Running Shorts

A word of advice: don't get out of shape. Once you are, getting back in shape sucks. And patience is hard. Coming back from injury, I've been running for three weeks; this current week will be my fourth. My progression has been as such: Week 1: 17.5 miles on 5 days (4.5 mile longest run) Week 2: 27 miles on 6 days (7 mile longest run) Week 3: 37 miles on 6 days (8 mile longest run) Week 4: GOAL 45-50 miles on 6 days with a 10-mile longest run Right now I'm just running to return to a semblance of fitness. It's base training for base training. No special workouts, and the only think I'm doing faster than easy runs are the occasional set of four strides at about marathon effort. It's tough. Progress is slow. My Achilles feels great some days and achy other days, so I have to really pay attention to it. I feel aerobically fit to run more and faster, but neuromuscularly my legs haven't caught up. I find myself almost holding back on most runs, b...

Disclaimer: This is a history post...I am a history teacher, after all. You're about to get a history lesson. Fair warning. Last year around Thanksgiving, I wrote a brief cumulative history of Cincinnati's 100+ year-old Thanksgiving Day Race . It's a great local tradition that I look forward to racing every year; however, it turns out that most cities and towns have their own turkey trot traditions. (Heck, Buffalo's race is even older than Cincinnati's.) For thousands of runners across the country, road races are a Thanksgiving tradition. We don't often think of them like that, but the community turkey trot belongs in the conversation with turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and football as Thanksgiving staples. As it turns out, we can trace the legacy of running (racing) all the way back to the first Thanksgiving in 1621. Running has a stronger tie to the initial holiday than stuffing, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, etc - foods which weren't served at t...

So it's been about four years in the making, but I'm now going to the Olympic Marathon Trials. I ran the B-Standard qualifying time, I've registered for the Trials race (most reasonably priced marathon ever, by the way), and I've bough the plane tickets to LA. I'm all in. Well now what? What do you do after you finally run that cathartic qualifying time? You recover, race a 10k on Thanksgiving, and then hop into marathon training. I've spent the past two weeks taking training pretty light. The first week was very unstructured, just lots of easy mileage to get my legs back to feeling good. This past week was a little bit of a step up, with more mileage and some more tune-up workouts. This coming week I'm racing Cincinnati's classic Thanksgiving Day Race (if you'll be there come say hi!), looking to get after it  a few weeks removed from Indy Monumental. I don't want to go into the race with too many expectations, but suffice it to say I'...

Sorry for the delay in getting this post out, I don't really have any good excuse. Holidays and such, I guess. Anyway, for the third time in the last four years, I finished second . (The one time I wasn't second, I was fourth.) So that's disappointing in a Phil Mickelson-esque way. My time this year was 30:48, which was a solid 30 seconds better than last year, but about 30 seconds slower than I ran earlier this fall at Minster (which, admittedly, is a much faster course with much more competition). Coming down the home stretch. The race this year was over by the first mile. By that point, Team USA Minnesota member and eventual winner Eric Finan had started to gap the rest of the lead pack. Going up Liberty hill around the mile and a half mark, that gap became a gulf, and all that was left was a race for second. By the time I was struggling up Liberty, I realized today just wasn't my day. So what can you do? Pack it in, gut it out, and don't let anyone...

Source: Cincinnati Enquirer archive - http://www2.cincinnati.com/blogs/running/category/100-footprints/ On Thanksgiving morning in 1908, 21 men took off from the Fort Thomas Central YMCA, winding their way through Northern Kentucky and across the Ohio River into Cincinnati. 18 men reached the finish outside the downtown YMCA at 7th and Walnut streets. The winner that year -- as he was for the next four installments -- was Lovell Draper, covering the approximately 7-mile course in 37:15 and winning by over three minutes. (For some perspective, in that 7-mile race, Draper's 10k split would have been about 33:00, which would have been good enough for 11th place in last year's race , out of 14,259 total finishers.) While some cities celebrate Thanksgiving with a parade of floats, balloons, and bands, Cincinnati celebrates the holiday with a parade of runners. This is the abridged story of a local tradition. Before I go any further, the astute reader might point out that,...

So now that it's mid-September (what?!), I just realized I should probably post my planned fall racing schedule. My last race of the spring was the Hyde Park Blast ( read about it here ), which ended on a bit of a downer. Trying to push through a nagging hamstring injury, my spring races didn't end as well as I hoped they would. Since then, I've taken about 2 months away from racing, instead getting in some quality training. My hamstring is fully recovered and healthy, my mileage is back up in the 90+ per week range, and I'm running regular 20 mile long runs, 60 minute aerobic threshold runs, and hill repeats. Training's going great, and I've been feeling great during it. With that said, I've actually technically started my fall season. Two weekends ago, I ran the Zero Prostate Cancer 10k here in Cincinnati. This year was the first year this race has offered prize money: $250 for both the men's and women's winner of the 5k and the 10k. I chose t...

Will you be in Cincinnati this Saturday, June 28th? If so, you should experience the Hyde Park Blast , the most fun race event in the city all year. Yeah, I said it. It's better than Flying Pig weekend, better than the Thanksgiving Day Race, better than the Heart Mini 15k. Why? Simple: because it puts all levels of endurance sports (well, cycling and running) on showcase through a block-party-like atmosphere. The day starts in the morning with a 4-mile run/walk. Who doesn't like road races? Trick question: everyone loves them. Especially in Hyde Park. Everyone runs in Hyde Park, and you can bet just about everyone will be participating in the run that morning. The run is followed by a series of kids races, ranging in distance from .1 to .5 miles. Nothing like getting 'em started young. At noon the even switches gears (pun intended) as the cycling races start. From noon until 8 pm, there are a series of crits  of decreasing category (which means increasing speed ...

Whenever I tell someone I'm running a half marathon this spring, the response is almost always, "Oh, are you running the Pig?" When I tell them no, I'm actually going to Pittsburgh and doing their half marathon, the next question, invariably, is, "Well why aren't you doing the Pig?" I've explained what Pittsburgh has to offer in my previous post , but I haven't explained what the Flying Pig doesn't have to offer. So here's why not the Pig: But first, let me say this: I want to like the Pig; I really do. Even though I give the race a hard time in this blog, I only do so because I'm passionate about wanting to see it succeed as a race. After all, it is the biggest and most prestigious running event in Cincinnati, and people in the city (beyond just the running community) really care about the event and those participating. I do want to run events that people in my community care about; however, I also want to run events that ma...

Disclaimer: pardon my French. I don't want to win unless I know I've done my best, and the only way I know how to do that is to run out front, flat out until I have nothing left. Winning any other way is chicken-shit.                                                                                            - Steven Prefontaine, Without Limits Anyone who's been running any moderate amount of time - especially if you ran in high school - is probably familiar with Prefontaine. He's the gateway drug for young runners learning about the his...

Cincinnati is home to one of the more unique Thanksgiving traditions in the country: the Thanksgiving Day Race . Sure, most every city, town, and village has their own turkey trot in the morning; Cincinnati's is unique in it's longevity. Ever since 1908 (with only two years' exceptions), runners have dashed through the streets of Downtown and Northern Kentucky. This 104-year history makes Cincinnati's race the sixth-oldest race in the country - and the oldest in the Midwest. While in one year the race had less than ten runners, numbers now usually approach (or even top, if the weather is nice) 10,000. This year, due to some construction in the Downtown area, the 10k loop has changed (well, mostly just the first few miles and the home straightaway. ( Here is this year's course map ) Since I'm obviously not carrying a camera or anything while I'm racing, Dani and I drove the course this weekend and snapped some photos, thinking I'd take you on a tour ...