Newton North Opens Its Doors

The Boston Globe has a front page article today on the new Newton North High School. As I type this, the ribbon-cutting ceremony to formally open the school is just minutes away.

Predictably, the article mostly rehashes the history of the expensive and controversial project, but also quotes current students, including football and track standout Isaiah Penn.

I can only imagine it will be a huge relief for the athletic teams to have a home again. There's certainly a thrill in using a new facility, but I'm finding myself feeling a little nostalgic about not having those crumbling stadium steps as a background to our track workouts.

Speaking of the Fall season, I notice that Newton North's web site still doesn't have schedule info for 2010. HighSchoolSports.net comes to the rescue and informs me that the Tigers open their season Wednesday, 9/15, with a meet against Dedham (and Framingham, too, I assume).

Weekend of American Records

Hard not to mention David Rudisha's new WR in the 800, or Alan Webb's first win in... well, a long time, but we're going instead with the two American records set in two meets this weekend.

Molly Huddle Runs 5000m AR 14:44.76

Should we have seen this coming?

Molly Huddle, who had never before this year run faster than 15:17 for 5000m, improved on what has already been a breakthrough summer by running 14:44.76 Friday night in Brussels, dipping under Shalane Flanagan's old American Record by 0.04. The time was seven seconds faster than she ran in July and the third time she has run under 15:00 this year.

Many people have mentioned that the time placed her only 10th in a race won in 14:34.13 by Vivian Cheruiyot. It's true that the American Record is well off what would be considered top flight on a world stage, and more than 30 seconds slower than Tirunesh Dibaba's world record of 14:11.

I don't care about that. Huddle is deserving, having managed the transition from high school phenom to a fine career at Notre Dame (nine-time All-American) and now to pro. She has been competing at a high level for a long time, and has put it all together this year. It's what every runner wants.

In her Flotrack interview (see below), Huddle says being healthy and being consistent made the difference. I found this comment to be particularly interesting...

"...now I know that the training doesn't have to be spectacular and kill you, it just has to be consistent. That's a good thing to learn..."



Footnote: Huddle will celebrate her 26th birthday on August 31, the same day that Lisa Koll turns 23.


Lagat Gets American 3000m Record

This Tariku Bekele kid is pretty good. Any time any American runs great, it seems Bekele is front of him crossing the finish line. Bernard Lagat became the latest guy to run a great time but not get a top spot on the podium as he ran 7:29.00 for 3000m to take down Bob Kennedy's venerable record.

Lagat bounced back from a sub-par 1500 and showed he's still the man to beat. There were three other Americans in the race, including Chris Solinsky, but Lagat was better again, as Solinsky's personal best 7:34.32 was only good enough for 5th. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure Solinsky has not beaten Lagat at any distance this season. He came the closest in Oslo, when Lagat set the 5000M AR and Solinsky ran 12:56 for the first time. (Bekele beat both of them in that race, too...)

Steeplechaser Dan Huling also ran a PB 7:46.97. Galen Rupp struggled, running 7:50.46.

I Am My Own Walkman

Self-appointed guardians of the purity of running (like me) might cringe at the thought, but for a large number of recreational joggers, iPods and MP3 players constitute essential running equipment, as important, if not more so, than their stylish Reeboks and Mizunos.

As a rule, I think it's safe to say that serious runners are less likely to motivate themselves during a run with their favorite playlists. This generalization makes it somewhat easy to dismiss runners with music players as a different breed; who cares what's playing through their earbuds? There are exceptions, however. Many years ago, I ran a few times with Alex Tilson, an ultra runner who in 2002 set an American Record 2:51:48 for 50K. I remember him hammering out 20-mile tempo runs on a 400m track, headphones on his head providing the soundtrack to his personal descent through successive circles of Hell -- er, I mean his training.

Obviously, he was no lightweight. So maybe it is worth asking how music affects running performance and our motivation/willingness to keep going in the face of mounting fatigue. A recent article in The New York Times discusses recent research into these questions.

Does Music Make You Exercise Harder?

In the study, published last year by a team of British researchers, volunteers performed moderate exercise on a stationary bicycle while listening to unspecified contemporary music. The researchers varied the tempo of the music -- the same music -- and measured the work output and subjective sensations of the volunteers. What they found was that the cyclists were more likely to work harder and enjoy the experience more when the music was played faster. The fast music seemed to be linked to their motivation level in a fairly direct way, and that enabled them to work harder and longer.

Even if real, this effect might be limited to moderate exercise. The article also cites a 2004 study that showed that when participants ran at 90% of V02 Max, music was no benefit physiologically. In this study, about a third of the runners liked the music, but it didn't help them to do more.

It almost makes me want to try the experiment on myself, but I find myself hesitant because -- well, I've always thought that music was a crutch for people who didn't like running and were trying to convince themselves they were doing something else. I LIKE running. When I'm plodding along, I LIKE to pay attention to how I feel, even when I feel less than stellar. The stream of thoughts in my head usually serves as all the motivation I need to keep pushing through the daily run.

Which raises an interesting possibility. Maybe runners have developed an alternate "channel" that they can tune to that serves the same purpose as motivational music, a kind of "workout radio" that serves up a steady stream of observations, memories, and self talk that keeps the interest level high. Included are fantasies about running in the Olympics, surging to drop a pack of rivals, out-kicking Bekele, that sort of thing...

Music is all right I guess, but I think I'll stick with what's already playing in my head.

Rudisha's Run

During the introductions, the other competitors in the 800 all respond to the camera shoved in their face. Leo Manzano waggles his finger in a "we're number 1" kind of way. Jackson Kivuva gives a sharp salute. Alfred Yego looks like he's about to give some odd Nairobi gang sign, and then thinks better of it and cups his hands over his face. Adam Kszczot thumps himself on either side of the chest. Boaz Lalang waves both fingers. Then the camera moves to the man in Lane 7, David Rudisha. His face is set in a mask of grim purpose, and it never changes. When his name is announced, he raises his arms to acknowledge the crowd, but he does not smile. This is a serious man on a serious errand. He knows full well that to accomplish his errand, he must be prepared to suffer, and he is prepared.

By now, you've probably watched the video of Rudisha breaking the 800m world record, eclipsing by two-hundredths of a second Wilson Kipketer's 1:41.11 from August 1997. Until this year, when Rudisha ran 1:42.04 at Bislett and then 1:41.51 at Huesden, it seemed like one of the more remote records in track, out there where few would even challenge it.

Watching Rudisha's run, there's something strangely inevitable about the way he seizes the race and charges through the invisible barriers standing in the way of a new record. Starting from the aforementioned Lane 7, he accelerates powerfully but without panic to the top of the back straight. At that point, he is sixth. He then uses the entire straight to dismiss all the runners but one, the rabbit, Sammy Tangui, who appears to hit 200m in 24-flat.

This, of course, is where every instinct tells the runner to ease off the pace, to save a little something, for God's sake, for the rigors to come. But up ahead Tangui is driving himself without letting up, beginning to thrash against the air to maintain pace, while Rudisha follows a few meters back. It seems a long way back to the rest of the field, which might as well be the rest of the world.

Tangui barely makes it to 450m. For a few moments you wonder if is going to stumble, but just in time he drifts to Lane 2 where he is safely out of the way. Rudisha, having passed 400m in about 49-flat, is keeping his appointment with the hurt now, driving himself down the backstretch, three seconds clear of his nearest mortal competitors, and a few tenths of a second ahead of Kipketer's 13-year-old ghost.

At the end of the straight, Rudisha passes 600m in 1:14.54. There's still a long way to go, the curve and then the agonizing straight. The meters stretch out ahead, giving the serious man every opportunity to slow down, to be just a fraction too late at the end. How terrible it would be to arrive and find Kipketer already waiting for him, telling him it was good, very good, but not quite enough. I wonder whether Kipketer felt that way, when he equaled, but did not break, Coe's world record, or did he know that he would have it, in the end?

Rudisha's stride remains long and smooth, slowing slightly, inexorably, as the lactic acid makes it more and more difficult to lift the knees. Still, he has come too far not to be strong, and strong he remains until his strength and momentum carry him across the finish line, stopping the fully-automatic timing equipment at 1:41:09.

Still he does not smile, not yet. But so glad to have it over. A few seconds later, Tangui tracks him down and gives him a hug, and then, finally, he begins to experience the joy of what he has done.

Waiting for the Breakthrough

It's human nature to be impatient as you wait for all your hard work to pay off.

Here you are, nearing the end of summer and looking back at week after week of high mileage. Oh sure, there were a few interruptions - slight injuries that forced you to back off a bit -- but the body of work has been submitted and it is not paltry.

The beginning was hot and humid, worse than anything we had in New England last summer, but you adapted to the conditions, seeking the woods... running late in the evening. By mid-July, the worst was over and the sweltering heat gave way to day after day of perfectly pleasant temperatures. You settled into the routine.

You watched the professional runners in Europe and thought about the races you would run in the fall. Maybe that added a little extra inspiration as you went out each day on legs that weren't completely recovered from the previous day's exertions.

So... when does it all translate into your own breakthrough race?

The hard truth is that no one can tell you with certainty when it will come. Maybe the first race, maybe the third, maybe not this season. As unfair as it seems, training operates on its own mysterious timetable. John L. Parker famously wrote that conditioning was "a geometrical spiraling upwards," with each spin taking you a different distance up... or even down, gathering momentum for the next upswing. In somewhat less mystical terms, I believe that the initial adaptation to training is simply to raise your average work capacity, noticed first as an enhanced ability to recover from hard efforts and only (sometimes much) later as the ability to drop awesome times.

Yes, yes, but when will you see all that translated into a personal best, a sub-17:00 5K or sub 25:00 8K? A place on the varsity?

Ah, well...that I don't know. Even the best coaches hesitate to say when everything will come together -- mind and much fitter body -- to enable that ascent to the new, higher plateau that you've been yearning for. Training is science, certainly, but it is also faith, or at least patience. Training works, but more often by simmering for many months or years, not by boiling in an instant.

I know it's hard not to be eager for results. Distance running is one long exercise in delayed gratification. We train a long time to be able to gallop over a five-mile cross-country course at such a breakneck pace. Having done all that training, it would be nice to reap the rewards now. But if that first race or time trial doesn't provide the proof you seek, if it's not the breakthrough you were hoping for, don't despair. If you have trained well, trust your training and known that you've laid a good foundation. After that, all you can do is stay healthy and accept the burden of continuing to ready yourself for the breakthrough that must, eventually and when you least expect it, come.

Solinsky

Last night at the Zurich Weltklasse meet, Chris Solinsky went head-to-head with the best (healthy) 5000m runners on the planet and looked every bit like a contender.

There was a time not long ago when Galen Rupp's 13:07 personal best would have been big news and cause for optimism about the future of American distance running. But these are new days, and Tegenkamp, Ritzenheim, and especially Solinsky have raised the bar way higher.

Solinsky, especially, has establish a new plateau that would have seemed unthinkable even last year. He set the American record and ran the fastest 10,000m time in the world this year. He has run 12:56 once and 12:55 twice this summer, and owns three of the top sixteen times in the world this year. Were it not for former world champ Bernard Lagat's 12:54 at Oslo, Solinsky would have the AR at 5000 to add to his AR at 10000.

And because he's not satisfied, neither are we. Solinsky's quotes after Zurich make it clear that he didn't care about the time; he wanted to win the race. He didn't want to settle being 3rd best in the world. He didn't want to settle for giving Diamond League winner Imane Merga everything he could handle in the last 100m, he wanted to beat him, and Keninisa's little brother, too.

But he beat all ten Kenyans who finished the race, including...

Eliud Kipchoge (PR 12:45)
Vincent Chepkok (PR 12:51)
Edwin Soi (PR 12:52)
Lucas Rotich (PR 12:55)

For good measure, he beat Mo Farah the European champion, who "only" ran 12:57 to set a new U.K. record, besting Dave Moorcroft's 28-year-old standard.

Based on times, Solinsky has just completed the greatest 5000m season in American history. But, as he reminds us, he didn't win anything, and he won't be happy until he does.

As for Rupp, let's not forget about or dismiss him. In 2010, he has run PRs at one mile, 3000m (indoor and out), 5000m (indoor and out), and 10,000m. He still has the fourth fastest 10K time in the world this year (in a race where he set the pace in the latter stages). He has had a long, productive year. Time to rest and regroup and come back next year to run sub 27 and sub 13.

It's a little more than a year until the 2011 world championships in Daegu, South Korea, but these guys have us dreaming of medals.

Final Week of NSRP

This week marks the final week of the 2010 Newton Summer Running Project, affectionately known as NSRP. Wednesday, August 18 will be the official finale, i.e., the last day that I'm planning on showing up.

Thanks to all the runners who have shown up to share a little bit of their summer training. The miles go by quickly when you have good company.

Good luck to everyone heading off to pre-season or a fall marathon. I'll be checking results to see how all those summer miles have paid off.

Race Report: Bridge of Flowers 10K

The town of Shelburne Falls, Mass. (pop. 1951) doesn't seem like an obvious site for a big race, but it has the distinction of being home to the Bridge of Flowers 10K, an annual tradition that dates back to 1979. This year, the race was named the 2010 USATF-NE 10K road race championship. Although the name brings to mind pictures of smiling runners striding happily along bucolic country lanes, do not be fooled; this race is an absolute bear.

As it was a championship race, many runners from my club drove the two hours or so from Boston to compete. Terry, Kevin, and I chose to spend Friday night in Amherst, so we didn't need to leave quite so early, but by 7:30 Saturday morning we had joined the Westbound caravan of runners' cars driving along the Mohawk Trail to be in time for the 9:00 a.m. start.

I was more than a little apprehensive about the race. I knew the course was tough, with a legendary hill that wrecked the unwary, and I didn't feel race-ready, having struggled through months of desultory training that lacked both intensity and focus. My last race had been a month ago at the Stowe 8-Miler and it had not been encouraging.

But if the course was cause for worry, at least the weather was not. It was just a perfect day, with temperatures barely brushing 70, and dry air that seemed uncharacteristic of August in New England. Had there not been a race on the calendar, it would have been a lovely day to visit the town, take a stroll along the banks of the Deerfield River, take pictures of the famous Bridge of Flowers, and sit at an outdoor cafe to enjoy a scone and a leisurely cup of tea in this quaint town.

There was no time for any of that when we arrived a little over an hour before the race. Instead, we were immediately caught up in the familiar but anxious routine that -- if all goes well -- will get us to the starting line on time and ready to run. It begins with following the traffic that is descending on a tiny neighborhood never designed for the vehicles carrying a thousand runners from far off places, continues with those same runners standing in lines for race numbers and bathrooms (I skipped the former for the latter), shifts to the relative calm of a 20-minute warmup jog that doubles as a reconnaissance mission (to the base of the dreaded hill and back), and ends with the ritualistic change into racing flats for a few strides and a jog to the start, which is located on a steel bridge that crosses the river.

Once at the start, I make small talk with Gordon, who will go on to win the over-60 division and lock up the New England series championship for his age group. I ask him if he has run the course before and he says that he has, and reminds me that it was a championship race two years ago. I skipped that race for some reason, and for a moment, I feel a kind of abstract satisfaction that I am finally going to experience a race that has been a fixture on the New England calendar for over three decades and that has a reputation for being 1-2 minutes slower than a "normal" 10K.

After the singing of the Star-Spangled Banner, the race starts without a gun, but rather with a strange sound that escapes me now I try to remember it. Was it sleigh bells? Wind chimes? All I know now is that I am part of the crowd that surges awkwardly forward, trying to untangle itself as we pull away from the narrow start. It helps that the course immediately heads slightly uphill, and gradually I progress from a a jog to a careful run, and finally to full race pace, which in my case is about six-minute miles. I try to control my urge to jockey for position (the road is still very narrow) and I run without any sense of urgency or ambition. The one mile split is 6:05, which seems perfectly ok given the slight uphill. Still, my legs don't feel at all fresh, and I don't have the feeling of having to hold myself back, which typically signals a good race for me.

The second mile is gently downhill as we complete the small loop of what will eventually turn out to be a misshapen figure eight. We pass back over the bridge and turn left and then right onto Clement Street, a preliminary climb that provides a preview of the massive Crittendon Hill to come. According to MapMyRun, the course elevation at this point (1.9 miles into the race) is 433 feet above sea level. Here's a rule of thumb: when describing a course, if it's necessary to use the phrase "elevation above sea level," the race is not for wimps.

For some reason, I have it stuck in my mind that the hill is a half-mile long. This turns out to be a serious underestimate. The road rises steeply from 1.9 miles to 2.6 miles, and takes another 0.2 miles to crest. The grade averages 8.3% for those steep seven tenths of a mile, and there is one 400 meter section that exceeds 11%. All-in-all, the course climbs over 360 feet in less than a mile.

The effect on me in the race is a rapid series of adjustments to my estimate of the right pace. At the bottom of the hill, I try to keep my strides very short and quick and efficient. After 200 meters of this, I settle for short and efficient. I'm no longer aiming for "quick." After another 200 meters, I'm trying hard to keep my head from sagging to my chest and I'm adjusting my stride to make it shorter -- anything to ease the alarming distress I'm feeling in my quads. Again and again, I realize I am running too quickly and will not be able to reach the top without slowing down. Mid-way up the hill I am still able to take a little pleasure in the distress I see (and hear) from the runners around me, but as we approach the crest of the hill, I am thinking only of myself and how I have to keep moving my feet forward, without giving in to the strong desire to walk.

The end of the hill comes with a small fanfare; someone is playing an cajun music on an accordion. It's a small, but generous gesture that is, alas, wasted on me. I am way too busy at the moment wondering when my legs will begin functioning normally again so that I can lengthen my stride to take advantage of the long downhill. This is the part of the race that will produce soreness tomorrow, this long, ungainly descent on already tiring muscles. It's a long way down the hill, and my form is a mess. I neither gain ground on the runners around me nor lose any. It's as if we're all trapped on a circus ride, never changing our relative position, but no longer enjoying the fun.

Later, I'll review my splits for the race and they'll look like this:

Mile 1 - 6:05
Mile 2 - 5:52
Mile 3 - 7:34
Mile 4 - 5:34
MIle 5 - 6:02
Mile 6 - 5:49

What this doesn't tell is that Mile 4 feels tremendously costly. Although it is fast, it pounds the life out of my legs. When I hit the flat stretch at the bottom of the hill, I'm struggling to maintain a rhythm. Nothing feels smooth at this point, and instead of setting out to catch the pack in front of me, I am drifting back and fair game for the runners behind. I am a little disappointed when I hit the five mile mark and realize I haven't even been running my six-minute pace.

Into the last mile of the race, and I am caught by a pack of runners who drag me along for a while. With a half mile to go, I start feeling competitive again, but I am also unsure whether I can handle another uphill. In a good race, I feel like I know exactly how much road is left and how much energy I have to expend. But in this final 1000 meters, I'm making it up as I go along, feeling like I can push it for a 100 meters and then feeling like I have to back off because I'm about to crash. The course rolls its way down, back to the river. I begin a final push and pass the six mile mark in 36:54 before seeing the final turn that leads onto the bridge and the final sprint to the line.

I'm not holding anything back now, but I can tell I'm not going to catch the guy in front of me who is a couple of seconds ahead. Then, suddenly and shockingly, two runners pass me on either side just a few meters before the mat that records our finishing time. In the results, we will all be given the same time - 38:06, but I will be relegated to third. Worse, I know I'll be replaying that finish in my head for the next several weeks wondering if I had known they were there, could I have run any harder to hold them off?

After the race I am spent. The time is slow, and I lost out in the sprint.

Terry ran very well, finishing in 36:16. He ran the first half of the race very smart, and took good advantage of the downhill second half to catch people. Kevin also ran massively negative splits and finishes not far behind me in 38:47. We're all going to be sore tomorrow, especially after the long drive home with stiffening muscles.

Sizing up the race, I think I ran it ok, but clearly was not in shape for the challenges it posed. Uphills like Crittendon Hill are intense and require better force production than I had (showing my current lack of "strength" work), Likewise, downhills require more muscle strength and core strength to stabile the body during free fall. Bottom line: the course beat me up.

But it's good to get beat up sometimes if it motivates you to work harder where you're weak. While I don't expect to run any more road races like the Bridge of Flowers 10K this year, cross-country is just around the corner and it's nice to have a motivator to get me running harder workouts, hill repeats, etc. -- at least that's the plan as soon as the ice packs come off my quads.

Coming off the bridge at 1.8 miles, just before the hill. (Photo: Tom Derderian)

Read This: The View From Lane 9

I was thinking about writing something after the latest Diamond League meet in Stockholm, but Noah Jampol has not only beaten me to it, but done a much better job than I would have done. It's one of the first posts on his new blog, The View From Lane 9.

Anyone who has talked to Noah for any length of time knows that he is a keen observer and careful analyst, whether the subject is track & field, basketball, baseball, economics, or politics. It's great to see him sharing his observations, and I look forward to reading more as the track season continues.