In just the past month, I have had to travel on business to three different destinations on three separate occasions. This plethora of traveling has often made it difficult to run, but since I maintain an active racing schedule, I really can’t afford to have these trips impede on the 80-90 miles of weekly running required by my training program.After my most recent trip, I returned home fatigued and endured a series of terrible runs on the ensuing days. I’ve been spending these trips sitting around a conference table, not hiking around or digging ditches, so it was not immediately clear to me why travel is so taxing on the body.

However, after serious reflection, I identified several reasons why traveling can be perilous to a running regimen…

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This week’s featured maps are for the Wild Miles Relay. This overnight adventure relay race is put on by In Motion, Inc., and travels 179 miles from Vail Lake in Temecula, CA to its finish aat San Dieguito County Park in Del Mar, CA. True to its namesake, the Wild Miles Relay travels through some difficult terrain, and takes its 5- to 10-person teams through everything from deserts, to mountains, to the Pacific coast.

Marathon GIS produced two primary map products for this race:

1) A map book featuring the leg map, route directions/mileage, gps coordinates, misc leg information, and the elevation profile.

2) A large overview map (22”x36”) that shows the entire course and the entire profile in an aesthetic layout. These overview maps are good for both planning race logistics and as a souvenir.

My goal with the Wild Miles project was not just to create accurate maps and profiles, but also to “bring the race to life” by incorporating custom elements into the maps. The race’s official fonts were used for exchange and street labeling within the maps, and were also used in the profiles and in the map titles. A false-elevation color ramp was selected that uses warm colors in the desert/mountainous part of the race, and cool colors in the low-elevation coastal part of the race. Multiple-ring buffers were used to create “coastal vignettes”, which enhance the aesthetics of water bodies within the maps. The majority of the cartography was performed in ArcGIS 9.2, Adobe Illustrator CS2 was used to create the profiles, and Adobe InDesign CS2 for the final map and atlas layouts.

Good luck to all those participating in the Wild Miles Relay this weekend!

You might be a mileage junkie if:

1. You rotate 5 different pairs of shoes
2. Your training log has more mileage on it than your car odometer
3. You view holidays merely as more time to run
4. Garmin has voided your warranty on all purchases
5. You record your mileage to two decimal places
6. You view walking your dog as another chance to run
7. Your dog hides whenever you put on your running shoes
8. Despite the fact you own eight pairs of running shoes, you would never wear them for anything else besides running
9. Your spouse and children take up running, solely as a way to spend some time with you
10. Your chiropractor gives you presents on your birthday and Christmas
11. Your massage therapist gives you presents on your birthday and Christmas
12. Your podiatrist gives you presents on your birthday and Christmas
13. You run everywhere, because “walking is boring”
14. You hate tapering and look forward to your marathon as a chance to get more mileage
15. You routinely brag how you haven’t missed more than xx consecutive days of running in the last xx years. You are oblivious to how your friends are unimpressed.
16. You turn down co-workers when invited to go out to lunch, not because you’re a cheapskate, but because you were planning on grabbing an “easy 8” during the lunch hour
17. You adjust all of your appointments and meetings to your running schedule
18. You have no social life outside of your running group
19. Most people have never seen you in street clothes
20. You don’t let the sun down unless you have run xx miles
21. You run the evening after a race, just to “shake the race out”
22. You wake up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, but decided to get a few miles in while you’re at it, since “you’re already up”
    

Did I miss any?

I am often surprised at just how flimsy and breakable many of my expensive sports watches turn out to be. Too often these gadgets, which are high-tech in functionality, literally fall apart (usually from the band breaking). And if the body of the watch actually withstands the punishment I dish out, the battery inevitably dies a premature death. These past experiences have made me - admittedly - a bit cynical when it comes to sports watches.However, this all changed when I had the opportunity to try the GW-800 1V model of Casio’s G-Shock watch series…

Read the entire article at The Final Sprint!

Recently I participated in Relay Del Sol, an overnight team relay race that traverses nearly 190 miles through central Arizona. As if running and managing team logistics isn’t exhausting enough, I decided to punish myself even further by acting as a vendor and selling souvenirs all day at the finish line. That meant that while other participants had the privilege to go home, take a shower, and dive into the realm of slumber, I had to remain in the land of the living…

Read the entire article at The Final Sprint! 

Doubles…the dreaded “two-a-day”. Those phrases invoke not-so-fuzzy memories of high school cross country practice. Get up at 6AM, pound some stair laps, and then duke it out again on the roads at 3PM. Since most people on my prep team didn’t run at all during the summer, these double sessions (combined with racing three times per week) would “crash” most of us in shape by the conference and sectional meets.

Upon entering college and starting a new phase of my running career, doubles were completely eliminated from my training. Instead, our program focused on medium-length single runs (10-12 miles). My weekly mileage never topped over 80, which was not a hard volume to accomodate with singles, and I decided at that point that two-a-days were only for high school kids and obsessive-compulsive freakazoid runners.

This sentiment has changed, partially because I have become an obsessive-compulsive freakazoid runner. In other words, I become a marathoner in my post-collegiate running. Once my mileage reaches over 80 miles/week, I typically start incorporating doubles between 1-3 days/week. Here’s why:

1. This is a safe way to increase mileage without increasing pounding. It’s a lot easier to get 90-100 miles/week on 9 or 10 runs than on 6 or 7 runs.
2. Since runs can be shorter, you tend to get beat up less and reduce chance of injury (for the given training volume).
3. More running = more efficiency. Every time you go out and run, it increases blood volume and burns calories. There’s no such thing as “junk miles”. Doubles make you fast.
4. It’s a great way to recover from a race and do high mileage at the same time. For example, following up a half marathon or 10K with some doubles over the next week will allow the body to recover quickly and keep building aerobic fitness.
5. A short morning run is a good way to increase performance for an afternoon workout or race. Even an easy mile will help with this. I’ve found that running in the morning will help get the blood flowing and put some spring in my step for my evening run. It’s surprising how often I will wake up feeling slow and tired, jog with the dog around the block, and then feel like a new person when my evening run rolls around.
6. Doubles are a good way to keep mileage high on short race days. An easy 5-miler several hours after a 5K or 10K will keep your mileage stable and also “work out” some of the race soreness. Remember, easy is key, and running on a different surface is recommended as well (ie grass, trail, etc.).

At 70 miles/week or less, I don’t see much point in doubles, except on race days and recovery weeks. At 80+ miles/week, I think they are a good thing and should be considered by most people. If you’re struggling to get your mileage up, struggling to maintain mileage on recovery weeks, trying to lose those last few pounds of winter fat, or want a performance boost for workouts, give doubles a shot.

Over the span of March 30-31, 74 teams and nearly 900 individuals gathered in central Arizona to run the inaugural Relay Del Sol, part of the Ragnar Relay series.My team, MarathonGIS.com, was comprised of 12 men from various locations in Utah, Washington, and Michigan. Some of us were friends, some were strangers. Some of us were experienced relay runners, some were neophytes. Regardless of personal backgrounds, overnight adventure relays have a knack for bring people together, mostly due to close quarters! Every team that does a relay has their own stories, adventures, mishaps, and humorous quotes and inside jokes. The following is our story…

Read the full article at The Final Sprint!