I vividly remember my first marathon. I can still visualize the preparation, the excitement and anticipation, the effortlessness of the first half of the race … and the pain and agony of the last eight miles!…
Read the full article at The Final Sprint!
Update time. In Part 1 I outlined my initial aversion to the fusion of mp3 players and running, and how I eventually decided to give it a fair shake. Here are the results of my experiment with adding “flavor” to my running via music & podcasts…
Read the full article at The Final Sprint!
Well, I’ve broken down and done it. I have purchased an mp3 player … and I intend to run with it! Most of you are probably thinking: “Well, so what? Welcome to the 21st century!”…
Read the full article at The Final Sprint!
If you browse through any running magazine, website, or forum, you are sure to see a menagerie of articles and posts about overuse injuries. Stress fractures, tendonitis, “runner’s knee”, groin strains, and that beast, plantar fasciitis, all come up with surprising regularity. Let’s face the unfortunate truth, injuries can be a part of running…
Read the full article at The Final Sprint!
The Marathon GIS map of the week is of the Carlsbad Marathon, which is being held today, January 21. This event is hosted in Carlsbad, CA, just west of the San Diego. In fact, before 2005, it was called the “San Diego Marathon.” The event also consists of a large half marathon, which sold out for the first time in 17 years, with an entry total of 7000 runners. The total number of participants in the event (Marathon + Half Marathon + kid’s mile) is over 10,000 runners and walkers. Congrats to InMotion Events!
Needless to say, I was excited when InMotion contracted me (Marathon GIS) to update their maps and profiles. Despite never visiting the course, simply making the maps made me want to go out there one of these years and run the race. Both half and full marathon courses primarily hug the coastline and offer splendid views of the 
Pacific Ocean. The marathon course, although containing a noticeable hill near the middle, is considered a good Boston qualifier, and running at sea level will only serve to help.
The half marathon course looks to be flat-out blazing, with only a few very small rolling hills. Someday I would like to run the half, if nothing else just to get out of northern Utah in January! But it is a definite PR course as well, as demonstrated by very fast men’s and women’s course records of 1:02:06 and 1:11:23, respectively.
Making any course map is a challenge, but my progress was greatly helped my InMotion supplying me with GPS coordinates of the start, finish, mile markers, and u-turns. This ensured that both the maps and profiles were calibrated with the USATF certification, accommodating very accurate maps and profiles.
Others factors that helped me with the mapping was an abundance of high-quality GIS data available publically for the greater San Diego area. Good, attributed street data was key, and was complemented by the availability of 2005 color aerial photography and 10-meter digital elevation model (DEM) data. All these contributed to help with not only the accuracy of the maps and profiles, but also the aesthetics of the finished products.
My running outlook for the rest of January is hazy…hazy. Yesterday was our first red-burn day in over a year. A high-pressure system has swallowed most of northern Utah, leaving us with cold, inverted air that traps vehicle and livestock exhaust alike. My pristine little mountain valley currently has air quality that rivals Los Angeles. It’s a strange phenomenon.
People with respiratory problems are encouraged to stay inside or wear masks when they go outside. Obviously running outside in not in my interest. But I figure running outside could be no worse than smoking a few cigarettes, which is indefinitely better than running on a treadmill.
Although I have treadmill access through my gym, I am reluctant to do extended running on them due to injury concerns. In a nutshell, treadmills can cause you to overstride, due to the “ground” moving under your feet. For the split second your feet are on the mill, they are actually moving backward; this is unnatural and has been known to cause injuries. I’m a bit paranoid of injuries, having missed most of 2006, and will take my chances outside with the freezing cold and PM-2.5.
Since moving to northern Utah I’ve developed a bit of a trail running habit. During the summer months the local mountains frequently invite me onto their paths of dirt and rock, and I gladly accept…
Read the full article at The Final Sprint!
1 degree in Logan, Utah this morning. My beard completely iced over just from walking the dog around the block. How am I supposed to run in this crap? The only thing keeping me going is my training calendar. I am supposed to run 60 miles this week, and by golly, I’ll hold myself to it. This is where that $10/month gym membership comes in handy, as I imagine I will supplement “real” running with treadmill. I hate the treadmill, but my hands are so cracked I can barely write. Warm up soon, Mr. Sun!
Running injuries present many challenges. Getting the injury diagnosed and implementing a rehabilitation program are at the forefront, but keeping your SANITY during the potentially long layoff is often overlooked and can be very problematic….
Read the full article at The Final Sprint!
Early in the summer of 2006 my “running” hit an all-time low. I use the term “running” loosely, because at that time I had not actually ran in over two months. A better description would be that my overall physical well-being hit an all-time low, as I was suffering from an adductor strain, lower pain back, and acute plantar fasciitis all at the same time…
I tried to run naked once a week. By “naked”, I actually mean “without a watch”. We runners love our gadgets, and the sports watch is the granddaddy of all running accessories…
Read the full article at the The Final Sprint!
Big news for this blog and my writing career. I have been invited on as a freelance writer for The Final Sprint, a fairly new, but large, comprehensive running website. I’m pretty excited about this. The upshot is that I can fulfill my month-long dream of becoming a professional running columnist. The downshot is that all my “A”-material will be going there rather than here. But not to worry, Of Marathons and Maps will continue on in a slightly modified form. Gone will be be the rants and raves, training articles, product reviews, and other gibberish. What remains in enhanced form will be Utah running news and opinions, race course map showcases, and anything else too obscene or irrelevant for a “real” running site. When I created this blog, I originally intended it to be an extension of my side business, Marathon GIS, but I got sidetracked with writing columns and articles. Now the site will revert a bit closer to its intended format. And whenever I post on the The Final Sprint, I will post a link here as well.
What is the mathematical limits of human speed? That question was addressed in an interesting article yesterday on The Final Sprint website.
John Einmahl, a Dutch mathematician and professor at Tilberg University in Germany, claims to have recently discovered that the world record in the 100m sprint can be lowered by another half-second. Einmahl claims that Asafa Powell’s current record of 9.77 seconds mark can be reduced to 9.29 now, and Paul Tergat’s record of 2:04:55 can only be improved by 49 seconds…
…Paula Radcliffe’s current marathon mark of 2:15.25 could drop by 8:50…
…He stated that in his field the unbelievable can be accepted; but the impossible is not recognized. Despite his results, the mathematician acknowledged that extraordinary performances may come along, contradicting his findings.
This is interesting to me. The article does not go into detail into how exactly he computed this, and the link to more information and sources was broken. Bummer to math and running geeks alike. Oh well.
Personally, I’ve always been optimistic that the men’s marathon record would be improved by several minutes still. It would seem that given enough training improvements, enough time, and enough prize incentive, that eventually someone would come along and break the 2:00:00 marathon barrier. Adeel speculates similarly on the Complete Running Network. For the record, 2-hour pace comes out to about 4:34/mile, but hey, didn’t people once say that the 4-minute mile was beyond human limits? And if a million moneys could type Hamlet over enough time, surely someone will break 2:00:00 at some point.
Okay, but let’s say for fun that John Einmahl the mathematician is correct, and that someday a runner, let’s call him “Super-Tegat” reaches the human genetic potential of running and busts out a 2:04:06 on a flat, sea-level course. End of story, he can go no faster right? Nonsense, Super-Tergat sold himself short. He should have ran the St. George Marathon. Not to speculate too much, but St. George is most likely the fastest certified course on earth, as long as you are trained for downhill and altitude. And Super-Tergat is all of that. No, St. George is not record-eligible (has a downhill gradient greater than 1%), but let’s just speculate here. The idea is no worse than the Steroid Olympics.
So let’s assume that Super-Tergat spent a good year training in Salt Lake City at elevation, running up and down the Cottonwood Canyons to calibrate his legs to the hills. He is ready to race in Utah. Weather conditions at St. George are perfect, 45 deg F at the start with no wind. My course profile calculations indicate that the course has a cumulative elevation gain of 410 feet and cumulative elevation loss of 2976 feet. Over the marathon distance (138375 feet), this equates to 0.296% uphill gradient and 2.151% downhill gradient.
Tim Noakes in the Lore of Running summarized a study that indicated that energy savings of running downhill was about half of the energy cost of running uphill at the equivalent gradient. For each 1% increase in gradient, running speed would decrease by 0.65 km/hr; for each 1% decrease in gradient, running speed would increase by about 0.35 km/hr. Given the total uphill and downhill gradients of St. George, how much faster will Super-Tergat run? The time of 2:04:06 converts to 20.4 km/hr. His net energy savings due to the given gain and loss converts to an increase in speed of 0.56 km/hr, increasing his overall speed to 20.96 km/hr. This equates to just over 4:36/mile and an overall time of about 2:00:40. Rats, just missed it! I’m assuming no effects on altitude either for the sake of this fun. Runworks.com has a great running calculator that uses the Noakes formula and comes up with results that confirm my own math (which is reassuring). Sasha’s Utah Race Predictor is based more on empirical data and observation, as I understand it, but is known to be uncannily accurate. Sasha’s calculator comes up with a time of 2:02:03, so is a bit more conservative, but may indirectly factor in the effects of altitude.
If St. George offered a huge purse to break 2:00:00, I imagine it would happen sooner rather than later, despite the fact that the course isn’t record eligible. Super-Tergat will come some day.
I have to admit, I’m starting to get a little bit antsy. It has been about 9 months since I’ve ran a real race, but I still have a good 5 weeks until my first scheduled race (Striders Series 5K). The upside is that this gestation period has enabled me to shake my injury bugs and to develop a big base. The downside is that I’m sick of winter and sick of building base. As Cody put it the other day in his training blog, “Just another day, blah.”
But here’s the thing: despite my impatience, the longer I hold off racing and the longer I build base, the stronger and faster I will be in the long run. When I do run that first 5K on Feb 10, it will probably be my best season racing debut in many many years. For that matter, it will be the first real 5K I’ve ran in shape since Draper Days in July, 2004. This is my first year since college I’ve actually taken the time to build a big base before doing any sort of race! Most years I’ll go ahead and run the Canyonlands Half Marathon after just a couple months of running 30-40 miles/week. In fact, last year I was back to racing again just a few weeks after I resumed running after a three-month layoff. Sure, I told myself that I would “hold back” and treat the races like “workouts”, but I just can’t do that in reality. I was lying to myself; I’m way too competitive to hold back. Having a good base this year will give me the freedom to deliberately let loose from the get-go.
So yes, I will continue unabated with the base-building and set my eyes on long-term success, not instant gratification. To keep things more mentally (and physically) interesting, I’ve started throwing in a “Tinman Tempo” once week, added 100m striders a few days a week, and intend to start doing some CV fartleks in a couple weeks. These three workout types are part of Tinman’s base program, and should greatly increase aerobic fitness during base training. My mileage this week will be 53 on 6 days, plus some elliptical training. I’ll hit 60 miles/week (on 6 days) in a couple weeks, and by the time I race, I will have been in the mid-60s for several weeks. Not a huge base volume by the standards of many, but I think the key for base is not just volume, but also time. The longer one keeps at it and runs consistent, steady mileage, the faster they will be at the end of the base period, even without doing speedwork. This is what I’ve experienced in the past, and is what I anticipate experiencing this winter and spring. Yes, I’m itching to race pretty bad, but I’m looking forward even more to injury-free, strong running over the next full year.
Let me start off by saying that I don’t like the term “resolution“, which is overused so much this time of year that it almost implies failure. Instead I use a term that as a runner I can wrap my mind around easier and is more meaningful to me: “goal“. Being goal-oriented is important not just in everyday life, but in our running lives as well. As the proverb says, “The plans of the diligent lead surely to plenty; but those of everyone who is hasty, surely to poverty…”
I generally set running and life goals throughout the year, but do so in a fairly disorganized fashion. I don’t necessarily think them through, write them down, or tell other people about them. I felt that although it was good that I had goals, I could probably be more effective with them.
Effective 2007 goal setting was on my mind last week, and I happened to be listening to the Dave Ramsey Show (my favorite financial radio show), and Dave did a segment on well-rounded goal setting. I was working at the time and couldn’t focus my full attention on the segment, but fortunately I found a synopsis on another blog.
Dave says that our lives consist of seven major components, and goals must be set for each component in order to be successful. These seven areas of life for goal setting are: Career, Financial, Spiritual, Physical, Intellectual, Family, and Social. It is important to note that goals must be specific, measureable, and have a set completetion date. For example, “I want to lose weight” is a goal almost doomed to fail. A more powerful goal would be, “I want to lose 7 lbs by March 1st.”
I really liked the idea of structuring my goals this way, and over the weekend came out with a series of goals for these life areas for 2007. It was a challenge to make some of these goals measureable, but I eventually got the hang of it, and have started pursuing these individual goals. As I was working on my general personal goals, it occurred to me that running is multi-faceted as well, and a holistic group of running goals should address all of the aspects of running in order to be more effective. I made a few modifications to Dave Ramsey’s categories to come up with the Seven Goal Categories of Running. They are:
Again, in order for these goals to be effective, they need to be measureable, have a completion date, and be specific. Since my particular running goals are for 2007, the set completion date for many of them are simply by the end of the year or racing season. Below is a subset of my 2007 running goals:
I should note that some of these goals are things I’m already doing, and I simply want to keep doing them. I think it’s important to have some “lay-up” goals to keep us encouraged and not overwhelmed.
So I’ll have to wait and see how this method of goal setting will work out for me this year. This is the first time I’ve tried something like this, but I’m very optimistic. I’ve printed the list and tacked it to my bulletin board by my desk to remind me, and I’ve also told others about them to help keep me accountable. On that note, I’ll end by saying that it is important to share our goals with others. Feedback can help “sharpen the saw,” refine ideas, and enable accountability. Happy New Year, and good luck with your own goal setting and 2007 running!
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