-years-younger mark. And for winning the forties age group I walked off with a funky hand-made ceramic mug, hopefully not laced with lead-based glaze (I will inherently trust them). All in all, it was a decent, though not exceptional, evening.
Then it gets interesting, because I am at heart an engineer, and I cannot stop myself from fiddling, measuring, calculating, pondering, mashing and re-mashing until the numbers turn blue. Why bother, you might ask, if the course was USATF certified? Well, having been a race director, and having seen how the USATF measurement system works, where, for example, they prefer a bicycle measurement device, subject to the ability of the rider to go in a straight line, over a wheel, very easy to control and generally very accurate, I’m always curious. I saw how the USATF measurement stretched my local ten-K considerably over the wheel measurement I’d personally made with utter loving care.
Not being one to carry a wheel in my trunk (other than the one I’d slap on the car itself if needed), the only real weapon in this endeavor is the trusty online satellite photo measurement web sites, explicitly a no-no in the USATF book. But truth be told, they’re pretty accurate if you’re careful with your tracing – this is easy to test by tracing out your local track. And so I traced, and traced, and traced some more. And the result surprised me, because it came out not just a hair long, expected with the inaccuracies of the trace and the built-in margin of error in the USATF methodology, but quite a bit long. Even after double-checking and looking hard for discrepancies, well, gee, ain’t that a hoot. If that trace was right, adjusted, tonight would’ve been a big PR, on the order of fifteen seconds or so.
Next, I pulled up the USATF course certification map to verify what I’d measured matched what we ran. And here I found another surprise: the race director had started the race from a point notably further back than the hard-measured point on the map. Only a hundredth of a mile difference to be sure, but that one I could take to the bank as real. At my pace, that buys an adjustment of a whopping four seconds, which would still leave me short of that elusive PR, but would make it my quickest five-K since that long-ago day. Four seconds is four seconds, right?
And then we get to the quandary, the ethical questions, the ‘whaddayagonnadoaboudit?’ point. I have a longstanding policy of basing my personal race rankings on the most accurate measurement I can come up with. But typically I don’t adjust when it’s a certified course, unless I know there was some absolute discrepancy. So I’ll take the hundredth of a mile error in the starting line, and I’ll take the four seconds, and I’ll take the best-since-way-back-when, and plug that result into my ever-growing table of race results. But beyond that, all the pondering, positing, prognosticating, and prevaricating, well, it just doesn’t matter. The time on the clock is the time on the clock. No matter how I slice it, I can’t call this that PR I so heartily seek. Even if I think in my heart of hearts that it was real. It just doesn’t matter. The quest must go on.
But hey, the mug is really nice, and it was a fun time, plenty of nice folks to warm up, warm down, and chew the fat with, and there was free pizza afterward, so does it really matter?
04 June 2012
The Streak
Relative to what others have accomplished, what I’ve done is piddling at best. According to the website www.runeveryday.com, there’s a guy in California who’s run every day for nearly forty-four years, since 1968. Their criteria is a mere mile per day minimum, whereas mine is three, and I’ll bet he’s had far better weather on average, but really, who cares? It’s the fact that you get out and do something, anything at all, and reap the benefit. What he’s done is, and apparently continues to do, is truly remarkable. What I’ve done really isn’t, but it certainly has been good for me on the whole, and has given me a large smile to boot – both for the immediate effects as well as the memories.
While running the Buffalo Marathon two Sundays back, I hit the three-mile-per-day minimum and tied one of the few remaining records from my First Lap younger days, at least one of the few that isn’t tied directly to raw youthful speed. I’d equaled The Streak of my youth, three hundred and seventy five days straight, running at least three miles per day. The next morning, on a recovery jog through the flat streets of Horseheads, New York, accompanied by my niece, who can justly curse at me for nudging her into this running thing – to the extent that she’s now gearing up for her first full marathon this fall (the venerated Maine Corps one – nice choice!) – the record fell, Day Three Hundred and Seventy Six.
What I’ve done is to effectively sneer at the concept of aging. That’s really how I see it. Topping at age forty-nine what you busted your butt to achieve at age seventeen. And frankly, it’s tougher at age forty-nine. Not only does life get in the way a lot more, but the body needs a little more attention and maintenance. Mention “streak” and you’ll hear plenty of warnings about injuries, burn-out, and the like. These aren’t idle threats. The streak continues only at the convenience of the avoidance of major injuries, and the inevitable minor ones must be managed. I use the “VDO”, or Virtual Day Off, the easy three-mile jog, just enough to maintain but barely enough to break a sweat, liberally as needed. I use racing and odd adventures, like running distant locales, to avoid the burn-out.
Aside from that, the practical benefits of a streak are pretty obvious, starting with motivation to get out there every day, no matter what. Trust that there were more than a few days when it would have been really easy to stay in the warmth and comfort of indoors, or get that extra hour of sleep rather than rise to sneak in a quickie before going on the road for meetings.
But getting out every day, no matter what, forces you to a higher level of training consistency, a level I haven’t enjoyed since, well, since that first streak back in 1979-1980. Training consistency pays off in fitness level and race performance. In those days of yore, the consistency of streak training led me to my three best races of that era with times I’ll almost certainly never match at my ripe old age: a sub-sixteen-minute 5K, my best “mile” – more accurately that odd sixteen-hundred-meter distance we started running when they converted our track midway through high-school, and a 15K at close to five and a half minutes per mile. This time, it’s led to (modern-day, Second Lap) PRs at almost every distance from the mile to the marathon. You can’t argue with that.
This streak, like the last big one thirty-two years ago, started entirely by accident, not unlike almost any other streaking runner. A couple of days before finishing up last year’s “run every street in Marlborough” challenge, I just forgot to not run for a while. It took a few weeks to notice. When it stretched past two months and became the longest since that legendary streak of youth, I pulled out my log book from those days and recalled some amusing tidbits.
In my First Lap high school days, I was extremely lucky to have an extremely talented runner a mere four doors up the street, four years my senior but willing to hang out with a youngster. I don’t recall exactly how Cliff and I linked up, though it probably had to do with him dating the daughter of close friends from our church. Matters not, we did, and the result was many years of terrific runs and a friendship that, while left unattended for many years, was easily revived and lasts to this day.
Through the years we shared plenty of adventures that I don’t need my log to remember. The summer he worked second shift, a small gang of regulars would form a late-night coffee klatch in his driveway awaiting his arrival, and we’d head out around one in the morning. On our weekly twelve-milers, I’d hit the sheets around three in the morning, and joke that my mother never worried about me since she knew I was just out roaming the streets all night. And the trip to New York City for the New Year’s Eve midnight race in Central Park probably deserves a post all its own.
What I had forgotten, and was reminded of only when I perused those old pages, was that the streak started the first day I ever ran with him. Schoolboy meets mentor, schoolboy gets motivated, schoolboy transforms from middling schoolboy runner to something at least a notch or two higher. More importantly, schoolboy registers in his brain that this is something bigger than high school, and though he lets it lapse for twenty-some years, the spark is planted to re-ignite decades later.
A year into that streak I found myself getting itchy, feeling that the streak had run its course, done its job, and needed an excuse to end. The excuse was obvious, as Mentor Cliff’s wedding day approached, and as his lovely wife was of a family so connected to ours, it was a big enough event to give license for calling it a day. The log reads “Cliff and Margo forever” and I’m happy to say that thirty-two years later, they still are.
Cliff, when you read this, know it is my way of saying thanks for your help, motivation, and friendship through all those years, miles, and adventures. Breaking that streak record last week brought back a lot of great memories. Then, get over all the emotional crap, go pop in a few miles, and enjoy a cold one – wish I could join you for it.
Now, only forty-three years to go to catch that guy in California, assuming he actually quits sometime.
Trivia Note: The conversion to metric happened midway through my high school years, and I recall them digging up the steel rail to shrink our 440 yard cinder track down to 400 meters. Before the conversion, an annual event was the “Metric Meet”, an invitational where once a season we ran those exotic international distances. My log reminds me that after the conversion, we actually did the reverse, for old time’s sake, and ran an invitational “Anti-Metric Meet” with traditional length events. Seeing today’s movement to bring back the mile, I’d have to say we were unknowing visionaries.
While running the Buffalo Marathon two Sundays back, I hit the three-mile-per-day minimum and tied one of the few remaining records from my First Lap younger days, at least one of the few that isn’t tied directly to raw youthful speed. I’d equaled The Streak of my youth, three hundred and seventy five days straight, running at least three miles per day. The next morning, on a recovery jog through the flat streets of Horseheads, New York, accompanied by my niece, who can justly curse at me for nudging her into this running thing – to the extent that she’s now gearing up for her first full marathon this fall (the venerated Maine Corps one – nice choice!) – the record fell, Day Three Hundred and Seventy Six.
What I’ve done is to effectively sneer at the concept of aging. That’s really how I see it. Topping at age forty-nine what you busted your butt to achieve at age seventeen. And frankly, it’s tougher at age forty-nine. Not only does life get in the way a lot more, but the body needs a little more attention and maintenance. Mention “streak” and you’ll hear plenty of warnings about injuries, burn-out, and the like. These aren’t idle threats. The streak continues only at the convenience of the avoidance of major injuries, and the inevitable minor ones must be managed. I use the “VDO”, or Virtual Day Off, the easy three-mile jog, just enough to maintain but barely enough to break a sweat, liberally as needed. I use racing and odd adventures, like running distant locales, to avoid the burn-out.
Aside from that, the practical benefits of a streak are pretty obvious, starting with motivation to get out there every day, no matter what. Trust that there were more than a few days when it would have been really easy to stay in the warmth and comfort of indoors, or get that extra hour of sleep rather than rise to sneak in a quickie before going on the road for meetings.
But getting out every day, no matter what, forces you to a higher level of training consistency, a level I haven’t enjoyed since, well, since that first streak back in 1979-1980. Training consistency pays off in fitness level and race performance. In those days of yore, the consistency of streak training led me to my three best races of that era with times I’ll almost certainly never match at my ripe old age: a sub-sixteen-minute 5K, my best “mile” – more accurately that odd sixteen-hundred-meter distance we started running when they converted our track midway through high-school, and a 15K at close to five and a half minutes per mile. This time, it’s led to (modern-day, Second Lap) PRs at almost every distance from the mile to the marathon. You can’t argue with that.
This streak, like the last big one thirty-two years ago, started entirely by accident, not unlike almost any other streaking runner. A couple of days before finishing up last year’s “run every street in Marlborough” challenge, I just forgot to not run for a while. It took a few weeks to notice. When it stretched past two months and became the longest since that legendary streak of youth, I pulled out my log book from those days and recalled some amusing tidbits.In my First Lap high school days, I was extremely lucky to have an extremely talented runner a mere four doors up the street, four years my senior but willing to hang out with a youngster. I don’t recall exactly how Cliff and I linked up, though it probably had to do with him dating the daughter of close friends from our church. Matters not, we did, and the result was many years of terrific runs and a friendship that, while left unattended for many years, was easily revived and lasts to this day.
Through the years we shared plenty of adventures that I don’t need my log to remember. The summer he worked second shift, a small gang of regulars would form a late-night coffee klatch in his driveway awaiting his arrival, and we’d head out around one in the morning. On our weekly twelve-milers, I’d hit the sheets around three in the morning, and joke that my mother never worried about me since she knew I was just out roaming the streets all night. And the trip to New York City for the New Year’s Eve midnight race in Central Park probably deserves a post all its own.
What I had forgotten, and was reminded of only when I perused those old pages, was that the streak started the first day I ever ran with him. Schoolboy meets mentor, schoolboy gets motivated, schoolboy transforms from middling schoolboy runner to something at least a notch or two higher. More importantly, schoolboy registers in his brain that this is something bigger than high school, and though he lets it lapse for twenty-some years, the spark is planted to re-ignite decades later.A year into that streak I found myself getting itchy, feeling that the streak had run its course, done its job, and needed an excuse to end. The excuse was obvious, as Mentor Cliff’s wedding day approached, and as his lovely wife was of a family so connected to ours, it was a big enough event to give license for calling it a day. The log reads “Cliff and Margo forever” and I’m happy to say that thirty-two years later, they still are.
Cliff, when you read this, know it is my way of saying thanks for your help, motivation, and friendship through all those years, miles, and adventures. Breaking that streak record last week brought back a lot of great memories. Then, get over all the emotional crap, go pop in a few miles, and enjoy a cold one – wish I could join you for it.Now, only forty-three years to go to catch that guy in California, assuming he actually quits sometime.
Trivia Note: The conversion to metric happened midway through my high school years, and I recall them digging up the steel rail to shrink our 440 yard cinder track down to 400 meters. Before the conversion, an annual event was the “Metric Meet”, an invitational where once a season we ran those exotic international distances. My log reminds me that after the conversion, we actually did the reverse, for old time’s sake, and ran an invitational “Anti-Metric Meet” with traditional length events. Seeing today’s movement to bring back the mile, I’d have to say we were unknowing visionaries.
30 May 2012
All-Nighter
We recall wistfully those college days when time blurred, especially time after about three in the morning when you were cramming for that final, taking bad pictures of the sunrise out your dorm window to document the experience, hoping to nail it 
(yes, that is actually the Troy sunrise on the morning of my freshman physics final). Then the memories of reality flood back in, and you recall how utterly rotten you felt when you walked in the next morning, how the professor thought you looked so fried that he offered to let you defer, but you motored on anyway, and somehow, at least in the case of the exam following this photo, you nailed the sucker.
Thirty years later we know darn well that all-nighters have a dashing and heroic aura to them, even in the post-collegiate professional world (nothing like that email time-stamped four-twenty-three AM), but in reality they are to be avoided precisely because of how utterly rotten you feel the next morning, how you are in fact so fried that you should defer any meaningful activity not related to sleep. Yes, I still need to pull them occasionally in my line of work, but not by choice, and certainly they’re incompatible with race performance. Marathon prep consists of months of training, weeks of taper, days of rest, and critically, a good night’s sleep before the big event, the word critically indicating that it’s a real problem when that last step of the process fails.
Fortunately, rare is the case where I’m not out in ten minutes flat. And “race nerves” is not a term known to me; heck, it’s just a race. No, I’m generally losing focus long before the end of the chapter I’m trying to slog through. Attaining a semi-coma is just not a problem.
But it was on Saturday night in a suburb of Buffalo on my uncle’s couch. And I have no idea why. Perhaps they served double-caffeine cola at the pasta dinner that night. Perhaps the KGB drugged the air in uncle’s living room. But for whatever reason, it just didn’t happen. Lights out by ten-thirty for that four-thirty-oh-my-God-it’s-early jangle became midnight, became one, two, a haze. Turning and tossing and wondering if there’s a dog (you know, the old dyslexic agnostic insomniac thing), a few brief interludes of fading out, but probably no more than one, two hours total, and already in a semi-wakened fog when that dreaded alarm came. Oh, no, this is not good. It’s typical for me to be dazed when roused, but dazed and fried, wiped, already fatigued, with a starting gun in two and a half hours, no, this is not good.
Such began the first marathon I’ve ever run on an all-nighter. Having shuffled off to Buffalo once again, fourth time for this race, seventeenth marathon, seeking redemption and a fast time, perhaps the Personal Best I figured I’m trained for, after the Boston Bake Fest ruined the previous attempt, focusing my worries entirely on the Buffalo forecast which appeared to be headed into the too-warm zone as well, I never saw this one coming. No sleep? Seriously?
My warm-up only confirmed my worst fears. Ugh. Slug. Might as well, the grave be dug. It was just plain ugly. Bodily functions simply not cooperating on multiple planes (which would become another issue later, but I’ll spare that detail, suffice to say that I spent about fourteen miles wishing for a five minute stop I was unwilling to give myself…). I wasn’t even focused enough to line myself up right at the start, ending up a good five or six back rather than my desired second, maybe third row. Hey, at least the geeky headband thing – it worked in Boston, might as well make it a habit – made me identifiable in the crowd.
And it was work from the start. When I’m tired, I’m clunky. Klutzy. The legs don’t flow, the feet clop harder, nothing seems to work right. Now, the beautiful thing about running is that after a long night of too much work, a morning run will start horribly but improve somewhat. I won’t get past the fatigue, but I will loosen up and feel better despite the tiredness. That works in a five-miler. Not so much in a marathon.
The clunkyness was immediate, though it did fade, even to the point of hearing a few compliments from the crowd on my stride later in the race. But the fatigue was on me rapidly and never faded, only grew. This one was simply going to be a long stretch of determination. There was no avoiding it. There was no period of cruising comfort before the grind set in. It was already in. Well, if this was going to be hard work, so be it. I didn’t get to marathon number seventeen without being intimately familiar with tough days. Let the slog-fest begin. Motor on, and nail this sucker.
From there, I can focus on the good stuff. The weather held, overcast persisting all morning to hold the air to the mid-sixties, avoiding the late-morning heat-fade which brought down the entire field last year. I settled in to the six-thirties by mile three and stuck there through the halfway point, a little slower than planned, knowing I wasn’t banking enough time to have a serious shot at a personal best, but also knowing I was holding my own on an hour’s sleep. Splits started rising just past the half, which at first I attributed to a lapse of focus through the transition from the busy half-marathon crowd to the lonely world of the full course runners, but it occurred to me later that miles fourteen and fifteen are a tad uphill. The reason mattered not; in my pre-fatigued state there was little hope of holding PR-pace into the high miles. Each ten kilometer segment sagged a little more, but I sated myself with the satisfaction of continued steady progress, as even when a couple late miles slightly topped seven, the body complained but didn’t fail. And truth is, I picked off several others in the second half and succumbed to no one. Mental victory.
No personal best. No surprisingly high placing amidst the masters or age group. No race-career-defining moment. But at two-fifty-five and change, a solid sub-three and a mere minute and a half off my PR, on an hour of sleep, well, I’ll take it. Ironically, being a year older than when I set that PR last fall, on an age-graded basis, this one in fact equaled that one, on an hour of sleep. And since some serious masters talent showed up, only third in my age group (complete with a star-themed trophy we decided looks kind of like it came from a dance or cheerleading competition, but hey, no complaints), compared to second last year. On an hour of sleep. Yeah, I’ll take it.
I’ve no intention of running another marathon after an all-nighter. Those nights are made for blog posts.
Random Bits: Sunday’s Buffalo Marathon marked Day 375 of my streak, tying my record from age 17 in 1980, and Monday’s recovery run broke that longstanding mark. I’ll expound on that in the next post. And the research is in: running Boston in a Greater Boston jersey really IS special. In Buffalo, a surprising number of people shouted, “Go number one-seventy-one!” despite the unavoidably large “GREATER BOSTON” splayed across my chest. Sure, there were a few bits of Boston recognition, but their tone was more of curiosity, not home team pride like I heard in Boston.
Thirty years later we know darn well that all-nighters have a dashing and heroic aura to them, even in the post-collegiate professional world (nothing like that email time-stamped four-twenty-three AM), but in reality they are to be avoided precisely because of how utterly rotten you feel the next morning, how you are in fact so fried that you should defer any meaningful activity not related to sleep. Yes, I still need to pull them occasionally in my line of work, but not by choice, and certainly they’re incompatible with race performance. Marathon prep consists of months of training, weeks of taper, days of rest, and critically, a good night’s sleep before the big event, the word critically indicating that it’s a real problem when that last step of the process fails.
Fortunately, rare is the case where I’m not out in ten minutes flat. And “race nerves” is not a term known to me; heck, it’s just a race. No, I’m generally losing focus long before the end of the chapter I’m trying to slog through. Attaining a semi-coma is just not a problem.
But it was on Saturday night in a suburb of Buffalo on my uncle’s couch. And I have no idea why. Perhaps they served double-caffeine cola at the pasta dinner that night. Perhaps the KGB drugged the air in uncle’s living room. But for whatever reason, it just didn’t happen. Lights out by ten-thirty for that four-thirty-oh-my-God-it’s-early jangle became midnight, became one, two, a haze. Turning and tossing and wondering if there’s a dog (you know, the old dyslexic agnostic insomniac thing), a few brief interludes of fading out, but probably no more than one, two hours total, and already in a semi-wakened fog when that dreaded alarm came. Oh, no, this is not good. It’s typical for me to be dazed when roused, but dazed and fried, wiped, already fatigued, with a starting gun in two and a half hours, no, this is not good.
Such began the first marathon I’ve ever run on an all-nighter. Having shuffled off to Buffalo once again, fourth time for this race, seventeenth marathon, seeking redemption and a fast time, perhaps the Personal Best I figured I’m trained for, after the Boston Bake Fest ruined the previous attempt, focusing my worries entirely on the Buffalo forecast which appeared to be headed into the too-warm zone as well, I never saw this one coming. No sleep? Seriously?
And it was work from the start. When I’m tired, I’m clunky. Klutzy. The legs don’t flow, the feet clop harder, nothing seems to work right. Now, the beautiful thing about running is that after a long night of too much work, a morning run will start horribly but improve somewhat. I won’t get past the fatigue, but I will loosen up and feel better despite the tiredness. That works in a five-miler. Not so much in a marathon.
The clunkyness was immediate, though it did fade, even to the point of hearing a few compliments from the crowd on my stride later in the race. But the fatigue was on me rapidly and never faded, only grew. This one was simply going to be a long stretch of determination. There was no avoiding it. There was no period of cruising comfort before the grind set in. It was already in. Well, if this was going to be hard work, so be it. I didn’t get to marathon number seventeen without being intimately familiar with tough days. Let the slog-fest begin. Motor on, and nail this sucker.
From there, I can focus on the good stuff. The weather held, overcast persisting all morning to hold the air to the mid-sixties, avoiding the late-morning heat-fade which brought down the entire field last year. I settled in to the six-thirties by mile three and stuck there through the halfway point, a little slower than planned, knowing I wasn’t banking enough time to have a serious shot at a personal best, but also knowing I was holding my own on an hour’s sleep. Splits started rising just past the half, which at first I attributed to a lapse of focus through the transition from the busy half-marathon crowd to the lonely world of the full course runners, but it occurred to me later that miles fourteen and fifteen are a tad uphill. The reason mattered not; in my pre-fatigued state there was little hope of holding PR-pace into the high miles. Each ten kilometer segment sagged a little more, but I sated myself with the satisfaction of continued steady progress, as even when a couple late miles slightly topped seven, the body complained but didn’t fail. And truth is, I picked off several others in the second half and succumbed to no one. Mental victory.
I’ve no intention of running another marathon after an all-nighter. Those nights are made for blog posts.
Random Bits: Sunday’s Buffalo Marathon marked Day 375 of my streak, tying my record from age 17 in 1980, and Monday’s recovery run broke that longstanding mark. I’ll expound on that in the next post. And the research is in: running Boston in a Greater Boston jersey really IS special. In Buffalo, a surprising number of people shouted, “Go number one-seventy-one!” despite the unavoidably large “GREATER BOSTON” splayed across my chest. Sure, there were a few bits of Boston recognition, but their tone was more of curiosity, not home team pride like I heard in Boston.
20 May 2012
One Two Three Four PRs
Almost lost in this weekend’s excitement was Friday’s excitement. Or perhaps it was Thursday’s excitement, as there is reasonable debate over the date. I’d considered weaving an article about this controversy, but along came Saturday, and the Thursday-Friday stuff seemed rather trivial.
You are wondering what that was all about, so I’ll cover it off first, quickly. Thursday marked Day 365 of the Streak, comprised – by my rules – of a run of at least three miles every day, stretching since the 19th of May 2011. A year! Or perhaps not? After all, this is a leap year, so I didn’t really knit up the calendar year until Friday, the 18th of May 2012, Day 366. So which day marked a year? A year being roughly three hundred sixty five and a quarter days, or any number of variations per Wiki, is rather hard to pin down. It’s not, as the cast of Rent would have you believe, five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes (to the great dismay, I am certain, of my daughter). What it is, on the other hand, well, who cares, Thursday came, Friday came, both were relatively uneventful, no celebrations occurred. And the fact is, the last time I did this Streak thing, when I was seventeen, it also happened to be a leap year, so any doubts sort of cancel out. The bottom line is that it really won’t matter until I break that thirty-two-year-old streak record, slated to happen in about a week, if nothing breaks between now and then.
Far more interesting is what happened on Day 367.
Here’s a study in contrasts. Last weekend, B race, B effort, B performance, absurdly large trophy. Walked away pleased with a fun day, but more or less ambivalent. This weekend, A+ race, A+ effort, A+ performance, no hardware, but an absurdly large confidence boost. Walked away shaking my head at what just transpired. What a difference seven days makes.
Saturday’s event was the Bedford (New Hampshire) Rotary 12K, yes, 12K, or 7.46 miles for you translational geeks. I’m told that 12K is actually a recognized distance, raced in, for example, international cross country, and the age-grading tables list it (which is a good thing, as you’ll see), but it’s not a distance that pops up often, and certainly not one I’d raced before. As a result, I was guaranteed a personal best just for finishing. Instead, I walked away with four personal records (“PRs”), even if only one really counts, because this race, being one of the USATF (USA Track & Field) New England Grand Prix events, sucked me into a place I didn’t know I had a ticket to enter.
You can race for years and not know of the existence of the Grand Prix series. I was entirely oblivious of these events for years, then only mildly aware of them, and now am frankly in awe of the talent they draw. This series, run here in New England and replicated (I would presume) in each region of the country, identifies a group of events over the course of the season spanning a plethora of distances ranging from five kilometers to the marathon. Both teams and individuals accumulate points toward the annual Grand Prix championship. The result is that every ringer in New England shows up for these races. Just showing up for a race of this caliber gets your heart pounding. Racing on the Greater Boston master’s team meant it mattered.
A week ago I wrote of a local race, a fine event to be sure, but clearly of local caliber. The starting line was peppered with people who had no idea that they shouldn’t be standing directly on the starting line. By the first turn, the lead pack stood at three. On this week’s fine and sunny (if a bit warm) Saturday in Bedford, I knew darn well that I had no right to be standing directly on the starting line. It was that obvious. This was the major leagues. I felt out a spot about six or seven deep from the front, and eyed the runners around me trying to get a feel if I’d be held back in a crowd or simply trampled by an unfathomably fast herd.
My positioning guess turned out to be fairly accurate. I nor anyone else I knew of was gored by the running of the bulls. But oh, did they run. Trouble was, I was really quite clueless as to just how fast they were running. This was no lead pack of three. This was a lead pack of an uncountable hoard, so many that I questioned whether I’d started racing. Am I really slugging this out so slowly that I’m this far back in the pack? Or is this simply an absurdly talented field? Or both?
Awaiting the mile split to answer this dilemma, my brain remotely registered a cacophony of watches chiming. It wasn’t till ten to fifteen seconds later that it dawned on me that I must have heard everyone’s GPS (save Luddite me with my simple Ironman) hit the mile. But a quick glance at my watch quickly dispelled that theory, as even ten to fifteen seconds later the time it reported was too quick for the first mile of a 5K, let alone for the distance we had in front of us.
Still questioning my pace, sanity, or both, and assuming I must be flagging to be so far back in this pack, I locked onto the lady ahead of me to avoid losing contact, while searching for the second mile split, by now realizing I’d missed the first. When a tiny “2m” paint mark passed, another glance at the time told me once again that this couldn’t possibly have been the second mile.
The enigma broke only when GBTC teammate Doug, whom I’d assumed had started ahead of me, arrived from behind shortly before the three mile mark (which again, I failed to see), and by the benefit of both his and my adopted pacer lady’s GPS they clued me in to the reality of the day. This was no slog in the park. This was, at least for me if not for them, flying low.
Last fall, I scratched my head over Kim, the young lady with whom I ran the Bay State Marathon, who wanted nothing to do with splits, pace calculations, and so on. Didn’t want to know. Don’t say a word. She just wanted to run. Saturday, I figured out her mindset. Hearing the pace we’d run for the first two miles, I was glad I hadn’t known. Indeed, I consciously put what they said out of my head. I didn’t want to know. Had I known, had I believed it, I would have cranked it way back after the first mile. Criminy, there’s still six and a half to go! But I didn’t know, and now we hit three miles, not quite at that first mile pace, but not far off, and, well, so what? This was what I was running, and it was really quite manageable. And though I didn’t know it at the time, using Doug’s GPS readout and some very conservative estimates, later I’d figure out that I’d just run my PR 5K, nailing a time I’d set as a goal for this summer. In a 12K.
Running with Doug at the five mile mark, where for the first time I saw the milepost, this time I was aware as it happened – another PR at five miles. A mile later at six, again a visible milepost, a clean split time, and easy extrapolation later turned up yet another PR at 10K. And though the only disappointment of the race came shortly after, another cramp (two weeks in a row!) which slowed mile seven, I held on to click off the 12K in sub-six pace. And since those aforementioned age-grading tables do indeed recognize the 12K, I was treated to seeing this scored as my highest rated race ever.
Oh yeah, and there were still over eighty people ahead of me. An utterly awesome field!
One of the mantras I would constantly tell the kids I coach is that you have no idea what you are capable of. I sucked up a little dose of that myself this weekend. Who needs a trophy when you can walk away with a carton of confidence and satisfaction, instead?
You are wondering what that was all about, so I’ll cover it off first, quickly. Thursday marked Day 365 of the Streak, comprised – by my rules – of a run of at least three miles every day, stretching since the 19th of May 2011. A year! Or perhaps not? After all, this is a leap year, so I didn’t really knit up the calendar year until Friday, the 18th of May 2012, Day 366. So which day marked a year? A year being roughly three hundred sixty five and a quarter days, or any number of variations per Wiki, is rather hard to pin down. It’s not, as the cast of Rent would have you believe, five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes (to the great dismay, I am certain, of my daughter). What it is, on the other hand, well, who cares, Thursday came, Friday came, both were relatively uneventful, no celebrations occurred. And the fact is, the last time I did this Streak thing, when I was seventeen, it also happened to be a leap year, so any doubts sort of cancel out. The bottom line is that it really won’t matter until I break that thirty-two-year-old streak record, slated to happen in about a week, if nothing breaks between now and then.
Far more interesting is what happened on Day 367.
Here’s a study in contrasts. Last weekend, B race, B effort, B performance, absurdly large trophy. Walked away pleased with a fun day, but more or less ambivalent. This weekend, A+ race, A+ effort, A+ performance, no hardware, but an absurdly large confidence boost. Walked away shaking my head at what just transpired. What a difference seven days makes.
Saturday’s event was the Bedford (New Hampshire) Rotary 12K, yes, 12K, or 7.46 miles for you translational geeks. I’m told that 12K is actually a recognized distance, raced in, for example, international cross country, and the age-grading tables list it (which is a good thing, as you’ll see), but it’s not a distance that pops up often, and certainly not one I’d raced before. As a result, I was guaranteed a personal best just for finishing. Instead, I walked away with four personal records (“PRs”), even if only one really counts, because this race, being one of the USATF (USA Track & Field) New England Grand Prix events, sucked me into a place I didn’t know I had a ticket to enter.
You can race for years and not know of the existence of the Grand Prix series. I was entirely oblivious of these events for years, then only mildly aware of them, and now am frankly in awe of the talent they draw. This series, run here in New England and replicated (I would presume) in each region of the country, identifies a group of events over the course of the season spanning a plethora of distances ranging from five kilometers to the marathon. Both teams and individuals accumulate points toward the annual Grand Prix championship. The result is that every ringer in New England shows up for these races. Just showing up for a race of this caliber gets your heart pounding. Racing on the Greater Boston master’s team meant it mattered.
A week ago I wrote of a local race, a fine event to be sure, but clearly of local caliber. The starting line was peppered with people who had no idea that they shouldn’t be standing directly on the starting line. By the first turn, the lead pack stood at three. On this week’s fine and sunny (if a bit warm) Saturday in Bedford, I knew darn well that I had no right to be standing directly on the starting line. It was that obvious. This was the major leagues. I felt out a spot about six or seven deep from the front, and eyed the runners around me trying to get a feel if I’d be held back in a crowd or simply trampled by an unfathomably fast herd.
My positioning guess turned out to be fairly accurate. I nor anyone else I knew of was gored by the running of the bulls. But oh, did they run. Trouble was, I was really quite clueless as to just how fast they were running. This was no lead pack of three. This was a lead pack of an uncountable hoard, so many that I questioned whether I’d started racing. Am I really slugging this out so slowly that I’m this far back in the pack? Or is this simply an absurdly talented field? Or both?
Awaiting the mile split to answer this dilemma, my brain remotely registered a cacophony of watches chiming. It wasn’t till ten to fifteen seconds later that it dawned on me that I must have heard everyone’s GPS (save Luddite me with my simple Ironman) hit the mile. But a quick glance at my watch quickly dispelled that theory, as even ten to fifteen seconds later the time it reported was too quick for the first mile of a 5K, let alone for the distance we had in front of us.
Still questioning my pace, sanity, or both, and assuming I must be flagging to be so far back in this pack, I locked onto the lady ahead of me to avoid losing contact, while searching for the second mile split, by now realizing I’d missed the first. When a tiny “2m” paint mark passed, another glance at the time told me once again that this couldn’t possibly have been the second mile.
The enigma broke only when GBTC teammate Doug, whom I’d assumed had started ahead of me, arrived from behind shortly before the three mile mark (which again, I failed to see), and by the benefit of both his and my adopted pacer lady’s GPS they clued me in to the reality of the day. This was no slog in the park. This was, at least for me if not for them, flying low.
Last fall, I scratched my head over Kim, the young lady with whom I ran the Bay State Marathon, who wanted nothing to do with splits, pace calculations, and so on. Didn’t want to know. Don’t say a word. She just wanted to run. Saturday, I figured out her mindset. Hearing the pace we’d run for the first two miles, I was glad I hadn’t known. Indeed, I consciously put what they said out of my head. I didn’t want to know. Had I known, had I believed it, I would have cranked it way back after the first mile. Criminy, there’s still six and a half to go! But I didn’t know, and now we hit three miles, not quite at that first mile pace, but not far off, and, well, so what? This was what I was running, and it was really quite manageable. And though I didn’t know it at the time, using Doug’s GPS readout and some very conservative estimates, later I’d figure out that I’d just run my PR 5K, nailing a time I’d set as a goal for this summer. In a 12K.
Running with Doug at the five mile mark, where for the first time I saw the milepost, this time I was aware as it happened – another PR at five miles. A mile later at six, again a visible milepost, a clean split time, and easy extrapolation later turned up yet another PR at 10K. And though the only disappointment of the race came shortly after, another cramp (two weeks in a row!) which slowed mile seven, I held on to click off the 12K in sub-six pace. And since those aforementioned age-grading tables do indeed recognize the 12K, I was treated to seeing this scored as my highest rated race ever.
Oh yeah, and there were still over eighty people ahead of me. An utterly awesome field!
One of the mantras I would constantly tell the kids I coach is that you have no idea what you are capable of. I sucked up a little dose of that myself this weekend. Who needs a trophy when you can walk away with a carton of confidence and satisfaction, instead?
13 May 2012
B-Race
Not every day is an A-Day, and that’s not a bad thing. No, I didn’t tank at the races today. In fact, I walked away with an absurdly large trophy, the largest I’ve ever received. Large enough that it won’t fit in any of the usual trophy-stowage spots in my already overcrowded basement lair. It’s simply that having what’s clearly an A-race slated for next weekend, followed by yet another the weekend after that, I couldn’t look at this weekend’s event as an all-out, everything you’ve got kind of race. Even my level of obsession knows some bounds.
In the balancing act between my local club and friends – the Highland City Striders – and my racing club and friends – Greater Boston – this was a Striders weekend, a Striders race series race, and therefore a weekend to keep the home fires alive. As a local race that I’m only aware of due to my local club, and really only running due to my local club, it made sense to wear green and join our Striders contingent for this weekend’s event. I was sure my red friends would understand – or at least they would so long as I didn’t go and do something silly like win it while not wearing GBTC red.
No worries, that didn’t happen. It was a B-Race day, and a B-Race outing. In the end I landed in third place with the aforementioned massive SUV-scale hunk’o’hardware for – gosh – only second place in the masters – not even winning that! (No, sadly, the wine wasn’t included in the prize, that’s just for perspective.) We’ll call it a hard day’s work and a decent but not remarkable outing, and be happy with it.
How is it that after Boston’s oven-baked wonder, we’ve endured four weeks of almost universally chilly, often wet, frequently windy, even downright uncomfortable training weather, then suddenly, along comes my first return-to-racing day and… of course, it soars up to about eighty. Go figger’ And like Boston, again it was mercifully non-humid, but oddly so non-humid that I’ve rarely felt so dry-mouthed in any race, let alone a brief five-miler. Sigh, suboptimal weather again. Whatever, it’s a B-Race day.
Now, none of this B-Race talk is in any way intended to demean the fine event known as the Clinton Tribute Road Race, a thirty-four-year tradition with tremendous town-wide volunteer and fan support. Few local races get people out of their houses along the course to cheer, but this one does. The race honors local heroes, and the town stands up and takes note. And the local newspaper in Clinton provides more coverage their local events than anywhere else I’ve seen. No, no belittling at all, they did a fine job. It was simply a B-Race day.
And a wicked hilly one to boot. Right up my hills-in-my-blood alley. I’d been warned, and so I’d scoped the course in response to those warnings. Four notable hills in a mere five mile race., the third being clearly the worst, the last also tough but seemingly manageable, since it’s the second-to-last hill in Stu’s 30K, and knowing that I wouldn’t have to climb the killer final hill of Stu’s made it seem that this one would be a breeze. Well, relatively, at least. Well, not, it would turn out.
For starters, this race starts uphill. Significantly uphill. That alone is pretty unusual. I also note that this one had more than its share of the usual hoo-ha’s who sprint off the line and more or less fall to the ground panting by the first tenth of a mile, and this was even more fun to watch when that first tenth was uphill. We’d cleared them out by the first turn at the third of a mile mark, and by the mile, the field of three hundred had winnowed to a mini-field of three. I’d already long ago heard the last of any footsteps or crowd support for anyone close behind, and just plugged myself into a slot about fifty yards back as John & Brad duked it out up front. I was holding their pace, and not at my limit, but I just couldn’t find it to press harder to catch them. Not that they would have necessarily just let me do so, but… It was a B-Race.
Brad, running second as we worked hill number two, proved to be outstanding at striding out the downhills but not so strong on the climbs – or in short exactly opposite of my strengths and weaknesses. On the flats around the two-mile mark, he briefly took the lead from John, whom I’d last faced – and lost to (and didn’t care because he’s a youngster and a nice guy) at the Tri-Valley 15K. Not only did John repay the favor as we hit the third and biggest hill at mile three, but I piled it on, also eclipsing Brad and moving into second on the climb. This positional jockeying was kind of fun, but it didn’t last. Following that biggest climb came the biggest downhill screamer, and by the four-mile mark, cramping and uncomfortable, and feeling like it was a B-Race day, I just smiled and waved as Brad grunted by and I realized that yes, he qualified for the Old Farts Club, and I wouldn’t be taking the masters’ top prize. C’est la vie.
Given that, the final climb back into town, which I’d earlier mentally called a gimme’, was anything but, transformed into a fatigued slog. Being ninety-five-percent certain there was nobody within reach (though never entirely certain) it pretty much just didn’t matter. Between the heat, the hills, and the cramp, my time was nothing to write home about. So just wrap it up, call it a hard workout, a decent day, unremarkable, a B-Race. A fine day, to be sure, but a B-Day, with no regrets.
With an absurdly big trophy.
Tidbits of Note: Entering that killer hill at mile three, my odometer clicked over mile one thousand miles on the year. I’d known it would happen that day but had forgotten about it in the heat (pun intended) of the competition. It was an appropriate spot for the event. And post-race, I had the pleasure of bumping into a former co-worker I hadn’t seen in years. Truth be told, he spotted me. Jim played football when he attended my alma mater, Rensselaer, and I was tickled to see he’s keeping himself in fine shape during those years when most people focus on their careers and neglect their fitness. Way to go, Jim!
No worries, that didn’t happen. It was a B-Race day, and a B-Race outing. In the end I landed in third place with the aforementioned massive SUV-scale hunk’o’hardware for – gosh – only second place in the masters – not even winning that! (No, sadly, the wine wasn’t included in the prize, that’s just for perspective.) We’ll call it a hard day’s work and a decent but not remarkable outing, and be happy with it.
How is it that after Boston’s oven-baked wonder, we’ve endured four weeks of almost universally chilly, often wet, frequently windy, even downright uncomfortable training weather, then suddenly, along comes my first return-to-racing day and… of course, it soars up to about eighty. Go figger’ And like Boston, again it was mercifully non-humid, but oddly so non-humid that I’ve rarely felt so dry-mouthed in any race, let alone a brief five-miler. Sigh, suboptimal weather again. Whatever, it’s a B-Race day.
Now, none of this B-Race talk is in any way intended to demean the fine event known as the Clinton Tribute Road Race, a thirty-four-year tradition with tremendous town-wide volunteer and fan support. Few local races get people out of their houses along the course to cheer, but this one does. The race honors local heroes, and the town stands up and takes note. And the local newspaper in Clinton provides more coverage their local events than anywhere else I’ve seen. No, no belittling at all, they did a fine job. It was simply a B-Race day.
And a wicked hilly one to boot. Right up my hills-in-my-blood alley. I’d been warned, and so I’d scoped the course in response to those warnings. Four notable hills in a mere five mile race., the third being clearly the worst, the last also tough but seemingly manageable, since it’s the second-to-last hill in Stu’s 30K, and knowing that I wouldn’t have to climb the killer final hill of Stu’s made it seem that this one would be a breeze. Well, relatively, at least. Well, not, it would turn out.
For starters, this race starts uphill. Significantly uphill. That alone is pretty unusual. I also note that this one had more than its share of the usual hoo-ha’s who sprint off the line and more or less fall to the ground panting by the first tenth of a mile, and this was even more fun to watch when that first tenth was uphill. We’d cleared them out by the first turn at the third of a mile mark, and by the mile, the field of three hundred had winnowed to a mini-field of three. I’d already long ago heard the last of any footsteps or crowd support for anyone close behind, and just plugged myself into a slot about fifty yards back as John & Brad duked it out up front. I was holding their pace, and not at my limit, but I just couldn’t find it to press harder to catch them. Not that they would have necessarily just let me do so, but… It was a B-Race.
Given that, the final climb back into town, which I’d earlier mentally called a gimme’, was anything but, transformed into a fatigued slog. Being ninety-five-percent certain there was nobody within reach (though never entirely certain) it pretty much just didn’t matter. Between the heat, the hills, and the cramp, my time was nothing to write home about. So just wrap it up, call it a hard workout, a decent day, unremarkable, a B-Race. A fine day, to be sure, but a B-Day, with no regrets.
With an absurdly big trophy.
Tidbits of Note: Entering that killer hill at mile three, my odometer clicked over mile one thousand miles on the year. I’d known it would happen that day but had forgotten about it in the heat (pun intended) of the competition. It was an appropriate spot for the event. And post-race, I had the pleasure of bumping into a former co-worker I hadn’t seen in years. Truth be told, he spotted me. Jim played football when he attended my alma mater, Rensselaer, and I was tickled to see he’s keeping himself in fine shape during those years when most people focus on their careers and neglect their fitness. Way to go, Jim!
11 May 2012
Bounce-Back
I am reminded during this political season (though, when is it not political season?) of the old joke that goes something to the effect of, “How many times can you hit a liberal before he’ll hit back?” Conveniently skipping the morass of any political commentary, I’ll simply translate that to, “”How many times can you hit a marathoner before he’ll hit back?” The answer appears to be precisely one.
We’re in an unprecedented bounce-back season it appears. On the heels of the Boston Bake-Fest, many of my marathoning friends have found themselves in an unusual position: without a Boston Marathon Qualifier, and though months away, with the Boston registration season looming large. These people are not taking it sitting down. They’re taking it to the streets.
Used to be (ah, the good old days…) that you had plenty of time in the fall to nab a qualifier. Then came that famed eight-hour sellout of 2010, and the world changed rapidly. The Boston Athletic Association made changes, the world grumbled, and we moved on. Frankly, I thought the scheme to sign up on day one, day three, day five, based on where you stood vis-à-vis your qualifying time was a good idea. Of course, I wasn’t at any risk with that scheme, so why wouldn’t I think it was a good idea? But if Boston is to continue as a race primarily for qualified runners, it’s fair to give an edge up based on one’s level of qualification. Further tightening the qualifying times was right in line with that philosophy. Someday I too may find myself on the outs and grumble, but I cannot complain about the fairness of the system.
But the other major change puzzled me when it was announced, continues to puzzle me, and today is vexing a whole lot of runners who were baked and basted out of their expected requalification last month on the skillet from Hopkinton to Wellesley. That’s the odd fact that the BAA moved the qualifying deadline up from mid-October to mid-September. If your intent is to bring together the most qualified marathoners to maintain the elite nature of the event, it makes sense that those qualifying times be recorded relatively close to the event. By moving this date back, the BAA has eliminated the bulk of the fall marathon season – the optimal time weather-wise – from the pool of qualifying opportunities for the following year’s race. This forces runners to use much earlier races to qualify.
Fall marathons still count due to the roughly eighteen month window, but only for the following year. A lot can happen to a runner in that period of time. It seems to me that it would have made more sense to reduce the window length to winnow out the long-past races, but keep the immediately preceding fall season within the window. It seems to me this would have produced a field more likely to be in “Boston” condition. But I’m sure they had their reasons, so who am I to judge?
I’m sitting in a comfortable position, since my race at Bay State last fall, which didn’t count to get me into this year’s Boston but did count to improve my seeding once I was in, now counts to get me into next year’s race. Provided the registration process works well again as it did this year, I’m set, with a solid time for seeding. On top of that, I was fortunate to be one of the few who, despite the heat, would have requalified with my Boston time, with over twenty minutes to spare, a big advantage with the new registration system. I don’t need to scramble.
But a lot of other folks do. People who qualify year after year suddenly found themselves on the outs. For many, each Boston is the primary route to requalify for the following Boston, and if for some reason that race went poorly, they’d pop in a fall marathon, get their time, and be done with it. No longer. It’s now a case of doing it now, before the summer heat (one hopes, look what happened last month), or traveling northward and hoping for a cool day in early September, a pretty big gamble with that deadline looming.
Most people don’t stack marathons back-to-back. I’ve done it with the Boston-Buffalo combo a number of times, but typically to raised eyebrows. My compatriots are now exploring that world. Granted, the slower pace of this year’s Boston did reduce the pounding and wear-and-tear factor, so one could construe it to have been a full-scale training run, and see a follow-on race as not quite so absurd.
And so off they go, a few to Providence last weekend, where two of my friends did get their qualifiers, one blowing a huge personal best with and leaving himself room to spare, one uncomfortably close to his needed time, leaving him still at risk based o the new registration process. Another friend heads to Sugarloaf in Maine in a week for their famously downhill romp, and hopefully cool weather. And he found himself in the midst of a cattle herd heading north, over a dozen Boston Burned Boys all thinking the same thing. I’m quite certain that late spring marathons have seen an unusual uptick of late registrations, all owing to this strange confluence of events.
I’m set for Boston 2013, but while I’m pleased with my race considering the conditions, I’d sure like to see what the winter’s training can produce on a good day. And so I’ve tossed my hat into the ring to take on my favorite late-spring race in Buffalo again this year. I’m a little worried that the mild winter could mean a warmer-than-usual Lake Erie and the absence of cool breezes we rely on for that race. After all, last year did get hot by the end. But I’ll take my chances and see what Mother Nature deals up this time. Knock on wood, it can’t be as bad as last month.
Right?
We’re in an unprecedented bounce-back season it appears. On the heels of the Boston Bake-Fest, many of my marathoning friends have found themselves in an unusual position: without a Boston Marathon Qualifier, and though months away, with the Boston registration season looming large. These people are not taking it sitting down. They’re taking it to the streets.
Used to be (ah, the good old days…) that you had plenty of time in the fall to nab a qualifier. Then came that famed eight-hour sellout of 2010, and the world changed rapidly. The Boston Athletic Association made changes, the world grumbled, and we moved on. Frankly, I thought the scheme to sign up on day one, day three, day five, based on where you stood vis-à-vis your qualifying time was a good idea. Of course, I wasn’t at any risk with that scheme, so why wouldn’t I think it was a good idea? But if Boston is to continue as a race primarily for qualified runners, it’s fair to give an edge up based on one’s level of qualification. Further tightening the qualifying times was right in line with that philosophy. Someday I too may find myself on the outs and grumble, but I cannot complain about the fairness of the system.
But the other major change puzzled me when it was announced, continues to puzzle me, and today is vexing a whole lot of runners who were baked and basted out of their expected requalification last month on the skillet from Hopkinton to Wellesley. That’s the odd fact that the BAA moved the qualifying deadline up from mid-October to mid-September. If your intent is to bring together the most qualified marathoners to maintain the elite nature of the event, it makes sense that those qualifying times be recorded relatively close to the event. By moving this date back, the BAA has eliminated the bulk of the fall marathon season – the optimal time weather-wise – from the pool of qualifying opportunities for the following year’s race. This forces runners to use much earlier races to qualify.
Fall marathons still count due to the roughly eighteen month window, but only for the following year. A lot can happen to a runner in that period of time. It seems to me that it would have made more sense to reduce the window length to winnow out the long-past races, but keep the immediately preceding fall season within the window. It seems to me this would have produced a field more likely to be in “Boston” condition. But I’m sure they had their reasons, so who am I to judge?
I’m sitting in a comfortable position, since my race at Bay State last fall, which didn’t count to get me into this year’s Boston but did count to improve my seeding once I was in, now counts to get me into next year’s race. Provided the registration process works well again as it did this year, I’m set, with a solid time for seeding. On top of that, I was fortunate to be one of the few who, despite the heat, would have requalified with my Boston time, with over twenty minutes to spare, a big advantage with the new registration system. I don’t need to scramble.
But a lot of other folks do. People who qualify year after year suddenly found themselves on the outs. For many, each Boston is the primary route to requalify for the following Boston, and if for some reason that race went poorly, they’d pop in a fall marathon, get their time, and be done with it. No longer. It’s now a case of doing it now, before the summer heat (one hopes, look what happened last month), or traveling northward and hoping for a cool day in early September, a pretty big gamble with that deadline looming.
Most people don’t stack marathons back-to-back. I’ve done it with the Boston-Buffalo combo a number of times, but typically to raised eyebrows. My compatriots are now exploring that world. Granted, the slower pace of this year’s Boston did reduce the pounding and wear-and-tear factor, so one could construe it to have been a full-scale training run, and see a follow-on race as not quite so absurd.
And so off they go, a few to Providence last weekend, where two of my friends did get their qualifiers, one blowing a huge personal best with and leaving himself room to spare, one uncomfortably close to his needed time, leaving him still at risk based o the new registration process. Another friend heads to Sugarloaf in Maine in a week for their famously downhill romp, and hopefully cool weather. And he found himself in the midst of a cattle herd heading north, over a dozen Boston Burned Boys all thinking the same thing. I’m quite certain that late spring marathons have seen an unusual uptick of late registrations, all owing to this strange confluence of events.
I’m set for Boston 2013, but while I’m pleased with my race considering the conditions, I’d sure like to see what the winter’s training can produce on a good day. And so I’ve tossed my hat into the ring to take on my favorite late-spring race in Buffalo again this year. I’m a little worried that the mild winter could mean a warmer-than-usual Lake Erie and the absence of cool breezes we rely on for that race. After all, last year did get hot by the end. But I’ll take my chances and see what Mother Nature deals up this time. Knock on wood, it can’t be as bad as last month.
Right?
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