FINISHED

I just finished the Bank of America Chicago Marathon with a time of 2:50:12 (PR). Approximately 40,000 ran and 1.4 million came out to watch the show. Needless to say, it was an amazing experience. Here are some of my favorite highlights/tips from race day.

1. Do whatever it takes to get yourself into one of the seeded corrals. It's nowhere near as jammed with runners, and it puts a nice chip on your shoulder right before the race as you walk through gate after gate as one of the chosen few. If you don't have a fast enough time to get in, lie or cheat in any way that you can. ;)

2. Know this about the seeded corrals: people will be peeing all around you: in water bottles, on the ground, on you... These people are serious about their times. So, on second thought, maybe that open corral didn't look so bad...

3. Go nuts at the start with everyone watching. They'll love it; you'll love it.

4. Anyone who tells you, "you're looking strong" before the 10 mile mark doesn't realize how long this race is. Of course you're looking strong! If you're not at this point, I recommend stopping immediately and having a nice brunch instead of finishing the marathon. It will be far less painful and much more enjoyable.

5. Go nuts at the half way point with everyone watching. They'll love it; you'll love it.

6. When you think you still feel good at mile 15, wait to kick it into a higher gear. The worst is yet to come.

7. When you think you still feel good at mile 20, wait to kick it into a higher gear. The worst is yet to come.

8. When you feel ridiculously miserable at miles 23-24, feel free to crank it up a notch. FYI, this is basically impossible. Good luck.

9. The guy with the "HTFU" sign at mile 25.5 could not have said it better. Figure out what he meant.

10. The finish - fall apart at the seems, knowing that you left everything out on the course, not to mention the four months of training. Complain with fellow runners about how long the finishing chute is. Speculate on where you could have shaved 12 seconds off your time. Swear you're done running after this, knowing you'll be back at it in a week or two. Thank every volunteer, and lie to them when they ask you how you're feeling.

Most importantly, bring some family and friends to see you along various points of the route. There's nothing more uplifting than seeing a face that you recognize in a crowd of 100,000+. And thank them profusely for coming out.

So, thanks to Rosie, Jayme, Justin, Megan and Richard. You made the Chicago Marathon one of the best experiences of my life.

Happy Running

The hard part is over.

The greatest part about training for a marathon? Finishing training for a marathon! And you finish a lot sooner than you might think: three weeks before the actual race.

I've been preparing for the Chicago Marathon on October 11th this year, and I just put in my last brutal workout yesterday. From here on out, it's all easy maintenance running and washing your hands a bunch so that you don't get a cold before race day. ;) That's part of the attraction of the sport, at least for me. It's such a slow-adaptive process that the benefits of training takes weeks to pay off. Actually, I take that back. SOME of the benefits of training take weeks to pay off. Some of the benefits of marathon training actually take months and years to pay off! I've said it before, but it really can't be stressed enough: consistent commitment over time will give you improvements you never thought possible.

On the other hand, now that marathon training is mostly over, things get a little boring. When you go from running one, two or three hours a day to thirty, forty or fifty minutes, you find that you have a lot of free time on your hands. And since most marathoners are the active, type-A personalities, it can be pretty hard to sit still and let your body rest for three whole weeks to get ready for the big show. My two cents: take this time to REST. It's not a good time to start a new cross-training regimen, or try rock-climbing or whatever else. Why risk injury and trashing the past fifteen weeks of training? Not to mention the six months of base work you might have put in.

If you're going to start a new hobby, try one of mine: knitting, reading, drinking coffee or starting a blog. They're much less injury-prone. ;~)

My favorite workout

Like I could only pick one favorite workout – not a chance. This is ONE of many of my favorite workouts.

Here’s the deal with Yasso’s. Bart Yasso is a crazy runner and good too – note that I did not say he’s crazy good, but crazy and good. He’s run on every continent, in the nude, every distance known to man, through jungles and tundra… His book, My Life on the Run was a quick and fun read that I’d definitely recommend. Anyway, he didn’t really invent this workout, but he likes it a lot, so it just kind of got named after him.

Here’s the workout: Do a 1-2 mile warm-up. Start out with about 5X800m with a 400m recovery jog in-between. Take full advantage of the recovery!! As far as pace goes, you want the fastest possible average time that you can manage. This means you need to take it a little easy at first, because those last couple are going to be a doozie! A little faster than your best 5k pace is a good time to shoot for. After the 800’s do a mile or two for a cool-down.

Here’s the progression: Do Yasso’s once a week, adding one repeat every week without letting your average pace drop, eventually getting up to 10x800m. Now, if you’re just starting out running, it’s probably not time for you to jump into a 5x800m workout with 4 miles in the warm-up/cool-down – that’s a tough workout. Start with 1 mile each w/u and c/d and 3-4 repeats. Go from there. If you’re already a seasoned vet, you can start with 5-6 and limit the recovery to 2-3 minutes. Or, (this is crazy awesome), for a super-hard workout, instead of recovery, do 20 burpees, then get right back into the 800m repeats. After 100 burpees and 2.5 miles of speed work, you’re gonna’ be pretty sore. ; )

Here’ the neat thing: the average of your 10x800m repeats can be a pretty accurate predictor of your marathon time! So, if you average 3:30 on the repeats, you could reasonable expect a 3:30:00 for the marathon! Shooting to break 4 hours for the marathon? Try to work up to 10x800m in an average of 4:00 each. Pretty neat, huh?

Thanks Yasso. Happy running.

THIS JUST IN:

I didn't know this was possible until just recently: you CAN run without tons of fancy equipment and miniature laptops on your wrist. In fact, You can run with almost nothing, like a caveman might.

I’ve had this conversation with a buddy of mine – we’ll call him Craig Grouper to protect his identity. He's a longtime supporter of this barbaric style of running. I, on the other hand, have been the longtime proponent of running with a heart-rate monitor, GPS, iPod, Camelbak fanny-pack etc..., And I just suffered a huge loss: my Forerunner 305 died. (*tear) This was easily one of my saddest experiences to date. I didn't know what to do with myself. I thought for sure I'd have to just throw in the towel and hang up my running shoes. But just when I thought all hope was gone, I remembered that conversation with Greg, err...Craig, and how he said that you can run with nothing but the shoes on your feet and a pair of embarassingly short shorts.

Believe it or not, it worked. I ran without knowing my heart rate, pace, average pace, lap pace and distance. And you know what? I had a pretty great run. Granted, I imagined myself a paleolithic hunter chasing down a woolly mammoth, but that just added to the fun! And since then, (it seems like it's been years, but it's really just been weeks), I've been having a darn good time running like this.

So here's my two cents: if you don't have a fancy watch or a GPS or a robot that does the running for you, just go out and run. Run according to your exertion level where 10 means you're about to puke or pass out and 1 means your sitting on the couch eating cheesy poofs. Run at about a 5, throw in some level 8 or 9 sprints, and then finish up running at 5 again. Piece of cake. And it's fun. (And cheap.)

For extra credit, try to catch a woolly mammoth. ;~)

What's this got to do with running?

Well, this has absolutely nothing to do with running. But I still wanted to mention it on my blog.

I was perusing through a bunch of different blogs and happened upon this photography page: http://leelikesphotography.blogspot.com/. Now, I don't know anything about photography or cameras, but I found it interesting because the photographer's descriptions of the photos weren't all artsy-fartsy or technical. It was just a blog written in the language of the common man about why Lee liked or didn't like something or found this or that thing interesting or whatever. Then Lee would take a picture or a series of pictures of something that would seem rather ordinary to everyday passersby and share something that he loves with people he doesn't know, neither for profit nor persuasion, but for the sole purpose of sharing his passion.

And it seems to me that THAT is what it's all about folks. Get excited about something. Do it all the time. Share it with others. That just sounds like a smart plan for life. And not to toot my own horn like I've got life all figured out or something, but that's what I'm aiming to do with my own blog and running. And I kind of smiled when I realized that I was following in the footsteps of this small-time photographer who seems to have it more together than most of the big-business millionaires I meet while I'm bartending at my fancy-pants, Italian restaurant. So, congrats, Lee. Keep up the good work.

And it turns out Lee is just a junior in high school.

Happy running/photographing/fill-in-the-blank-with-something-you-love.

I have a secret.

I love secrets. They remind me of ninjas, because ninjas are basically real life secrets personified. And I think ninjas are cool.

Anyway, back to my secret. You know how Clark Kent had a day job as a journalist, but secretly he lived this super-human life at night? Well, I’m the same way, but in reverse. I’m a bartender by night and a super-human by day. Everybody who comes into my restaurant thinks that I’m just some regular Joe Shmo with a button-up shirt and tie who knows how to make a decent vodka martini up or on the rocks. What they don’t know is that hours before I got to my night job, in my secret life, I RAN more miles than what they’ve DRIVEN for the day. And I take a lot of pride in knowing that. And knowing that they don’t know that. In fact, they barely know that it’s humanly possible to run as many as 10, 15 or 20 miles all at once.

Speaking of humanly possible, let’s just touch on how the marathon figures into that little category. Humans might have been intended to run from the dawn of time, but they were not intended to run 26.2 miles. You know how I know? Because the first guy who did it died – Pheidippides, may you rest in peace. That’s right, the first time someone tried this little stunt that we know today as the marathon, he keeled over and kicked the big bucket minutes after crossing the “finish line.” (Talk about the ultimate finish line.) Of course since then, we’ve improved quite a bit, and it’s become somewhat humanly possible to complete the marathon. But rest assured, as I do, that when you complete a marathon, you are accomplishing a task that was not always humanly possible. Today the most daring individuals find it to be semi-possible. Making them real-life, semi-super-humans.

Happy Running.

If I can do it, anyone can.

I was just reminiscing today about when I first started dabbling in running two and a half years ago. I started with a two-mile loop around the park three times per week, and man, did I think I was fit!! (Sometimes I’d even throw in 20 pushups to boot. Wow, what a beast I was.) If you would have told me that I’d be running TEN times that amount in a week with barely any sweat off my back two years down the road, I would have laughed in your face. People couldn’t possibly run that far. But here I am. Along with 400,000 others. People just like me across the states that finish a marathon every year. So, if you can do a two mile lap three times per week, you can start thinking about finishing your first marathon. Talk about an accomplishment.

While it's really fun to think about how much progress I've seen in my running over the last two years, it's also nice to think about how much running has changed my lifestyle. It's just not possible to stay out drinking till the wee hours of morning and to get in a 10 mile run the next day. So I kicked the drinking habit and little by little developed a healthy lifestyle. Trading in a phenomenally healthy habit for a possibly tragic one. Talk about an accomplishment.

Sometimes less is more.

As a personal trainer, I end up giving a lot of people advice on getting fit and staying fit. As a marathoner, I end up giving a lot of advice on weekly mileage, good form, etc.... And it's funny, even though I end up giving lots of advice to lots of people, I'm pretty reluctant to take it myself! Despite all those times I've counseled people to start out taking very small steps to increase total weekly mileage to avoid overtraining and injury and to listen to their bodies and take a break when they need it, I just couldn't heed it myself - fool that I am...

So let me just re-iterate some points to keep you running injury free. (Should that word be hyphenated?)

1. Increase weekly mileage about 10% per week.

2. Make every third or fourth week a recovery week.

3. Keep a log/journal/diary-with-a-unicorn-on-it to track how your body's holding up - and pay attention to it!

4. Here's one of my favorite quotes, I think from Bob Glover's Competitive Runner's Handbook: "Better to wind up at the start line of your goal race 10% undertrained than even 1% overtrained."

I made the mistake of increasing mileage almost 20% per week for a month, skipped a recovery week to get in an extra race, and constantly wrote in my log that my body "badly needed a rest day." Well, I was forced to give it ten rest days when I hit that 1% overtrained point and injured my left calf.

Sometimes less is more. Happy Running.

You want to talk about improvement?

How about shaving an average of 90 seconds off your mile and 30 seconds off your 400-meter! In just six weeks! Well, that's exactly the kind of improvement our first RUN class saw over the last month and a half. Thirteen-minute-milers became ten-minute-milers. Ten's became eight's and eight's became seven's!! The girls who ran sub-three minute quarters? They're running sub-two minutes. You know how pink is the new black? Well, 1:25 for the 400-meter: it's the new 1:50 - faster and fitter.

Need I also mention the ten pounds and eleven inches a few of our girls watched fall right off of them? (I'm talking about individuals each losing that much!!) That's what we're talking about when we're talking about results and improvement. And it's all a direct result of COMMITMENT over time.

See ya' in our next class.

"What we're doing, it isn't about today."

I just read a great article by Patrick Cummings @ http://www.againfaster.com/articles/. The writer happens to be talking about a style of training called Crossfit, (more on that later!), but it applies to any sort of training or investment that we make in ourselves and our body today. Running off body fat and increasing cardio-vascular strength is great for our lives now, but it'll be an even greater pay-off 20, 30, 40 years down the road when we're still moving around without the use of a "Rascal" or a "Segway" or whatever new contraption they come up with to transport the folks who got old without spending a little bit of time taking care of themselves!! Let's leave the heart-attacks and high cholesterol and moaning and groaning as we get in and out of bed for them. Hopefully, we'll still be running. Or playing with grandkids. Or still running. ;)

Run today, for tomorrow.

"But I can hardly even run for 2 minutes!! How can I run for miles??"

I hear this all the time. Lemme' tell you something, if you can run for two minutes, you can turn yourself into a runner or even a marathoner! The trick is COMMITMENT!!

When you decide that you want to lose weight, or 'tone up,' or 'get in shape,' (what shape exactly? I like the rhombus....) or commit to running a half-marathon, whatever the case may be, don't be like so many people who will run twice and get discouraged because they don't see improvement in two days! This is a COMMITMENT! It will take a while before you see/feel the improvements that you're body undergoes as a result of the new stress that you're putting on it.

Let me give you an example of easing into a running program:

Week #1: For 30 minutes, run for 2 minutes, walk for 3. (That's 6 intervals.) Do this 3x/week resting a day inbetween.
Week #2: For 30 minutes, run for 3 minutes, walk for 2. Again 6 intervals. Again, 3x/week.
Week #3: For 40 minutes, run for 3 minutes, walk for 2. That's 8 intervals. Sticking with 3x/week.
Week #4: For 30 minutes, run for 4 minutes, walk for 1. 3x/week.
Week #5: Now you can either add one 30 minute session, or extend the sessions to 40 minutes, running for 4 minutes and walking for 1.

Look at that! At the end of 5 weeks, (just a skosch over a month), you'll be putting in almost 15 miles per week! And you'll be ready to take on running with fewer and fewer walk breaks! That's a real runner right there my friends! You'll be a half-marathoner in no time!! And anyone who finishes a half can run the full marathon!

Happy running.

21 Miles and I still wasn't tired!!

Let’s talk about why, after a 21-mile run, I really wasn’t tired. (Well, I’ve got to be totally honest, I was a little tired, but I was not falling apart at the seams like you might expect from someone who had just finished running what many would consider a good distance for a lengthy bike ride.) My secret? Core strength.

When I got into running, I did one type of workout for almost a year and a half: run. Run 3 miles, 5 miles, 7 miles… Run for 30 minutes, 45 minutes, an hour… Sounds like it makes sense if all you want to do is improve your running speed and endurance, but I got news, there is a better way! Two or three times per week, include 20-30 minutes of body weight exercises like squats, pull-ups, push-ups, crunches and planks. This will increase your muscular endurance in your hip flexors, glutes, lower back, deep abs and the entire core.

After running for an hour, hour and a half, or even two hours, your body begins to “slump” as your hips rotate forward, your torso bends and your shoulders sag; your core is what will help you maintain good running form and keep you going tall and strong until you cross the finish line! When you’re coming into the final mile or two of a race and others around you start to crash, you’ll be thanking you’re lucky stars that you invested as little as 60 minutes a week into your core as you fly by ‘em!

Welcome!!

There are a lot of different reasons why people run: to lose weight, to get in shape for sports, to evade the cops, to exercise their dogs... I run because I love it. In fact, I'm obsessed with it. It's what I do, what I read about, what I talk about and what I think about when I'm not running. So, I thought that I'd share some of what I've learned about it over the past couple of years with those who might be just starting out or are a little curious about why people run. My real goal is to show people that ANYONE can be a runner - and a good runner to boot. So, in future posts, I'll be sharing tips that will take any middle-of-the-pack-er (like myself when I started), and turn them into a top runner!!