Running Shorts

Suffering from post-Olympics withdrawal? Turn on USA channel to find Law & Order instead of table tennis? Don't know what to do without sports on 24/7? Unsure of how to schedule out a day that doesn't revolved around a combination of live streaming, DVR recording, and spoiler avoiding? Yeah, me too. Which means it's the perfect time to talk about the Olympics that just happened! One week out, here are four of my biggest takeaways -- two about Athletics in general and two about the distance slate specifically. 1. Athletics (because that's what the rest of the world calls it) remains the premier event in the Olympics.  While in America NBC played up the swimming and women's gymnastics competitions -- because American dominance plays into the "America #1 heck yeah!" narrative -- the Athletics events were by far the most prestigious of the games. From the iconic marathon final on the last day (with the medal ceremony at the closing ceremony) to the Wor...

With the Olympics coming up in a couple of weeks, I thought this would be the perfect time for a three-part series about the state of the sport. After all, this is the one time every four years when people outside of the insular track world actually care about athletics. It would be easy to come up with a list of complaints about the sport; however, I'm deciding to take a positive outlook (on both the topic and my own running performance), so instead I'm going to fix running (and jumping and throwing) in three easy steps. A New Calendar of Competition This proposal to fix the sport is going to focus on track and field; specifically, the outdoor competition schedule. Or, rather, the lack thereof. The current calendar is...a mess, to put it mildly. Once every four years there is an incredibly important global championship -- the Olympics. In odd-numbered non-Olympic years, there is another global championship, albeit somewhat less meaningful. In even-numbered non-Oly...

With the Olympics coming up in three weeks, I thought this would be the perfect time for a three-part series about the state of the sport. After all, this is the one time every four years when people outside of the insular track world actually care about athletics. It wold be easy to come up with a list of complaints about the sport; however, I'm deciding to take a positive outlook (on both the topic and my own running performance), so instead I'm going to fix running (and jumping and throwing) in three easy steps. Shamateurism to Professionalism Athletics exists in a state of shamateurism . On the one hand, it is a professional sport, in that individuals athletes can make money from it (how much they actually make is appalling, but still...). On the other hand, athletics is governed by amateur rules that directly limit the ability of its professional athletes to make money. It's this weird, nebulous purgatory that definitely isn't amateur but isn't fully profes...

...is an Ohio guy named Bob Schul. Sure, you know all the American greats: Ryun, Shorter, Pre, Rodgers, Salazar, Joanie, Webb. Maybe you even know of some of the more obscure stars: Mills, Kastor, Lindgren, etc. But how much do you really know about Bob Schul, the only American to ever win Olympic gold at 5,000m  -- which he did while also coming into the race as the favorite and world #1 at the time? The race that made Schul immortal was the 5,000m at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Racing the deepest field ever assembled to that point (including Ron Clarke, Bill Baillie, Harald Norpoth, Michel Jazy, Kip Keino, and Bill Dellinger -- all running royalty), Schul waited patiently through a tactical, surging and slowing 4800 meters until unleashing an incredible kick over the final lap. To beat out nine (9!) other runners in contention at the bell, Schul closed in 54.8 for 400m and an astonishing 38.7 for the final 300 meters -- as fast, if not faster, than Mo Farah's kick in London 20...

Some days you have it, some days you don't. With training and tapering, of course, you hope to have it on race day. On February 13th 2016 in the heat of Los Angeles, I most definitely didn't have it. On a day that was a battle for everybody, I was one of the many riding the struggle bus. About 60 of the 160-ish men that started the race did not finish, myself included. I made it about 10 miles into the race before calling it a day and stepping off the course. I actually felt pretty good on my short warmup jog. I fell into aerobic threshold effort real easy and was primed to go. The first two miles, even in the mass of humanity, were right about where I wanted to be: 5:25 and then 5:18, right on. I latched onto a group that felt like it was going the right effort, ready to hang on for a ride to a solid time. But by the time we got to 10k, I knew I was in trouble. That's a scary feeling when you're hurting and you realize there are still twenty miles left in the ...

Hey blogosphere, sorry for the month-long hiatus. I got a little-stitious in the lead up to Indy Monumental and was worried that I was doing a little too much talking (well, writing) and not enough training. This is the race report I posted on reddit recapping the race, so I thought I'd re-post it here as well. Hey reddit! I'm mostly a lurker here, but I raced Saturday morning in Indianapolis and wanted to share. The TL;DR: I ran 1:04:33 for the half marathon, which qualifies me for the US Olympic Marathon Trials in LA this February. I also got 3rd overall, which was pretty cool, too. So anyway, here goes... But first, a shout-out to the staff at Monumental Those guys know how to put on a top-notch race. It's so refreshing to here the rhetoric coming out of the organization that says, "we're trying to be a professional event; we understand that most people want a fun event, but we also understand that some people want to come and  race  the damn thing; we...

I'm not a cyclist. I'm not a cycling fan. I've never ridden in a cycling race, and I couldn't name many of the top cyclists in the world. I spent no more than $250 on a used road bike, which I use more for commuting than training. For 49 weeks out of the year, I could care less about cycling. But for the other three weeks, it's all I have on TV. The Tour de France is awesome, and NBC Sports Network's coverage of it is fantastic -- enough to make a fan out of me, at least for a few weeks. For four to five hours a day, for 21 straight days, they broadcast and cover each stage live. And you're telling me we can do the same thing for two-hour footraces only three times per year? (Chicago, New York, Boston) Here's what, to me, makes the Tour so compelling to watch: 1. The commentators are incredibly well researched and knowledgeable about the race course and the riders in the field. They know everyone and their results (and they let you know), not jus...

Since Thursday, all I've been doing has been watching the Winter Olympics. Okay, that may be a slight exaggeration, but not really. While watching cross country skiing, I got to thinking: why isn't XC running a summer Olympic event? As a runner, former XC athlete, a huge fan of the sport, of course I'm totally biased. But XC running would actually be the perfect Olympic addition. Here's why: It's the ideal combination between individual and team competition. Obviously, at the front of the race you'd have athletes racing for gold, silver, and bronze...that's the same as any other racing event, and every other Olympic event. The difference, however, is that after the three medalists are determined, interest in the race doesn't end -- it gets more intriguing! When the top runners finish, the team race begins: five team runners with the lowest combined score (with a potential sixth runner acting as a tiebreaker). So in the same event, you have individual...