Going Long

I walked 8 laps this morning, covering 6.4 miles in an hour and 25 minutes, so I was moving at a 13.28 minute pace...for a guy who could get into the low 10's a few years back, that number looks awful. But I did manage to do a "long" workout. I probably should have gone another lap to get past that 90 minute mark, but I was feeling a bit soft as I finished. I think my knees will be whining a bit tonight and tomorrow.
On Saturday, I'd gone down to an area race with my son. It's an end-of-summer cross-country race that is a shakedown for area racers. My son commented that he could beat a lot of the girls in the high school race. He rarely runs cross, so may be neglecting the time penalty of varied soft surfaces.

A Class Act and Some Idiocy

LoLo Jones was all over the reports from Beijing when she hit hurdle number nine and had the race pass her by as she struggled to stay on her feet. She didn't whine or complain, just asked, "Why here?" To me, that was a real class act, she moves up a couple of natches in my book.

Now the idiocy - the USA sends two 4x100 teams to the Olympics, how do both the men's and women's teams drop their batons? I coach kids, and the most important thing I try to teach them is "get the stick around." You can run relatively slowly and beat every team that drops the baton. These people are supposed to be our best; how do they make a stupid mistake like this? There is one way to make sure this doesn't happen...practice! Not only that, but after the men dropped, why didn't the women take a lesson from it? To me, it's inexcusable.

A Stroll

Last night, I walked for about an hour. I had gone to a local park and started walking about 7:15, and got back into the car at 8:23. I'm not sure if I went 6 or 7 laps, given the time, I'd like to think it was 7, but have no certainty, so either 4.8 or 5.6 miles. Being a Wednesday, one of the local running groups gets together there, so one guy I knew did a "WHAT are you doing?" about my walk. I'm just not in shape to run long, with my weight and lack of conditioning. I'd run 3.2 on Monday.

The Running Meatball

Ten days ago, when I ran the five miles, I'd suffered from the dreaded "chub rub," with my overly meaty thighs chafing to the point of having "polka dot" scabbing the next day. A few days later, I ran in my least favorite pair of running shorts. They're a pair of Nikes, which I purchased a few years back when I realized when headed for an evening race that I'd mispacked my bag. They're too long, nylon taffeta and they hold stink really well - I think it's the lining. I noticed as I wore them that I chafed very minimally, so it struck me that the trend towards longer shorts might also be a function of the trend towards obesity on American society.

Michael Phelps - Not the Greatest Olympic Athlete Ever!

No disrespect to Mr. Phelps, certainly he is one of the finest swimmers ever, perhaps the finest, but we must examine this fairly. Mr. Phelps, on winning his tenth gold surpassed several athletes tied for the honor with nine, one of whom was Paavo Nurmi (another was Mark Spitz), but it's Nurmi whom I'll use to argue this point.
Swimming is different from running, most significantly because it is raced in multiple strokes and at a great many distances, whereas there is only one way to run. What would Phelps' medal haul look like if he could only race freestyle? Or what would Nurmi's look like if he raced a run, trot, and canter? Simply put, the yardsticks are VERY different.
Nurmi won his 9 golds across three Olympiads, capturing three golds in Amsterdam (1920), five in Paris (1924) and one in ?? (1928), he also won several silvers. None of his medals were earned at distances less than 1500 meters. I will make the claim that running, because it involves impact loading, presents considerably more abuser to the body, and the ability to absorb that abuse and come back for more is more difficult than in swimming, lacking impact loading AND of generally shorter duration than running. (Time, distance as well, but I think time is the right measure here...swimming paces are inherently slower, so measuring by distance would be unfair.)
I would argue that the double double of Lasse Viren and that Emil Zatopek's 1952 distance running triple, golds in the 5000 meters, 10,000 meters, and marathon exceed what Phelps has done, but simply put, the yardsticks are different. (BTW, when checking details, I stumbled on Britain's James Cracknell saying much the same here.)Swimming has all these variants, and I believe more distances as well, so earning a swimming medal may well be easier than earning a running medal. Also, anyone without access to a reasonable body of water (think much of Africa) lacks the opportunity to hone their skills to an Olympian level.

Another Update

My achilles tendons are a bit tight because yesterday morning, my son and I went back to RVRR's weekly towpath run. We ran just shy of five miles. Once again, we were warmly greeted, and had a nice time, although we did not go to breakfast with them after the run. My son wants to take his running a bit more seriously, and he's been doing a fairly long run at least once a week with either my wife or me.

Happy Birthday!

Yesterday, my son and I went to one of the local parks to wish "Happy Birthday" to Dixie, who turned 91 yesterday. Dixie has cut back his mileage, now walking just 4-6 miles, six days a week, and he says that it's more often closer to the four, still, that's 24 miles a week from a 91 year-old. I think he got a kick out of seeing my son, who is about to turn ten, thus now more than a tenth of Dixie's age.
Also, today, I turned 49.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

See this post:
http://shoreacnews.blogspot.com/2008/08/100-years-of-marathon-distance.html

29:59 and Happy!

When I was in reasonable shape, I would have been slightly disappointed to run a 4 mile in that kind of time. Tonight, I ran a 5K in that time and am happy. That's what lack of conditioning will do for you. My son beat me by over 3 minutes, that's mostly the innate conditioning of being 9 years old.
I saw a guy I'd known for years, and his son, who sports a mane of bright orange hair, is now fifteen. I mentioned to him that I remembered his son when he was my son's size.
On Saturday, my son and I ran with one of the area clubs on a canal tow path. He ran about 5K before the lump of raisin bread hardened into concrete in his beely and made running hard. So, we did a mix of running and walking back to the start. We covered about 10K (me, a bit under 6 miles), but it was a good workout. The legs were a bit soft for a day. My wind is the limiting factor.
In tonight's race (and I use that term loosely), I wound up with another guy beside me for most of the last lap. He was pulling me along, and I was doing the "bail out, no don't" routine. I thought back to the lesson I got from Arthur Lydiard, which was "keep fighting, you never know when your competition will break." He didn't, I didn't, but I got my time, and I think he reached a bit deeper than he otherwise would have. The result was a bit anticlimactic, my opponent didn't cross the line, he hadn't signed up for the race, so I got the placing, but there wasn't the need to reach down and struggle to lift the knees to finish better than he did. He was a great runner in his day, so I knew it wouldn't be easy if it came to that, but it didn't.
Anyway, it was my first time this season under 30, so I'm happy.

An Update

I ran this morning, and I ran yesterday afternoon, and I walked on Wednesday. I am working hard to fight the battle. I did not do much last week, but I had a pretty good excuse, I was in Italy to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Olympic Marathon that established the standard marathon distance. I will be making a post on that on another site and will link to it from this one once it is up.