Running Shorts

Disclaimer: this is a bit of an old picture (well, duh) and clearly I've been bad about putting it up. Actually, as I'm typing right now, there is about 3-4 inches of snow on the ground. So...oops. But anyway, this is a rave run of Mariemont in the fall, which in my opinion is the best place to be in Cincinnati that season. This is actually my street (although my house is at the opposite end). Anyway, that's all I got...figured it would be nice to feature a picture of warmer times.

...sneaking onto the local golf course and running 18 holes. Yup. Christmas and trespassing just go hand in hand. Some of the nicest places to run are golf course. It's all finely manicured, soft grass surfaces in a quiet, peaceful, and natural setting. Of course, the problem with running on a golf course is that, well, it's for golf. And (shamelessly generalizing here) no one gets more snotty about the purity of their "sport" than golfers (again, just over-generalizing...it's not all golfers, just the rec golfers). Grass is always a nicer surface to run on than asphalt. We used to do occasional workouts on the golf course by Xavier in the winter, and it was always nicer running on the grass than on the sidewalk. I've been looking for a good time (and the balls) to trespass since then. So I figured Christmas would be the best time to try it out - no places are actually open and no one would be there. So I did it. Two loops of nine holes on the Little

With four months until the Boston Marathon, it's time for me to start thinking about and putting together my general training plan. I've been working on a pretty good aerobic base for most of the fall - and of course that's going to continue - but now I'm starting to put together workouts. I've blogged about how I like being able to experiment with different workouts and training methods now that I'm running on my own, and that's still true now. I'm a huge dork and am really excited about the training method I'm going to experiment with this time around. I'm going to be experimenting with the Canova method of marathon training, which tweaks the typical training periodization a little bit. There is a really good article on it from Running Times here , and another good one from Runner's World here (it pains me to use the latter magazine, but this seems like one of the few times it actually applies to more than the average rec runner). I

My blog's kind of boring. It's mostly just text. I mean, super exciting and informative and hilarious text (right? right ? Oh who am I kidding...), but still...it's just text. I need more visuals. (I know I've mentioned that before, and I do have a couple Rave Runs I'm sitting on.) Or, what would be really cool: audio-visuals. Movies. Which leads me to the title of the post: 5 Vignettes (or 5x5). Long story short, a former teammate and roommate in college posted on facebook a link to a friend's vimeo page, and after surfing around a bit I came across this challenge to create a 5x5 short video. Internet creeping at its finest. So what is this 5x5? And what are the 5 Vignettes? Basically, it's a short (25 second) film consisting of 5 clips lasting 5 seconds each telling some sort of story about a place or event. Here's a link to the group page with other peoples' films a short description of the genre. Now, they say no music, but I'm not

I ran a 31:26 and finished in 4th place. Meh. I definitely wanted it to be better, but I think it was a pretty accurate reflection of the training I'd done leading up to the race. Between the Achilles problems in August and the sprained ankle a couple months ago, I was never able to get in the consistency that makes for good races. I didn't get my mileage where it should have been and I wasn't able to get in the quality workouts that I should have. And that inconsistent training was reflected in my race. As for the play-by-by, it happened like this: Went out in 4:57 for the first mile, and the guys who finished 1-2 gapped 3-4-5. In an ideal world, I should have been able to go with them, but that didn't happen. Going across the bridges into Kentucky, 3 & 4 gapped me, and I was sitting 5th. The middle two miles weren't very good for me. I was really pleased with my last 2 miles, where I was able to accelerate and close the gap, moving into 4th place and alm