Running Shorts

As per my fall racing schedule from last week, I raced the Hudepohl 14k this past weekend. It's a fun kickoff to America's largest Oktoberfest celebration. The race starts at right outside of the Moerlein Lager House, between the Reds and Bengals' stadiums. Heading west at the start, the course basically makes on giant loop around downtown and Over-the-Rhine, passing many historic breweries and -- of course -- a couple killer hills. Like the past couple years, the competition was a little sparse; however, Michael Eaton from Louisville showed up again. He won last year by about a minute, (and is a 2012 Olympic Marathon Trials qualifier) so I knew I'd have a tough race ahead of me. I finished second to Eaton in 43:36 and couldn't be happier. The race went out fairly conservative the first mile, and then I tried to get into a good groove and ratchet the pace down a little bit. From the start it was just the two of us, and it would remain that way for the durat...

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...

File this one under more-serious-less-fun articles . It's kind of depressing, but it's something that I'm passionate about and feel needs to be discussed. If you haven't read about it already, the New York Times wrote a pretty good summary of what's going on in the NCAA. And there's more about it here . But let me just give you the TL;DR version: the athletic departments of the Big 5 conferences (Big 10, Big 12, Pac 12, SEC, and ACC) now have the authority to essentially play by their own rules - they can pay athletes a living stipend, increase the value of their scholarships, give out health insurance, let players contact agents, etc. From the second article, it also gives athletes the rights to royalties that the NCAA was making off of their likenesses (mostly from video games). Sounds great, right? More power to the athletes, let them get paid, stick it to the man! And it is great... if you play football or basketball, and if you play one of those spo...