Born to run + marathons #5 and #6

I haven't been blogging about running (or at all) recently, so a quiet Sunday evening while experiments are running in datacenter far far away sounds like the appropriate time. In no particular order, here's what's on my running mind lately:

I'd recommend it.

Born to run

Of course, I had heard about "Born to run" before -- everyone in the running community has been associating that book with the minimalist shoe craze in the last few years. Since I'm still not completely sold on that idea, I wasn't terribly ecstatic about the book either. But this week, I saw a girl on the bus reading it and she insisted it was much more about telling running stories than minimalistic shoes. And boy, was she right (so, thank you, random gbus rider).

The book does tell a lot of good ultra-running stories: the Leadville 100, the Badwater ultra, a Mexican running tribe, the authors own experiences, and one particular race in the Mexican desert that the storyline revolves around. Of course, there are quite a few tangents about "natural" running, minimal shoes and bashing on big shoe manufacturers, which make the book very popular among the minimal crowd. But putting those aside and even treating it as a good piece of fiction (aka enjoying the story and not fact-checking) worked well for me. So well that I read it (mostly) in one sitting. Anyways, the book gets high on my recommendation list. You'll probably enjoy it more if you are a runner, but works well for any crowd.

That's a first, a half-naked picture
on the Internet. Now I should sit
down and watch traffic explode.

Marathon #5: San Francisco

I ran the marathon in San Francisco mid-June and it doesn't seem I'm writing a full race report for it. I ran the same race last year (my first full marathon) and wasn't planning on doing it again, especially so close after Sugarloaf in May. But decided to run after all last-minute instead of a 30km slow training run that weekend. And by last-minute I mean the Friday night before the Sunday race, when a friend told me she had a registration that would go unused due to an injury (and yes, I know there is a special place in hell reserved for people who run with others' bibs; what can I say, it was tempting).

The plan was to take it nice and slow and run a really controlled race, shooting for around 3:45. For the first time, this is more or less what happened -- I kept my discipline, didn't go out too fast and finished in 3:47. The only exception (that cost me those two extra minutes) was walking some portion of the 40-th km because of pretty bad calf cramps. All in all, it was a good run and I'm happy I did it.

Marathon #6: Light at the end of the tunnel

Great race, will come back.

This was my target race for the summer, in mid-July. It's in the mountains near North Bend, WA, about 40 minutes away from Seattle. And the course is fast, as in no uphill and about 1000 m of elevation loss. As the name suggests, there is a pitch-black tunnel during the first 5 km, where you can literally see the light at the end a few km away. Pretty cool. It was also capped at about 300 runners, which means none of the hoopla and huge crowds of a big city race.

For this one, I made my signature move of starting out too fast, but managed to somehow not destroy my quads in the process. This is partially because I ran a big portion by feel -- my watch got somewhat confused with the mountains, the tunnel and all of that. I finished with a shiny new PR of 3:29, fairly happy with myself. Not only because I was somewhat faster than before. The course was really beautiful, the race very well-organized and seemed to attract a good crowd of dedicated runners. I'll probably come back next year.

What now?

The last couple of months haven't been that much fun in terms of running. I feel like jumping from one pain to another. After a very steep downhill in SF (somewhere near Haight and Market, I think) I spent more than six weeks recovering from some lower-leg related pain. I was almost convinced it was cracked shin bone, muscle shouldn't take that long to heal and shouldn't hurt as much. Anyways, that's gone now, but I've been working to correct some other muscle imbalance, which is never efortless, and I keep missing that zen state when everything clicks and miles just go by. Oh well, hopefully the right muscles get strong enough and I find zen again.

Regardless, I've been building up good base mileage for the fall races in New England. My target then will be Hartford, CT in mid-October. I'll try to match (or even beat) my latest PR there, but now on a really flat course, no downhill cheating. I also enjoyed BayState so much last year that I might just do it again... And then, there's Manchester, NH, which sounds like a really nice small race, albeit a bit hilly. Soo, it will definitely be some subset of these three... Time will tell...