NNHS Track and Cross-Country

NNHS Alumni Results 2012 BU Terrier Invitational

2012-01-29T07:07:00.003-05:00

On Friday and Saturday Boston University hosted the Terrier Invitational, and as it always does, the meet served up heat after heat of really fast folks running season's best times.

In the mile, Providence's David McCarthy scared the collegiate record, running 3:55.75 to finish ahead of Mass. native and former BC star Tim Ritchie, who also broke 4:00 with a 3:58.49.

I counted four Newton North alumni in the meet, although I might have missed some. There were also a slew of former Brookline H.S. distance runnners, and several friends of NSRP competing.

In Saturday morning's unseeded 5000, Bates senior Ben Chebot ran what I believe is a personal best 15:14.59, finishing 4th in the second of 4 sections.

Hymlaire Lamisere competed in both the 60m and 200m dashes. Hymlaire ran 7.27 in the short sprint, and then won his heat of the 200 in 22.93.

Respectable citizen and certified adult Dave Cahill continued his quest to get back under 52 seconds for the 400, running a very respectable 52.42 to place 2nd in his heat.

MIT's Jared Forman had a nifty time in the 800, clocking 1:57.61 to place 2nd in section 8.

I mentioned the Brookline distance crew. Rob Gibson ran 14:14.85 in the seeded section of the 5000m, and I believe that's a personal best for him. In an unseeded heat, Jerzy Eisenberg-Guyot ran 16:09.81. In the 3000m, Christian Sampson ran 8:50.50, and Chris Mercurio ran 9:00.70.

Also in the 3K, friends of NSRP Paul Norton ran 8:40.83, and Andrew Wortham ran 8:44.23.

Results Courtesy of Lancer Timing

Depth, Balance Carry NN Boys to 2nd in DI State Relays

2012-01-21T21:09:00.002-05:00

Justin Keefe anchor's NN's 3rd-place DMR (photo: Patrick Bendzick).

Newton North's boys indoor track team placed in the top four in five separate events, earning a runner-up finish in the D1 State Relays Saturday.

North showed balance, getting 14 points from the sprint relays, 12 from the mid and long medley relays, and 10 from the field events.

Their lone first place came in the shot put relay, where the Tigers threw for a combined 42.91m (140-09.5) to win by four feet.

North also placed 4th in the 4x50 (22.61), 2nd in the 4x200 (1:33.24), 3rd in the sprint medley (3:40.21), and 3rd in the distance medley (10:43.92). The Tigers also placed just out of the scoring in the high jump relay, missing 4th place by a mere 1.5 inches.

Heading into the final event, North was tied with Lowell for the lead in points. Unfortunately for North, they had used their runners elsewhere and didn't have a team entered. Having only to place in the top six, Lowell finished 4th, earning the points that brought the school its first-ever Relays State Championship. Newton hung on for second, two points ahead of Acton-Boxborough.

In a Class By Themselves:NN Girls Rule D1 State Relays

2012-01-21T13:39:00.007-05:00

Kayla Wong anchors the record-setting hurdle relay (photo: Patrick Bendzick)

We all knew they were good, but 59 points at the State Relays?!

The Tigers won half of all the events contested, and four of the seven running events, on their way to scoring an incredible and unassailable 59 points, or 12 points more than they scored to win in 2011, and 23 better than runner-up Andover. (Bay State rival Weymouth also had a strong meet, finishing 3rd with 30 points.)

The NN girls finished 4th in the 4x800 (9:56.01), then won the sprint medley (4:15.05), shuttle hurdle relay (29.11, all-class record), shuttle dash relay (24.52, all-class record), and 4 x 400 (4:03.74). In the field events, they won the long jump with a meet record 15.04m (49-04.25), and tied for 3rd in the high jump with a combined 4.27 (14-00). The Tigers very nearly got more, finishing just out of the points (7th) in the shot put.

Carla Forbes anchors the NN 4x400 (photo: Patrick Bendzick)

Results on ma.milesplit.com

NN Teams Up to the Challenge, Sweep Weymouth

2012-01-20T07:53:00.006-05:00

Although many of us focused on last night's battle between the Newton North and Weymouth girls, it was the boys meet that nearly became an instant classic. Event-by-event, the Wildcats held their own against the heavily favored Tigers, and it looked like it was going to come down to the relay.

Here's how close it was: Had Weymouth's Tyler Mulcahey managed to clear any of his three attempts at 5-11, and if Ronald Homere managed to hit the finish line of the 55m dash two-hundredths of a second faster, it would have been 47-43, Newton going into that final 4x400. But those things didn't happen. And even if they had, North had the horses to run a season's best 3:33.14 in the relay, leaving no doubt about the outcome.

The Tigers won seven of the ten individual events, with particularly strong showings in the shot put (9-0), 300, and the aforementioned 55 dash. Ryan Lucken was a double winner (300 and 55), while Young Guang had another strong meet, winning the HJ and finishing 2nd in the Shot Put. I wonder if Young is planning on competing in the individual pentathlon. Here are his marks from yesterday: 5-9 high jump, 49-3.5 shot put, 9.55 hurdles (in addition to a 7.07 55 dash).

In addition to their strength in the sprints and shot put, North won three close races in the mile (Justin Keefe, over Nolan Parsley), 1000 (Gabe Montague), and 600 (Daniel Swain). Those were welcome points, as Weymouth took 2nd and 3rd in each of those events to keep the score close. The Wildcats went 1-2 in the long jump and 55 hurdles, and also won the 2M. They came very close, but in the end it wasn't quite enough to dethrone the decade-long defending Carey champs.

The girls meet had some great individual performances on both sides, but Newton North had the greater depth as well as the incomparable Carla Forbes, and in the end pulled away to leave-no-doubt 64-31 win.

The first event was a harbinger for the rest of the meet, as Evie Heffernan won a terrific battle in the mile against two of Weymoth's best, Julie Tevenan and Bridget Jaklitsch. The momentum continued in the 1000, with Miller McCarthy-Tuohy winning another close race against Allison Brady. In the 600, Jen Kimball (league best 1:39.49) raced to victory over Meghan Bellerose (1:39.86), but with the exception of the shot put and 2M, there were few other highlights for the Wildcats.

Newton dominated the sprints and jumps. Not coincidentally, that's where Carla Forbes keeps office hours, and the junior scored a career high 19 points by winning three events outright (300, 55, and LJ), and sharing first place in the high jump with teammate Lucia Grigoli. Kayla Wong won the hurdles and took 2nd in both the long jump and 55 dash, scoring 11 points.

And for good measure, North won the relay in 4:10.15.

With the Bay State Care Division well in hand, now it's on to the State Relays, and a big test against the rest of the state.

Full results are posted on Cool Running.

Newton North v. Weymouth on Thursday (Girls Preview)

2012-01-18T07:46:00.006-05:00

It's a big week for Newton North's indoor track programs. On Thursday, North competes against Weymouth in a much-anticipated dual meet, and on Saturday the Tigers compete at the DI State Relays.

Mike Miller would like a preview of the NN-Weymouth girls meet, and why not? These have been the two preeminent teams in the Bay State league for the last few years, and their battles usually bring out big performances.

However, with the exception of 2010, these meets have turned out to be LESS close than predicted. In 2010, the meet came down to the relay, but that hasn't been true in any other recent year. Weymouth won decisively in 2008 and 2009, and Newton won decisively in 2007 and 2011. Then there was 2010, where an epic and close 4x400 settled the matter in North's favor, 46-40. It's a curious fact that if Weymouth had managed to win that one relay (and it was very close), the total number of points scored over the last FIVE YEARS of dual meets would would be 232.5 to 232.5 -- I'd say that's a pretty even rivalry.

Of course, scores don't tell the whole story. Meets can be very close without the score reflecting that closeness. A few hundredths of a second here or there can make a big difference. Anyway, that's the way I've felt about these meets for the last few years.

But this year feels different. This year, it feels as though the score will be close, perhaps very close, but many of the individual events seem to have clear favorites.

Taking the events in roughly the order in which they will be contested, I'd expect the mile to be one of the exceptions to my point. above. That is, the mile should be a close event that could go either way. Weymouth's great distance crew are regaining racing sharpness after a long cross country season and some recovery time. Newton's Evie Heffernan is a formidable foe. I'm going to say 5-4 for the Tigers.

Reverse that for the 1000, with Weymouth getting the win, and Newton taking the next two places for a 4-5 score.

In the 600, Meghan Bellerose appears to be on a new level. She won last year, and I don't see anyone beating her this year since she's gotten faster. 5-4 for Newton. Likewise, Carla Forbes in the 300, with Madi Nadeau 2nd.

In the sprints and hurdles, Kayla Wong is the best hurdler in the league, and Carla Forbes is money in the 55. Both of those events should go to Newton, and I think the Tigers will pick up thirds in both events.

Weymouth has dominated the 2M in recent years, and I think they'll go 1-3 this year, with Becca Trayner taking 2nd. If my math is correct, that gives the Tigers a 36-27 edge in the running events (minus the relay).

The high jump is the most unpredictable event in the meet, and it happens fairly early. Weymouth really has to win it to have a shot in this meet. I think it's a toss up between Kate Pearce and Lucia Grigoli, and no doubt I am forgetting someone who will end up out-jumping both of them, but I'll score it 4-5, with Weymouth getting the win.

The long jump will be exciting, but it's hard to imagine any result other than Carla Forbes first. Let's say this goes 6-3 to North. In the shot put, Weymouth's Nostia Amazan gets the win with Michaela Salvucci second. The field events make it 49-41 in favor of Newton.

In the last five years, only one event has tracked the result of the meet exactly. The team that wins the relay wins the meet every time. Even if it's closer than what I've outlined above, I think North will win the relay and the meet.

In any case, predictions are just for fun, and they don't matter! Good luck to BOTH teams. I hope that the competition brings out personal bests on both sides.

The boys deserve a preview, too, but I'm not going get to it. My prediction: North will be tough to beat.

Thoughts on the 2012 Olympic Marathon Trials

2012-01-16T10:29:00.002-05:00

Was this the best "Trials" ever?

For the men, the times were certainly at a new level this year. Before Saturday, only one American, Ryan Hall, had ever run under 2:10 in a Trials race. At Houston, four men did it in the same race, with 2008 Olympian Dathan Ritzenheim in the excruciating position of running a personal best of 2:09:55, becoming the fourth-fastest Trial performer in history, and not making the team.

To put those times in perspective, the previous fastest Trials race was in 1980 -- the so-called "race to nowhere" since the U.S. boycotted the 1980 Moscow Games -- where three runners, led by Tony Sandoval in 2:10:19, finished under 2:11. Other than Ryan Hall's Trials record from 2008 in NYC, no other American man had EVER run under 2:11 in a trials race.

By the way, while I don't begrudge Meb his heartfelt celebrations and grabbing and waving an American flag in the final 400 meters, I think there's little doubt that he was capable of taking Hall's record and running the first sub-2:09 Trials had he focused on running hard to the line. But never mind that; Meb has never been about time, but about competing, and he won the race just 69 days after hanging in with the world's best at New York. Meb can do whatever he wants, as far as I'm concerned.

The depth of the race extended deep into the pack, with 8 men running sub 2:12, and 22 running 2:15 or better.

As impressive as the finishing times were, what was more striking about the men's race were the splits. Thanks to Hall, the men ran hard from the beginning, splitting 29:53 (2:06:08 pace!) for 10K. That's basically unheard of for an All-America race, and yet, even at that pace there was still a pack of seven runners in the mix. Remarkable!

The women didn't start out fast, in fact, they dawdled through a 6:11 first mile (2:41:30 pace) before Desi Davila ratcheted the pace down to something more reasonable. Once they got going, however, the women were all business. The first half was run in 1:13:30, and the top three women all negative split the second half, with Shalane Flanagan running 1:12:08 to win in a Trials record 2:25:38.

Davila and Kara Goucher finished only 17 and 28 seconds back, respectively, and the top three were not seriously in doubt over the final five miles. Amy Hastings, Davila's college teammate at Arizona State, took the fourth spot in a PR 2:27:17, also under the old Trial record.

The performance of the day might have been that of Linda Somers Smith, who, at age 50, ran 2:37:36 to finish 28th. You are forgiven if you don't recall that Somers Smith finished second in the 1996 Trials race -- SIXTEEN YEARS AGO, and at age 42 finished 10th in 2004 in 2:37:28. So she slowed down one second per year over the last 8 years. Unbelievable. In case you're wondering, plugging Somers Smith's performance into an age-grading calculator yields an age-adjusted time of 2:22:21.

So it was a great day of racing. It's too bad that there was no live TV coverage of the race, and that the delayed broadcast by CBS was, as usual, mediocre. I'm not sure why the network thinks that Tom Hammond is the right person to host the coverage; he doesn't appear to have any insight into distance running, and never offered much in the way of background information about the athletes or the Trials race. The two experts, former USATF CEO Craig Masback and former Olympian Todd Williams, provided the occasional background story or insight into the race, but the whole team seemed to be hampered by not knowing (or not bothering to mention) the split times, the gaps, etc. It's a shame that the networks still struggle with basic stuff like this, and can't seem to cover long distance races with a passion that matches the excitement of the running community.

Lucken, Guang Lead NN Over Brookline

2012-01-13T09:04:00.003-05:00

In a meet that was closer than the score, Newton North's boys mostly neutralized Brookline's distance strength, and pulled away in the sprints and field events to defeat the Warriors 61.3 to 31.6.

Senior Justin Keefe and Sophomore Gabe Montague had big (and close) wins in the 1M and 1000, respectively, to get the Tigers off to a solid start. The teams traded 1-2 finishes in the 600 and 300, before heading into the sprints, where North had a decided edge.

As expected, Ryan Lucken won both the 300 and 55, with North sweeping there. Senior Young Guang had a big day, winning the 55 hurdles and the shot put (what a double!) and taking 3rd in the 55 dash. Shawn Seamans also had a key role in the win, as he won the long jump and placed 2nd in the 300.

North mostly dominated the field events, at least as far as the points were concerned. The Tigers swept the shot put, went 1-2 in the high jump with Hansen Yang winning, and 1-3 in the long jump.

As for the girls, in their first meet since the Dartmouth Relays, they won every running event, and swept all but three events (Brookline won the high jump, got a 2nd in the 2-mile, and a 3rd in the shot put) to hold the Warriors to single digits in an 86-9 win.

Kayla Wong (55 hurdles and LJ) and Carla Forbes (55 dash and 300) were double winners. Evie Heffernan (1M), Miller McCarthy-Tuohy (1000), Meghan Bellerose (600), Becca Trayner (2M), and Michaela Salvucci (SP) all won their events.

Bay State Meet #3 Results on Cool Running

Tanzania Journal Day 12:Ngorongoro Crater

2012-01-12T06:00:00.001-05:00

Running Log, 1/4/11 -- Rest

January 4th was Joni's birthday, and as hard as it was to believe, this would be our last day of Safari. Waking in the cold pre-dawn and looking out over the edge of the world, Arusha seemed a thousand miles and a lifetime away. And yet, our plan was to spend all morning and early afternoon in the crater below, and then pack up and return to the city that evening in time to celebrate with dinner in an actual restaurant. But first, Ngorongoro lay all unexplored beneath us. With the sun not yet up, we dragged ourselves from our tents, ate a quick breakfast and drank instant coffee, and then climbed into the Land Rover for one more adventure.

Descending into Ngorongoro Crater from the rim is not a casual undertaking. Although the floor of the crater covers approximately 100 square miles, there is only one road for vehicles like ours to use to enter the crater, and only one road (a different one) for leaving. Since the rim is 2000 feet higher than the crater floor, these roads are steep and winding. It took us an hour from the time we left our campsite to when we reached the bottom and began to explore.

Hyenas

There is a quote, attributed to Maurice Greene, I think, that goes like this:

"Every morning in Africa a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must move faster than the lion or it will not survive. Every morning a lion wakes up and it knows it must move faster than the slowest gazelle or it will starve. It doesn’t matter if you are the lion or the gazelle, when the sun comes up, you better be moving."

This is a great quote, but now seems to me completely wrong. Gazelles don't survive by running around all day in the hot sun, they survive by sticking together and avoiding places where the lions like to hang out. Lions don't survive by challenging every random Zebra to a footrace, but by sleeping in the shade as much as possible, and by killing when success is near-certain. The animals in Africa seemed to have a limitless patience and spent most of their time watching, waiting, biding their time. And if there was one characteristic that seemed common to every creature on the Savannah, it was the desire to avoid unnecessary effort. Which brings me to the hyenas.

We had only been driving in Ngorongoro for a 5-10 minutes when we came upon a developing "situation" involving zebras and hyenas. The zebras were grazing, but warily. Nearby, a hyena was approaching but at an agonizingly slow pace. Every so often, the hyena would stop, and look around for reinforcements. We saw that there were other hyenas not far off, and that they were also walking very slowly, almost in formation, approaching the zebras. The zebras kept lifting their heads, looking around, moving off a little ways, re-adjusting their circle. The hyenas kept closing in. Rob pointed out a hyena that was not participating. It looked like its leg had been damaged, and Rob guessed that it had been injured by a swift, powerful kick from one of the adult zebras in the family now being stalked.

This went on for a half an hour, with us not able to take our eyes off the drama. Eventually, we counted seven hyenas in a deadly formation drawing closer and closer to their prey, and we were sure that at any moment they would launch a coordinated attack on the youngest or oldest or weakest member of the herd. Instead, when they reached the moment of truth, they all seemed to look at each other, look at the strong adult zebras staring back at them, and they gave up. They simply dispersed back into the tall grass and saved their energy for another time. Even with seven of them, these hungry predators couldn't afford to waste calories on a high-risk sortie and get a fatal kick for their trouble. They would wait until another time, perhaps when a foal didn't stay close enough to its mother, or a a zebra came up lame and couldn't keep pace when all the others began to run....

Lions: No shade left for me?

As in the Serengeti, there were many Land Rovers driving the dusty roads at the bottom of the crater. All of us were looking for the same big animals, and whenever any one of our vehicles spied something interesting, it was only a matter of time before others would gather. It was not uncommon for two dozen or more Land Rovers to pull of the road in approximately the same spot for the same view of Lions or Rhinos.

So it was that when we saw a mini traffic jam of vehicles, we headed over to see what was going on. Out in the field, we could see three young male lions. This was impressive, but what happened next was unexpected and unforgettable. The first lion got up and began to walk very slowly directly toward us. When he reached our truck, he turned and walked alongside and past it, and then lay down in the shade, directly alongside one of the other vehicles.

If you have ever seen a lion in a zoo, I am sorry, but you have seen an out-of-shape lion. You have seen a lion that has not been hitting the weights, a lion that is flabby and untoned. Having a fit lion amble within a few feet of you, it's impossible not to notice that there is no fat and a LOT of muscle. In that moment, all of the jokes we had made about lions liking to lie around (they do) and being lazy (they are) seemed pathetically beside the point. These creatures are nature's ultimate sprinting and killing machines, superbly designed for hunting down large quadrupeds and tearing them apart like six-hundred pound breakfast pastries.

And at that moment, this heavily muscled thug just wanted to find a little shade from the mid-day sun. All these land rovers filled with camera-wielding tourists -- just an opportunity to get out of the direct sun for a few minutes.

Then, the second lion repeated the same performance. And then the third lion thought it was a good idea, so he came looking for shade, too. I managed to get a video of the third lion:

I wonder what the driver of the other car was thinking, with those animals under his window. I know what I was thinking: "close the window!"

Rhinos

The picture above was taken from many hundreds of yards away, which was the closest any of us got to the pair of black rhinoceros slowing making their way across the plain.

The rhinos are a sad story, it seems to me. There are very few of them left, having been hunted nearly to extinction for their horns. Within Ngorongoro, the rhinos are under 24-hour protection from poachers.

Baboons

There were forests in the crater, and in the forests were our old friends the elephants and the baboons. The first time I had seen baboons in Tarangire, I had been intimidated, but the more I watched them, the more I liked them. In Ngorongoro, we came across a large colony of baboons and spent twenty minutes watching them forage for food, the babies riding on the backs of adults, or clinging to their bellies.

Like the elephants, the baboons seemed mostly to want to be left alone to enjoy life with their large extended families. Here's another short video of baboons having a nice family dinner... and absolutely nothing happens...

Other Creatures

Water Buffalo, Golden Cranes, Warthogs, Maribu storks, Ostriches, Wildebeest, Secretary birds, and a Serval Cat... I like cats, but this was the strangest "cat" I'd ever seen...

Next: Leaving Ngorongoro

NN Girls 2nd at Dartmouth Relays

2012-01-08T07:44:00.003-05:00

A slew of outstanding individual performances and relays nearly brought Newton North's girls another Dartmouth Relays title. The Tigers finished with 60 points, tied with La Salle Academy (RI) and a mere two points behind Colonie HS (NY).

Carla Forbes had an incredible meet, even by her standards. The Newton North junior won both the long jump and the triple jump, finished 3rd in the 55 dash, and ran on two scoring relays, including the winning 4x200 relay. In the triple jump, Forbes mark of 40-10 obliterated a 15-year-old meet record by nearly a foot and a half. In the long jump, her mark of 19-4 won by 8 inches.

Steph Brown had the other individual win for the Tigers, Brown was the only competitor to clear 11-6 in the pole vault, earning 10 points for the victory.

Other NN athletes scoring points were Meghan Bellerose who placed 3rd in the 800m run in 2:22.27, and Kayla Wong who ran 8.58 in the finals of the 55 hurdles to nail down 5th place.

In addition to the winning 4x200 team (1:48.29), NN's sprint medley of Wong, Forbes, Madi Nadeau, and Bellerose, placed 3rd (4:17.13), and their 4x800 team (Maggie Heffernan, Bellerose, Miller McCarthy-Tuohy, and Evie Heffernan) finished 8th in 10:06.79.

2012 Dartmouth Relays - Final Girls Results

Tanzania Journal Day 11:Empakai

2012-01-06T06:00:00.002-05:00

View from the rim of Empakai Crater

Running Log, 1/3/11 -- 3M at Ngorongoro Campground

This was Day 7 of our Safari and for the first time we would be staying the same place for more than one night. It felt luxurious to watch other campers pack up all their stuff, knowing that we were staying put.

Although the wonders of Ngorongoro beckoned to us from below, our plan for today was to drive about 2 1/2 hours further up into the hills to a smaller, more remote crater called Empakai. Unlike the game drives, where we were more or less confined to our vehicles, we had chosen to drive to Empakai for what Rob said was the opportunity to spend much of the day hiking. That was the plan. It turned out that we didn't fully understand the nature of the adventure, and the hike ended up being quite different from what we had imagined.

The first clue came only a few minutes after we set off in the Land Rover. Instead of immediately heading North, toward the higher mountains and our destination, we backtracked to the local ranger station. There we picked up a park ranger who would be escorting us for the entire day. It turned out that this was a requirement for visiting Empakai.

Our ranger-for-hire wore a dark green uniform and carried a rifle. His bearing was that of a military man, alert and all business as he took a seat next to Rob in the front of the Land Rover. Although he spoke English, he and Rob would periodically exchange brief remarks in Swahili, presumably about wildlife activity where we were headed, and other practical matters.

We soon turned off the paved road, and began heading Northeast. We were now approaching the massive Ol Doinyo Lengai from the highlands to its West, effectively completing a huge circle that had begun several days ago. After our first night in Tarangire, we had driven the better part of a day through the dry valley on the Eastern side of the Rift Escarpment gazing up at the imposing and mysterious Ol Doinyo to the West; we had camped at Lake Natron near the Kenyan Border; we had turned West to climb the escarpment on the worst roads any of us had ever seen and had entered the Northern Serengeti near Loliondo; we had made our way South through the Seronera and Central Serengeti to follow the lives of the wildlife there; we had driven further South to Lake Ndutu, and from Lake Ndutu we had driven East again to enter Ngorongoro Conservation area and begin the long climb up the into the highlands. Like the Wildebeest, we had been migrating across the plains almost non-stop. Now we were on the upper shelf of the Escarpment and climbing towards the mountains that we had once admired from thousands of feet below.

It was a long drive, and for the most part it was quiet in the car. The road passed through broad valleys whose slopes were dotted with Maasai villages. The scale of these valleys was so vast that even the large herds of cattle that grazed there seemed to be only insignificant smudges of brown and white in a never-ending landscape of green. Unlike our recent travels, we saw no evidence of other tourists on this leg of our journey. In contrast to Ngorongoro, Empakai Creater is not on the beaten path, even by Tanzanian standards. Unless you are ready to leave any vehicle behind and hike for days along the edge of the Escarpment, it is a dead-end trip to an out-of-the way location where you need to be escorted by a man with a gun.

It was almost noon when we stopped. There didn't seem to be any reason for stopping where we did. There was no landmark or other indication that this was the beginning of somewhere, or the end of somewhere for that matter. We just stopped the car and got out. It seemed the first part of our hike would be just continuing to walk down this road for a while. Our guard told us to keep together. He said that if he was forced to use his rifle, the first shot would be in the air, and the second would be to kill. Ann asked if he had ever had to kill an animal. "Oh yes, many times."

The hiking party.

So we grabbed a couple of backpacks with water and lunch, and we set off down the road. We walked for about 15-20 minutes until we came to a little clearing where we could see the crater below us and the sulfur lake that covered most of the crater floor. The view was very beautiful, but we didn't see any way down the steep slopes. Then Rob pointed out a narrow path that plunged away from the road to our left. With our guard in front and Rob bringing up the rear, we started picking our way down the twisted path to the bottom of the crater nearly a thousand feet below.

The walk brought out our guard's talkative side. He started describing the plants and trees along the path. He stopped to show us what he called a "strangle tree" -- a vine that germinates in the upper branches of an existing tree and grows down to the crowd, sometimes strangling and killing the original tree (see below).

When we reached the bottom of the crater, we seemed to have entered a hidden paradise. The bowl of the crater was about 6km across a narrow salty shoreline surrounding a natural sulfur lake. There were flamingos here, lots of flamingos, as well as other birds circling and circling, perhaps hunting for insects.

With our guard still urging us not to wander too far away from the group, we gradually dispersed to our own pursuits. Peter took pictures of birds and wildflowers. Ann examined paw prints in the sand and wondered what animal had made them. Loren walked a long ways along the shore, testing the boundary of what "too far away from the group" meant. Joni chafed at the realization that we really weren't going to be hiking much, except of course to climb back up out of the crater at some point.

We ate lunch. We lay on the rocks. We strolled on the beach. We saw no ferocious animals and no other people.

By mid-afternoon, we were ready to head back, and so we retraced our steps. The climb was strenuous and it took us a while, but felt good after our "confinement" in the crater.

The drive back to our campsite was very long, and we all realized we were tired. Maybe after a full week of Land Rovers and being wary of predators we were ready to end our safari. But before we returned to Arusha we had one more adventure planned: we would be doing a final game drive in Ngorongoro Carter in the morning. Would we see anything we hadn't already seen?

Once back at the campsite, I changed into running clothes and while everyone else rested before dinner, I ran about 25 minutes around the perimeter of the camp. Since it was sloped and since we were at nearly 7000 feet, every time I turned up hill I felt like I was getting in very intense fartlek. I felt very good. My legs were good, my breathing came hard but that was ok. It was my second run of the new year. It was also my last "good" run for two months.

Next: Ngorongoro Crater

Frank Horwill: 1927 - 2012

2012-01-05T06:00:00.001-05:00

UK Athletics coach Frank Horwill passed away earlier this week.

Although not well known in the U.S., Horwill was hugely influential in the U.K. and tributes to him have been appearing in Athletics Weekly and elsewhere.

When we say that someone is an "Old School" coach, we usually mean that they do not coddle their athletes, but instead preach hard work and personal responsibility as the true paths to success. But however we define it, when we use the phrase we probably have some specific person in mind. For me, the coach who best exemplified "old school" was Frank Horwill.

The remembrances describe him as a unique man and true eccentric, who coached a slew of international athletes over the years, but who also coached kids and pretty much anyone else who asked him for advice. He founded the British Milers Club in 1963 after observing that no British athlete had appeared in any of the world or European top ten lists for distance running. He brought a common-sense approach to training for the events that was based on analysis of the demands of the different events and observations of how successful runners trained. He then wrote out training programs that were logical but very, very hard. Indeed, he encouraged athletes to identify what was hardest for then and do more of it.

Peter Coe consulted with Horwill and used many of his ideas to design the training program for his son, Sebastian Coe, who became the only man to win back-to-back Olympic gold medals in the 1500m. Horwill explained those ideas in many articles and two books.

I remember the first time I stumbled upon Frank Horwill's articles, which you can read here.

His writing slapped you awake with its directness. Every brisk sentence crackled with energy and insight and a "let's get going" confidence. Do you want to run faster? ... Here's how you're going to do it. here's one example, from an article on improving your 5K times:

"Supposing you are a runner who doesn’t believe in all this aerobic and anaerobic stuff, you train by instinct. Fair enough. However, there are a few common sense matters to consider. If you want to run 15 mins for 5km, you have to know that’s 72 secs per 400m and get used to it for spells lasting 3-5 minutes’ duration with short rest."

He loved giving examples, especially to show that something was possible, even if it was not easy. Here's Horwill explaining why Coe's 800m record lasted so long:

"Where did Coe get his amazing endurance from? The answer came to me in 1986 when I went to Battersea Park Track one Saturday morning with a 13:11 5km performer to do a session of 7 x 800m at 5km speed with 45 secs rest. The rep times were fixed at 2:08 because the 5km runner was returning to fitness after injury. Coe was on the track and came across and asked what we were doing and could he join in? I felt a little apprehensive that an acknowledged 800m/1,500m runner would not survive a 5km pace session with a short recovery. The 800ms went like this: 2:08, 2:06, 2:04, 2:02, 2:00, 1:58 and 1:56! Coe led them all. Afterwards, he confessed that he did a 5km pace session at 13:20 speed each week. I ventured the opinion that he could run a good 5km anytime. He agreed, but said he didn't like the event! It is doubtful whether any 800m runner before or since could have completed such a session in such times."

And here's Horwill on why running to (and from) work is beneficial:

"We often hear some athletes saying that they don’t really have time to train. I recall a mediocre athlete many years ago with a best time of 4:12 per mile. His coach told him he should go for the 10km event, but the mileage the coach asked him to do was so extensive that the athlete, a carpenter by trade, who traveled long distances to work, could not fit it in. The answer was to run to and from work. However, at the time, his work-site was 15 miles away. He was undaunted by the prospect and ran the 30 miles involved daily, five days a week. He rested Saturday and Sunday. This athlete, Roger Matthews, became the 4th fastest 10km runner in the world in 1970."

There it is. A mediocre athlete becomes the 4th fastest 10K runner in the world. That's the message that Horwill communicated for over fifty years. If you were willing to put in the time and the effort, you could do great things.

The most successful athlete Horwill ever coached was probably Tim Hutchings, who won a silver medal in the World Cross Country Championships and finished 4th in the Olympic 5000m. After Horwill's death, Hutchings wrote:

"He was one of the last of the great old school of coaches: whistle, stop-watch, baseball cap and a bus ticket to get to and from the track – and he was very rarely late for a session for decade after decade of coaching at a wide variety of London tracks. And all this after living one of the most fascinating lives one could imagine before athletics became his love."

Tanzania Journal Day 10:Rim of the Crater

2012-01-03T06:00:00.001-05:00

Ngorongoro Crater from above

It was already three in the afternoon when we left Olduvai Gorge and began our two-hour drive East out of the plains and up into the hills. At first, the road was flat and the terrain barren. But soon we began climbing and as we did the hills became green and almost lush with low vegetation. We also began to see numerous Maasai villages on these hills. While in the Serengeti, we had been in a wildlife protected area. When the National Park was created, the Serengeti was made off limits to the nomadic Maasai. We had now passed into the Ngorongoro Conservation area where settlement was allowed, and we passed dozens of large Maasai settlements as we continued to gain altitude and ascend.

Early in the planning stages of our trip we had been told to bring warm clothes, and the reason given was that we would need them for the two nights we would spend camping on the rim of Ngorongoro Crater. The campground where we stayed was nearly 2300 meters (7500 feet) above sea level, and the temperatures at night got down to 5-10 degrees Celsius. Indeed, it was already considerably cooler, although the afternoon sun was still bright.

I think it's fair to say that nothing on our trip so far had prepared us for the experience of Ngorongoro Crater. The Crater itself is a wonder, an immense volcanic caldera measuring 22km across and 600 meters deep. It has been estimated that the mountain that erupted to create the crater was 5000-6000 meters and rivaled Kilimanjaro. Within the crater is a population of 25,000 large mammals, including what is thought to be the densest population of predators in Africa.

When we arrived at the campsite, we found that we would be pitching our tents on a large circular green looking out over the crater. In the middle of the green was an ancient tree. The effect was magical.

There were other things about this campsite that were different than what we had experienced so far. For one thing, we had an armed guard here patrolling the perimeter of the campground with what looked to my untrained eye like an AK-47. Rob explained that the guard was necessary to protect against incursions of water buffalo and bush pigs. As we disembarked from the Land Rover, he also pointed out a young elephant hanging out in the sparse bush about 100 yards away from the camp. It seemed that this elephant was fairly well known to the guards, and hung around the campground for its water. I made a mental note that it would be a bad idea to meet either the elephant or a bush pig on a midnight trip to the bathroom.

I also noticed that the campground was ringed by a red dirt road and grass path that was perhaps 500 meters long. It almost seemed designed for high altitude intervals. I had to remember my promise to myself not to run.

As it grew dark, we played cards in the common dining building while Henry prepared another incredible dinner. Our meal was especially satisfying that night, since we were hungrier than usual after our improvised lunch. It was also very lively at the campground, with perhaps a hundred fellow campers from all over the world. I happened to be sitting next to a Japanese woman and a Tanzanian man who were conversing in basic Japanese. It was a perfect multi-lingual eavesdropping opportunity for me, as I knew a bit more Japanese than the man, and the woman spoke very slowly and explained everything twice.

Heading to our tents after dinner, the sky shone with stars, and the black outline of the single sheltering tree stood out against the deep blue of the heavens.

I fell asleep easily that night.

Sometime after midnight, I woke again to the sound of an animal snuffling up against the side of the tent. My heart froze. Was it a bush pig? Something worse? I lay there trying to be as quiet and uninteresting as possible, my mind racing with images of a big ugly brute rooting around our tent, ripping a hole in the canvas.

This went on for several minutes. I seem to remember the snuffling sound stopped for a while, then sounded again a little ways off. I wondered what it was after.

The next morning, I woke up before the sun. Peter was also up, and took some spectacular photos of sunrise over the crater. As for the midnight intruder, there was no sign of any damage to tent or camper. That might have been the end of the story, but it turned out other members of my family had been up and had heard the animal. I know this because at breakfast Joni asked, "did you hear the Zebra last night?" Apparently my fierce bush pig had actually been a meek and harmless ruminant.

Two pictures of sunrise at Ngorongoro Crater

Tanzania Journal Day 10:Olduvai Gorge

2012-01-02T06:00:00.015-05:00

Exposed monolith formation in Olduvai Gorge

Running Log, 1/2/11 -- Rest

On the morning of January 2nd, 2011, I woke up early. I had slept well, enjoying the relative luxury of our spacious tent -- a tent that felt more like a small apartment complete with a real bed, a toilet, and even a makeshift shower. Outside, it was still fairly cool, as the sun was just rising above the horizon. I could smell the smoke from charcoal fires as I walked the hundred yards to the main tent to read a little, and spend some more time with my Swahili book.

We had stayed the night at a tented camp near Lake Ndutu, an alkaline lake in the Southern Serengeti. Unlike the busy campground where we had spent New Year's Eve, this place was fairly quiet. The camp consisted of twelve large canvas tents for the guests, a larger open air tent for the dining area, and miscellaneous structures for the staff.

Lake Ndutu itself was a bit of a mystery to me. I don't remember seeing it, or if I did, I mistook it for something else. Instead, I remember only muddy tributaries surrounded by low scrub forest and a network of twisting dirt roads. When we drove on these roads in the Land Rover, we raised great clouds of dust that hung in the air long after we passed, and I could never tell whether we were leaving or heading deeper into the forest.

Our plan for the day was to spend the morning on a game drive around Lake Ndutu, then head east to the famous archaeological site at Olduvai Gorge, and finally drive up into the Ngorongoro Highlands where we would stop at a campground and pitch our tents on the rim of Ngorongoro Crater.

On this morning, I didn't attempt a run. After 372 consecutive days of running at strange hours and in strange places, I had arrived at the long planned-for day off. So no claustrophobic circuits of the campground today.

I don't remember too much of our morning game drive. I remember the dust, and I remember that we got a flat tire at one point (it was expertly fixed with no loss of life). Peter took a couple of pictures of a mother leopard and three leopard cubs that I think came from that morning. Mostly I remember the thickets of low trees and bush, and how all the colors blended together, making it hard to spot the animals.

When we finally left the Lake Ndutu region in the late morning, we came out into open plains that seemed especially vast and empty. We were headed East now, driving toward the Southern "Gate" of the Serengeti at Nabai Hill, a massive and unexpected hill rising up out of the flat grasslands.

There was a park station at Nabai Hill, which meant a stop where Rob had to present the permits that would enable us to continue on our way. During the short delay, we climbed up to one of the highest points on the hill and took in the impressive views of endless plains in every direction.

I no longer remember exactly where Peter took the picture of ostriches, below, but it shows the openness of that part of the journey, and a distant rock formation that might or might not be Nabai Hill.

Olduvai / Oldupai

In the early afternoon, we arrived at Olduvai Gorge, one of the most famous and important archaeological sites in the world.

In the 1930's, Louis and Mary Leakey began archaeological excavations in the gorge that would continue for decades and would ultimately change our assumptions about the origins of mankind. The Leakeys discovered tools of different ages, some dating back 1.7 to 1.9 million years. At the time they began their work, there was no consensus about when and where humans had emerged. Many archaeologists were skeptical of the theory that the first humans had come from Africa. The Leakeys' work provided extensive evidence for that this area in the Rift Valley was "The Cradle of Mankind," as it came to be known.

In truth, it was hard to imagine this dry ravine as a fertile land that could sustain life, an area where homo habilis had left footsteps in the volcanic ash. Standing on the edge of the gorge and looking out, there was nothing much to see. Perhaps down in the gorge where the excavation sites were it would be different, but that area was off-limits. Instead, we had to content ourselves with wandering through a small, rude museum that contained artifacts from the excavations, explanations of the work done there, and historical photos of archaeologists and various government officials in stiff poses.

We learned that the name "Olduvai" is a mispronunciation of "Oldupai," which is the local word for the sisal plant that grows in and around the gorge. The world knows the place as "Olduvai" but we were encouraged to begin using the correct pronunciation and spelling.

Peter in front of OlduPAI Gorge

I should also mention, although it seems hardly worth the space, that while we were in the museum, the box lunches that our crew had prepared for us went missing. Every morning, Henry would pack simple but ample lunches consisting of crepes, hard-boiled eggs, bananas, muffins, chocolate bars, and juice boxes. Every day we would have these, and we would never be able to eat all the food. At Olduvai, Rob had put the stack of white boxes on benches that overlooked the gorge. When we came out of the museum, they were gone.

No big deal, we thought. We had plenty of crackers and trail mix in the Land Rover, and would be completely fine until dinner. But Rob was extremely upset, and was insisting that he had to make this up to us by stopping somewhere else and getting lunch. It actually got a little tense, as we tried to convince ROb that it was ok, and Rob continued to insist that it wasn't and that he needed to make this right. In the end, Peter, Rob, and I held a council and negotiated. Peter and I were firm that we did not want to delay our trip to get lunch elsewhere, but we would gladly let Rob buy us all soft drinks at the museum, and we all agreed that we should ask Henry to prepare an early dinner at the campsite. Crisis averted, we left the Gorge and drove on towards the distant Highlands.

NEXT: The Rim of the Crater

You Don't Know Until You Race

2012-01-01T06:00:00.003-05:00

I coach an athlete -- a sprinter -- who has been reluctant to enter any track meets this winter -- even low-key, all-comers meets -- because she feels unprepared for competing in a "real" meet. Being a nice, sympathetic coach, I direct most of my efforts at helping her feel more confident. However, I also find myself selling the idea of competing, even when under-prepared, as a learning process. In that spirit, the other day I told her, "Every time you compete, you learn something. Running a race, getting a mark or a time, is like having a good friend who'll tell you the truth about important things when no one else will."

I felt like a hypocrite.

The truth in my case is that for far too long I've been reluctant to race on the track because the idea of running fast had become a mental obstacle for me. The thing is, it has been nearly two years since I last put on my spikes and heard the starter say "on your marks." In that time, I've lost touch with speed and definitely lost the "edge" that you get when you race middle distances. Being older, I never lacked for reasons and excuses to avoid the more intense races, but even when healthy, I never could seem to motivate myself to start working on speed again. It was much easier to keep running slow mileage and lots of it and postpone my rendezvous with the track to the next season... and the next... and the next.

With the year winding down, I felt like it was time to take my own advice and get back to racing. Maybe the result wouldn't be a pleasing one, maybe my ego would take a little bruising, but it was time to find out where I stood. If I ran poorly, I would be motivated to train better, and I believe that whether you're 15 or 50, it's still all about the training.

So I entered the third and final BU Mini-Meet, signing up for the 3000m. The BU meets are low key, with plenty of heats for "sub-elite" (the old, the lame, the infirm...). But here was my first problem: I didn't know how to seed myself. I didn't want to be last in a fast heat (Oh, the vanity! We never want to finish last...), but I knew that I would run better if I was in a heat with a lot of people running my pace. I finally settled on the roundest number I could think of, 10 minutes even, or 40s per lap. Immediately after sending in my entry by email, it occurred to me to plug my most recent 5K time into a race prediction calculator to see what IT thought was realistic 3K time for me. The answer came back: 10:23. Terrific.

Arriving at BU on Saturday morning, I was surprised how nervous I was. Somehow the concept of "low-key meet" had been replaced in my brain by "life or death struggle to maintain the last shreds of self-esteem as a runner." Well, I told myself, no one else will notice or care whether you run well or poorly... Relax, you're anonymous here... No pressure...

At that moment, I ran into Chris Barnicle and Paul Norton. Both of them were running the 3k. Chris had recently returned from Iten, Kenya, where he had been training with world-class runners. A couple of years ago, Paul had also spent significant time training in Iten, so they spent a few minutes chatting, sharing stories and impressions of the experience. Chris mentioned that he had really learned the value of running long runs at a hard pace, for example, 3:20 per kilometer for 30-35k. After a few minutes more of such talk, the subject turned back to the meet, and Chris politely asked about my goals for the race. I told them I wanted to break 10:00 --- 3:20 per kilometer, or Chris' new long run pace.

There were a lot of people entered in the 3k. Chris and Paul were in the first heat (of six total) and I was in the fifth. So I got to watch Chris take the race from the gun and rip off a 60s opening 400 before settling into a rhythm of 32s per lap. He finished in 8:00.82, lapping several runners in the process. It was very impressive, even though I guessed he wouldn't be happy to be on the wrong side of 8:00. In any case, watching such a fast race made me feel very slow, indeed.

In the third heat, Newton North Asst. Coach Sean Wallace used a great move in the final 600m to win n a time of 8:55. "Everyone is fast," I thought, "except me."

Finally, it was time for the fifth heat. Standing on the track with the other 15 runners, I remembered how I hated those last few moments before the start. Better to make the mind go blank, or focus on responding to the first command with two small, patient steps to the line. Then, after a second that seems like a minute, the gun, and the end of all that terrible anticipation.

I got off the line quickly and settled immediately in fourth place around the first turn. My goal was to run 40s per lap. Simple. In theory, there were only a few people in this race who would average better than that. However after we passed first 200 in 39, about 3-4 runners behind me decided the pace was too slow and passed me. 400 in 79 and the crowd in front opened up a little gap. My friend Joe yelled at me to let the pack pull me along, but I wasn't budging from my pace. Let the pack come back to me.

I passed 1k in about 3:19 in about the same position, and then, sure enough, people started coming back. I almost tripped someone clipping their heel from behind, someone almost tripped me in the same way. We had bunched up, which meant that the pace was going to slow down, so I ran wide for 100 meters and improved my position a little bit. 1600 in 5:19, 2k in 6:38. Just run 40s laps.

Through the middle part of the race, I was really surprised at how, despite running evenly, I didn't feel good at all. After the race it didn't seem like a mystery. I was running at a pace that I rarely run in practice. I was NOT prepared to feel relaxed and efficient at this pace, but I was also just fit enough to keep it going. In other words, I was in good enough shape to make this really hurt.

Still running very close to 40 per lap, I started moving up. My mouth was very dry, and I knew from previous experience how my lungs would hurt after I finished. With five laps to go, I started thinking that maybe I could go a little faster if I had to. With 3 laps to go, I picked up the pace just a little to go around another runner. With 2 laps to go I was pretty sure I could break 10:00 after all if I didn't die first. With one lap to go, I threw what was left into the effort and passed one more person, moving up into 3rd on the final turn. The last 40 meters were pretty ugly, but I pushed hard through the line and held my place. Final time: 9:55.64.

On the plus side, I raced. Although my lungs hurt all day, and my legs felt like they had been in a street fight, but it was exhilarating to be racing people. In my heat, seven runners finished within five seconds. That kick mattered!

On the plus side, a bunch of Newton North alums showed up, including Dan, Jesse, and Ben Chebot, Evan Morse, and Chris, of course. It was great to have them yelling as I tried to finish what I had started.

On the plus side, I ran faster than I expected, and on the plus side, there's no reason for Speed and I not to become better acquainted again.

On the minus side, well, it hurt! I'm telling you, getting older, running slower, it doesn't matter, you can still make yourself suffer.

Other meet notes:

- NNHS alum John Blouin competed in the mile, running 4:50.13.

- Peabody senior Nick Christensen ran a huge PR in the mile, coming from behind to win the seeded heat in a time of 4:12.56. According to DyeStat, that is the #2 HS time in the country so far this season.

- Kara Haas set an American age-group record for women 40-44 in the 3K, running 9:50.16, breaking the old record of 9:51.60.

- There was a 4 x 1600m relay at the end of the meet. The Whirlaway Racing Team destroyed the listed world record for men 50+, running 19:17.61, but I didn't stick around long enough to see it. Liberty AC set the Over-60 women's world best with 28:57.57. Brookline had a team in the relay, as did a college team with Brookline alums Mike Burnstein and Jerzy Eisenberg-Guyot. I was rooting for a tie.

- I saw a bunch of kids with Newton North singlets, but I didn't recognize them and I don't know what they ran. Maybe the relay?

Ryan Lucken (36.12) Chases History

2011-12-23T08:29:00.004-05:00

Winter began on Thursday, December 22nd, but unseasonably warm and mild weather made it feel more like a day for outdoor track than for the rush-hour pandemonium of indoor action at the Reggie Lewis Center. Be that as it may, Newton North's boys and girls teams busied themselves once again with being faster, stronger and deeper than their opponents, on this evening Framingham, and with winning their meets easily.

In the girls meet, NN hogged all but three of the points, yielding only a single second-place finish in the 600. Carla Forbes won two events (55 and LJ) and finished second in two others (55 hurdles and HJ). Kayla Wong won the hurdles and finished second in the 55. Maggie Heffernan won the 2M, Sarah Perlo the 1M, Miller McCarthey-Tuohy the 1000, Meghan Bellerose the 600, Madi Nadeau the 300, Michaela Salvucci the SP, and Lucia Grigoli the HJ.

On the boys side, NN's top three shot putters came within six inches of averaging 50 feet, with Swardiq Mayanja winning it at 53-2. In a great race, Framingham's Ben Groleau out-duelled Justin Keefe in the mile, running 4:25.25 to Keefe's 4:27.81.

Perhaps the performer of the night was NN junior Ryan Lucken, who won the 55 (6.97) and the 300 (in a personal best 36.12). Lucken also won the 300 at last Sunday's Winterfest meet, and is making his way up the school's all-time list in the lap-and-a-half race.

NNHS historian Josh Seeherman notes that Lucken is now the sixth fastest 300 runner in school history. Here's Josh's NHS/NNHS 300 All-Time List:


1. Dan King            2002   34.93
2. Sean Herlehy        2001   35.34+ (35.1h)
3. Dave Gates          1985   35.48+ (32.2yh)
4. Isaiah Penn         2011   35.58
5. Frank Hines         1938   35.91+ (32.6yh)
6. Ryan Lucken         2011   36.12
7. John Head           1957   36.35+ (33.0yh)
8. Matt Milner         1982   36.46+ (33.1yh)
9. Allen Boyer         1971   36.57+ (33.2yh)
10. Avery Mitchell     2007   36.74

Dan King remains the only NNHS runner to go under 35 seconds for 300 meters. It's still astonishing to think that King was more than a half second faster than Isaiah Penn's best time at that distance.

Five of the other top ten marks are converted from hand times over 300 yards, and some date back many decades. Josh notes that John Head ran 33.0yh in 1957 to win the Class A meet, where he tied the record held by Somerville's Jimmy Blackburn (remember him?) from the previous year. Head's race was at the Boston Garden on a wooden 160 yard portable track with four turns instead of three.

The runner just ahead of Lucken on the all-time list, Frank Hines, held the record for over 40 years.

Bay State Meet #2 Results

Yes, Virginia, There IS an Indoor Track Program

2011-12-21T09:38:00.004-05:00

"DEAR EDITOR: I am 17 years old and I attend Concord Academy. My friends say there is nothing to do after cross-country except play intramural basketball and write college applications, and there's no such thing as "indoor" track. My coach says we can keep running outside, and doing drills in the hallways, and strength and core in the weight room, and if we believe in it hard enough, we can even run races in places like Harvard and BU and Roxbury. PLEASE tell me the truth; is there an Indoor Track season?"

- Virginia O'Hanlon, CA Class of '2012

VIRGINIA, your friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe in what they do not see. They think that nothing can be which is not described in the CA course catalog. All course catalogs, Virginia, whether they be CA's or some great university's, are the product of convention and previous experience. In this great universe of ours, course catalogs don't even begin to capture the possibilities of sport.

Yes, VIRGINIA, there is an Indoor Track Season. It exists as certainly as strength and speed and endurance exist, and you know that they abound and give to your afternoons their highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the winter world if there were no Indoor Track. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no burning light of aspiration to break 13 in the 100, no dedication to come to practice on Saturday mornings in the hopes of running faster, jumping higher, or throwing further, no controlled chaos of indoor meets to make tolerable this cold and dark time of year. We should have no enjoyment, except in watching football on TV. The eternal light with which the competitive fire of young people fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Indoor Track! You might as well not believe in winter running! Sure, you could get the maintenance man to inspect the campus to see if there are any facilities for practicing hurdles, solid floor for putting shots, or mats and pits for the high and long jumps. But even if the maintenance man found nothing but a few unused hallways and a tiny weight room, what would that prove? Nobody sees an indoor track on campus, but that is no sign that there is no Indoor Track. The most real things in the world are those that neither athletes not coaches can see. Did you ever see the invisible lift that helps a triple jumper set a PR by two feet in a championship meet -- the sudden revelation that follows months of patient effort in the weight room and on the runway? Of course not, but that's no proof that it isn't there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the soul of an athlete.

You may biopsy the muscle and see what makes it contract with such force, but there is a veil covering the unseen world of athletic aspiration which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, dedication, and training can push aside that curtain and view and picture the beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Indoor Track! Thank God! It lives, and it lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, indoor track will continue to inspire the strong and rapid beat of the hearts of athletes everywhere.

Bay State Meet #1 - 12/15/11

2011-12-16T07:48:00.005-05:00

From afar, I check out the results online of Bay State Meet #1 and am not surprised at the times and places and points piling up for Newton North.

The first name I see is that of Justin Keefe, perhaps the first winner of the season, ripping off a 4:37 mile in his indoor track opener. Gabe Montague and Jon Long, 2:45 and 2:52 in the 1000; Dan Swain (do I know him?) 1:28.92 in the 600; Ryan Lucken 36.59 (36.59!!) in the 300, Nick Fofana in a trio of events, a phalanx of shot putters led by Swardiq Mayanja at 52 feet, and so it goes. In my mind, I start playing the game of trying to project what those times will be after a season of dual meets, invitationals, relays, and facing better and better competition. Five (or is it six?) years away from the team and I still feel confident that Keefe will be running 4:20-22 at States, that everyone will get faster...

I click on the link to see the girls results, and all those sprinter times look incredibly fast for a first meet. I know I shouldn't think it -- wouldn't think it if I were a coach and not a distant fan -- but who will beat this team? Kayla Wong, Carla Forbes, Meghan Bellerose, Evie and Maggie Heffernan, Lucia Grigoli, Madi Nadeau, and all of those freshmen and sophomores who will be developing under Joe Tranchita's program.

The Boys and Girls won their meets over Braintree with identical scores of 82-13. It's early, and Braintree isn't the strongest opponent in the BSL, but this first meet didn't serve up much hope for the rest of the league.

Results - Bay State Meet #1 - 12/15/11

[Note: I know that some of my readers (well, Kevin...) will groan at seeing H.S. meet results again, and others will complain if I don't write detailed previews of every meet. As always, I write when I feel like I have something to say and time to say it properly. I wish I had more of both, but there you go. And yes, I am hoping to use the holiday break from work to write more about Tanzania.]

NXN: H-W Girls Win; Pembroke Boys 2ndFLNE: Hubbard, Green, Allen, Rocha Qualify for San Diego

2011-11-27T05:05:00.002-05:00

Monday marks the beginning of indoor track for Massachusetts high schools, but for a few runners, indoor will have to wait a bit longer while the cross-country season continues.

Nike Cross-Country National Qualifying Meets

The NXN Northeast and New York Regionals were held at Bowdoin Park in Wappinger Falls, NY, on Saturday.

Hamilton-Wenham, only the runner-up a week ago to Bishop Feehen in Mass. Div 2, won the Northeast Regional outright and qualified for the National Meet. Although their top runner was only 27th overall, H-W placed all of their five scorers in the top 60 and that was plenty good enough to hold off runner-up Champlain Valley (VT) and a surprising performance from Weston (MA) in third. It was an unlucky day for Feehan, as the Shamrocks placed only 8th after a blanket finish from teams 2-7. Incredibly, Feehen was only 28 points from 2nd place and an automatic qualifying spot.

In the boys race, Pembroke, the OTHER runner-up from Mass. Div 2, followed their near miss from a week ago with a strong second-place finish here, earning themselves guaranteed tickets to Portland. The Titans benefited from outstanding runs by Wesley Gallagher (3rd overall) and Christian Stafford (12th overall), and a comeback performance from Joe Vercollone, who finished fourth for his team and 32nd overall in 16:55, a full minute faster than he ran at Franklin Park a week ago.

Other Mass. teams scoring well included Div I champs Brookline in 9th place, and Div 2 champs Bishop Feehen in 10th. Apparently winning a team title in the State Meet is bad luck for doing well here.

NXN Northeast Regionals Results

Footlocker Northeast Regionals

Saturday was also the day of the Footlocker Regional Meets, with the Northeast regional meet held at Sunken Meadows State Park on Long Island.

In the seeded boys race, Newark's Edward Cheserek ran 15:20.5 to win and break John Gregorek's thirty-year-old course record. Meanwhile, three Massachusetts runners finished in the top ten to qualify for the National Finals in San Diego. Marshfield's Joel Hubbard (15:49.9) placed 4th, St. John's Jonathan Green (15:52.5) placed 7th, and King Philip's Chris Allen (16:03.9) placed 10th to claim the last spot.

Amazingly, the next two runners were also from Massachusetts -- Marshfield's Kevin Thomas and Wakefield's Stephen Robertson placed 11th and 12th -- and the Bay State won it's first team competition in a long time (has Mass. ever won?)

In the seeded girls race, Peabody's Catarina Rocha (18:19.9) finished third overall, the only Massachusetts girl to make the finals. Rocha is returning to San Diego, having qualified for the finals in 2010, as well.

2011 Footlocker Northeast Results Page

NNHS Alumni Results - Thanksgiving 2011

2011-11-25T06:13:00.003-05:00

Thanksgiving Day Road Races have become almost as much of a tradition as Thanksgiving Day High School football games, providing an incentive for both the serious and occasional runners to get out there and race. There were over twenty-five road races held in Massachusetts yesterday, and a number of NNHS (and NSRP) alumni appeared in the results.

Let's start with the Boston Volvo 5K Thanksgiving Race, always a favorite of the Chebot family. This year's race featured a 4th place finish from Seb Putzyes (16:05) followed by a down-to-the-wire battle for family bragging rights between Ben and Dan Chebot, with Ben (16:12) prevailing by one second over Dan (16:13). Competing without the benefit of wheels, Scott Cole and Jesse Chebot finished together in 19:58.

I should also mention friend of NSRP Andrew Wortham, who finished 8th in 16:18.

In the women's race, Wellesley H.S. and Boston College alum Brielle Chabot won in 17:10. Newton South alum Kathy O'Keefe was 5th in 19:01.

Speaking of Wellesley alumni, in Framingham, Peter Krieg won the 17th Annual Framingham Turkey Race, running 16:47, while older sister Alexandra finished first in her age group, running 19:59.

Another Thanksgiving race that always gets a large crowd is the Gobble, Gobble, Gobble 4-Miler in Somerville. Friend of NSRP (and Concord Academy grad) Tyler Andrews placed 3rd in 20:20. Another NSRP regular, Cliff Bargar, placed 11th in 22:47, and just ahead of NNHS alum John Blouin (12th, 23:00).

Just a little farther down the results, I noticed a name I hadn't seen for a while: former Brookline standout and two-time Bay State League XC champion George McArdle, now 27, finished in 21st place with a time of 23:24.

In Wakefield, Newton North Asst. Track and XC Coach Shawn Wallace won his hometown race, fending off Wellesley grad (and friend of NSRP) Billy Littlefield. Wallace managed sub-5:00 pace, finishing in 15:24, seven seconds ahead of Littlefield (15:31). In third was my teammate and another friend of NSRP, Terry McNatt, who finished in 16:26 to win his age group by over two minutes.

Anyone remember Scott Zeller (NNHS '05)? Scott was a talented runner who played soccer in the fall and tennis in the Spring. In between and with no base, he managed to run 4:39 for the mile indoors.

Scott finished third overall in yesterday's 6th annual Donohue's Turkey Trot 5K in Watertown, running 18:29.

Know of any other NNHS alumni results from Thanksgiving week? Run a race yourself? Leave a comment and let us know.

NNHS Alumni at NCAA Div III XC Nationals

2011-11-20T20:44:00.002-05:00

I don't want to miss these outstanding performances from former NN teammates running at the Div III XC Championship in Oshkosh on Saturday.

Bates senior Ben Chebot placed 108th overall in 25:20.64, finishing as the fourth man for the Bates Varsity, which placed 7th out of 32 teams. According to online splits, Ben was in 199th place at the mile, and passed 90 people after that!

Rochester junior Dan Hamilton placed 239th overall in 26:15.56, the seventh man for his team, which finished 22nd.

Other notable performances:

Brookline alum and Washington Univ. senior Mike Burnstein finished 10th overall in 24:25.25, earning All-American. Newton South alum Andrew Wortham was 49th overall, and the second finisher for Bates, running 24:57.16.

Brookline Repeats as State XC Champions

2011-11-20T07:10:00.002-05:00

For a few seconds yesterday, the crush of runners into the finishing chutes at Franklin Park reached its frenetic peak. In the span of six seconds, twenty-one runners crossed the finish line, piling up together in a sweaty, exhausted corridor of boides.

Near the end of that traffic jam, Brookline's Aaron Klein had to wonder whether he had finished far enough up in the standings. With so many runners finishing, a person can lose perspective and think that half of the runners in Massachusetts are in that chute ahead of him.

Klein, it turned out, had finished 83rd overall, 53rd in the team scoring. As Brookline's fifth man, his 53 points -- added to the 57 points from the four teammates who had finished in the previous minute -- was enough. The Warriors 110 points was 37 ahead of runner-up Lowell, and Brookline had won its second straight State Championship.

The D1 race was fast, as were all the races on a relatively mild day at Franklin Park. In boys D1, eight runners went under 16:00 led by St. John (Shrewsbury)'s Jonathan Green who held off Marshfield's Joel Hubbard, 15:41 to 15:42. Brookline's Chernet Sisay and Mark Perry finished 12th and 13th, and were given the same time of 16:11. Evan Strenstein (27th, 16:35) and Matt Goroff (51st, 16:54) were the other Brookline scorers.

Newton North's Justin Keefe, competing as an individual, placed 88th in 17:12.

Boys D1 Results on Cool Running

In the Boys D2 race, defending champion Pembroke had its top four runners score 1st, 5th, 6th, and 13th, but incredibly, that wasn't enough to win. Bishop Feehan's top five all finished under 17 minutes with a gap of only 23 seconds to wrest the title away by a mere two points.

Had it been a dual meet between the two schools, Pembroke would have had it won before Feehan's first runner had crossed the line. Indeed, Feehan's sixth and seventh runners also contributed to the singlet-thin victory, finishing ahead of Pembroke's fifth man.

Boys D2 Results

In the Girls D1 race, Peabody's Catarina Rocha crushed the field, running 18:12 and finishing half a minute ahead of Longmeadow's Camille Blackman.

Whitman Hanson's top five finished within 20 seconds of each other, from 19:27 to 19:47, as the Panthers rolled to the State title with 93 points, far ahead of runner-up Wachusett (168), and defending state champs Weymouth (177).

Evie Heffernan competed for Newton North, placing a strong 26th in 19:43.

Girls D1 Results

In Girls D2, Bishop Feehan made its case as the best team in the state, as their top five girls averaged 19:16, scoring a mere 63 points, which was 16 ahead of an excellent Hamilton-Wenham team.

The Shamrocks were led by senior Katie Powell and sophomore Abbey McNulty, who finished 2nd and 3rd overall in 18:44.

Girls D2 Results

Virtual Roads and Trails

2011-11-03T07:54:00.003-04:00

For many summers, I did most of my long runs on the trails of Lincoln. Starting from the Lincoln Train Station or Walden Pond, sometimes alone but more often with friends, I would wind my way through the woods and fields, circling Flint Pond, climbing up and tumbling down Pine Hill, along the narrow trail that took us past Fairhaven Bay, adding a loop around Mt. Misery... I had such intimate knowledge of those trails that I imagined it would be possible to sit down in front a roaring fire on a cold winter night, close my eyes, and replay an entire run, step-by-step, without leaving my comfy chair.

The other day, I was fretting about the fact that our cross country team hadn't found a time to drive into Boston to preview the Franklin Park 5K course. I seriously considered trying to take my team on an imaginary tour of the course, relying on my memory to describe every feature on those historic loops. I also did a quick Internet search to see if anyone had shot a course video, which would serve the same purpose.

I didn't find what I was looking for, but I did come across an interesting site -- Outside Interactive -- whose mission is to capture video to simulate running a specific race course or a favorite training route. I quote from the company's web site:

"...After enduring yet another boring treadmill run in another harsh New England Winter while in preparation for the Boston Marathon [company founder Gary McNamee] thought, 'what if I could film the course and view it while I ran on my treadmill?' [...] After compiling research about the latest technologies in videography (and a LOT of trial and error) Gary successfully filmed the 26.2 mile course from Hopkinton to Boston and other popular running routes by refining the videography and editing process to produce the smoothest views of the course seen from a runner's perspective"

The company thinks the main use of such software will be for use with treadmills, and they have made it possible to adjust the video playback speed to correspond to various different paces. Here's a sample (from the company's web site) showing a few highlights from the Boston Marathon Course.

Outside Interactive - Hopkinton to Boston 26.2 Mile Trailer from Gary McNamee on Vimeo.

I'm not a treadmill runner, and I don't think this software and video will change that, but it's an interesting idea for sure. I'm not sure how much it really helps to prepare for running a course, but it certainly helps call to mind the experience of running along those roads after the fact.

I wonder if the same technology could be applied to make a game for the Sony Wii that would allow you to experience a race with Keninisa Bekele or David Rudisha? Perhaps call it Track Track Revolution?

10/29/11 - Bay State League Meet Results

2011-10-31T09:21:00.000-04:00

On Saturday, the Bay State League held it's XC championship meet at Norwood. The timing was fortunate; a few hours later, Massachusetts was in the midst of a Nor'easter that brought rain and heavy wet snow to the whole East Coast. By Sunday morning, there were several inches of snow on the ground hundreds of thousands had lost power. That storm cancelled many weekend events, including several road races, but Saturday's league meet was already in the books by then.

At Norwood, the Brookline boys and Weymouth girls left no doubt that they were the top teams in the league.

In the boys race, Brookline's Chernet Sisay (15:59) held off Walpole's Zach Ganshirt (16:03) for the win, and the Warriors placed five runners in the top ten to run away with the team title. Walpole (93 points) earned the runner-up spot ahead of Newton North (105) and Weymouth (110).

(Point totals might not be accurate, as I understand there was at least one mistake in the results.)

In the girls race, Wellesley's Priyanka Fouda followed her runner-up finish from last year with a win in 2011, taking the race in 19:10, half a minute in front of Weymouth's Ashley Betts and Julie Tevenen. The Wildcats would go on to place four runners in the top eight and win easily, with Needham second and Brookline third. Newton North's Evie Heffernan was fourth overall, leading the Tigers to a fifth-place team finish.

This was the first year that the Bay State league meet included not only a JV race, but a race for freshmen. Newton North's Isabella Reilly won the 2500m girls race in 10:25, while Brookline's Ethan Goroff won the boy's race in 8:55. Brookline boys also took the top six places in the JV race and had the top finisher in the 2500m mixed co-ed run to make a clean sweep of the awards.

Results can be found on Cool Running here:

Bay State XC Championships - Individual and Team results

BHS vs. NNHS Today

2011-10-26T08:22:00.002-04:00

Newton North XC hosts Brookline today, as the defending D1 State Champion Warriors seek to wrap up another undefeated season and another Bay State league title. The Tigers go into the match-up with a 9-1 record, their one loss coming to Walpole at Cold Springs Park earlier in the season.

It will be the final home meet for NNHS seniors, including Justin Keefe, who has won four meets this year already. He'll have quite a challenge in Chernet Sisay, who is coming off his win at the McIntyre Twilight Invitationals, where he finished just ahead of teammate Mark Perry.

On the girls side, NN sophomore Evie Heffernan has run 19:52 this year and is the favorite for the individual win, but Brookline appears to have far more depth up front and is the favorite to win the meet.

Good luck to all teams, and best wishes for the class of 2012, who are competing for the last time at Cold Springs Park.

Remembering Sarah Philipps (1968 - 1988)

2011-10-22T08:39:00.002-04:00

The death of Muammar al-Gaddafi in Libya this week prompted NNHS Historian Josh Seeherman to write a somber note remembering Sarah Philipps, one of the victims of the 1988 bombing that killed 259 people on Pan Am Flight 103 and 11 more people on the ground in Lockerbie, Scotland.

A 1986 graduate of Newton North H.S. and a Track and Field athlete there, Sarah Philipps attended the University of Colorado and participated in Syracuse University's London Studies program in the fall of 1988. She was 20 years old when she boarded Flight 103 at Heathrow Airport on Dec. 21st, 1988, to return home for the Christmas holidays. She died when the plane exploded in mid-air over Lockerbie, killing all aboard.

The Philipps family established a scholarship in Sarah's name at Colorado that continues to this day, and has enabled over twenty CU undergraduates to study abroad over the past two decades. In addition, Syracuse University created 35 Remembrance Scholarships to honor the 35 victims from the Syracuse program who were on the flight. In 2009 one of those scholars, Kate Callahan, who had been inspired by Sarah's love of athletics, organized a 3.5-mile Remembrance run for the 35 students.

Josh went on to write of his connection to Sarah. She had been a camp counselor at the Meadowbrook Day Camp in Weston, which he attended, and had also been one of the last groups of students to attend the old Claflin Elementary School, a quarter of a mile up Lowell Avenue from the site of the old Newton North building. NNHS runners pass the old school almost every day as they head out for their runs on Comm Ave.

BSL Alumni Results 10/8/11-10/10/11

2011-10-11T07:15:00.000-04:00

Columbus Day Weekend featured three big running events in the Boston area standing out among the the usual fare of local road and cross-country races.

New England XC Championships

On Saturday, Franklin Park hosted the Collegiate New England Championships on a day that felt more like summer than fall. In all, almost 1200 runners competed in the varsity and sub-varsity races. It was fun to see so many former Mass. high school stars in the race, and, in addition, there were quite a few alumni from Bay State league schools. I apologize in advance for missing any BSL runners, but here is a list of names that I recognized from the results:

Women's 5K:

Rebecca White 18:04 (Natick '09)
Amanda Waldron 19:09 (Walpole '10)
Jessica Kaliski 19:27 (Wellesley '11)
Anna Lukes 19:55 (Wellesley '08)
Jill Corcoran 20:15 (Weymouth '11)
Marlis Gnirke 20:47 (Wellesley '08)
Maria Grandoni 21:17 (Framingham '11)

Men's 8K:

Stephen Sollowin 26:15 (Weymouth '11)
Sam Miller 26:32 (Needham '08)
Jerzy Eisenberg-Guyot 26:59 (Brookline '07)
Romey Sklar 27:22 (Brookline '11)
Seb Putzeys 27:25 (Newton North '08)
Chris Mercurio 27:29 (Brookline '08)

BAA Half-Marathon

From the time the last race was over on Saturday, crews at Franklin Park began setting up the start/finish area for the BAA half marathon to be held the next day.

The BAA half has become one of the most popular races on the New England calendar with over 5000 entrants. The top spots went to Ethiopia's Al Abdosh (1:03:36), Kenya's and Liberty University grad Sam Chelanga (1:03:41), and a several other Kenyan runners. Top American was Boston College grad and Mass. native Tim Ritchie, who finished 7th in (1:05:29).

I looked for BSL alums in the results but didn't recognize any names.

Tufts 10K

On Columbus Day Monday, 6500 women and girls took the starting line for the 35th annual Tufts 10K for women.

Janet Cherobon-Bawcom won the race in 32:47, a day after winning the BAA Half in 1:11:58. That's quite a double!

There were at least two BSL alumnae in the race, although one of them was running under an assumed name. Here are the two I recognized. Anyone know of any other BSL athletes who raced?

Brielle Chabot, 37:02 (Wellesley '07)
Joni Waldron, 50:01 (NNHS '02)

(A special shout-out to Joni who ran her first official 10K on limited training and still managed 8:00 miles and a fierce kick at the end.)

College XC: 2011 New England Championships Today

2011-10-08T07:27:00.002-04:00

The 2011 NEICAAA Cross Country Championships, aka, New Englands, take place this morning at Franklin Park in Boston, on the following schedule:

11:00 am    Women's Sub Varsity 5k
11:45 am    Men's Sub Varsity 8k
12:30 pm    Women's Varsity 5k
 1:15 pm    Men's Varsity 8k

This is one of the few meets that brings together DI, DII, and DIII teams, and offers a great chance to see former Mass. H.S. runners strutting their stuff for their college teams.

Barnicle 7th in USA 10-Mile Championships

2011-10-03T06:25:00.003-04:00

Only two weeks after his half marathon debut, NNHS alum Chris Barnicle was back on the roads competing at the USA 10-mile championships in the Twin Cities on Sunday. The result was another outstanding race, as he placed 7th overall in a time of 47:06, just twenty seconds behind winner Mo Trafeh.

Here's a link to the race finish video:

USA Running Circuit - USARunningCircuit.com - USARC Official Site - Videos - Mens and Womens Finish - Live Webcast Replay - USA 10 Mile Championships 2011

September 28, 2041

2011-09-25T20:44:00.006-04:00

(Berlin)

Somalia's Abdi Jimale Bani became the first man in history to run the standard marathon distance in under two hours this morning, recording a stunning new world record of 1:59:55 at the Berlin Marathon. Jimale Bani, whose previous best had been 2:01:13, ran with a large pack early in the race, but seized the lead shortly after passing halfway in 59:49. Accompanied by his two virtual pacesetters, Jimale Bani opened up a lead that grew with every passing kilometer and it seemed ever more certain that he would better David Kipsang's old world record of 2:00:08; the only question was whether he would be inside the two-hour mark. When he crossed the line, the Somali-born and American-trained runner went to his knees and kissed the ground, then rose with a huge smile on his face and waved to the crowd.

In addition to the distinction of being history's first two-hour man, when he crossed the line Jimale Bani became perhaps the wealthiest distance runner in the world. In addition to his first-place prize money of $1,000,000 (USD), Jimale Bani received the course record bonus of $500,000 from race organizers. He also earned the $2.5 million "two-hour challenge" prize from the World Marathon Association.

Around the world, marathon fans celebrated the news that the barrier had finally been broken. There had been speculation that the record might fall in Berlin, but the man considered most likely to do it, 2036 and 2040 Olympic 10,000m Champion and half-marathon world record holder Dareje Tale of Ethiopia, retired from the race after only 15 kilometers with a leg injury that has plagued him in recent months.

The two-hour marathon has long been considered an achievement of supreme significance in long distance running. Perhaps no barrier has seized the imagination of the Athletics World since Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile 85 years ago. In the early part of this century, the marathon record seemed under constant assault and was lowered nearly a dozen times in fifteen years. But progress seemed to come to a halt after Kenya's Paul Kimeli Koech ran 2:01:57 in 2019, a time that would not be bettered for another decade.

In the early 2030's, a new generation of marathoners began lowering the record again. Some credit new medical breakthroughs in understanding how the body repairs tissue damage after extreme physical exertion, allowing athletes to train at a higher level without needing as much recovery. Others credit technological advances in footwear and the construction of racing surfaces, such as those used in the streets of Berlin, that return more energy to runners' legs.

But perhaps the single most important reason that a human being has finally run under two hours for 26.2 miles is that Abdi Jimale Bani believed it was possible. "I knew that one day, someone would run under two hours," Jimale Bani said after his historic race. "I knew that there is no limit to what we can do, how fast we can run. Today I decided to not thing about what was impossible, but about how anything is possible, and now I am so happy."

Race Report: The 23rd Annual Fred Brown Relay

2011-09-23T08:00:00.004-04:00

A week ago Saturday was the 23rd Annual Fred Brown Relay, an eight-person 65-mile stage race around Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire.

My club often competes at this race, and this year we entered a men's over-40 team. One challenge of a stage relay is to find runners who consider it fun to drive for hours, race solo over hilly terrain, perhaps without ever encountering another runner, and then drive for even more hours following their teammates as they slowly advance the baton around the Lake. Our team this year had great enthusiasm for this task, and spirits were high as we all headed for our appointed rendezvous points on the course.

These days, large corporate-sponsored stage relays are becoming a fixture on the New England Road Racing Calendar. Events like "Reach the Beach," the "Green Mountain Relay," and the "Ragnar Relay," are well-organized two-day races that cover up to 200 miles and charge entry fees of over $1000 per team. In spite of this, the races regularly reach their limit of teams.

Unlike these newer events, the Fred Brown Relay is hosted by a local running club (the North Medford Club), charges a modest entry fee ($250 per team this year), and uses actual volunteers to hand time the legs. Traffic control is minimal and runners are mostly on their own.

Not surprisingly, faced with increased competition from the professionally-organized and more heavily-marketed Relays with their spiffy web sites, the Fred Brown Relay has been shrinking in recent years. This year, only 75 teams completed the race around the Lake. Only a week later, 434 teams would finish "Reach the Beach."

If it perishes, many old-timers like me will mourn the Fred Brown Relay and its storied history. That history began not in New Hampshire, but on Cape Cod when the legendary Fred Brown -- a beloved figure in New England Road Racing and a tireless champion of small, local, inexpensive races -- organized an annual relay from Plymouth Rock to Provincetown in the early 1970's. The P-to-P relay, as it was called, was quite an event, and attracted the top club teams in New England, including the BAA, Central Mass Striders, and many others.

Despite its popularity with runners, the P-to-P relay was never embraced by residents of Cape Cod who resented the influx of cars and runners every fall. In the late 80's the race moved to New Hampshire. The relatively flat point-to-point journey to the end of the Cape has become a relentlessly hilly loop that starts and finishes at "Funspot," a roadside attraction and tourist diversion located near the top of a long hill not too far from Weir's Beach. This was the course we were about to tackle.

Mike and Kevin had the early legs, and both set out from Boston before dawn to reach Fun Spot in time for the 8:00 a.m. start. Meanwhile, Terry and I had left Boston later and were headed to Alton Bay and the second exchange point. From there it would get a little complicated. Kevin, running second, would hand-off to me, running third, and then drive with Terry, running fifth, to the start of Terry's leg. Kevin would then backtrack to the end of the third leg, deliver a race number and pins to our fourth runner, Paul, and wait for me to finish. Kevin and I would then drive to the start of the sixth leg, deliver more numbers to Al (running seventh) and Andy (running eighth). We would then backtrack, meet Terry at the end of the fifth leg, and follow the race together after that all the way to the end.

But back to Mike -- Mike would start it all off by running the 10.5-mile first leg, a rolling course that begins with a long downhill into the village of Weir's Beach before climbing nearly 600 feet up to the entrance of the Gunstock Ski Area.

I had run this leg in 2010, and I knew that the final climb -- three miles of relatively steady uphill would be tough. Michael had predicted a time of 67 minutes, based on the distance but not the hills. I thought he did well to finish in 70 minutes, handing off to Kevin at ten past 9:00. Kevin's leg began with two and a half miles of downhill, and I had told him that his stride was perfectly suited for the terrain. It was, but I had somehow failed to mention that after those early downhill miles, there were another 8 more miles to run, including some tough uphill stretches. Kevin ran really well (68 minutes for the 11-mile leg), but had the look of someone on whom a trick has been played as he handed off the baton to me in Alton Bay.

I had told Kevin that I didn't care how fast he ran as long as we had a proper hand-off. It drives me crazy to see receiving runners standing flat-footed as their teammates come barreling into an exchange zone. In such cases, the incoming runner hands off the baton and then runs PAST the outgoing runner, who finally decides to start moving after receiving the baton. I swore this would not happen to us.

Bad: Incoming runner passes outgoing runner... and laughs about it! Do you see think hand-offs are a joke?

As Kevin approached, I extended my hand and started running. The baton never stopped moving, and one respectable hand-off later I was on my way for the dreaded 3rd leg.

Kevin and Jon demonstrate a proper hand-off, gaining precious tenths of a second in this seven-hour race.

The third leg begins in Alton Bay, next to the water and is exceedingly pleasant for about 600 meters. It then heads straight up Bay Hill Road, a steep half mile climb that ends on a barren stretch of highway that has no scenery of any kind for seven miles. I had never run the third leg, but I felt it would be good for me. It wasn't.

I actually felt ok at the start and ran the hill with restraint so that the first several miles on the highway were steady. I managed to catch two runners who had started before me, bringing our team into 4th place overall. We didn't know it at the time, but that's where we would stay for the next 40 miles of racing and that's where we would finish four and a half hours later.

By the last few miles, the constant rolling hills had taken their toll on my legs, and I plodded into the village of Wolfeboro a humbled man.

After handing off to Paul, I walked around a bit drinking water and Gatorade. After 10-15 minutes it was back into the car for the drive to Moultenborough. It was a brilliant late summer day, and after leaving Wolfeboro we found ourselves driving along beautiful back roads with occasional views of the lake to our left and mountains to our right.

While Terry ran the fifth leg, we drove ahead to the start of Leg 7, met Andy and Al, and found out that we had missed Jonathan who had taken the shuttle bus to start of Leg 6 numberless. So it was back in the car, and back to the previous exchange zone to find Jonathan and wait for Terry.

At this point, nearly 5 hours into the race, our team was in fourth and the runners were so spread out that there was essentially no traffic or congestion. As we waited for Terry to arrive at the exchange, we noted the first, second, and third place teams, separated by several minutes each. It was another fifteen minutes before Terry hove into view and passed the baton to Jonathan. There was no chance we would catch any of the teams in front of us, but could we be caught? We stuck around long enough to time the gap to the fifth-place team at just over five minutes. With 19.4 miles to go that was close!

Jonathan took the baton for the sixth leg and looked to be running well. With Terry in the car, we were now in a position to provide support to Jonathan at various points along the road.

We chose a spot a couple of miles into his leg, and I grabbed a water bottle to hand to him. Remember, I had run nine and a half very hill miles a couple of hours ago and had been cooling off ever since. As Jonathan ran towards me, I tried to run alongside and hand him the water, but my legs were shot. I managed to hold out the bottle, and Jonathan grabbed it form me. As he took a swig, I tried to accelerate to get the bottle back from him, but he was past me and pulling away like a train pulling out of a station. Eventually he realized there was no hope for me and tossed the bottle backwards over his head and continued down the road. I retrieved the bottle and limped back to the car where Kevin and Terry were laughing at me.

We saw Jonathan several more times, and he continued to run well. Even so, the team behind us (we would find out later that their team name was "Tunnel of Pain") had sliced almost a minute and a half from our lead. As Al began the 8.8 mile 7th leg, we had a lead of under four minutes.

The 7th leg is a long, soulless slog from Moultenborough to Meredith along a busy highway facing oncoming traffic. Its final miles feature several "false summits" that fool the runner into thinking he or she is almost done. When the runner finally gives up guessing, there is a final sharp downhill to the exchange zone.

Our runner for the seventh leg was Al Paine, probably the least intimidating human being on the planet. Soft spoken and slight of stature, wearing long shorts that make him look like a high school freshman, Al is, nevertheless, an impressive runner. From time-to-time, Al takes a notion to train for some marathon other. He trains by running and running and running -- twenty mile runs, thirty mile runs, seemingly oblivious to the normal limits of fatigue and attention span. Al seems to have a very high tolerance for discomfort of all sorts, including heat, cold, hunger, thirst, and... traffic.

The runner from "Tunnel of Pain," on the other hand was tall and athletic-looking, sporting short shorts and a singlet that actually fit him (Al's singlet was about three sizes too big). He looked like a ringer, and we were nervous.

Fearing the worst, we drove ahead to offer Al encouragement and time the gap as the race proceeded. In the first few miles, our fears were realized as the athletic-looking guy began to close the gap. At around three miles, our lead was down under three minutes. But we also noticed that athletic-looking guy was straining, fighting, his eyes downcast to the pavement as he encountered each new hill. Al, on the other hand, looked impassive, unperturbed as he shuffled along the highway oblivious to the pickups roaring past. At four miles, Al's lead was still three minutes. Then -- a miracle -- at five and a half, it had grown to 3:15. Al's tortoise was putting time into Tunnel of Pain's hare. By the exchange, Al had regained all of the lost time and hand-off to Andy with a lead of 3:49.

The final leg is only 4.4 miles, but is all hills, the longest one a steady climb of 1.1 miles. We had chosen Andy for this leg because in his youth he had been a "fell runner" in England, that is, a runner who competes in races that consist of running up and down "fells" all day. He embraced the role, and ran a very solid final leg to bring us home in 7:06:19. I took this picture as he crossed the line...

We hung around for a while, watching "Tunnel of Pain" finish a few minutes after us, then a top women's team, and then... no other teams for another half hour. We chatted with the teams who had finished ahead of us, compared notes, ate the cookies and other refreshments provided by the race organizers, saw a few teams finishing at about eight hours, and then got in our cars and headed South.

The early morning drive seemed like it had happened a long time ago. Not much had changed since then, although I was going home with a handsome beer glass -- one of the eight that we had acquired by virtue of our finish as the second master's team. It would have a place of honor alongside the half a dozen similar glasses in my kitchen, the reminders of previous years at the Lake.

IAAF to Disallow Women's World Records in Mixed Races

2011-09-22T09:54:00.002-04:00

Yesterday's NY Times has an article that describes a recent IAAF ruling women's road race performances in mixed-gender races will no longer be considered for world records. Shockingly, the ruling means that Paula Radcliffe's 2:15:25 will no longer be considered the world record, being replaced by her fastest time in a women's only race, 2:17:42 from London 2005.

For Women's World Records, No Men Allowed

This strikes me as a terrible idea. If pacing is an artificial aid to racing performance, then why not ban all pacing, specifically, men pacing men. The gender of the pacers is not relevant; the pacing is.

I once read an essay that decried pacing in track races, arguing that the worst thing that ever happened to Track was Roger Bannister breaking the four-minute mile with substantial pacing assistance from Bannister's teammates Chris Brasher and Chris Chataway. Now, every big meet hires multiple pacemakers to enhance the possibility of records.

Pacing helps. Everyone knows this. It's also a fact that it's much harder to find pacers for women's races. But do these things by themselves mean that men pacing women is fundamentally different than men pacing men?

And what happens if a woman sets a WR record, and then one of the other competitors subsequently fails a "gender test." Does the WR no longer count because it was set in a mixed-gender event?

It seems to me that the IAAF is struggling with the issue of gender in Athletics, but its decisions are increasing, not dispelling the confusion.

Barnicle Runs 1:02:43 at Philly Half

2011-09-18T20:39:00.005-04:00

On Sunday, NNHS alum (and former Arkansas and New Mexico athlete) Chris Barnicle ran 1:02:43 to take 13th at Philly Rock and Rock Half-Marathon. That time qualifies him for the 2012 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials in January. It was Chris' debut at the half-marathon distance.

Also on Sunday, Jess Barton ran 17:19 for 24th woman at the CVS Downtown Pharmacy 5K and 2011 USATF 5k Championships.

With all the early cross-country meets this weekend, I'm sure there were other NNHS alumni results, but I didn't find any in my quick browsing.

Rupp Runs 26:48 -- Sets Off "Amadeus Effect"

2011-09-18T13:56:00.012-04:00

Katerina Cavalieri: What does he look like?
Salieri: Mozart? You might be disappointed.
Katerina Cavalieri: Why?
Salieri: Looks and talent don't always go together, Katerina.

On Friday night in Brussels at the Memorial van Damme meet, Galen Rupp ran 10,000m in 26 minutes and 48 seconds, a personal best by 22 seconds and a new American Record by 11. Rupp's previous best had come in the same 2010 race where Chris Solinsky had become the first American to run under 27 minutes with a performance that sent shock waves through U.S. Distance Running.

In the Brussels race, just as in the 2010 race, Rupp finished third. However, this time he trailed only Kenenisa Bekele and Lucas Rotich, and he beat -- among others -- the 4th fastest man ever at 5000m, Eliud Kipchoge. Watch the video, below, and feel your pulse quicken as Rupp moves into second and pushes the pace with 1200 to go.

As the news of Rupp's AR hit the public square, or at least the message boards of LetsRun.com, there was a strange, but in some ways predictable attempt to diminish Rupp's run. One writer asserted that Solinsky's run had been more impressive; another pointed out that Rupp had never beaten Solinsky in a 10K; still others predicted that Rupp would never win a World Championship or Olympic medal.

Perhaps not, but why all the hate? Why not just keep quiet and let the record stand for itself? What is it about Rupp, in particular, that invites this churlish negativity? I think it might be something I'll call it the "Amadeus Effect."

In the film Amadeus, the composer Antonio Salieri can't reconcile the sublime genius of Mozart's music with the childish bearing of Mozart the man. Salieri, who knows his own mediocrity, takes it as a personal insult that God would bestow his gifts on someone who didn't look and act the part of a great composer.

I suspect that Rupp has a similar effect on those who, while saddled with their own mediocrity, want their running heroes to "look the part" of a great distance runner. For these people, great runners should be tough bad-asses like Steve Prefontaine... or like Chris Solinsky.

Rupp isn't like that. Rupp has always seemed more goofy than tough. The haters have always dismissed Rupp for his "privileged" athletic pedigree, his breathe-right nose strips, his pollen masks, and his generally well-adjusted demeanor. When he was beaten at Footlockers by Matt Withrow, he was derided as "the rich kid with the altitude tent and the private coach."

But -- unlike Withrow and so many others -- Rupp has gotten better and better. He won NCAA Titles in XC and Track. He won national titles. He now has American Records for 10000m outdoors and 5000m indoors. He is a legitimate medal contender for next year's Olympic Games.

The comparison with Mozart isn't exact. The implication of "Amadeus" is that Mozart didn't have to work at being great, while Rupp has worked extraordinarily hard for the last decade to be where he is. But the Salieris of the world still find it hard to accept that someone who runs 26:48 seems like a little kid with funny hair, and easy smile, and a can of grape soda in his hand.

Noah Jampol on Blade Runner:T&FN's Daily Best Reading

2011-07-23T13:58:00.003-04:00

The number one recommended read on the Track And Field News Web Site today is a blog post written by NNHS alum Noah Jampol arguing the case for why Oscar Pistorius should not be able to compete at the 2011 World Championships in Daegu.

Noah, a contributor to the Bleacher Report web site, is always worth reading, but this piece is one of the best I've seen on the question of whether "Blade Runner" should be competing against the best in the world at the World Championships and Olympics. Noah isn't overly distracted by the minutiae of the scientific evidence that Pistorius' prosthetics provide a biomechanical advantage over able-bodied runner, but explores why we have competitions in the first place.

I have been contemplating writing (and may yet write) an article arguing the exact opposite, but Noah's argument for banning Pistorius is compassionate without flinching from the conclusion that allowing prosthetics to compete against legs is a fundamental shift in how we think of track and field.

The Seduction of Soft

2011-07-19T07:43:00.002-04:00

Like you, I love to run on trails.

Well, actually, I love to run on trails that aren't too rocky. (I still have memories -- and scars -- from hard, injurious falls on otherwise very nice trails). I love to run on trails, unless, that is, they are so narrow that a group has to go single-file for miles on end, and even a solitary runner is constantly ducking low branches. I enjoy the ups and downs of trails, except the steep embankments where one needs to use all fours to ascend and a parachute or rope ladder to descend.

I like dirt trails, but if a trail has too much mud, I might choose to run on the roads instead. And of course, for many months of the year when trails are covered with snow, or worse, ice, I don't even consider them an option. If I had to hazard a guess, I would say that I do roughly 80% of my annual running mileage on roads, 10% on a track and 10% on trails or grass.

I ponder these things after reading an article in the NY Times this morning questioning the common wisdom that running on trails is better than running on other surfaces. The folks at LetsRun.com dismiss the article outright, calling it "Bad Training Advice." You can read the article yourself, at the following link.

For Runners, Soft Ground Can Be Hard on the Body

I don't think the article is especially insightful, but it does raise an interesting question: what is the benefit of running on trails compared to a harder, more even surface? Have we all just accepted as gospel that running on soft trails is superior to road or track?

Coincidentally, a few days ago I received an email one of my Concord Academy runners. This runner is convinced that she will get injured if she runs on roads, and wants to run as much as possible on grass or trails. I find this to be a surprisingly common feeling among high school runners. In my response, I agreed that trails were very nice, but I also said that I didn't consider running on soft surfaces to be a fail-safe strategy for avoiding injuries. Specifically, I didn't think that the SOFTNESS of the surface was the most important factor. Instead, I mentioned the need for gradual adaptation to mileage, the need to strengthen the muscles of the foot and lower leg to be able to stabilize the body effectively at impact, the role of proprioception, and so on...

And I suggested that it was the UNEVEN nature of trails (not necessarily whether they were harder or softer) that made them different than roads. I thought that the uneven surface would give more variety to one's footstrike, hence, a better workout for the feet and less risk of overuse in the muscles, ligaments, and tendons of the knee and hip. (And by this same logic, runners will sometimes consider a rolling course to be slightly less stressful than a pancake flat course... but I digress.)

Of course, I couldn't prove any of this.

The other reasons to run on trails might be even more compelling. To enjoy the outdoors in a more agreeable environment, to avoid cars and exhaust, to take in the scenery, to introduce variety into one's running. These are perfectly good reasons to run on trails, even if the training effect is elusive.

And then there's the specificity of training. If one is preparing to race on soft surfaces for cross-country, it only makes sense to practice running on those surfaces. But for road runners, perhaps trails are not so necessary.

It's interesting how, when we think about running, we think that "soft" is automatically better than "hard." I remember a time when running shoes were being touted as "pillows for your feet." The impact forces of running are pretty severe; shouldn't your shoes be soft to cushion the blow? Nowadays, the trend is toward less shoe and letting the natural mechanics of the unshod foot handle the stress of landing, but it wasn't always that way.

In the end, isn't the whole question a little fatuous? We run where we like because that's where we like to run. Sometimes it's easier on the mind and body to run on trails (like now, in the summer) and sometimes it's a bear (like one winter trail run where I nearly ended my running career by spraining an already tender ankle). It's great to be able to do long runs off-road and I really enjoy the variety, but in January I get by on a restricted diet of runs on Comm Ave, I don't fall apart. There are no magic shoes to solve all our running problems or make hard training easy, and, sadly, you can still get hurt even if you run all your miles down a garden path strewn with rose petals.

Training to Train

2011-07-06T11:11:00.007-04:00

Many years ago, at a time when I had just started running for a coach who was a proponent of lots of hard interval workouts, I had a brief exchange with him that has stuck in my mind ever since.

My training partners and I had done a couple of workouts with him already. My recollection is that they weren't too tough, but they WERE structured differently than what I was used to. The volume was light, but they were quite fast. After the second such workout, I asked him about the purpose of this kind of training, and his response was: "You're doing this workout to train for the workouts to come."

Now, I don't think the details of those workouts matter that much, and I can't remember them anyway. But the concept of training to prepare for training made a lot of sense to me. I think I had always operated as if there was a direct and immediate connection between training and racing -- that this week's workout would benefit next week's race. The idea that you did such-and-such workouts to prepare for other workouts was new to me. My coach's response neatly encapsulated the idea that one could focus on one aspect of training or one physiological system as a foundation for work on other aspects and other systems. It would later resonate with my subjective experience when I was involved in periods of training when racing was the last thing on my mind and I was completely focused on surviving the crucible of a series of tough workouts.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately because like many, I'm deep into my own summer training now, and I'm focusing on building a foundation to support harder training to come. I've been really enjoying this process, without worrying about racing at all. There's something very satisfying about being able to handle harder sessions on the track or longer tempo runs and beginning to notice yourself recovering well and eager for the next round of workouts.

I think a lot of people -- a lot of athletes, a lot of coaches -- assume that summer is nothing but base mileage, and that ANY fast running is out of place. I'm not convinced this is right. While it might be of secondary importance, I think fast running has a place in base training.

Looking at the calendar, I see that there are only 19 weeks until my cross country team lines up on a cold day in November for their final meet of the season. Preparing for that final test means preparing to prepare. Do I want them running long, hard intervals in the early weeks of October? Then I need a plan for how to get them ready to handle those hard sessions. Shouldn't that plan include a gradual introduction to fast running?

I don't mean to suggest that summer speed is the most important element of such preparation. When I prioritize summer training goals for my runners, I generally stress adapting to daily running and impact stress, developing a significant aerobic base, working on core strength, and establishing habits of good nutrition and adequate sleep. I'm confident these are the most helpful for building a foundation for hard training to come.

But for my experienced runners I don't discourage fartlek runs, tempo runs, low-key races, strides, and other forms of faster running. I wouldn't even rule out some work on the track, if I were able to supervise it, which I'm not.

We tend to forget that fast running is fun and motivating. Feeling faster makes you feel more engaged and committed so that you start looking forward to more training. I think the key is doing enough to increase comfort with faster running, while holding back from any heavy servings of speed that would be more suitable later in season.

I'm fortunate that among my readers are coaches with much more experience than me. I'm curious as to whether you encourage your athletes to incorporate faster running into summer plans, or whether you steer them away from that.

With Gravity on His Side, Lowell's Brian Gagnon Runs 3:44 Mile

2011-07-04T05:00:00.000-04:00

Former Lowell H.S. and UConn standout Brian Gagnon won the inaugural HASLAW Manchester Road Mile in Manchester NH Sunday, running an attention-getting time of 3:44, more than two seconds faster than Alan Webb's American Record.

Too bad it won't count. The course, which begins at Derryfield Park (site of the Manchester XC Invitational) and ends at Pulaski Park, has a net elevation drop of 188 feet. The race is organized by Millenium Running, the same outfit that directs the New Year's Day Millenium Mile, another downhill dash.

Here's the elevation profile for the Manchester Mile:

I wonder what the splits were for that first half mile... maybe Gags had his eyes on Johnny's Gray's AR in the 800, too.

According to the story posted in the Manchester Union Leader, Gagnon was one of eight men to go under 4:00. The women's winner, Julie Cully of Clinton NJ, ran 4:14, which is under Mary Slaney's American record.

USATF Men's1500 Final and its Aftermath

2011-06-27T06:00:00.005-04:00

If you like races where runners push the pace from the start and run personal and seasonal best times, you probably HATED the men's 1500m final at the USATF Championships, Saturday. If, on the other hand, you like races full of tactics and tension that can be resolved only by a fast, furious finish, the 1500 was the race for you.

Of course, you already know that baby-faced Matt Centrowitz did the unthinkable, holding off -- no, pulling away from! -- the seemingly invincible Bernard Lagat. You know that Leo Manzano closed brilliantly, outleaning Andrew Wheating and Will Leer for third. Wheating, it must be said, didn't actually run a bad race (he had positioned himself in third with 100m to go), but he didn't fully appreciate a basic principle of tactical races: everyone is fast in a tactical race, and if you leave it to the last 100m, you better be sure you have the best acceleration. Wheating didn't, and he paid the price. By the way, watch the race video a few times and tell me how Will Leer accelerates so quickly in the last 40 meters...and how he manages not to lean at the tape, thereby losing fourth to Wheating...

So Wheating, who had skipped the 800 to focus on the 1500, finished in the worst possible position -- fourth -- but wait! Bernard Lagat, who had already made the team by winning the 5000m, announced he would not compete in the 1500m, opening up a spot on the team for Wheating.

So it's Centrowitz, Manzano, and Wheating, right?

Not so fast. None of the three qualifiers has met the "A" standard of 3:35 yet, and they have only until August 8th to do it. While I am no expert in USATF selection procedures, this opens up many possibilities.

If Centro meets the "B" standard (3:38) but not the "A" standard, then I believe he is the only guy who gets to go. If Centro meets the "A" standard, but Manzano doesn't, then I think Centro and Manzano go, and Wheating is left off the team. if Centro and Manzano get the "A" standard, then Wheating is all set, since he has already met the "B" standard.

And what if Centro doesn't get the "A" or "B" standard? I think that means the he doesn't go, and the other chase the standards. That could, conceivably, lead to Manzano, Wheating, and Leer going.

Anyway, the one thing we can be sure of is that -- unlike the championship finals -- in their next 1500m these guys will be running fast from the gun. That's the only way to ensure they can make it to Daegu for another tension-filled tactical race.

Another Myth Busted: 10% Rule Bites the Dust

2011-06-22T09:30:00.001-04:00

I knew it!

I knew that venerable training rule that a runner should increase mileage by no more than 10% per week was bogus. In her Personal Best column, Gina Kolata of the New York Times cites one large study that finds no evidence that the 10% rule makes any difference in injury rates compared to a more rapid increase to a similar peak mileage and to a program that began with four weeks of other kinds of conditioning.

When Running Up Mileage, 10 Percent Isn’t the Cap

While one study can't be considered definitive, the fact that no one seems to know where the 10% rule came from and no one seems to have any evidence for its efficacy in preventing injuries suggests we should take the rule with a whole shaker of salt.

One of the weaknesses of the 10% solution was always that it flew in the face of two common-sense observations: first, it doesn't say anything about your starting point. If you start by running more than you can handle, you'll be in trouble no matter how gradually you increase from there. And second, you can't keep increasing forever or even for very long before you are running higher mileage than you can handle.

For example, if you run 30 miles a week and increase 10% each week, in fourteen weeks you'll be running over 100 miles a week. That can't be right!

Here's another example: I recently had to take several weeks completely off from running. When I started up again, my first seven days I ran about 15 miles. My second week, I ran about 25, a 67% increase, and that was fine for me. "But wait," you say, "that's only because you are a trained runner used to running more miles, and different rules apply..." Fair enough, but doesn't everyone bring some level of training to the game? I mean, if your baseline is 0, then 10% of that is still 0.

The math just doesn't make sense. If your baseline is a mile a day, it will take you 9 weeks to reach 2 miles every day. That's an entire cross-country season to go from one mile a day to two. Ah, but seven weeks after that you'll be running 4 miles a day. Seven weeks after THAT, you'll be running 8 miles a day, and by the end of seven months, you'll be running almost 16 miles per day, or 110 miles a week.

To continue my own example, after that 25 mile week I continued to increase my mileage, and now, fifteen weeks later, I'm running about 45 miles per week. That works out to about a 5% increase per week. Had I followed the 10% rule, I would be running 86 miles per week now, more than I've ever done in my life. So in my case, I used a fairly rapid increase in the first few weeks, followed by a much flatter curve as I approached what I believe is optimal mileage for my age and experience.

As a symbol of progression and gradualism, the 10% rule has some value, I guess. But as the article and the study it cites make clear, it's probably not something you should take too literally.

US Track and Field: What Are We Good At?

2011-06-21T12:36:00.006-04:00

The USATF Championships begin today in Eugene and continue through Sunday, with the meet serving as the selection process for the World Championships in Daegu, South Korea later in the summer.

The selection process itself is a little complicated. Athletes who won world championships in 2010 are automatically qualified for Daegu provided they compete in some event -- any event -- in Eugene. Hence, Alyson Felix, the reigning world 200m champion, is qualified for Daegu in the 200, but will run the 400 only in Eugene (and decide later whether to attempt to do both in Daegu). Trey Hardee, the reigning decathlon champ, has to compete in at least one decathlon event to punch his ticket to South Korea.

(Defending 400m champ LaShawn Merritt is in a strange position, since he is is currently serving a suspension that will keep him from running in the U.S. championships but not preclude him running in Daegu... at this point it seems it is up to USATF to decide whether to bend its rules that an athlete must compete at an event in the U.S. championships to be eligible.)

Other than those few, the top three in Eugene will go to the world champs, proving they have met the Olympic "A" standard. If they haven't, well, I won't attempt to explain what happens. If you are interested, you can read about it from the Eugene Register-Guard, which provided this handy guide:

Who Advances to Daegu?

This talk about about "A" and "B" standards always makes me think about where the U.S. is strong and where it is weak in Olympic events. You never hear anyone talk about the standards in the 100, 200, or 400. That's because the U.S. typically has dozens of athletes in those events with "A" standards. There's essentially no chance that a "B" standard athlete will finish in the top three.

But in other events, we are weak by world standards. At this moment, the U.S. men do not have a single runner who as met the "A" standard in the 1500m, and only two women have met the standard.

Where is the U.S. strongest? In the sprints. The U.S. is fairly strong in ALL running events. The lack of 1500 "A" marks is balanced somewhat by the large number of "B" standard athletes in that event. In all other running events, we have quite a few athletes with "A" or "B" marks already (and, of course, athletes who need them can chase "A" standards after the tactical U.S. championship races are behind them).

Where is the U.S. weakest? The walking events are a disaster, reflecting the dwindling popularity of walking in the U.S. and the lack of opportunities for youth athletes to compete in walking events. Surprisingly, except for the shot put, the men are weak in the throwing events. The women fare slightly better.

The most surprising weaknesses to me were the lack of U.S. women who had qualifying marks in the high jump and triple jump (no "A" or "B" marks in the women's triple! Is that a reflection of how much time NBC spends showing the triple, or the reason?)

Anyway, here are unofficial lists of qualified athletes from T&F News. Decide for yourself!

U.S. Men With WC Qualifying Marks
U.S. Women With WC Qualifying Marks

Tanzania Journal - Day 9:Lions as Role Models

2011-06-20T09:00:00.001-04:00

Lion couple near Lake Nduto

Running Log, 1/1/11 -- 25 minutes in and around Lake Nduto Tented Camp

In late December 2010 I traveled to Tanzania with my wife and son to visit my daughter, Joni, who had lived in and outside of Arusha in 2004 and 2007 and who, at the time we visited, was working in neighboring Zambia.

I started writing about the trip several months ago, and those earlier posts can be found under the "Tanzania" label. In my last post, I described my final run of 2010 -- a 25-minute jog around the campground where Joni had met lions three years earlier. Although that was the end of my "year of running dangerously," we were only halfway through our trip...

After my final run of the year, I joined my family for dinner in an enclosed pavilion at the campground where we sat at metal tables and toasted the coming New Year with two bottles of wine. Rob had squirreled them away for the occasion, another one of his many thoughtful gestures. In spite of festive atmosphere, we had no real desire to stay up late, and instead retired early, falling asleep to the boisterous sounds of revelry from a group of German campers who continued to laugh and sing long into the night.

Waking up to the new year, we were, for once, not in a hurry to leave our camp site. We had another day of driving and game-watching ahead of us, as the plan called for us to work our way South to Lake Nduto, where we would have the luxury of staying at another tented camp.

My online sources tell me that the name "Serengeti" is taken from the Maasai word serengit, meaning endless plain. Entering the Serengeti Park from the North, we had not been aware of the breadth of the Serengeti. The terrain had instead seemed full of variation with rolling hills dotted with acacia and fever trees, and areas of low vegetation that provided habitats for a wide variety of wildlife. It was only when we left the Seronera and headed South that the real expanse of the plains opened up to us. The trees and low bush fell away, and the grassy plains stretched in every direction like an ocean.

Four of the roughly four million zebras we saw everywhere on the vast plains...

Here and there, the uniformity was broken by a large outcropping of granite called a kopje ("small head" in Afrikaans). In the Serengeti, kopjes rise out of the surrounding grasslands like islands, providing a distinctly different habitat that supports numerous birds and animals. For this reason, kopjes are a popular destination for the Safari vehicles. At one particularly magnificent kopje we were one of about a dozen Land Rovers parked to watch a leopard with her two cubs sunning themselves on a high shelf of rock.

Aside from the kopjes, the plains are home to hundreds of thousands of herbivores, huge herds of wildebeest and zebra, as well as smaller bands of Thomson gazelles and other migrants who feed on the short nutritious grass covering the land. These animals are part of the great East African migration, a seasonal movement of game over a 1200-mile route in search of water and nutrition.

At this point in our trip, we had begun to view the animals through the filter of our human values and to see them as representing human qualities. We had started identifying our favorites, and we all started taking sides in their endless everyday struggle for existence.

It was, for example, easy to root against the hyenas -- they seemed like gangs of thugs always slouching around plotting some new atrocity. Rob tried to put their behavior in context for us, but our prejudice got the better of us. So, too, it was easy to root for the elephants, those calm and imposing matriarchs and patriarchs surrounded by happy extended families, seemingly untroubled by our presence or the presence of predators.

I admit that at the beginning of the trip, I didn't have much respect for the wildebeest (or bearded gnu). Silly looking, I thought, and probably not too bright. But then I saw them running, single file in long dusty lines and I changed my mind. The wildebeest impressed me as the true endurance athletes of the Serengeti, running for days at a time with a steady distance-runner's gait, guided by the mysterious and crucial ability to find water in this dry land.

As for the lions, well, we all had different opinions about the lords of the Serengeti. Thanks to the skill of our guide, we had many opportunities to see lions "in action." Most of the time, this meant seeing them sleep. They sure did a lot of sleeping, at least while the sun was up. At Ngorongoro Crater a few days later, we would have our most impressive and bracing encounter with lions when three of them ambled slowly out of the grass and came straight toward our truck. It turned out that they only wanted to lie down in the shade of the row of Land Cruiser that had stopped by the side of the road.

And then there was the lion couple that we saw at Lake Nduto. When we first drove up, they were lying lazily on the ground, ignoring the gawkers and apparently doing nothing.

After a few minutes, the male rolled over, hauled himself to his feet, circled the female once and then mounted her. This sequence took about 30 seconds total, and did not appear to impress the female very much. In any case, both lions were soon snoozing again. Rob explained that this was typical and that it would go on all day, with the male waking up every 15 minutes, initiating copulation, and then going back to sleep.

My son -- who, by the way, had been growing a reddish, lion-like beard on the trip -- remarked that his search was over; he had found his role model.

After a full day of wildlife viewing, we were ready to rest. We drove through a dry wilderness around Lake Nduto, a maze of scrub forest with dried-up watering holes and dust everywhere. We arrived at the Lake Nduto tented camp around 5 p.m. and were grateful to get out of the Land Rover and smell the familiar charcoal smell of cooking fires. We dumped our bags in the tents, and the others went to get drinks.

I had decided to run -- to start the year off with a run before breaking my streak, so I changed into shorts and running shoes and began my usual routine of circling the perimeter of the camp. It was very dusty, and the charcoal smoke burned my throat, but I was pretty happy to be running anyway. I felt good, and felt that after 372 days, I would appreciate a day off.

Running at Lake Nduto -- the final day of the streak

When I was done running, I prepared to shower. The large, apartment-like tents at Lake Nduto were constructed with an ingenious contraption for hoisting a bucket of hot water up on a pole and then connecting it via a PVC pipe to a shower head that sprayed water down into a small shower stall within the tent. "Preparing to shower" meant telling the camp personnel in charge of heating up water, to bring a bucket to the tent and raise it up into position. Not for the first time, I felt a little uncomfortable to be the recipient of such lavish personal service, but I did enjoy my hot shower very much.

NEXT: Olduvai Gorge, Ngorongoro Crater

Lampron -- 4:05.99!!

2011-06-19T07:55:00.000-04:00

It's safe to say that Mansfield junior Josh Lampron was not among the favorites in the boys mile at the New Balance Outdoor Nationals Saturday.

Lampron was not among the 11 H.S. boys who ran sub-4:10 at the "Dream Mile" a week ago in New York -- the race where Lukas Verzbicas broke four minutes. In fact, his best mile of the season had been a 4:15, run over a month ago at the Weston Invitational. Since then, he had competed in and won the 800 in the Division and State Championship meets, but hadn't focused on the mile.

However, on May 14 he had run a 1500m in 3:50.03 at the New Balance Twilight meet, the second fastest time in the country at that point (roughly equivalent to a 4:08 mile) and a performance that didn't get as much attention as it should have.

As the seeded heat of the mile got underway on Saturday, Lampron settled into fourth place and held that position behind better known runners such as Jantzen Oshier and Daniel Everett. With 100m to go, Lampron was still in fourth, more than half a second behind. But Lampron had another gear, and he bolted on the outside catching the others and going ahead of Oshier with about 15m to go. Oshier responded and the two runners crossed the line at almost the same time. A few moments later it was announced that Lampron had won, 4:05.99 to 4:06.00. He had covered his final lap in 58.36.

Sub-4:06 as a junior, and now we're all wondering whether he might eventually join Verzbicas in the sub-4:00 club. Amazing!

Results - Boys 1M - NB Outdoor National Championships

Chris Cogliano Does the Right Thing

2011-06-18T14:17:00.002-04:00

On Saturday morning, the first event on the track at the New Balance Outdoor Nationals was the 4x1600 relay. After a single heat for the girls, the first of two heats for the boys stepped on the track.

After two legs (3200 meters), Christian Brothers of New Jersey had the lead at 8:40.85, five seconds ahead of second place with Pembroke, MA, in fifth. At the back of the field and 13 seconds behind the leaders, Bishop Guertin's Chris Cogliano received the baton to run the third leg. The officials were about to do something wrong, but he was about to do something right.

After 800 meters of leg 3, officials put the anchor runners on the track. As the leg 3 runners came into the exchange zone expecting to run their final lap, they found their teammates there to take the batons. As instructed by the officials, they made the exchange and disqualified their teams. All of them but one.

Chris Cogliano kept running, completing his four laps before handing off to anchor Jeff LaCoste. It must have been a strange sight seeing Bishop Guertin, whose team ran the full 16 laps, come in dead last in that heat, 54 seconds behind the second to last team. I wonder what kind of applause they received?

After the race, meet Director Jim Spier acknowledged the mistake made by the officials and decided to award medals to the top six teams in the first heat -- the ones who had run 6000 meters instead of the proscribed 6400 -- AND to the top six teams that had run the full distance. That included five teams from the second heat and Bishop Guertin, whose time of 17:50.63 placed them second, just ahead of a fine performance from Lowell.

I have no idea why Chris Cogliano didn't stop running after three laps when every other runner in the race did as he was told. Maybe it was because he was so far back that a coach or official told him to go ahead. But I like to think it was because he knew he wasn't done yet, and so he ran through the remnants of the chaos to finish his leg.

It just goes to show that the world is full of well-meaning people telling you what to do. Unfortunately, some of them are wrong. In this race, the officials were wrong and Chris Cogliano did the right thing anyway. Good job, Chris.

Congratulations also to All-Americans Lowell (3rd in full race) and Pembroke (6th in the short race).

Results of Boys 4x1600 Relay (lap short)
Results of Boys 4x1600 Relay (full distance)

MA 4x800 Teams (L-S, Wachusett) Place at Nationals

2011-06-17T22:14:00.002-04:00

The Lincoln-Sudbury girls and Wachusett boys 4x800 teams made the podium at the New Balance Outdoor Nationals on Friday with blazing fast times, well beyond anything they had run previously.

The girls race was first and L-S (Megan Broecker, Marika Crowe, Sarah Mepham, and Andrea Keklak) were up. Broecker ran a 2:19, but that was only good for 13th at the exchange. Crowe ran 2:13 on the second leg, bringing L-S up to 8th. Mepham's 2:21 kept them in about the same spot, and Mass State Champ Andrea Keklak took the baton in 9th. The Princeton-bound senior proceeded to catch all but three teams, running a 2:06.67 split -- second fastest of the night - and bringing L-S home in 9:01.78.

In the boys race, Wachusett looked a little over-matched on the first leg, as Hayden Frechette-McCall's 1:57 split was only good for 14th out of 18 teams. However, Alex Jagelsky had the leg of the night for Wachusett, splitting 1:51 and moving his team all the way up to 2nd behind eventual winners Long Beach Poly. From the second exchange on, it was a battle every step of the way. Third leg Jeremy Bennie split 1:55, and brother Colin ran a 1:53 anchor to bring Wachusett home in 5th in 7:36.37. Has any Massachusetts HS team ever run faster?

Girls Results
Boys Results

Wednesday June 8 @ Cold Spring Park.

2011-06-06T11:10:00.004-04:00

For the past several years, the Newton Summer Running Project (NSRP) has provided a loose structure for getting together with friends for steady runs during the summer months when most of us are busy building a mileage base for Fall cross country (or marathons).

Our routine has involved meeting at Cold Spring Park in Newton on Monday and Wednesdays at 6:15, and then departing for a run at 6:30. Different folks do different runs. There's usually a group of guys running 8-10 miles at sub 7:00 pace. I can't do that anymore, so I usually run 5-7 miles @7:00-7:30 pace, but I'm usually happy to go slower. If someone shows up wanting to ruhttp://www2.blogger.com/img/blank.gifn 4 miles at 8:00 pace, I'll join you.

Because of my schedule this summer, I don't know whether I'll be able to commit to regular runs from Cold Spring, but a few of us are planning to get together THIS Wednesday, June 8th, for a run. If you're around and looking for training partners, you should consider coming by.

Meet at 6:15. Run at 6:30.

Map to Beacon Street Entrance of Cold Spring Park, Newton

NN Girls Repeat as State Champions; Boys are Third

2011-06-05T15:53:00.002-04:00

The Newton North girls track team won their second straight outdoor state title on Saturday scoring 39 points, four ahead of Andover and seven ahead of Lincoln-Sudbury.

Unlike L-S (three wins) and Andover (two wins), the Tigers didn't win a single individual event or relay. Instead they scored in three field events (22 points), three running events (12 points), and a relay (5 points). By my count, the Tigers had nine athletes in the meet; eight of them scored individually or as part of the fourth-place 4x800 team, and the ninth -- Meghan Gentile -- came within five inches of scoring in the shot put.

Despite its depth, the championship didn't come easily for North. They didn't have the defending state pole vault champion (Stephanie Brown) or a key leg of their 4x400 team (Maddie Nadeau) due to injuries. And in a strange twist, they prevailed in spite of the fact that their best relay team did not run, and their best athlete never set foot on the track.

Carla Forbes didn't run a race, but accounted for 14 points by placing second in the triple jump (39-08.5) and third in the long jump (18-05.5). Tatiana Froelich and Ellen Goldberg placed 3rd and 6th in the discus for another 8 points. On the track, Kayla Wong finished 2nd in the 100m hurdles, running 14.81. Margo Gillis placed 7th in the 800 (2:19.06) and Evie Heffernan ran 5:07.77 for 7th in the mile.

And that brings us to the relays. With North missing Nadeau in the 4x400, Coach Tranchita moved Gillis from the 4x400 to the 4x800. Gillis led off (2:20), followed by Meghan Bellerose (2:25), Maggie Heffernan (2:28), and Evie Heffernan (2:20) to finish fourth (0.01 behind third) for the 5 points that would win them the meet.

A final thought about the 2011 North team. It might be eclipsed by the 2012 North team. Of those 39 points, only 11 were scored by seniors.

On the boys side, Mansfield was racking up points on its way to a dominant victory, but the NN boys were always in the hunt for second place.

Swardiq Mayanja placed 3rd in the shot put with a throw of 53-06.5, and took 6th in the discus with a mark of 145-06.

In the 400m, Isaiah Penn battled Waltham's Nathan Pierre Louis, finally settling for 2nd in a time of 49.04. In a very competitive mile with no clear favorite, Ezra Lichtman placed 5th in 4:21.78, behind Wesley Gallagher's 4:19.24 win.

North's final event was the 4x400, and the Tigers (Clark, Lichtman, Hart, Penn) placed 7th in 3:27.80. Their 23 total points left them behind Mansfield (49) and Acton-Boxboro (29), and tied with Andover.

Penn, Lichtman Earn D1 Titles as NN Boys Place 4th

2011-05-29T13:20:00.002-04:00

Ever since he split sub-50 in a relay indoors at Reggie, his fans have dreamed of seeing Isaiah Penn in a championship 400m. On Saturday, they got their wish and Penn became only the second Newton North/Newton H.S. runner in history to run one lap in under 49 seconds, as he won the D1 title in a blistering 48.77. Penn became the first D1 400m champion from NN since Jed Carpenter in 2005, and the second fastest in school history behind Wes Harris.

In the one mile, Ezra Lichtman also staked a claim to history as he won the D1 title in 4:18.18, a personal best. Lichtman becomes NN's first outdoor D1 mile champion since Dave Polgar did it in 2006. Junior Justin Keefe ran a PR 4:24.40 for 7th and two more points.

The team competition was close, as expected, but Acton-Boxboro ran away with it on the strength of an unprecedented 1-2-3 24-point finish in the 800m. Seriously, has that ever happened that one team has swept a running event in D1? A-B also won the 400m hurdles (Chris Pullerits, 54.61), the 4x800 (8:01.17). and the 4x400 (edging out Newton North in 3:24.45).

North had more points from Penn in the triple jump (42-5, 5th place), and Swardiq Mayanja, who took 3rd in both the shot (53-00.25) and discus (141-04). Ryan Donovan also picked up a point with an 8th place finish in the discus (128-10).

Field Events Key as NN Girls Win D1 Championships

2011-05-29T06:41:00.004-04:00

The Andover girls were the best team on the track yesterday at the State D1 Championships, but it wasn't enough. The Golden Warriors scored in seven of eleven running events and got wins in the 200, 400, and 4x400 relay, where in an epic battle they defeated Newton North and set a meet record with a time of 3:57.50.

But as good as Andover was on the track, Newton North was better in the field. The Tigers scored an incredible 58.5 points in the jumps and throws, including 24 points in the long jump, 18 in the discus, and 11 in the triple jump. Those points, plus 35 points in the running events and relays propelled North to the team title and denied Andover a second straight D1 crown.

Individually, the Tigers were led by Carla Forbes who defended her 2010 D1 titles in the long and triple jumps, and Ellen Goldberg and Tatiana Froelich, who went 1-2 in the discus. Kayla Wong placed 2nd in the long jump and 3rd in the 100 hurdles (14.78 in the finals, following a 14.76 in her preliminary heat). Evie Heffernan continued here amazing spring as she ran a five-second personal best in the mile (5:09.77) for third. Margo Gillis gutted out a 2:17.44 in the 800 for another third place, behind Andrea Keklak's unreal 2:08.78. Meghan Bellerose went under 60 for the 400 for the first time, placing 5th in 59.76. Kayla Prior was 5th in the long jump. Alli Hurwitz placed 7th in the 400 hurdles in 1:08.59. Emily Hutchinson tied for 8th in the high jump with a clearance of 5-0. And in perhaps her final H.S. meet, Amy Ren finished 7th in the long jump and 8th in the triple jump for 3 more points.

In addition to North's second place in the 4x400 (3:57.91), the Tigers also placed 6th in the 4x800 in 9:52.96. North's 4x100 team was disqualified for a zone violation, but by then the Tigers had the meet in hand.

2011 DI Championships - Full Results

BSC Conference Meet Results 5/19/11

2011-05-20T06:35:00.005-04:00

Under heavy, overcast skies, Newton North's track and field teams competed at the 2011 BSC Conference Championships yesterday at Weymouth. I've always had mixed feelings about the conference meet, wondering whether it was one meet too many for the top athletes, but looking at the results, I'm becoming a believer in the value and excitement of the event. In particular, the Tigers had scintillating wins in the boys and girls miles, among other strong performances. The NN girls looked particularly dominant in the field events, winning all of the jumps and two of the three throws.

On the girls side first, North got wins from Evie Heffernan in the mile (5:14.33 personal best) and Margo Gillis in the 800 (2:20.41). Allie Hurwitz took 4th in the 400m hurdles, and the girls 4x100 team took 3rd.

Emily Hutchinson won the high jump at a modest 4-11 (slippery jumping surface?)... Carla Forbes won the long and triple jumps (17-5, 38-9.5). Megan Gentile took first in the shot put (36-9), and Tatiana Froehlich won the discus, spinning it out to 122-00 (with Ellen Godberg 3rd in 107-03). Amy Lu had a nice throw in the javelin, hitting 95-08 for 6th.

For the boys, Ezra Lichtman went head-to-head with Weymouth's Steve Sollowin in the mile and won the battle, running a personal best 4:21.46. That makes him the fastest NN miler since David Polgar (2006), and almost certainly puts him in the top ten all-time for the Tigers. Not to be overlooked, Justin Keefe also flew, running 4:27.51 for 3rd, with Dan Ranti at 4:35.76 in 7th. Geez, it used to be that 4:30 would win this race, now it gets you 5th.

Isaiah Penn continued to dominate the one-lap race, winning the 400 in 50.38. North also won the 4x400 relay in 3:31.14, and the 4x800 relay in 8:47.2. Who ran for the Tigers on these teams?

The work of Mike Bower continues to amaze. Newton North had four of the top five places yesterday, with all four -- all underclassmen -- at 46' or better. Swardiq Mayanja won with a toss of 50-03, but North also had a sophomore throw 48-7 (Carl Witham) and a freshman throw 46-6 (Jermel Wright). That's like having a sophomore and a freshman running 4:30 and 4:35 for the mile. Incredible! Mayanja also won the discus (140-6), with Ryan Donovan taking 2nd (139-7).

In the jumps, Tylor Hart placed 2nd in the high jump (6-3), and Penn placed 3rd in the triple (39-11).

2011 Bay State Conference Outdoor T&F Championships

Results from the 2011 State Coaches Meet

2011-05-16T07:42:00.002-04:00

When I was coaching at Newton North, I always loved the MSTCA Coaches meet because the depth and quality of the competition always seemed to result in a bounty of personal bests. It was always a goal to qualify for the State Coaches meet, and then run a really fast time there to qualify for the MIAA Div I meet.

On Saturday, Durfee hosted the 2011 MSTCA meet and there were plenty of fast times, and several championships for Newton North athletes.

NN senior Isaiah Penn ran the fastest 400m in the state this year, crossing the line in 49.01. He was quoted in the Globe to the effect that he still had more work to do and that he knew he could go faster. Mercy! Also in the 400, NN's Ben Clark ran 52.57.

In the 800, Ezra Lichtman added another impressive victory for North, running 1:57.92 (personal best?) to lead six runners under 2:00. North freshman Gabe Montague also competed in the 800, running 2:05.79.

In other events, Justin Keefe finished 5th in the 1 mile (4:31.19); Dan Ranti placed 4th in the 2 Mile (9:52.70); and Tylor Hart placed 4th in the high jump (6-2). In the shot put, North had three throwers over 47 feet, all underclassmen, led by Swardick Mayanja's second place (53-8). Mayanja also placed 2nd in the discus with a throw of 160-7.

Running out of the slowest heat, the quartet of Clark, Terrell Doyle, Abbott, and Keefe placed 4th overall in the 4x400 relay, running 3:32.01. Gotta love their chances with Penn and Lichtman.

Carla Forbes was named the meet's outstanding performer in the field events, as she won the triple jump with a leap of 40-1.25. Amy Ren was 10th in the same event with a leap of 33-5. Forbes also placed 3rd in the 200, running 26.17.

Forbes had company (and competition) for the above honor from her teammates. In the discus, Tatiana Froelich won with a throw of 119-5. Ellen Goldberg also had a great throw, 113-8, which was good enough for fourth. In the long jump, Kayla Wong won with a leap of 16-10.5. Wong also placed 3rd in the 100m hurdles, running 15.24 in the finals (15.16 in the trials).

In the shot put, Megan Gentile had a huge throw of 36-1.25 to place second. In the high jump, Emily Hutchinson cleared 5-3 to place third. Steph Brown was third in the pole vault (8-0).

In the 400, sophomore Meghan Bellerose (60.02) and Madison Nadeau (60.75) finished 7th and 10th, respectively. In the 1 Mile, freshman Evie Heffernan ran a personal best 5:14.04 to finish 5th, only two seconds behind the winner. Sister Maggie finished 8th in what I believe is also a personal best 5:19.84. In the 2 Mile, Devika Banerjee placed 8th in 12:20.79, with Liz Rudie at 12:44.22.

In the 400m hurdles, Amy Ren placed 10th in 1:09.32.

North's 4x100 team of Wynn, Forbes, Brown, and Wong placed 3rd in 50.72. Their 4x800 team finished 5th in 9:58.60.

2011 MSTCA Boys and Girls Results

College Results: Karys Wins 10000m at Heps

2011-05-09T09:16:00.005-04:00

Ivy League Championships

Cornell sophomore Kelsey Karys (NSHS '09) won the 10000m at the Ivy League Championships (Heps) by nearly 20 seconds over the weekend, running 34:19.99. Karys also finished 6th in the 3000 (9:53.37).

Josh Seeherman poses the question:

"When is the last time a Newton North or Newton South runner won a Heps title? We know the first; Milton Green (NHS '31) won the long jump and high hurdles at the inaugural Heps championship in 1935. M. Carl Shine (NHS '55) won the shotput in 1958-1959 . . . . Mark Young (NSHS '64) won the 400 in 1968-1969, but is that it?"

Princeton senior and former Xaverian runner Mark Amirault continued his incredible spring, winning the 1500m and 5000m. Cornell sophomore Nick Wade (North Attleboro '09) won the 800m in 1:50.15.

Yale senior David Smith (NNHS '07) finished 9th in the shot put with a best throw of 15.28m (50-01.75), and 12th in the discus (38.37m, 125-11).

3rd Annual Adrian Martinez ClassicJune 17, 2011

2011-05-06T08:05:00.002-04:00

2010 Adro Mile

On Friday evening, June 17, beginning at 5 p.m. Concord-Carlisle H.S. hosts the third annual Adrian Martinez Classic, a festival of one-mile races on Concord's Emerson track. There are races for all ages and all abilities, including a race for mile novices, and the highly competitive ADRO MILE, which offers cash prizes for top 5 finishers in the men's and women's division. There is a bonus of $1,000 for the first man who runs sub-4:00 and the first woman who runs sub-4:30.

Schedule of Events:

5:00 PM: Age Group Races from 10-under up to 18
Scholastic Challenge, three runners from same town

6:05 PM: FIRST-TIMER’S MILE

6:20 PM: Masters and Seniors Races

6:40 PM: OPEN Races

7:00 PM: The Adro Elite Miles

The scholastic challenge is a team category for high school students (team members must be from the same town and must be attending high school or just graduated).

For entry info and directions, see the event website:

http://www.martinezclassic.com

Letter from Race Director and CCHS Head Coach Steve Lane:

Dear Coaches,

I am writing to invite you and your athletes to the 3rd Annual
Adrian Martinez Classic on Friday, June 17th in Concord, MA. The
goal of the event is to bring together the whole running community
for one evening of mile races. For elites, we wish to spread some
prize money around, offer up another chance to race a fast time,
and have the race serve as a late-season qualifying chance for
USATFs. For runners with more modest goals, we offer the chance to
race a track mile, then watch the elites in the same event – an
opportunity not often available.

Hope to see you there!!

Thanks,
Steve Lane
Race Director, The Adrian Martinez Classic
www.martinezclassic.com
617-306-4650

WHS Track Coach Tom Davis Dismissed

2011-05-04T12:54:00.003-04:00

Tom Davis (NNHS '04), the second-year track coach at Westwood High School, was summarily dismissed from his position last Friday, after the WHS Athletic Director confronted a member of the track team for running without a shirt.

Wicked Local has the story here:

Davis Fired as WHS Track Coach

There is a thread on Letsrun with additional information:

Letsrun's Tom Davis Fired from Westwood High

Tom's attempts to engage the administration in a discussion to resolve the shirtless issue prior to the incident that led to his dismissal were unsuccessful. It's hard to understand the thought-process behind the actions taken by the school.

According to the WickedLocal article, Westwood athletes and their parents have requested a meeting with the administration but have so far been rebuffed.

While I would ask everyone to keep Tom in mind, as always, it will be the athletes who will be hurt most by this action.

Newton North Teams Sweep D1 State Relays

2011-05-02T08:04:00.004-04:00

To no one's surprise, The Newton North Girls won the D1 State Relays title yesterday, earning their second straight victory and fifth in the last eight years.

To almost everyone's surprise, the Newton North boys joined them as champions, winning their first title since 2005.

The girls won with their characteristic depth, scoring 37 points in the running events and 36 points in the field events. On the track, the Tigers dominated the sprint medley (4:14.50) and shuttle hurdles (1:05.51), winning by over five seconds in the former and two seconds in the latter. The Tigers also won a close race in the 4x400 over Andover, setting a meet of 3:59.61. For good measure, the team picked up a 4th-place finish in the distance medley, a 5th in the 4x1600, and a 6th in the 4x200.

In the field events, North won the triple jump and long jumps by an average of a foot per jumper. They also won the discus, which, with a 3rd in the Javelin, clinched the meet. I've always maintained that this Newton North team can win even when things don't go perfectly. On Sunday, North surely hoped for plenty of points in the high jump, but recorded a "NH" instead. In the end, it didn't matter as the Tigers had points from so many other sources.

For the boys, highlights of the running events included a razor-thin victory in the sprint medley (3:34.78, just 0.02 ahead of Andover), a 3rd in the 4x1600 (18:15.07), and a 5th in the distance medley (10:58.02).

It was unexpected points in the field events, however, that put North over the top. Mike Bower's throwers took home a first-place in the shot put (Swardic Mayanja had the best throw of the competition with a toss of 54-4), and second in the discus. The boys scored a surprise second in the high jump, and a third in the triple. The team's 50 points was 11 better than New Bedford and St. John's Prep.

It was also a great comeback for a team that finished 9th in 2010 and only 21st in 2009.

Boston Herald coverage

Great highlight photos

Full Results - D1 State Relays May 1, 2011

Former Xaverian Star Mark Amirault Anchors Princeton's 4x1 Mile Victory at Penn Relays

2011-05-01T06:35:00.003-04:00

Princeton senior Mark Amirault, a former Mass track and cross-country champion at Xaverian Brothers H.S., ran a 4:02.8 anchor leg to give Princeton its first victory in the 4x1 Mile at the Penn Relays. It was also the first Ivy League win in the event since 1931.

Amirault, who has been tearing up the track this spring, began the final leg trailing Indiana's Ben Hubers and Arkansas's Duncan Phillips. Phillips led the charge to catch the leader, and Amirault followed, putting himself in perfect position to kick by Phillips in the home stretch.

Thanks to Josh Seeherman for the tip!

Home Unbeaten Streak

2011-04-28T07:49:00.005-04:00

I know the track season started over a month ago, but spring always seems to develop slowly until a warm day, a new track, and some upcoming state-level meets finally make it feel like the season has really started.

Newton North hosted a home meet at the new high school, sweeping Needham and remaining undefeated on the season.

Girls: Newton North 105 Needham 31

For the girls, Carla Forbes won four events (100, 200, LJ, TJ) and wasn't seriously challenged in any of them. Other performances that stand out for me include Kayla Wong winning the hurdles (14.9!!), Margo Gillis winning the 800 (2:17.0).

Other winners in the running events: Meghan Bellerose won the 400 in 60.9. Maggie Heffernan won the mile by 150 meters in 5:30.4. Devika Banerjee won the 2M in 12:38.4. Impressive times that did not win: Madison Nadeau -- 26.6 in the 200 (behind Forbes), and Evie Heffernan -- 2:22.7 in the 800 (behind Gillis and Needham's Hannah Alpert).

Other NN winners in the field events: Meghan Gentile in the SP (31-7), Ellen Goldberg in the discus (107-0), Djaidah Wynn in the Jav (90-10), and Emily Hutchinson in the HJ (5-2). North also won both relays.

Girls: Newton North 91 Needham 45

Isaiah Penn dropped down to the sprints, and won the 100 (11.0) and 200 (22.4) in convincing fashion over Needham's Brian Hazzard (2nd in both races). Ben Clark took care of business in the 400, running 52.8 for the win.

In the 800, Ezra Lichtman pulled away for the win in 2:02.0, with freshman Gabe Montague running 2:05.2 for an impressive second over Needham's Jeff Okerman. In the mile, it was Justin Keefe (4:38), and in the deuce, Dan Ranti won by over half a lap in 10:03.5.

Needham's Peter Farlow won the 110 and 400 hurdles by plenty, but in the high hurdles, Nick Fofana recorded a solid 16.4 for second.

In the throwing events, Swardic Mayanja led a NNHS sweep of the shot put with a toss of 50-0. Ryan Donovan won the discus with a throw of 118-10. Fofana took second in the Javelin with an excellent throw of 143-5 (PB?).

In the jumps, Tylor Hart won the high jump at 6-0, with Fofana second again in 5-8. North had two jumpers (Hart, Penn) over 20' in the long jump, but that was only good enough for 2nd and 3rd behind Farlow's facility record 22-1. North's Shawn Seamans won the triple with a jump of 41-6.

North also won both relays.

Next up for the Tigers: The MSTCA Div I State Relays at Franklin H.S. on Sunday, May 1

NNHS Hosts Inaugural Meet on New Track

2011-04-27T11:34:00.003-04:00

Even when I don't post, there are lots of comments!

Here's a placeholder post for anyone who wants to continue to comment on the historical moment at hand, as NNHS prepares to host a track meet for the first time since Spring 2007. Newton North competes against Needham today and we'll find out how fast the new track really is.

Trivia question: who was the last Newton North runner to compete in a high school meet at the old Dickinson Stadium track?

NNHS Alumni @ Boston 2011

2011-04-19T17:00:00.000-04:00

Congratulations to NNHS alumni who ran Boston this year!

I know of at least two:

Jason Abbott-Dallamora (number 2256 in your program) ran negative splits to break three hours for the first time and finish 987th overall in 2:55:44.

Newton firefighter and NNHS grad Tim Killilea ran 3:42:54. That gave him the bragging rights in the family as he pulled ahead of younger brother Dan (an NSHS grad), in the final kilometers. Dan finished in 3:45:34.

There must have been many other Newton North alumni running. Post a comment if you know of any.

Blown Away

2011-04-19T05:00:00.001-04:00

Prior to April 17, 2011, there had been ten sub-2:05 marathon performances in the history of the world.

Thirty-six hours later, there are half again as many. On Sunday, Emannuel Mutai ran 2:04:40 to win London on a perfectly still day. On Monday, Geoffrey Mutai ran 2:03:02 to win Boston with the wind at his back nearly every step of the way.

Before we get to the wind, lets take a few moments to admit that what we just saw at Boston was, under ANY conditions, amazing. I have always laughed at the idea of 2:00 marathon, saying it wouldn't happen in my lifetime. But watching Mutai sprinting down the final meters of Boylston Street with the clock reading 2:02:xx blew my mind.

And lest I forget, the women's race was just unbelievable. Forget about the times, the seesaw battle between Kilel and Davila was tremendous. I really hoped Davila would get the win, but she did everything she could and it wasn't quite enough. However, she now has the fastest time ever on the Boston course by an American -- 2:22:38 -- eclipsing Joan Samuelson's astonishing 2:22:43 from 1983.

Prior to Boston 2011, almost all the really fast marathons have been at Berlin, Frankfurt, or Rotterdam. These are proper, legal courses that do not have a drop in net elevation and do not offer the POTENTIAL of a point-to-point tailwind. Boston fails both tests, and performances at Boston are not given record consideration.

So it is left to us to appreciate those performances with a different set of standards. To wit: as anyone who has run it knows, Boston hurts you. It pounds the quads into pulp, and terrorizes the hamstrings with its rolling hills and uneven pavement. You can have all the tailwind in the world, but that won't guarantee you a pain-free race; just ask Kim Smith.

Secondly, for all their charms, Berlin, Frankfurt, and Rotterdam are all about the records. They are pancake-flat courses and the organizers always provide multiple pace-setters to give the favorites a chance to tuck in and draft at 1:02 half-marathon pace. Nothing wrong with that, but the only pace-setters at Boston are the actual runners who hear the siren song that whispers in their ears that it's ok to go out fast because they feel so GOOD in the early miles.

Now, about that wind...

I am almost an old-timer now, and as such, I am qualified to tell you that a marathon day such as April 18, 2011 comes along only once every 15-20 years. In fact, the last one was in in 1994. I had the good fortune to run Boston that year. It was a cool day and there was a strong tailwind for the first half of the race. I vividly remember passing under a banner that had been strung across Rt. 135 at about the 15K mark and seeing it blown nearly horizontal in the direction I was heading. I was giddy with the feeling of having hit the meteorological jackpot. Eventually, that strong Southwest breeze became more of a crosswind, but for a while, I felt like I had someone pushing me from behind. I ran 2:31 that day, which is by far my best time at Boston. A lot of other people ran fast that day, too. For example...

In 1994 Cosmas Ndeti won his second of three consecutive races in a course record (and lifetime personal best) 2:07:15. Uta Pippig won her second of three consecutive races in a course record (and lifetime personal best) 2:21:45. Heinz Frei won the men's wheelchair race in a course record (and lifetime personal best) 1:21:23. Jean Driscoll won the women's wheelchair race in a course record (and lifetime personal best) 1:34:22. Well, you get the idea...

The wind helps. It helps a lot. But don't try to figure out exactly how much; that path leads to madness. Not everyone benefits from the wind equally. And you still have to be smart enough not to go out too fast. People crash and burn with a tailwind at their back, too.

For the same reason, don't get all huffy about how records set at Boston should be recognized. They shouldn't. We should just appreciate them for what they are. Really, really impressive fast runs that leave us pretty much speechless. Even Ryan Hall, who recorded the fastest marathon ever run by an American (perhaps quieting his critics for a few days, at least) seemed unable to put it into words.

"I'm a 2:04 marathoner," he said. For once, I'm ready to join him and the choir and shout out, "Amen!"

Sub 2:05 Marathons prior to 4/17/2011 (including Boston):

1. Gebrselassie 2:03:59 (2008)
2. Gebrselassie 2:04:26 (2007)
3. Kwambai 2:04:27 (2009)
3. Kibet 2:04:27 (2009)
5. Makau 2:04:48 (2010)
6. Gebrselassie 2:04:53 (2008)
7. Tergat 2:04:55 (2003)
7. Mutai, G. 2:04:55 (2010)
9. Korir 2:04:56 (2003)
10. Kipsang 2:04:57 (2010)

Sub 2:05 marathons after 4/18/2011 (including Boston):

1. Mutai, G. 2:03:02 (2011)
2. Mosop 2:03:06 (2011)
3. Gebrselassie 2:03:59 (2008)
4. Gebrselassie 2:04:26 (2007)
5. Kwambai 2:04:27 (2009)
5. Kibet 2:04:27 (2009)
7. Mutai, E. 2:04:40 (2011)
8. Makau 2:04:48 (2010)
9. Gebrselassie 2:04:53 (2008)
10. Gebrmerriam 2:04:53 (2011)
11. Tergat 2:04:55 (2003)
11. Mutai, G. 2:04:55 (2010)
13. Korir 2:04:56 (2003)
14. Kipsang 2:04:57 (2010)
15. Hall 2:04:58 (2011)

Snow on April 1st Bodes Ill for Marathoners

2011-04-01T05:00:00.000-04:00

As the snow began falling Thursday evening, it brought back memories of 1997 -- the year Boston was socked with an April Fool's Day blizzard that dumped two feet of the white stuff on the city. For those too young to remember that storm, let me (and Wikipedia) refresh your memory:

"During the peak of the storm from about 11 p.m. March 31 to 3 a.m. April 1, snow fell in Boston at an almost unheard-of rate of 3 inches (76 mm) per hour, some of the heaviest Boston had ever seen. Numerous lightning strikes and thunderclaps accompanied the extremely heavy snow, which accumulated one foot (12 inches (300 mm)) in just that four hour period. Moderate to heavy snow continued through mid-morning before tapering off." (Wikipedia)

Unlike the winter of 1997, which was -- up until that unusual blizzard -- a mild one, 2011 has been a bear of a year for snow. The last few weeks haven't been bad, but January and February were brutal. I have to admit, I thought we were through with winter. Maybe it's cabin fever, but I just can't wait for the first really warm day.

But there's a group of people that probably hopes it stays cool for a while longer. I'm talking, of course, about all those poor folks who have trained through this miserable winter to run the Boston Marathon. They were out there every weekend in January and February and March, defying frostbite and slippery roads to get in those long runs. They are the ultimate winter warriors, their bodies and minds toughened by the elements. They probably didn't even notice the snow falling last night. In fact, there's only one thing that these runners fear...that it will be 70 (or 80 or 90) degrees on Patriots Day. There is nothing more unfair than training for four months in sub-freezing temperatures only to be hit with a scorcher on the big day.

Unfortunately, and despite today's wintry mix, that nightmare scenario might be the most likely, or so says a researcher from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Dr. Rolf Paoli, who heads the NOAA's long-range meteorological forecasting service and is himself a veteran of six Boston Marathons, recently published an article on the NOAA web site that provides historical evidence for a definite weather pattern that has affected Boston a dozen times in the last sixty years.

According to Paoli, the pattern is characterized by colder-than-usual temperatures for up to six weeks in late February and March, culminating in a significant storm (sometimes cold rain, sometimes snow) on April 1st. In every case, this pattern has been followed by a dramatic warming trend within 2-3 weeks. More ominously, in every year that the pattern occurred, the temperature on Patriot's day exceeded 70 degrees.

Notwithstanding my own hankering for a nice spring day, this is not at all good news for the legions of winter-blooded runners who are not acclimated to heat and will be trying to cover 26.2 miles on April 18th in what might feel like tropical conditions.

According to Paoli, he became interested in the phenomenon after running the 1997 race less than three weeks after that massive April Fool's Day storm. The temperature on Patriots Day hit 78 degrees and he struggled just to finish. He ended up with a trip to the medical tent (for bad blisters) and a much slower time than he had hoped for. As he states in his article:

"I began to wonder if the weather had ever shifted so suddenly. I discovered it was actually fairly common. What was surprising when I examined the historical data was to see this correlation -- almost 100% -- between a storm on April 1st and a hot day on the day of the race. It would be foolish to claim that anyone can predict the weather so far ahead with absolute certainty, but the correlation appears to be too strong to be a coincidence."

Not all scientists share Paoli's view that there is a cause-and-effect relationship between April 1st storms in Boston and the weather on a specific day almost three weeks later. Researchers in Yale University's Department of Atmospheric Statistics point out that even a hundred years of data is not enough evidence to draw conclusions. Associate Professor Ari Pollof is quoted to that effect:

"If a convenience store sells two winning lottery tickets, people might think there is good luck involved, but in fact, it is nothing more than an unlikely coincidence. This supposed connection between snow on April 1 and the weather for the Marathon is similar -- it is curious, but ultimately the product of pure and simple chance."

Still, according to this statement on the BAA web site, the race is taking no chances with what might simply be a matter of chance. The strange connection between April 1st snow and a Patriots Day heat wave has, apparently, caused them to plan for more water consumption and more utilization of on-course and post-race medical facilities for treating heat-related injuries.

Tanzania Journal - Day 8:Hippos in the Water; Elephants in the Mud

2011-03-24T13:00:00.004-04:00

Running Log, 12/31/10 -- 24 minutes in and around Dik Dik Campground

On the last morning of 2010, I awoke from a heavy sleep with the feeling that the world had regained its sense of proportion. The pounding in my head from the previous evening's entertainment had gone away, and everything was quiet and peaceful as the sun came up on another perfect day in the Serengeti.

Rob had described our agenda for the day as a "full-day game drive" through the central Serengeti area known as Seronera. We would discover that our vehicle was one of a hundred others bent on driving for the next twelve hours on the network of dirt roads that infiltrated this popular area. We would all be out there with the same objectve: see as many animals as we could before the sun went down.

We had a leisurely breakfast at Mbuzi Mawe, although nothing was ever completely leisurely with Rob reminding us that we needed to get an early start. After breakfast it took us almost no time to gather our bags and trek down to the parking area and load up the Land Cruiser. It was not yet 9:00 when we left Mbuzi Mawe in search of wildlife.

Our first stop was a bluff overlooking a wide and relatively deep pool formed by one of the shallow streams that ran through the plain. I don't recall the name of this spot, but it was known universally as "the hippo pool," because it was filled with submerged and partially submerged hippos seeking refuge from the sun and the heat of the day. Photographs do not do justice to the odd, understated grandeur of 30-40 enormous creatures packed into no more than a splash of muddy water like animate bowling balls in a bathtub.

Hippos are known to be ill-tempered and extremely dangerous when disturbed, and are responsible for more human deaths in Africa than any other mammal other than man. It was hard to believe that these massive vegetarians who seemed willing to sleep all day in the pool, shifting positions occasionally with loud and comical grunts, were deadly when roaming the land at night. I could have watched them for hours.

After leaving the hippo pool, our journey became more random -- at least that's how it felt to me. Sometimes it seemed that Rob had a definite destination in mind, but sometimes it seemed we were just circling aimlessly, waiting for something to happen or some animal to make an appearance. From time to time we would pull up next to another Land Cruiser coming from where we were heading, and Peter or Rob would exchange news with the driver. I assume they were talking about where the lions were, or the leopards, or the jaguars.

The big cats were very cool, that's for sure, but my favorite animals were the elephants. We were lucky enough to see a huge herd of 100-120 elephants, and spend a good hour in their company when they chose to come our way. Among the herd were babies and adolescents, and they put on a show for us, wallowing and playing in the mud as though they hadn't a care in the world.

Mud, mud, glorious mud -- nothing quite like it for cooling the blood.

Of all the animals we saw, the elephants (and perhaps the baboons) were the only ones who seemed free from the constant anxiety of having to hunt or avoid being hunted. Even so, we had reason to be grateful they were so good-natured, because when they came over to the Land Cruiser, any one of them could have knocked us over with little effort.

It was late in the afternoon when we finally drove into the parking area at the Dik Dik campground. It must have been past six o-clock already, and the precious daylight was slipping away quickly. I had packed my running shorts and running shoes in my backpack for easy access, so while the others unloaded their bags, I was off immediately to change and get in that one last run of the year.

The layout of the campground would make this one of the more challenging runs. There were tents everywhere, and to have a running route at all I needed to make my way from the parking area along the edge of the background where it turned into bush, past the latrines and then up an access road that led to a second field, which was also full of tents and people. With a little creativity, I figured out how to make this a loop, of sorts, rather than a back-and-forth, and I set out to get in my requisite 20 minutes.

The first "loop" took about four minutes. As I passed our land cruiser, Rob looked on with amusement and maybe even a little pride. You see that mzungu running? He's OUR mzungu. He exercises every day, even on safari. I wondered what the other campers made of the sight of me gliding past their tents, forward and back, over and over. Surely there were other runners there. Maybe they were a little envious.

After the first loop, Joni fell in step beside me and we ran one circuit of the campground together. She ran in flip flops and civilian clothes, and it was great.

As with all of my short, repetitive, campground runs, it took forever to run the first 10 minutes, and then the next 10 went by quickly and easily. As I passed the 20-minute mark and realized that I had brought my year-long running adventure to a successful conclusion, a very happy, peaceful feeling settled over me. I celebrated with one final loop in the gathering dusk, speeding up as much as I could without terrorizing the other campers, and savoring the moment. It had been a long twelve months.

A final note about Dik Dik. Back in 2007 when Joni was traveling in Tanzania with Liz Gleason, they stayed at the same campground, They awoke in the middle of the night to a low growling sound. It was the sound of lions walking slowly through the campground in search of whatever it is lions want at that hour. Joni and her friend lay in their tents in a paroxysm of fear. Eventually after what seemed like a very long time, the lions went away.

Joni wisely chose not to share this story with us until she was safely back in the United States. Still, it has become part of our family history -- we refer to it as the night Joni met the lions -- and we all had it in the back of our mind as we bedded down for the night in the exact same spot.

So you might understand that I was a little apprehensive and edgy as night fell. Returning from the latrine with a flashlight just before turning in for the evening, I met a couple standing on the edge of the campground looking out into the bush. "You can see eyes," they said. Sure enough, when I pointed my flashlight out into the darkness, I could see the unmistakable gleam of yellow eyes staring back at me from perhaps 50-60 yards away. I didn't mention this to Ann until the next morning. I wanted to make sure that at least one of us slept well that night.

NEXT: Lions as Role Models; Lake Nduto

Tanzania Journal - Day 7, Part 3:Mbuzi Mawe

2011-03-16T22:37:00.020-04:00

At Klein's Gate, it took Rob about twenty minutes to secure our permit to enter the Serengeti. I should mention that this was only the latest example of the routine delays we encountered traveling through different administrative districts. In the past two days, there had been several times when we had found our way blocked by a small gate across the road manned by some local authority. Usually there would be a few shacks nearby, perhaps a village. Peter or Rob would get out of the car and go talk to someone for a while. I was never clear as to the exact nature of the conversation -- whether it was social, official, or something else. I was never sure whether any money changed hands, or whether they were just checking the status of our permits. The first time it happened, I was apprehensive. But after a few times, I just accepted it as normal and found a few more reasons to be glad we had experienced guides.

In any case, it was about 4:30 when once more, and for the last time that day, we all climbed into the Land Rover and drove through the gate.

Almost immediately the landscape changed from scrub forest to rolling hills and grassy plains, dotted with acacia trees. We were traveling South now, and the sun was sinking lower in the sky on the right side of the car. With Rob encouraging us, we all started scanning the bush for birds and animals. At first, Rob would be the one to call out to Peter to stop the car, and then he would point out an exotic bird perched in a tree or a "bachelor herd" of antelope or a lover's triangle of hyenas. We stopped frequently, sometimes letting the engine of the Land Cruiser rumble on, and sometimes shutting it off, letting the vast silence of the plains roll over us.

The sun had already set when we arrived at the Mbuzi Mawe tented camp. Until then, I really had no idea of what was meant by a "tented camp," but I suppose I thought it would be like, well, a CAMP... with TENTS. In fact, it was quite a bit more than that and I was unprepared. For me, at least, after two nights of roughing it, I would have been ecstatic with a hot shower and a clean bed. That, a bottle of beer, and Henry's incomparable cooking would have seemed like paradise enow.

But those simple pleasures were not on the menu at Mbuzi Mawe. As soon as Peter had pulled the Land Rover into the graveled parking area and we had climbed out of the vehicle to stretch our legs, uniformed porters appeared and whisked our bags away. Then Rob informed us that he, Peter, and Henry were heading off to the guides' quarters for the night. This came as a shock to me as I had assumed we would all be sticking together. But no, moments later more porters came and escorted us away up to the main lodge.

I was still feeling disoriented trying to figure out how we would get along without our crew when we walked through the doorway into the main building of the camp. On our right was a concierge sitting at a rather elegant wooden desk. On the left were couches with comfy pillows, coffee tables with magazines and board games, and open french doors leading to a veranda. A few more steps into the lobby, or whatever it was called, and one could see there was a gift shop, a bar, and beyond it, a well-appointed dining room. As we stood there dazed, someone offered us glasses of mango juice. "Karibu, karibu! Welcome to Mbuzi Mawe!"

Pictures from the promotional web site for Mbuzi Mawe Tented Camp

The way the camp was set up, guests stayed in these very luxurious, very large "tents," furnished with hotel-like beds, writing desks, electricity, flush toilets and yes, hot showers. I suppose they were tents because the walls and roofs were constructed from heavy canvas, but had we been at the Ritz it could hardly have felt more opulent. The only thing to remind us that we were in the midst of wilderness was the rule that after dark, guests were not to walk from the tents to the main lodge without an escort from the camp staff. Although the walk was probably no more than 150 feet along paved walkways, it was a strange feeling, indeed, to make this walk behind a camp employee wielding a flashlight.

Back in the main lodge, things kept getting weirder.

After finding an electrical outlet where we could charge camera and laptop batteries, Joni and I collapsed on a couch and waited for the others to return from washing up. While we sat there wishing for nothing more than peace and quiet, another hotel employee announced to us and the other guests milling in the lobby that we would be treated to an entertainment program before dinner. This consisted of twenty minutes of dancers and acrobats performing to tourist-friendly songs and music. When that was over, another camp staff member set up a laptop computer with speakers and began playing American country-western standards. It was not welcome, and became much worse when it turned out that there were only two songs on the laptop and they were to be repeated all night. As soon as the others arrived to rescue us, we fled into the dining room, pursued by the voice of Kenny Rogers singing for the third time "You've got to know when to hold 'em..."

Sitting at a table with the others, reading a menu, ordering wine, I felt a deep discontent. I was probably just very tired after a long day, but I couldn't shake the feeling that this gilded oasis in the Serengeti was a caricature of our privileged tastes and appetites. It was as though someone had held up a mirror and in it I had seen an image of myself that wasn't very flattering. Surely no effort had been spared to make us feel "at home," but the result was that I felt more out-of-place than at any other time during the trip.

Daytime picture of the dining area.

I suffered through dinner, allowed myself to be escorted back to our tent, brushed my teeth with bottled water, spent five minutes with my Swahili book before I realized that I wasn't paying attention, and finally turned out the light and waited for sleep.

NEXT: Hippos in the Water, Elephants in the Mud

All Seven Runners Count!

2011-03-16T09:02:00.003-04:00

Some time ago, NNHS historian Josh Seeherman sent me a wonderful account of the 1995 Mass. Girls State Div I Cross-Country meet. That meet was remarkable for several reasons, not least because the top two teams -- Newton North and Newton South -- had identical scores after their first five runners had crossed the finish line.

I have been holding on to Josh's story, waiting for an opportune time to post it. This week seemed as good a time as any. Here in New England we are between indoor nationals and the beginning of outdoor track, while the rest of the world is preparing for the IAAF XC championships in Spain. Meanwhile, legendary coach Peter Martin is preparing to coach his final season.

So here is Josh's account. Although fall XC is still six months away, I hope the story resonates and reminds us what a great sport it is.

All Seven Runners Count!
by Josh Seeherman

This fall marked the 15th anniversary of the 1995 Newton North girls state cross-country title, the middle championship of the magical 1994-1996 three year run when Peter Martin's team trampled over the competition and won three consecutive state championships. While some emphasis is placed on the 1996 team, one of the best teams in NNHS history scoring only 44 points, it is worth recounting the 1995 story in that something absolutely impossible to replicate actually happened - Newton North tied Newton South in the scoring and won on a tiebreaker.

Throughout the early-mid 1990's, the two high schools from Newton sat atop the girls cross-country universe in Massachusetts, winning their leagues and defeating most of the other competition at the state level. Newton South had won the 1993 state title quite convincingly with 55 points, putting 4 in the top 25 including a 2nd place by Eliza Beardslee; Newton North turned the tables and won the 1994 title behind sophomore Senta Burton's sub-19:00 romp and an overachieving performance by junior Susan Duncombe. It was not surprising that NSHS and NNHS were once again 1-2 in the coaches' poll for the 1995 season, and both teams easily won their respective conferences. Newton South featured the speedy Shara Miller, a legitimate individual championship contender, while Newton North countered with what appeared to be (perhaps) a slightly deeper team.

At the Eastern Mass races, held at Franklin Park, both teams held serve in convincing fashion in their respective divisions. In Division I, Newton North won by over 130 points, beating Plymouth South 50-182 behind the efforts of sophomore Liz Aronin and now junior Senta Burton, placing 5th and 6th respectively. However, over in Division II Newton South had played copycat, defeating Woburn 53-159. Shara Miller had run unopposed for 1st place, winning by 18 seconds, and the top 4 runners were all in the Top 15 placings. However, Newton North's top 3, the third runner being sophomore Sarah Harrison, had all run faster than Newton South's #2 and #3. Combining the times in a dual meet fashion, NNHS had gone 2-3-4 for 9, while NSHS had scored 1-5-6 for 12. If Newton North could somehow replicate the same situation, they might take the title. However, with no realistic shot at Miller herself, if they could not get their 2-3-4 across quickly the Lions looked like the championship team. Additionally, Wachusett Regional, still in the Central MA division, had performed very well and rightfully believed they were just as good as the two Newton high schools. The state meet, held at Gardner, would be a three team affair.

As we now know after the fact, the stage was set for a historic race. Miller ran as predicted, taking third overall but snaring the first team point as the first two runners were individual racers. However, in the first "wrinkle," Liz Aronin came flying across the finish line in an unexpected fifth, running 17:48 for 2.9 miles. With the fourth place runner also an individual participant, Aronin had taken the precious second team slot and neutralized NSHS's top harrier. Wachusett then showed their prowess, placing their Top 2 runners in before either of Newton's 2nd. The meet scoring was very much up for grabs between these three teams at this juncture.

Newton South then made their most significant move of the day. While Senta crossed the line in 18:13 as Newton North's second runner, the Lions' second and third runners (Maggie Hillis and Anna Beardslee) approached the finish line having managed to move in front of Sarah Harrison by one position. Beyond this point, there was a slight gap, and it became anyone's guess as to who had won as the officials sorted out the individual scorers from the team participants. It took a heroic effort from Susan Duncombe as the fourth NNHS runner to keep pace with NSHS's fourth, Julie Farago, otherwise the meet would have been over right there, but North's fifth runner (Gillian Chiong) stayed in front of South's fifth. Both Newton teams had their fourth runners in before Wachusett's fourth, effectively ending the bid from the Central Massachusetts school.

When the officials were taking longer than usual to reveal the score, and then were seen consulting the rule book, everyone knew the meet was extraordinarily close. Finally, the scores were announced, an unprecedented tie; Newton North and Newton South had each scored 68 points, Wachusett had scored 98 for third. Although it had never been enforced before at the state level, the tiebreaker rule was simple - the team with the lowest placing sixth runner won the meet. In this instance, Newton North's superior depth had prevailed. Going down the scorer's sheet, the officials revealed that both the Tigers' sixth and seventh runners had finished in front of the Lions' sixth. Sophomore Becky Zatsman, previously an anonymous sixth runner, running in essence to "bump" other teams' fourth and fifth runners, suddenly found herself in the Boston Globe recap, having run 19:31, a full 40 seconds in front of Newton South's sixth. The championship trophy went back to Newton, but this time it was staying on Lowell Ave for a second year and not heading down to Brandeis Road.

Looking back, the impact of this meet has somewhat been negated by Newton North's superior effort in 1996 and Newton South's historic performance in 2008, where they perhaps had the best team performance in Massachusetts history. Nevertheless, much like the fabled 1968 Harvard-Yale tie game, the 1995 meet still resonates for many who were witnesses. As Coach Martin said for the Globe, "cross-country is a team sport... you run as a team and finish as a team." The 1995 meet was a fantastic performance for both Newton teams, one perhaps just an ounce better on that particular day.

Tanzania Journal - Day 7, Part 2:Out of the Desert

2011-03-14T05:00:00.001-04:00

Camels near Lake Natron

We finally left the camp at Lake Natron at about 11:00 on the morning of December 30th. Rob had wanted us to leave an hour earlier, and we had dutifully packed all our bags the previous evening for a quick departure. However, while loading those bags into the back of the Land Cruiser, Rob and Peter had noticed a problem with the latching mechanism on the rear door, and it took a while to fix.

While they did, the sun rose higher in the sky, and what had been a pleasantly warm morning gradually became a very hot day. Like every other sensible creature, we sought out shade and waited patiently for the car to be ready.

For the first half hour after we left camp, the road continued more or less North, rising gradually through an arid landscape characterized by low scrubby trees and bushes. It was impressive that these trees were able to eke out a living on the modest amounts of rain that fell erratically in that region. It seemed an inhospitable place, and yet, every few miles we came across Maasai walking slowly in small groups along the road. All seemed to be heading in the same direction, back in the general direction of the basin. Perhaps there was a market somewhere, or perhaps they were making the long round trip for water or some other need.

Comenifera tree on the road from Lake Natron

Perhaps the hot sun lulled our crew into a moment of inattention, because we rounded a bend and suddenly found ourselves in the middle of a small village of huts and animal paddocks. Rob quickly figured out that we had gone the wrong way at a fork, and so we had to backtrack for a half a mile or so. Almost as soon as we were back on the right track, the road began climbing sharply. We were now ascending the escarpment, heading roughly Northwest toward the town of Loliondo. The terrain, which hadn't been smooth by any stretch, now became daunting. The Land Cruiser pitched and bounced, as we negotiated stretches of road with huge slabs of stone and ruts two feet deep. We would harrow through some particularly improbable section of road and think to ourselves that surely it couldn't get any more rugged, only to encounter a worse section a few minutes later. There were stretches when it didn't even seem we were on a road at all, just picking our way up a boulder-strewn slope trying to keep the wheels of the car moving forward.

It was here that we came to appreciate our driver, Peter. Up until now, Peter had been the overlooked member of the crew. Rob was the leader, gregarious and informative. He had planned the trip and consulted with us frequently about what was going on. Henry was our cook, and already we had begin to marvel at his ability to conjure large quantities of good food from whatever supplies had been packed and could be prepared in a camp. Peter had been mostly quiet, but as we lurched up the side of the rift, skirting disaster at every turn, his concentration and competence made us feel very fortunate and grateful.

I wish I had some pictures from that part of the drive. No one was thinking about pictures, however, since we were all hanging on to our seats trying not to careen up to the roof with every bump.

As we neared the end of our arduous climb, the dry red rocks fell away behind us, and the landscape became greener. As we gained altitude, the climate was changing before our eyes. Here, the condensation was greater and the foliage was thicker. We began to see cattle on the hillside. The road leveled out and became friendlier.

We continued to see people on or by the side of the road, mostly women and children. Invariably they waved at the car as it went by. Once in a great while we would see another vehicle coming our way. I wanted to warn them about the road they would be descending, but I'm sure they knew better than I did what they were getting themselves into.

At one point, we drove a mile off the main road into a little town where the people were not wearing the Maasai dress. We saw some teenage boys and I think I recall they were playing soccer in or next to the street. Most were wearing pants and t-shirts, very different than the the colorful shukas we had come to expect. Rob explained that these were not Maasai, but Sonjo, another tribe with different language and customs.

It must have been sometime between 1:00 and 2:00 that we stopped for lunch in a town called Wasso. I couldn't quite figure out what kind of place it was as Peter pulled the car to a stop in a large courtyard. It seemed like an official building of some sort, although it might have been a school. If Rob told us, I've forgotten what he said. Although Rob suggested we eat inside, we had been sitting in the car for a long time and preferred to stay in the open air. He seemed to consider this a little strange, but accepted it and went into the building to get us some soft drinks.

A word about soft drinks: other than instant coffee or tea in the morning, beer if we were lucky, and bottled water the rest of the time, the one reliable thing to drink was Coca-Cola and its sister products. There seemed to be an excellent distribution system that supplied recycled glass bottles of Coke and Fanta to every town, where they sold for what seemed like a very reasonable price of 500 Tanzanian shillings, or about 33 cents.

It was pleasant in this courtyard, but a sense of contradiction tugged at my consciousness. Here we were at this official-looking building in this big, important town -- at least big by the standards of Northern Tanzania -- and yet instead of bathrooms, there was an outhouse with holes in the ground, and no running water or soap to be had anywhere.

I'm afraid I have to spend a little time on the topic of sanitary facilities. I was struck by how access to and use of the toilets was a matter of more-or-less constant concern for all of us on the trip. Other than Joni, everyone in our family experienced a certain amount of digestive distress when we got to Tanzania. We suspected that it might be related to the anti-malarial medication we were taking although it's possible that there was some other cause. In any case, in Arusha, we had running water at the hotel, but not when we visited Oju's family, and not when we visited Rose in Monduli. At Tarangire, the camp toilets were crude and we weren't even allowed to use those after lights out. At Lake Natron where it was safer, it was not measurably cleaner (although there were simple showers of not-potable water). Sanitation was always an issue, and we wondered what microbes were out and about, waiting to pounce on our poorly-adapted immune systems. I wish I could say that I got used to roughing it, but it would be more accurate to say that I endured the lack of plumbing the best that I could and was very happy whenever we got to use a western-style loo.

After our lunch, we got back into the Land Cruiser and began driving West. We would enter the Serengeti National Park at an outpost named Klein's Gate. Although it was not many kilometers, it took us a couple of hours to reach the entrance to the Park. On the way we encountered more horrendous roads, and passed through several small, isolated villages.

One village, in particular, left a strong impression on me. The town seemed to appear out of nowhere. We had been driving along, and all of a sudden there was a cluster of buildings, some with masonry walls. What was most strange was that there seemed to be a crowd of people in the center of the town, but it didn't seem like anything was happening. Or rather, it appeared that everyone was waiting for something to happen, but in a slow, listless fashion without any definite expectation. There was no market, no activity, just people sitting or standing or milling around.

The other strange thing was when we encountered a bus traveling in the opposite direction. It was inconceivable that a bus could pass on the roads we had just traversed, and yet Rob assured me that it was heading to Arusha. I couldn't believe it.

We reached Klein's Gate at about 4:30. While Rob went into the office there to pick up the necessary permits, we admired a herd of giraffe a few hundred yards away. These were not our first giraffe; we had seen some in Tarangire and near Lake Natron, but these were Serengeti giraffe, and we felt very excited to have arrived, at last.

We were very careful to observe Rule 3...

Forbes (19-5) Wins National LJ TitleNN Boys Set School Record in SMR

2011-03-12T18:25:00.007-05:00

Newton North sophomore Carla Forbes leaped 5.93m (19-5.5) at the New Balance Indoor Nationals on Saturday to defeat a deep field and win the national title. Forbes will be out to defend her 2010 triple jump title on Sunday.

Forbes also combined with Amy Ren, Kayla Wong, and Steph Brown to take 8th in the shuttle hurdles.

Newton North's boys sprint medley relay team of Isaiah Penn, Ryan Lucken, Ben Clark, and Ezra Lichtman set a new school record of 3:32.46 for sixth place. If anyone has splits, please post them!

The race featured a 1-6-7 finish from Massachusetts teams. Running in the seeded heat, Mansfield won the national title with a time of 3:28.99. Also in the final heat, Andover finished with the 7th-fastest time overall.

Addendum:

Penn also won the "Emerging Elite" 400m, running 49.62. That might just be an indoor school record. Josh Seeherman will know...

Results of the meet are here.

Tanzania Journal - Day 7, Part 1:Lake Natron

2011-03-12T11:00:00.003-05:00

"Here it is the landscape rather than the animals that is the attraction - the area around the lake is dry, desolate and hauntingly beautiful." (www.moivaro.com)

"The lake is 35 miles (56 km) long and 15 miles (24 km) wide and contains salt, soda, and magnesite deposits. The lake’s warm water is an ideal breeding ground for the Rift Valley flamingos." (Encyclopedia Brittanica)

"Three-quarters of the world population of lesser flamingos live and nest in East Africa. All depend on Tanzania's Lake Natron as a breeding site. Food is plentiful, nesting sites abound – and above all, the lake is isolated and undisturbed." (www.rspb.com)

Running Log, 12/30/10 -- 30 minutes in and around Lake Natron camp, including "hill repeats"

December 30th was our second full day of Safari and would be, in every sense, our longest. It would take us from the near lunar isolation of Lake Natron to a brazen island of Western luxury in the heart of the Serengeti. In between, we would traverse a stretch of road so uneven it would make our Land Cruiser buck like an enraged bull, with only our seat belts keeping us from repeatedly banging our heads on the roof of the truck.

Our longest day began before dawn with a sunrise drive to the mud flats on the southern end of Lake Natron. Rob had strongly urged us to an early start, and it was nearly pitch black when we staggered out of our tents, carrying flashlights to find our way to the toilets across camp. Henry had heated water for tea or instant coffee, and after a few minutes to linger over our cups, it was time to bundle into the Land Cruiser for the fifteen-minute drive to the Lake.

Giraffes at sunrise near Lake Natron

There were many things that I saw on our trip that left a general impression that has acquired detail over time as I have read more and been able to put the experience into some sort of context. The early morning wander among the flamingos at Lake Natron is one of those things. So forgive me if I take a few moments to digress and things I learned later when I sat down and read about this place.

Let's start with the name. I was a little put off by the name, which sounds harsh and forbidding -- so different from the Swahili and Maasai names I was learning. Wikipedia tells me that "Natron" is an English word (from a French cognate) that refers to a naturally occurring mixture of sodium carbonate decahydrate (hydrated soda ash). So Lake Natron is something like "Salt Lake".

Alkalinity in the large, shallow lake can reach a pH of 9 to 10.5 (almost as alkaline as ammonia), and temperatures can reach 50 degrees Celsius (120 degrees Fahrenheit). Who could love such a place?

It turns out that these conditions are ideal for salt-loving organisms, including Spirulina, a cyanobacterium that grows in water and makes its own food via photosynthesis. The bacteria have a reddish pigment that gives the open water of Lake Natron a deep red appearance. Flamingos feed on the bacteria, and the pigment makes the birds appear pink. In other words, pink flamingos aren't born pink -- they get that way by eating red bacteria.

The other advantage for the flamingos is that a lake whose water is so alkaline is no haven for predators. Other than a few giraffes off in the distance, the only traces of larger mammals we saw near Lake Natron were some bleached bones on the shore. It seemed to me that unless you were a flamingo, the lake was a place to go to die.

Near us, there were thousands of flamingos wading in the water, feeding. We spent a long time walking slowly out on the flats, taking a few pictures, picking up a few bones. I look at the pictures now and none of them seem particularly compelling. It was a quiet refuge, isolated and spare. After an hour or so, we headed back to the Land Cruiser for the drive back to camp.

When we got back to camp, it was probably around 8:30 or 9:00 and breakfast was waiting for us. However, I had other plans. On the second to last day of the year there was no way I was going to pass up my one and only opportunity to sneak in a run. I told Ann to save me some food, and I slipped away to change into shorts and running shoes.

I didn't have high hopes for this run when I began my usual routine of looping around the campground. Even though the morning was pleasantly warm before the heat of midday and the grass and soft roads in camp were a pleasure, I expected to feel like a horse in a paddock. These pictures that Peter took sort of get that across.

However, after a few laps in the camp, and with Rob's assurance that there were no lions around, on my next loop I ventured out of camp and up the road that led past the Maasai village to the open plain beyond. I soon found a very runnable path that led up a decent hill and intersected the road we came in on. Thus, even without heading into the wilderness (I thought about it), I was able to follow a big lopsided figure 8 that combined small curcuits of the campground and large loops outside with a challenging climb to keep me focused.

The more I ran, the better I felt. At one point, I was joined by a Maasai boy and we ran together for a few minutes, a thrill for both of us, I think. In spite of the fact that I knew breakfast would be put away and that Rob would want to be leaving, I extended the run longer than the minimum and managed a good thirty minutes and some energetic charges up the hill. It would be my second favorite run of the whole trip.

Running, Aging, and the Heart

2011-03-09T11:27:00.004-05:00

Some of us older folks made a decision somewhere along life's highway that we would keep running and competing as long as our legs held out. We would accept with as much grace as we could muster the compromises forced upon us by bodies that were no longer able to handle the really punishing phases of training. We would learn not to dwell on all the great times we ran when we were in our prime. We would slip back into the pack, motivating ourselves by now and again taking down some twenty-something who went out too fast, or by battling other geezers for age group prizes.

But mostly, we would commit ourselves to running as a "lifestyle" -- it's a blow to one's ego to even use that word -- and enjoy the heck out if it as long as we could.

In my case, I thought this decision was all about taking care of the aging sinews of my body -- the muscles and tendons that make up the running machine. I never really worried about the hydraulic system that made it all possible. I guess I assumed that my heart and lungs would continue functioning adequately, if not perfectly, or at least until my knees exploded or my feet and lower legs couldn't take it any more.

Well, hearts, too are vulnerable to the ravages of time and training.

Intellectually, I knew this, but it was underscored recently when I read an article in Wednesday's New York Times that described recent research on the hearts of aging runners who continued to compete at a very high level in endurance events (e.g., racing marathons and triathlons).

When Exercise is Too Much of a Good Thing

The article basically concludes that long, intense running is associated with increased risk of scarring of the heart tissue. I was careful in that last sentence not to say that the running caused the scarring. The research has not established cause and effect in humans. However, no one should be surprised that intense training and racing might carry some risks, as well as benefits, for the hearts of middle-aged athletes.

It would be nice to think that running is the formula for eternal youth, and it might be a better candidate than anything else we can dream up. But with aging, there's always a catch.

On a side note, I continue to be fascinated by the extreme things that researchers make rats do in the lab. For example, in describing a study that seems to provide the first evidence of a direct link between heavy exercise and heart damage, the above-mentioned article says:

"Canadian and Spanish scientists prodded young, healthy male rats to run at an intense pace, day after day, for three months, which is the equivalent of about 10 years in human terms. The training was deliberately designed to mimic many years of serious marathon training in people..."

Does that sounds like the Kenyan training camp in Iten? I was hoping the article would go on to say which group of rats had the best treadmill marathon times, but they omitted that data.

Tanzania Journal - Day 6: Water in a Dry Land

2011-03-06T11:55:00.001-05:00

Running Log, 12/29/10 -- 22 minutes w/Oju up and back the road at our campsite at Tarangire

I was very happy when it finally began to get light at Tarangire. It had been our first night camping, and I had slept fitfully. Our tents had been hot and stuffy and it took a while to figure out how to ventilate them properly. Ann had fallen asleep quickly, but I lay on my back for what seemed like hours trying to think cool thoughts and trying not to listen too carefully for the sounds of large animals in the night. It didn't help recalling Rob's words of caution should we happen to feel the "call of nature" before it was light enough to safely cross the campground to the toilets. I don't know know how the others felt, but being told that I was confined to the tent for the next eight hours made me anxious and restless.

So it was a relief to have the sun finally come up, and to be able to climb out of the tent, stiff and groggy but unmauled and ready for another day.

As far as running went, this would be a test, of sorts, to judge whether it would be practical for me to run while inside the parks. Both Rob and Joni had been skeptical, considering that Rob would not sanction me venturing outside the campground for any reason. I understood that he had no desire to lose a client to a freelancing lion who might pass by while I was doing my best impersonation of breakfast. It would not be good for business.

I had already decided that the morning's run would consist of running up and back the campground access road, a strip of soft dirt that extended perhaps 150 meters from our tents. On the near end of each lap, I could circle the tents and the small pavilion that the cooks used to prepare meals. On the far end, I could take a wide turn around some bushes on either side of the road -- not much different from the turns we used to run in the old Newton North SOA. Plus, I would have company. When I had described the plan the previous evening, Oju had said to wake him up for the fun.

So it was that as the sun rose on Tarangire, we set off together at a sleepy jog, our first tentative steps taking us away from the safety of the tribe towards the bush, and then, as we approached the edge of our tiny island of human habitation, turning back again to complete a lap. The goal was to continue for as many laps as it would take to log twenty minutes. All year that had been the informal minimum I had established to "count" as a run.

Our first lap felt pretty tame. Having to turn around so soon after we started was drudgery. Returning to circle the tents barely a minute after we had left made us objects of amusement for our traveling companions and crew. On the first lap, I felt self-conscious, but soon I had other things to think about. At the far point of our second circuit, I looked out beyond the road and realized that there were hundreds of baboons foraging in the bush not more than 200 meters away. A shot of adrenaline went through me, and I experienced the visceral sensation of the wildness surrounding us. There was nothing separating us but dry grass and a few acacia trees. It was, I thought, very fortunate that the baboons had no interest in us.

Newly alert, we continued our laps, even finding ways to make our run more playful. We started weaving through the campground, bounding up the steps one one side of the pavilion, crossing it, and leaping off the other side, then heading out to the end of the access road and the indifferent baboons, and then back a minute later. After twenty minutes of this, I decided we needed to do one more lap, so we did, and finished without fatigue or distress. Rob, who had been watching us with the same concern that a mama bear might have watching her cubs wandering away from the den, gave us a broad smile. I'm not sure he approved, but he seemed to accept that this was what we did to amuse ourselves.

After breakfast, and after everything and everybody were packed back into the Land Rover, we left Tarangire and began to head North. Our destination for the day was Lake Natron, located along Tanzania's border with Kenya.

The previous day, we had spent the entire afternoon driving on bumpy park roads. I hated to admit it, but it was actually nice to leave the park and return to smooth pavement for a while. I had no idea at that point that the next few days' journey would challenge my very definition of "road." Knowing nothing of what was to come, I relaxed as we made the easy drive to the town of Mto Wa Mbu ("Mosquito River" in Swahili), where we picked up a few more supplies and said good-bye to Oju, who left us to catch a dala dala back to Monduli.

Leaving Mto Wa Mbu, we drove for a short way on the paved highway and then turned off onto an unpaved road, strewn with gravel and stones. I remember thinking that this must be a shortcut. Actually, it was the main route leading to Lake Natron and beyond it the Northern entrance to the Serengeti. It was very dry, this road, and the surrounding land appeared desolate and hardly habitable. Still, we continued to see Maasai villages, and occasionally passed Maasai men, women, and children walking slowly along the road, sometimes leading small herds of bony cattle.

Apart from the people, the most dramatic feature of the landscape was the East Africa Rift escarpment, a thousand-foot difference between the valley floor and the higher plain to the West that stretched to the North and South as far as we could see. The escarpment was a constant and impressive reminder of the tectonic activity happening here.

Maasai village with the Rift escarpment in the background
(Photo: Marc Gamble)

I remember that drive as having a timeless quality. It was the middle of the day, and no one said much as we bumped along through for what seemed like hours through that dry valley. After we had been driving for a while, the road began to rise and we could look out over the landscape of the Engaruka Basin. Here and there, the wind whipped up tall, slender dust devils that extended hundreds of feet in the air and presided over the basin like primitive spirits of the land.

Dust devil - Engaruka Basin

As we continued North, we had excellent views of Ol Doinyo Lengai, an active volcano and the third-tallest mountain in Tanzania. The volcano, whose name means "mountain of God" in the local Maasai language, has erupted several times in the last hundred years, most recently in 2007-2008, when it deposited new layers of lava and ash into the Lake Natron basin. Rob explained that the lava from Ol Doinyo is unique among active volcanoes, containing sodium and potassium carbonate that makes Lake Natron a "Soda lake" and that gives the surrounding area an appearance unlike anywhere else in the world.

Ol Doinyo Lengai

Throughout the trip, Rob gave a lot of thought to finding spectacular spots for our stops, and this day was no different. In the early afternoon, we pulled off the road and up to the edge of a huge caldera a kilometer across with a view of Ol Doinyo looming in the distance.

We must not have been the only travelers to ever stop in this place. A minute after our Land Rover pulled to a stop in the soft gravel, a band of Maasai women and girls appeared with bracelets, necklaces, and other trinkets to sell. None of us were interested in buying anything, and after a few words of Swahili were exchanged, the women left us alone and sat down in the shade of an Acacia tree. Our party sat down in the shade of another and we ate our lunch. It was impossible not to think about what we had -- our bottled water, the individual boxes prepared by Henry that each contained more than any of us would eat at one sitting -- and not think about our neighbors. We had no way of knowing whether food was scarce for them or not, but the option of throwing away the food was intolerable. When we were finished, Peter, our driver, took a box of untouched fruit and other items over to them, and then we left.

The Maasai have quietly asserted their authority by taking the best shade.

It was fairly late in the afternoon, probably around 4 p.m. when we arrived at the Lake Natron tented camp. The camp was adjacent to a Maasai settlement that turned out to be the same village where Joni had stayed for a week as a student in 2004. Maybe she had mentioned this before and it had not registered with me, but it made the place feel oddly familiar, as though I had known it for a long time before arriving on this day.

Unlike everything else we had seen that day, the camp was lush with green grass and a variety of trees. The reason for this was a stream that flowed out of the high hills above the camp, down to the lake. Our plan for the end of the afternoon was to follow that stream backwards, hiking through the narrow gash in the rocks where the water rushed down until we came to what Rob promised would be a waterfall and pool where we could swim.

We were certainly ready to be out of the Land Rover, and the idea of swimming was very tempting. For our hike, Rob had hired a Maasai to accompany us. At first, I thought that the role of guide was an honorary position, a courtesy to the local population, but I soon changed my mind. After a short way on the trail, we began criss-crossing the stream, now stepping on submerged rocks, now plunging through the water. Our guide knew every step of the way, knew which stones were firm steps and which were treacherous. Although he was a slight man, perhaps 5'2", he was extremely strong, as I discovered at one stream crossing. He was standing knee-deep in the torrent, patiently helping each of us cross without mishap. When it was my turn, I put my foot down in the wrong place and stumbled slightly. At once he reached out to steady me. His arm was like an iron bar.

After a half hour of hiking in this way, we arrived at the waterfall, an astonishing extravagance of water in this dry place. While the older adults waded gingerly into the pool, Joni and Loren leaped in like seals and splashed about joyfully, washing away the dust of the long day's drive.

Hiking to the waterfall

Loren and Joni under the waterfall.

Thus refreshed, we walked back down the trail and took the short ride back to the camp. The sun was setting as we entered this oasis for the second time. It turned out that some of the camp personnel had a generator and had converted one of the tents into a "Club" with a satellite radio and a tiny refrigerator that held beer that was not actually warm. We splurged on a few bottles of "Safari" and settled down for our evening meal.

Next: Out of the Desert

NN Boys 4x200 Wins New Englands

2011-03-05T06:13:00.003-05:00

(photo: Patrick Bendzick/MileSplit)

Newton North's 4x200 relay team upset Mansfield, New Bedford, and other schools with faster seed times to win the New England Championship last night at the Reggie Lewis Center.

Newton North, which, until yesterday had not won a 4x200 race all year (somebody check that and let me know if it's correct), finished 3rd at the Mass Div I meet (1:32.67) and 5th at the State Championships (1:33.19). That left them languishing in the fifth of six heats. Maybe it was a blessing in disguise, allowing them to stay out front and out of trouble. Who knows? In any case, they won their heat, improving their best time by over half a second. Then they waited to see whether any of the five remaining teams would run faster. None of them did, and the Tigers were and are the champs.

If Old Blue Eyes or anyone else who was at the meet could provide names and splits, that would be fantastic. I'm guessing the personnel included Ryan Lucken, Ben Clark, Isaiah Penn, and Nate Menninger in some order. True?

In any case, congratulations to the team on a remarkable upset and a New England championship to remember forever.

In the shot put, Swardiq Mayanja threw a personal best 57-1, placing second to the 58-3.75 mark of Newtown Connecticut's John Wlasuk.

Results - 2011 Indoor New England H.S. Championships

Forbes, NN Girls Win MSTCA Pentathlon Title

2011-03-01T21:36:00.004-05:00

On Tuesday, Carla Forbes added another championship to her growing resume of track and field achievements, winning the MSTCA Pentathlon with a total of 3072 points, over 100 more than her nearest pursuer, Wellesley's Karla Ganley. Forbes, along with Amy Ren and Lucia Grigoli, also helped Newton North to the top team score (combined score of three competitors).

Forbes held her own in the 55 hurdles (8.94) and high jump (1.47m or 4-9.75), and then built an insurmountable lead in the long jump (5.34m, 17-6.25) and shot put (27-5.25). She clinched the title with more-than-respectable 2:37 800m in the final event.

MSTCA Girls Pentathlon - Results

NNHS Alumni Results - 2/26/11

2011-02-28T06:29:00.004-05:00

On Friday and Saturday pf last week Boston University hosted the NEICAAA indoor track championships, aka the Open New Englands. At least three NN alumni competed, and although I am tardy posting their results, they are too good to ignore.

Jess Barton is running as well as she ever has, and won the women's 3000m in 9:44 (converts to a 10:27 two-mile!). Congratulations, Jess!

In the men's mile, Seb Putzeys ran 4:17.04 to place 12th. It's great to see Seb running well, and that's got to be pretty close to his personal best for the mile.

Bowdoin's Michele Kaufman ran 9.01 in the semis to earn the final qualifying spot in the nine-person finals, where she placed 8th in 9.07.

On Saturday and Sunday, the Heptagonals (the Ivy League Championships) were held at the Armory in New York. In the shot put, Yale senior David Smith threw 4.97m (49-1.5) to place 10th. Smith also competed in the weight throw with an almost identical result, a best mark of 15.06m (49-05.00) and a 10th-place finish.

2011 All-State Meet: Mayanja, Forbes, Girls 4x400 are Champions

2011-02-27T07:22:00.006-05:00

(More meet photos from my anonymous NN parent benefactor here)

At last week's D1 Indoor Track meet, Swardiq Mayanja finished second in the shot put by a single inch. Yesterday, Mayanja became the All-State champion with a throw of 56-02 -- nearly four feet farther than his nearest competitor. Also competing in the shot put, Young Guang threw 46-11.5 for 15th.

Mayanja's victory provided the North boys with half their points. North's other individual scorer was Ezra Lichtman, who ran a brilliant race in the 1000 to take third, just seven-tenths of a second behind the photo finish between Marshfield's Joel Hubbard and Bishop Feehen's Billy Looney. Lichtman's time was a personal best 2:32.08.

The Tigers also got four points from their 4x200 relay team who finished fifth in a near dead heat with Chelmsford.

A golden chance for more points and a shot at the runner-up trophy was lost when Isaiah Penn was disqualified from the 300 for a false start.

Dan Ranti ran 9:56.74 in the 2-mile and finished 18th.

2011 All-State Meet Results - Boys

For the first time this year, the Newton North girls did not emerge as the victors yesterday -- Mansfield earned that honor. But the Tigers did take home the runner-up trophy and had the satisfaction of winning the final event of the day, the Girls 4x400 relay, and running an All-State meet record 3:55.89.

If someone has splits for the relays legs, I would appreciate them!

Carla Forbes defended her indoor state championship in the long jump, besting the field by over a foot with a mark of 18-9 (a quarter-inch farther than last year). Amy Ren (16-1.75) and Kayla Prior (15-11.25) finished 13th and 17th, respectively.

Forbes was also a big factor in the 55, finishing in a personal best 7.28 behind Arlington's Rebecca Robinson and Boston Latin's Emma Rice.

Lucia Grigoli took 6th, and Emily Hutchinson took 9th in the high jump. Both were among the seven girls who cleared 5-2, with the places decided by fewer misses.

Sophomore Meghan Bellerose ran a personal best of 1:37.27 in the 600, finishing 12th.

2011 All-State Meet Results - Girls

USATF Indoor Championships This Weekend

2011-02-25T08:25:00.003-05:00

For most folks of my readers, the MA State Meet is the big event this weekend. But this is also the weekend of the USA Indoor Championships, taking place Saturday and Sunday at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.

There will be live streaming of the meet on Saturday and part of Sunday. Many Sunday finals, including the men's and women's 1 Mile races, will be shown live on ESPN. The following link provides more info about the webcast and TV coverage.

USA Indoor Championships - Webcast Info

FWIW, here's the current qualified/declared entry list for the men's 3000m:


Brent Vaughn    Nike            NT 
Bernard Lagat   Nike            7:39.35 
Aaron Braun     Adidas/McMillan Elite
                                7:50.11 
Jeff See        Saucony         7:50.23
Chris Barnicle New Balance     7:55.70
Trevor Dunbar   unattached      8:00.10
Scott Smith     McMillan Elite  8:00.34
Jeremy Johnson  Brooks          8:00.88
Derek Scott     Puma            8:01.68
Kyle Alcorn     Nike            8:02.56
Galen Rupp      Nike/OTC Elite  13:11.44* (5K)

The big deal here is Galen Rupp and Bernard Lagat (the current American 5K and 2M indoor record-holders) going head-to-head. Also interesting to see Chris Barnicle's name on the list. Since he is based in New Mexico this will be a home meet for him. On the other hand, I also pointed out he was entered in the USA XC World Team Trials and didn't run there, so no guarantees.

Anyway, the 3000m is set to start at 6:30 p.m. local time (8:30 p.m. EST) on Saturday.

2011 Indoor State Meet Preview - Boys

2011-02-22T22:39:00.007-05:00

Here we go with a tour of the performance lists for the boys indoor state meet. While compiling this, I noticed that the combined projected point total for Cambridge, Brockton, Lexington, and Xaverian was one point. Does anyone else think that's a strange sign of the times?

Note: I didn't bother assigning 0.1 points for the nine high jumpers seeded at 6-1. I probably should have, but I was in a hurry.

To no one's surprise, Mansfield is the big favorite and will be tough to beat. New Bedford is probably the team with the best chance to pull an upset. After that, it seems unlikely that any team could amass enough points, but we'll see.

Mansfield - 49

Mansfield has the top seeds in both the mile and two-mile. After he ran 2:29 for 1000m and the next weekend ran 4:17 at the New Balance Indoor Grand Prix, I jumped on the Josh Lampron bandwagon. He has plenty of competition in the mile, but 2:29 -- my goodness! I think he'll win a close race against St. John's Dan Zawalich, with Pembroke's Wesley Gallagher and Brendan Adams right there. It's amazing to me that the mile has ten guys seeded at sub 4:24.

Meanwhile, Shayne Collins has the top seed in the 2-mile at 9:14. His main competition will be the enigmatic John Murray, who won D1 last week with a wire-to-wire 9:23. Murray does not mind leading and I've seen him close a two-mile in a silky smooth 29s 200, but he has looked completely average running the 800 in relays this year. I expect Collins will follow Murray's pace, and the two will kick to see who wins. I don't see anyone else being able to stick around long enough to be in it for the win, but who knows?

In the 300, Mansfield has two guys -- Steve Gannon and Nick King -- under 36 seconds. In the relays, they have the third seed in both the 4x2 and 4x4, and the sixth seed in the 4x8. They'd love to get points in the long jump, but that's a volatile event. If Patrick Greaney can jump in the mid-21's Mansfield will be in great shape.

New Bedford - 31

The long jump has been very good to New Bedford this year. Phito Gondre is the top seed and Justin Callendar is the fourth seed. I'm sure they're hoping for a 1-2 finish, and it's not out of the question. Gondre is the third seed in the 55, and if he could do better that would again be huge. The Whalers are the top seed in the 4x200 and have pretty much owned that event. So if Mansfield stumbles, and especially if the long jump and 55 go the Whaler's way, they have a real shot to win the team title.

Bishop Feehen - 24

It's a little surprising to see Feehen up there, but they have Billy Looney in the 1000 (2:29.99), Tim McMakin in the shot put (53-5), and Sam Yoder in the high jump (6-4). There's certainly upside in the SP and HJ. They also have 5th seed in the 4x400. Probably not enough to catch Mansfield, but definitely a shot at the runner-up trophy.

Newton North - 23

I don't want to sound like a starry-eyed optimist, but North has to be thinking upside in every event. Isaiah Penn is seeded 2nd, but he has proven again and again that he rises to the competition. Swardiq Mayanja is seeded 2nd in the shot put, but has the best throw in the state this year. Ezra Lichtman is seeded 6th in the 1000, but only six-tenths of a second behind the third seed. And if North's 4x200 team can keep their shoes on this week, they can improve on their fifth seed.

Again, if Mansfield takes care of business, all of that won't be enough to win, but might be enough for second.

Andover - 22

18 of Andover's 22 projected points come from the 4x800 and 4x200 relays. The other four come from Pat Farnham in the 300. Missing from the total is any points from Simon Voorhees in the mile (seeded 10th at 4:23.28). A great race from Voorhees and a top three finish is definitely possible.

The Rest

Hard to choose from among the 19 schools projected at between 10 and 20 points. Somerville is pro0jected at 20, and speaking of bandwagons, I love watching Somerville's sensational sophomore Andre Rolim, the top seed and defending champ in the 600. Acton-Boxboro also projects at 20 points. The aforementioned Pembroke is at 18, as are Marshfield and Woburn.

The meet gets underway at 11:00 a.m. Saturday, February 26. Alas, I will be away. Anyone with a Twitter account want to post updates?

MIAA Performance Lists - Boys

2011 Indoor State Meet Preview - Girls

2011-02-22T17:00:00.000-05:00

Performance lists aren't predictions, and anything can happen. But here's a quick tour through the girls performance lists for the 2011 Indoor State Meet:

Mansfield - 37.3

Mansfield is a great team with many strong athletes and deserves to be the favorite in the state meet, but their projected top position is very precarious. ALL of their projected points come in events that are notoriously volatile -- the 55, 55 hurdles, 300, high jump, and 4x200 -- you couldn't come up with a list of events more likely to cause a coach to bite their nails down to the quick. Well, I suppose you could add the long jump to that list, but watching Carla Forbes tends to make you forget how difficult and unpredictable it is...

Newton North - 32

The Tigers will be in the unfamiliar position on being the underdog, at least on paper, for the first time this season. Their "safe" points (nothing is ever safe in track) are in the long jump and 4x400 relay. The remainder of their projected points come from the 55 and 1000, where Carla Forbes and Margo Gillis will be battling deep fields. Those points might not be easy to get, but there is a great chance for North to find other points in the 600 (Meghan Bellerose - seeded 9th), the high jump (three jumpers at 5-1), the long jump (Both Amy Ren's and Kayla Prior's PBs would put them in the top eight), and the 4x200 (seeded 9th).

Lincoln-Sudbury - 30

Andrea Keklak is one of the most impressive athletes at the meet, and having her gives L-S a great chance to win the 1000 and 4x800. But even if Marika Crowe can take 2nd in the 1000, it's hard to see where L-S will get more points than their projected 30. However, if Mansfield and Newton North have any mishaps, 30 points might be enough to win.

Franklin - 29

Like L-S, Franklin has the top seed in two events. Megan Ross was very impressive winning the D1 2M, and Kendal Knous is 1.5 seconds better than anyone else in the 600. Their other points come from the 1000 and the 4x800, both of which will be tough challenges. On the other hand, all the teams in front of them have tough challenges, too, so Franklin is a definite contender for the title.

Andover - 24

Don't be fooled by Andover's projected point total. It's low because it doesn't account for any points from Moira Cronin in the high jump. If Cronin has a good meet and Jess Salley matches last week's performance, Andover could score 16-18 points in the high jump and be right back in business.

Also, Maggie Mullins is seeded only fourth in the 2M after a sub-par race at D1, but is capable of doing much better at the state meet. Add the 300, where anything could happen, and the 4x400, where Andover is in the mix for one of the top three spots and it's not inconceivable that Andover could score in the mid-30s for this meet.

The Rest

Pembroke, Newton South, Wachusett, and Weymouth look to be the teams with significant upside. Arlington has Rebecca Robinson, the top seed in the 55 and 300, but that's about it.

Tanzania Journal - Day 5: Tarangire

2011-02-22T05:00:00.003-05:00

Running Log, 12/28/10 -- 3 miles, out and back from L'Oasis

After our day in Monduli, we returned to Arusha Monday night and spent all evening sorting through our stuff, separating the things we would need for our eight-day trip through the national parks from the things we could leave until our return. About half our luggage and a lot of the things we had brought from the U.S. for Joni were packed away and left for later. What was left still looked like too much.

After the blissful experience of the previous day's run in the hills outside Monduli, my three-mile run in Arusha was a hard return to reality. I struggled to get out of bed, and pulled on my running stuff with an utter lack of enthusiasm. As I ran along the now familiar main highway, the air seemed dirtier and the road surface harder. Other than that, the run made no impression on me, and I devoted one listless sentence to it in my journal. Such is the life of a streak. When I got back, instead of a leisurely breakfast, I had to hustle to take a quick shower (my last for a while), and eat a hasty plate of toast and fruit.

This was the first day of our journey into the national parks, which meant the first day of stuffing ourselves and our belongings into (or on top of) the land rover. The land rover would become our home away from home, not only our transportation but our only protection from the predators whose domain we were about to invade. Rob, Peter (our driver), and Henry (our cook) appeared on schedule at 8 a.m. It took about 30 minutes to pack everything, and then we were off. Well, sort of. Before heading out of town, we first drove back into the city to pick up supplies and other last-minute necessities. These included cases and cases of water, several dozen eggs, and various other sundries. In addition to the collective supplies, this was our last chance to get personal items. For Joni, this meant buying more air-time for her cell phone (yes, there is cell phone reception in parts of the Serengeti). For Loren, this meant getting the next volume of Stieg Larsson's Millenium trilogy. For me, it was a slim book called "Beginning Swahili," which would become my constant companion for the next week.

With the shopping, and various other delays, we didn't leave Arusha until well after 10:00 a.m. Our plan was to pick up Oju, who would accompany us to Tarngire National Park, and camp with us for one night. We would then drop him at a spot where he could get a dala dala back to Monduli and we would continue, first to Lake Natron and then to Loliondo and the Northern entrance to the Serengeti.

The drive to Tarnagire was uneventful except for a stop we made at a small roadside market. Within seconds of the land rover pulling to a stop, it was surrounded by a crowd of Maasai women pressing up to the windows with necklaces, bracelets, and other handmade items. We had been told that this was likely to happen, but being told hadn't really prepared us. I didn't want to buy anything, and after exhausting my repertoire of ways to say "no, thank you, I don't wany any," I gave up and turned back to my Swahili book. The irony of the moment would haunt me for several days. As the trip went on, we became more and more immune to this kind of interaction with the Maasai. That is, we learned to be indifferent.

We arrived at Tarangire about half past noon and waited for what would become a familiar twenty-minute ritual of having Rob pay our fees to enter the park. I don't know what transpired during those twenty minutes, but I don't think I want to know. Having obtained the necessary permission, we drove for about 15 minutes to a campsite and dropped off Henry and all our gear. Then we started the first of many game drives.

I am not going to recount every new animal sighting. It would be time-consumig for me and boring for you. I will say that Rob had set up our trip with a kind of genius in that every new place we drove, it seemed like things got more exotic. Our first sight of a giraffe was an occasion for ten minutes of taking pictures. In the coming days, we would get used to giraffes and baboons, and even elephants, although it's hard to get used to elephants.

Anyway, the highlights of this drive were our first sightings of all of the above, and more; our lunch stop where we matched wits with the sneaky, thieving vervet monkeys, and the baobab trees. I never got tired of elephants or baobabs.

I could look at these trees for hours.

As the sun went down, we returned to our campsite. This was our first sunset outside the city, and the views were stunningly beautiful. I've included two, below. The first is just a picture of the sky above one of the hills as we drove past. The other shows the road to our campsite.

It was late when we got out of the land rover, and we ate our dinner by torchlight. Before crawling into sleeping bags for the night, we were given a stern lecture by Rob about not leaving our tents in the dark. I won't repeat his instructions about what to do in case we felt we couldn't wait until morning to relieve ourselves. Anyway, his talk ensured that I would spend my waking moments, and there were many, listening for the sound of animal incursions into our encampment. It was a long night.

Next: Water in a Dry Land

NNHS Alumni Results - 2/19-20/11

2011-02-21T09:01:00.004-05:00

[An earlier version of this post mistakenly listed results from the GBTC Invite in January. My apologies!]

Bowdoin's Michele Kaufman competed on Saturday at the Women's New England Division III Championships at MIT, taking 2nd in the 55m hurdles in 8.37. In the same meet, another NN grad, Jaya Tripathi was listed as running the 400 leg on Amherst's DMR team that finished 4th.

The USATF-NE Indoor Track Championship Meet was held Sunday at Harvard's Gordon Track. I've been through the results and I think there were at least two NN alumnae and one current NN athlete competing:

Northeastern's Jess Barton placed 2nd in the mile in what I believe is a personal best time of 4:55.24. Also in the mile was Wheaton's Shoshanna Kruskal, who ran 6:03.14.

Current NN junior Stephanie Brown placed 2nd in the pole vault with a jump of 3.35m (10-11.75).

NN Boys 3rd at D1 Championships; Penn Wins 300

2011-02-19T08:07:00.003-05:00

Isaiah Penn took the lead early in the 300m, hit the break line first, and was never seriously challenged, as he won the D1 championship in 35.70 -- well ahead of runner-up Pat Farnham of Andover.

Penn had North's only individual victory, although Swardiq Mayanja came within an inch of taking the shot put title. The NN junior threw 54-7 in the final round, which was exactly one inch behind Durfee's Tresley Dupont. North also got points from sophomore Young Guang, who made the finals and placed 7th with a throw of 48-8. Ryan Donovan (45-2.5), Carl Witham (43-11.5), and Nate Menninger (39-10) also competed for North in the shot.

In the 1000m, senior Ezra Lichtman (2:32.9) ran a tactically flawless race but didn't have quite enough at the end to hold off Acton-Boxboro's Curt Owen and Wachusett's Alex Jagelsky, taking 3rd place and nabbing the last automatic qualifier for the state meet. Justin Keefe was in the thick of things in the first 600m, but dropped off the pace and finished 11th overall in 2:38.57.

Other individuals from North included Dan Ranti (9:56.34) who finished 10th in the 2M, Tylor Hart (6-0) and Nick Fofana (5-10) who were 11th and 13th, respectively, in the high jump, and Hart again in the long jump (19-6.75).

North's 4x200 team (Ryan Lucken, Terrell Doyle, Ben Clark, Nate Menninger) placed 3rd in 1:32.67 and earned an automatic bid to the state meet. The 4x400 team (Clark, Doyle, Orion Wagner (?), and Penn) ran 3:31.81 out of the penultimate heat to finish 5th overall. The 4x800 team ran 8:31.89 to place 16th.

New Bedford won the team title handily on the strength of two wins by Phito Gondre (55 dash and long jump), a 2nd and 4th place from teammate Justin Callendar in those same events, a tie for 5th in the high jump, and a win in the 4x200. North ended up 3rd with 36 points, just 3 points behind Acton-Boxboro.

2011 MA D1 Championships - Boys and Girls Results

NN Girls' 2011 Run Continues With D1 State Title

2011-02-18T22:40:00.006-05:00

(More fantastic photos from the meet)

Newton North's girls indoor track team continued its run of big meet victories last night, adding the D1 State Championship to its State Relays and Dartmouth Relays wins. The Tigers (55 points) took the title for the second year in a row, besting runner-up Andover (48), and Lincoln-Sudbury (42).

After more than five hours of intense competition that featured outstanding performances, unfortunate mishaps, and dramatic reversals of fortune for both teams, the meet came down to the 4x400 relay. Newton North held a five-point lead, which meant that Andover still had a slim chance.

That chance faded as the quartet of Madi Nadeau (59.2), Margo Gillis (59.4), Meghan Bellerose (59.9), and Carla Forbes (59.1) ran a metric meet record of 3:57.71. Indeed, if Forbes hadn't left a bit early and had to check herself, it could have been a half second faster. The final event put the exclamation on the meet for North, but there were certainly moments when the outcome was in doubt...

The meet started well for the Tigers, as Emily Hutchinson, Maeve Larkin, and Lucia Grigoli all earned a total of 10 points in the high jump. In a strange moment, defending state champion and top seed Moira Cronin of Andover seemed to have plenty of clearance on her third attempt at 5-3 but clipped the bar and had to settle for three-way tie for 4th place. However, Cronin's teammate Jess Salley won the competition, clearing 5-5 on her final attempt giving Andover 14 points for the event.

In the 600, Meghan Bellerose ran a controlled race, staying off the pace in the fast first lap and then patiently working her way up to the back of the lead pack. With 150 meters to go, Bellerose moved into 4th and was able to hold that position to the line, finishing in 1:37.42 and earning 5 points.

Margo Gillis (2:59.62) also finished 4th in the 1000, holding off a determined charge by Franklin sophomore Lauren Hagen (2:59.97). For Gillis, it was her first time under 3:00 this season. At the start, Gillis briefly followed Lincoln-Sudbury senior Andrea Keklak, but sensibly let her go after about 150 meters. Keklak would go on to run a meet record 2:49.88.

Sitting on twenty points, North looked to the hurdles to add to their total. Alas, third-seeded Kayla Wong had a poor start that seemed to affect her steps to the first hurdle. She clipped it, stumbled as her trail leg hit the tartan, and went down. North's other hurdler, Amy Ren, ran a season's best 8.92 but missed qualifying for the final by a mere 0.02. With North going 0 for the hurdles, and Andover taking 2 points and another 10 with a win in the 300 from Eve Bishop, it was time to worry.

This season, North's antidote to all manner of ills has been Carla Forbes. So it was again. The sophomore had qualified for the 55 final by running a personal best 7.30 in the prelims. As the two-miles dragged on, Forbes waited.

Andover, which had been cruising along since the high jump, hit another bump in the road when top-seeded Maggie Mullins wasn't able to keep pace with Franklin's Megan Ross in the 2M. The two had been so far ahead of the pack that when Mullins fell off the pace, she wasn't aware until it was too late that Wachusett's Rebecca Skodis and Waltham's Meghan Brophy were kicking hard. The two made up a five-second deficit in the final 200m, catching Mullins in the final 30 meters. Mullins reacted, but Skodis was in full stride, and The Andover runner had to settle for third.

At 7:36 p.m. Forbes finally settled into the starting blocks for the final of the 55 dash. The gun went off, and Forbes accelerated into the lead. Boston Latin's Emma Rice was closing fast, but it seemed that Forbes had held her off. All eyes turned to the scoreboard. But what was this? The results showed Rice first with a time of 7.69 and Forbes second with 7.76. The order of the finishers seemed wrong, but what was immediately bizarre were the times. There was no way that the D1 State Final would be won in 7.69 and that Forbes would run almost half a second slower than in the prelims. In a strange way, the absurdity of it kept us from panic. In a few minutes, the correct results appeared. Forbes had won in 7.31; Rice was second in 7.36.

There was no time to dwell on either the false results or the true ones. I jotted down these notes as I watched the sequence of events:

7:36 - Forbes wins 55
7:42 - Forbes receives first place medal
7:47 - Forbes takes first jump in LJ... 18-5

That 18-5 would win the competition, so in a space of 11 minutes, the sophomore won two events and catapulted North back into the lead. (Amy Ren would add two very welcome points by hitting 16-6 on her last long jump to move into 7th.)

So now it was just survive and take care of business in the relays.

There are times when you really don't want to be anywhere near Joe Tranchita during a track meet, and watching the 4x200 when his team is messing up their exchanges is one of them. Running in the seeded heat, North was in fourth when their third runner got trapped inside coming into the exchange. She had to extricate herself, and cross back out into lane three to make the handoff, which was not pretty. The loss of precious tenths of a second hurt North, as Andover, lying fifth, ran them down and edged them by four-hundredths of a second.

That set up the 4x400, where North had all its aces.

2011 MA D1 Championships - Boys and Girls Results

2011 D1 Indoor Preview - Girls

2011-02-17T19:00:00.002-05:00

Here's your form chart for the The MIAA Girls DI Indoor Track Championships.
(Corrected with 8-deep scoring - 2/18/11)

To repeat myself, a form chart is not a prediction; it's a summary of how many points each school would get if the results of each event were the same as the seeding performances. There are impossibilities and improbabilities galore in these numbers, but on average they do indicate the strongest teams.

1. Newton North 69.7 points (55H - 6; 55 - 8; 300 -2; 600 - 4; 1000 - 1; HJ - 9.7; LJ - 23!!; 4x2 - 10; 4x4 - 6)

I won't waffle. Newton North is the favorite. They have Carla Forbes, a veteran sophomore and defending state champion who is the odds-on favorite in the LJ and the second seed (by 0.02) in the 55. They have four high jumpers in the competition, with Lucia Grigoli at 5-4. They have Kayla Wong in the hurdles and LJ, They have two strong relay teams. And the total reflects only a single individual point from Margo Gillis, who is seeded 8th in the 1000m.

It's not that L-S and Andover aren't strong. They are great teams, too, and anything could happen, but only Newton North can have things go wrong (for example, under-performing in the jumps, messing up a relay) and still have a good chance to win.

2. Lincoln-Sudbury 61.3 points (55H - 5; 600 - 3; 1000 - 16!; 1M - 6; 2M - 3; HJ - 6.3; LJ - 3; 4x2 - 5; 4x8 - 4; 4x4 - 10)

L-S has potential scorers in 7-8 individual events and all the relays. They have Andrea Keklak entered in the 1000m and 2-mile, and she could win both events (she'll certainly be better than 6th in the 2M). They have upside in the LJ, but will have a tough time getting those 16 points in the 1000. If Keklak doubles in the 1000-2M, she's not available for a relay and that will hurt their chances big time. All-in-all, I think they're projected point total will be about what they can get.

3. Andover 54.3 points (55H - 1; 300 - 11; 600 - 1; 2M - 10; HJ - 16.3!; LJ - 1; 4x2 - 6; 4x4 - 8)

This is a team with big stars Moria Cronin (defending state champ in the high jump) and Maggie Mullins (top seed in the 2M), and typically strong relays). Although the projected scores don't show it, they are pretty deep, with quite a few athletes capable of cracking the top eight.

But there's not much upside from the stars, and that probably keeps them around 55 points, which might not be enough.

4. Wachusett 36.7 points

5. Franklin 28 points

6. Weymouth 25 points

I see a pretty significant gap between the top three teams and the rest of the field. Teams like Wachusett, Franklin, and Weymouth have a lot of athletes qualified, so if one of those teams has a great day they might rise to top of the chase pack, but I just don't see any of them catching NN, L-S, or Andover.

Anything can happen, though, especially in the jumps. Newton and Andover need lots of points from the jumps. If it doesn't happen, it opens the door for L-S and possibly other teams.

2011 D1 Indoor Preview - Boys

2011-02-17T07:15:00.005-05:00

The MIAA DI Indoor Track Championships kick off on Friday night at 4:30 at the RLTAC, and for your reading pleasure, here's a form chart for the boys competition.

A form chart is not a prediction; it's a summary of how many points each school would get if the results of each event were the same as the seeding performances. And even though it doesn't take into account seeds that are misleading, it turns out to be a pretty good way of focusing attention on the teams most likely to contend for the title.

A major new wrinkle to the process this year is that ~~distance~~ all runners are allowed to compete in two longer running events if they choose. There are certainly some athletes good enough to score in two distance events, but others are probably entered in two events but will scratch from one, depending on which event gives them the better chance to score points for the team.

Ok, without further ado, here are the top teams based on seeding performances:

1. New Bedford 37 points (55 - 10; LJ - 17; 4x200 - 10)

NB's Phito Gondre is seeded first in the 55 (6.46) and LJ (22-4). If Ricky Williams and Justin Callendar have a good night at the LJ pit, and if they can hang on to the baton in the 4x200, New Bedford has a great chance to win with only four athletes.

2. Newton North 36 points (300 - 10; 1000 - 10; SP - 10; 4x200 - 6)

The only team with three individuals seeded #1, North is also a bit deeper than NB, with chances for other points from the SP, HJ, and 1000. Obviously, it will be key for Isaiah Penn, Ezra Lichtman, and Swardick Mayanja to win or place in their respective events, plus big points from the relays. It seems like they will have to choose between stacking their 4x200 or 4x400, and the seeds suggest it will be the 4x200.

3. Acton-Boxboro 33 points (55H - 1; 300 - 6; 600 - 6; 1000 - 8; 4x4 - 8; 4x8 - 4)

A scary deep team with lots of upside. They need big nights from Brian Sommers (300), Alex Durkee (600), and Curt Owen (1000), and it would help their cause if they can get a top three place in the uber-competitive 4x800.

4. Andover 31 points (300 - 8; 1000 - 2; 1M - 7; 4x2 - 4; 4x4 - 2; 4x8 - 8)

Another deep team with upside, especially in the 1M (Simon Voorhees, 4:21.94, Will Osoff, 4:27.47). Can they field three competitive relays? Most likely only two, but that might be enough to win.

5. BC High 24 points

6. Attleboro 23.25 points

7. St. John Prep 22.25 points

8 Lawrence 20.63 points

9 Somerville - 20 points

It's not inconceivable that one of the 5-9 teams could emerge from the pack and take one of the top two trophies. In my opinion, the team best positioned for such an upset is St. John's, which has potential scorers in four events plus the 4x200 relay. BC High has 6-9 high jumper Nick Staley, 21-5 long jumper Yosa Nosamiefan, and the third-seeded 4x800 team, but I doubt that's enough.

So, in summary, it looks like at least four teams will still have a chance to win going into the relays. It should be a great meet!

Tanzania Journal - Day 4: Monduli Juu (Continued)

2011-02-16T08:30:00.001-05:00

Running Log, 12/27/10 - about 12 miles, from Monduli to Monduli Juu and back, with Oju

I promised to tell you about Oju's shoes...

When Joni was living in Monduli back in 2007, she did some running with a pair of well-worn ASICS that she had had for at least a couple of years. When it was time for her to leave and return to the States, she decided she would be buying new shoes and she knew that Oju could use them, so she left the shoes with him. I'm not sure what Oju was wearing before that, but they must have been trouble, because Joni's shoes were at least a size too small, probably more. But three and a half years later, he was still using them for his runs to Monduli Juu.

In the weeks leading up to our trip, Joni had told me I should bring an extra pair of running shoes that I wouldn't mind leaving behind. So I brought one pair for hiking in, one pair for running in, and one to give away. It turned out that Oju was the beneficiary. When I arrived at his room in the center of Monduli, I pulled out this pair from my backpack and made a presentation of sorts. Oju took off the shoes he had gotten from Joni, which were too small, and put on the ones I had brought, which were too big. I had this terrible feeling that they would be the cause of blisters, so I convinced him to wear two pairs of socks.

This whole exchange made a big impression on me. I couldn't quite imagine having such a strong desire or need to run that I would do 18 kilometers twice a week in shoes that forced my toes up tight into the front of the shoe. And then to exchange them for big clown-feet shoes that were too big seemed very unfair. And yet Oju assured me the "new" shoes were much better. The next time I go to Arusha, I'm going to bring the right size running shoes.

We set off at a leisurely trot, and my Swahili lesson began. We took a few turns to leave the main village, so I learned "kulia" (right), "kushoto" (left), and "sawa mbele" (straight ahead). The road was slightly downhill at first, then flattened out. The surface was a reddish dirt, soft without being too loose. The sun was almost directly overhead, but the the temperature was very comfortable, and there was a pleasant breeze. It was a beautiful day for a run.

As we left the village behind, we saw small groups of children playing in the fields by the side of the road. Sometimes they yelled something, but it was never sharp and edgy the way the kids had yelled in Arusha. I began to relax.

After about a mile and a half, the road began rising. There was no mystery about where we were heading. We had been able to see the mountains rising up in front us almost since we started. Our pace was still very slow and deliberate. Even so, the steady climbing kept us breathing fairly hard, and there were only a few words exchanged. "Kilima," said Oju, gesturing at the road in front of us. I repeated "kilima," and then to make sure, "hill?" Oju said yes. I repeated "kilima" a few more times, because it seemed this would be a very useful word.

After several miles of steady progress, we turned a corner and began ascending a much steeper hill. Here the grade was so severe that the road had been paved to keep it from washing away during the rains. I was just putting my head down, when Oju stopped and began walking. It was a little surprising at first, but then seemed such a sensible thing to do that I fell in step beside him. We were, after all, in no hurry. The road was long, the hill was steep, and we had plenty of time.

I began to think about time. It seemed to me that no one every became a distance runner without having a lot of time on their hands. Obviously no one who was in a hurry and who had money to spend would choose to run from Monduli to a distant outpost six miles away. I thought of all the distractions in my life, and the even greater sense of distraction I sensed in the kids at Concord. There was always something to do, and always someplace to go in a hurry. Oju was not in a hurry. He had all day, and so did I.

I thought about how, at our gentle pace, I could easily run for twenty miles, and then do it again the next day, and the next. Joni had told me that when she was living in Monduli, she would sometimes walk the six miles from town to the main road back to Arusha to catch a bus there. She didn't need to, she just had time for it and nothing else to do.

In the days that followed, we would drive through the Maasai lands, and would see Maasai men, women, and children walking miles and miles from the nearest village. They could and did walk all day and were never in a hurry. Later, in the national parks, we would get the same impression from the giraffes, elephants, zebra, and other creatures that slouched their way through the hot African day. No one rushed. There always seemed to be ample time to get wherever you needed to go. Even the big cats, who could, had they wanted to, shown us sprinting that would have made Usain Bolt look like he was running backwards, mostly just slept. These were the thoughts I had as we resumed our easy trot up the road.

After the steep grade, the pavement disappeared again, and we made our way up through the lovely countryside. From time to time we would come across children watching over herds of cattle or goats. Once we met two boys on the road, who ran with us for a little with big smiles before returning to their animals. At one point, a car passed, raising clouds of dust. It had been the first vehicle we had seen since we had left the plains.

Some time later the road leveled out onto a broad plateau, and we saw a low row of buildings. We had arrived in the market town of Monduli Juu. There were a lot of people milling around, including quite a few wearing the traditional Maasai shuka, the colorful robe draped over one shoulder. Oju knew a lot of people here, and exchanged greetings with several. No one seemed to think it unusual that we had run there.

At one point Oju disappeared into one of the shops and emerged a few moments later with two bottles of water. He nodded back towards the shop and said, simply, "my friend." We walked about, drinking our water, while Oju pointed to things and told me what they were in English and Swahili, or sometimes just Swahili. I repeated everything.

Although neither one of us was in any hurry to turn around and run down the mountain again, eventually we decided that we would. As the afternoon went on, our families would be waiting for us, wondering if we had been eaten by lions. We set out slowly, gathering speed as the road descended. The run back was easy, under control. I'm sure it took less time to run down than it had to run up, but the pace never picked up, even on the steep paved section.

Back in Monduli, we retraced our steps to Oju's house, picked up my backpack, and then began walking to Rose's house -- about a mile more. It seemed we could have run, but the walk was a nice cool down. Hakuna shida. No worry.

At Roses, I used a bucket of water to sponge off and then changed into pants and a clean shirt. Although everyone else had finished their afternoon meal, we feasted on the leftovers. Ann asked whether I had been able to keep up with Oju. I said that I was able to keep with him in running, but my Swahili was still lagging far behind. But I still had time, lots of time, to learn more.

Oju and I after running to Monduli Juu and back. Oju is still wearing his "new" shoes, his two pairs of socks, and the shorts he ran in. I've already sponged off and changed into my civilian clothes.

Next: Tarangire

Tanzania Journal - Day 4: Monduli Juu

2011-02-15T05:00:00.011-05:00

It may be that everything I have written so far has been motivated by a desire to write about the run I had on Monday, Dec. 27th. That was the day that Oju and I ran from the town of Monduli to the village of Monduli Juu (Monduli Highlands) and back again, a round trip of about 18 kilometers.

I know that I won't be able to fully describe the feeling I had on that day, the swelling sense of freedom and joy at running under the hot sun up the dirt road, seeing an occasional motor bike and passing Maasai children tending cattle on the hillside. On that day, I think I was as happy as I have ever been to be a runner. Although it sounds like an exaggeration, without that run I'm not sure how much I would have understood about Oju, about Arusha, about myself. That run seemed to make all the difference -- and for a few hours, at least, I didn't have to see Tanzania through the eyes of a baffled, apprehensive tourist, but instead could feel it through the soles of my feet and in the dust of the road stretching lazily before us.

To explain what led to that run in Monduli, I have to go back a few years.

When Joni returned to Tanzania in 2007, she didn't really have any plan that covered basic things like finding a place to stay. She had many friends and contacts in Arusha, though, so she ended up there and set about figuring out the next step. Although I don't know the whole series of events that led her there, Joni ended up staying for several months in Monduli with a woman named Rose, a teacher who worked at a school that served the local Maasai. Joni lived with her and helped take care of her house and two young sons.

Joni with Rose and her two sons

While living in Monduli, Joni began getting to know some of the people who worked at the open air market in the center of town. One of those people was Oju, a young man in his early twenties who sold produce there. They became friends, and Joni discovered that Oju liked to run. Or to put it more exactly, she found out that he would regularly run from Monduli to the Masaai market that was held twice a week in the village of Monduli Juu, about 9 kilometers away.

Joni and Oju selling tomatoes at the Monduli market, circa June 2007. Notice she is wearing a BSC XC Championship t-shirt

At least once, Joni ran part of the way with Oju. It was then that she found out that the road to Monduli Juu started easily but then rose sharply over a thousand feet into the hills. I remember her writing about this run, and I remember wishing I could have seen that road.

Back in the present, I knew there would be few opportunities to run. The city was crowded and dirty and not very pleasant, and the bush was far too dangerous. As a runner herself, Joni understood instinctively my need to do a "real" run, and she arranged it with Oju that he and I would run together in Monduli on one of our free days. As the day approached, I experienced a mix of intense anticipation for the run tempered by a small voice in my head that wondered whether I'd be able to handle it.

I don't think non-runners really understand or appreciate that even fit runners always have these voices of self-doubt. Going into a race or even a challenging workout we always wonder whether we'll be able to handle it. I was in that same state of mind thinking about the run with Oju. Here, in no particular order, were the things that worried me and nagged at my self-confidence:

The sun - I was newly arrived from New England, where the temperature had been below freezing for three weeks and the sun was a listless visitor lurking low on the horizon in a half-hearted appearance for nine hours out of every twenty-four. From that reality, I would be running for a couple of hours in the middle of the twelve-hour equatorial day, with the sun directly overhead. As far as I knew, we would have no water for the twelve mile round trip.

The hills - From Joni's description, these hills seemed really steep and really long. I didn't know exactly what that meant, but having seen the hills around Arusha, I was anxious that I would need oxygen for the mountains ahead.

Oju - I really had no idea how fit Oju was, but I knew that he did this run regularly and that he had sprinted up the hill behind his parents' house with a spring in his stride that I hadn't felt in twenty-five years. I knew he wouldn't abandon me, but I didn't want to be a weakling on this run and not be able to keep up with him.

It was with these thoughts in my head that I prepared for our third day in Tanzania

We woke early, ate breakfast, and headed downtown. The plan was to do a few errands, meet Oju, find a dala dala heading to Monduli and get there in the late morning. Oju and I would run. Joni and the others would visit with Rose and her kids and have lunch with them. In the afternoon, we would get a ride back to Arusha from another of Joni's friends who was heading that way.

Our second trip into the city was scarcely less chaotic than the first one. The day before had been a Sunday, and many shops and businesses had been closed. Now it was Monday, and the level of activity seemed to be at least double. Everything took longer. Everyone seemed a little more aggressive, a little more edgy. Even Joni began to get exasperated as she tried to guide us through the hubbub to places where we could do our errands, while brushing off the flycatchers who trailed after us.

When it was time to leave, it took us a long time to find a dala dala that was not empty. The problem with the empty ones was that, this being Africa, they wouldn't leave until they were full. So if we wanted to avoid waiting for another hour, we had to find one that was already half full but that had room for the six of us. Eventually we settled for one that was mostly empty, and put up with several circuits of the downtown area as the dala dala's driver and runner tried to round up more riders. With all this, we didn't actually leave Arusha until about 11:30, and didn't arrive in the Monduli until 45 minutes later.

Monduli seemed very small and provincial after Arusha, not that this was a mark against it. For one thing, the air was much better here. For another, no one immediately came over to sell us stuff. Joni gave us a very brief tour of the market, greeted some old friends, and then it was time for our party split up.

As everyone else headed off to Rose's house, Oju and I went to drop off my backpack at Oju's room, which was one of several in a one-story cinder block building near the main square. I took another long drink of water from the bottle I had brought with me, and then left it in Oju's room. It was time to start running, and I was giddy with anticipation.

Ah, but I have forgotten to tell you about Oju's shoes.

To be continued...

Tanzania Journal - Day 3 Immersion (continued)

2011-02-13T11:00:00.001-05:00

There are many local languages spoken in Tanzania, but only two "official" languages. One is English, which is used in higher education, commerce, and government. The other is Kiswahili, or as we say, "Swahili," which is used for just about everything else. The CIA World Factbook refers to Swahili as the "lingua Franca" of Central and East Africa.

It was our experience that everyone spoke Kiswahili and knew at least a little English, depending on how far they went in school and how much their work required them to interact with English speakers. For example, our tour guide, Rob, spoke English quite well. The hotel staff spoke it adequately. Many of the other Tanzanians we spent time with -- Oju and his family, our driver, our cook -- had varying amounts of limited English.

By the time we arrived at Oju's parents' house, muddy and damp, we had been in the country for a little less than 24 hours. In that time the urge to speak and understand Swahili had become an obsession for me. Despite the fact that I had not yet mastered basic greetings, I was working hard to acquire more words and would repeat them whenever the situation plausibly gave me an opportunity. With Oju, I had practiced some simple phrases, such as introducing myself and my family. Of course, with such a small repertoire, almost all our conversations ended a few moments after they began with me saying asante sana, thank you very much, and Oju saying karibu, you're welcome, and then appeals for Joni to translate.

Thus, when we arrived at Oju's family's house, most of our communication was with smiles, gestures, and a word here or there, or sometimes a longer phrase directed at someone who would render it into the language that the listener could understand. This would be followed by nods, more smiles, handshakes, hugs.

In addition to Oju and his parents, the other family members included Oju's brothers and sisters, brother-in-laws, sister-in-laws, a niece and nephew, and a baby. Among the adults of Oju's generation, it was never clear who was a blood relative and who was a relative by marriage. To make things more complicated, the women in the family with daughters were not called by their given name; instead, their family called them "Mama" followed by the name of the eldest daughter. Thus, Oju's mother was not called by her given name, but was referred to as "Mama Joyce" because Oju's oldest sister was named Joyce. Another of Oju's sisters had a daughter named "Pray," and so she was referred to as "Mama Pray."

After all of our greetings and after presenting the gifts we had brought, we were ushered into the larger room of the two-room main house, where we packed ourselves in around a low table. I sat between Joni and Peter on my right, and Oju's brother Emmanuel ("Imma") and sister Joyce on my left. Imma was gregarious and engaging. He had studied enough English to both keep a conversation going and be able to answer some of my questions about how to say things in Swahili. It turned out he also knew some French, so our conversation, which was mostly on his side, shifted from English to French, with a little Swahili thrown in. Throughout the meal, He also made it his personal mission to make sure I had seconds, thirds, and fourths, of every one of the delicious dishes put in front of me.

Peter, Joni, Jon, Imma, and Joyce. Imma is telling a story and plotting to get me to eat all of the avocados and bananas on the nearest plate.

I don't know how long we sat at the table, passing around the dishes of rise, beans, vegetables, and fresh fruit. It seemed like many hours, although perhaps it was less. With our limited language skills, we did the best we could to express all that could be expressed, and especially our gratitude for the meal and for their hospitality to us and to Joni.

After our feast, we went outside and a decision was made to see the house of one of Oju's sisters, a little way up the road. So we all walked to that house, went inside and sat down around another table, where we were served glass bottles of coke and Fanta. Although we were all quite full from our large meal, we would not have considered refusing this gesture of hospitality. Unlike Oju's parents' house, his sister's house had electricity and a TV. For the entire time we were there, the TV played a music video showing alternating shots of a singer crooning away, some African drummers, and a line of men doing cheesy dance steps in apparently traditional tribal costume (think: grass skirts). The music was catchy, but the video was... well, pretty silly, actually.

(We would be surprised when the next day, we visited another Tanzanian home with a TV and saw another similar video playing over and over. It was hard not to think of these as some kind of joke, but they must have been very popular.)

When we had drunk our sodas, someone else had they idea that we should walk up the hillside to a ridge where we could see a nice view of the valley. So we walked out and up, under banana trees, past small garden plots of soft rich soil, and up a steep hill. Oju led the way, bounding up the steep grade like a mountain goat. By this time, everyone knew that Joni had arranged for me and Oju to go for a long run the next day, and as they saw Oju swiftly and effortlessly climb this hill, most of my family started speculating on how long I would last. Only Loren expressed confidence in me, saying that Oju looked like a sprinter to him.

The view from the top of the hill was spectacular and well worth the climb. Although we couldn't see downtown Arusha, we could see far below us the road we had walked in the rain to get to Oju's house. We took lots of pictures, and then walked along a ridge to try to get a glimpse of Mt. Meru, the second highest mountain in Tanzania after Mt. Kilimanjaro. I've included a picture of Mt. Meru that we took at the end of our trip from a different location, but on that day only the shoulders of the mountain were visible, and the summit was shrouded in mist.

Oju's brother Zakayu takes a picture of Joni and Oju.

My running partner, Oju.

Mt. Meru on a clearer day.

As we walked down the hillside again, the afternoon was getting quite late. We stopped again to admire the building site for a house that another one of Oju's brothers (or brothers-in-law) was building. It was explained that construction on a house might start and stop many times, as money became available or scarce. We admired the foundation, but secretly worried that the house, built on the side of this steep hill, would wash away with the rest of the hillside if there was too much rain.

Then it was time to say our good-byes to our hosts, to take more pictures, to promise to print out some of those pictures for them, and to begin the long walk down to the main road, where we would catch a dala dala and head back to the hotel.

We began our walk with half the family walking with us, then one-by-one, they would stop and turn back. It was getting late, and there was less than an hour of daylight left for our journey. Both Oju and Joni made it clear that we did NOT want to be out after dark. With the sun setting, we reached the end of the dirt road.

A few minutes later we were on a dala dala, and a half hour later we walked through the gates of L'Oasis in the twilight. None of us were hungry, but we all gathered in the large common room of the hotel with bottles of beer to talk about and relive our amazing day. As we thought of our hosts and their home, we couldn't help looking around at the hotel with its electric lights, its running water, its refrigeration, and its TV showing English soccer on TV. What had appeared rustic the previous evening, now seemed opulent.

NEXT: Running With Oju

Keflezighi Shut Out of Boston (as reported by TheOnion.com)

2011-02-13T05:00:00.001-05:00

BAA Marathon Releases Elite Field For 2011 And Meb Keflezighi Is Left Out And Controversy Simmers - story on letsrun.com

It's not April Fool's Day, but what the hell...

(Boston, MA) - The BAA's new online entry system apparently claimed a famous victim who failed to get his entry to the 2011 Boston Marathon in on time. Meb Keflezighi, Olympic silver medalist and the first American runner in a generation to win the prestigious New York City Marathon, was shut out of the Boston race when the 21,000 available entries were filled in a little over eight hours. That means Keflezighi will be watching the 2011 race on TV instead of racing the Kenyans up heartbreak hill.

"I'm disappointed, obviously," said Keflezighi from his home in Mammoth Lakes, California. "I tried to log in to the web site, but the server was busy. I didn't think it was a big deal because last year we had like, what, 60 days before they ran out of entries. I went out for a long run and when I got back I tried again and the race was full."

"Of course California being three hours behind didn't help any," the former Olympian added.

Race Organizers downplayed the outcome of using their new online entry system. "It's unfortunate," said Hancock's sponsorship and event marketing chief Doug Fluffman, "but we thought our [race entry] system performed remarkably well, all things considered. It's certainly more fair than relying on snail mail. At the same time we sympathize with Mr. Tetrazini and we certainly hope he is able to get up a little earlier next year so we can welcome him to Boston in 2012. Of course, if he really wants to run this year's race, there are still some charity numbers available."

For his part, Keflezighi said he wasn't interested in raising money to gain entry to the hugely popular BAA marathon. "I would hope that the race would want to see somebody at the front wearing a USA singlet," he said. "I mean, after I won New York, it was a great thing for this country. I went on Letterman. I read his lame top-ten list. People started believing in U.S. distance running again. Doesn't that count for anything?"

But despite the runner's complaints, the BAA appears ready to stand firm. "Every runner has to realize that it's not about who wins or loses, it's about the common man and woman and giant beer can who give the race its unique character. It's about the runner who selflessly raises $5000 for medical research. It's about fairness..."

And having a fast internet connection.

(No actual wire service accounts were harmed in this story.)

Tanzania Journal - Day 3: Immersion

2011-02-12T05:00:00.022-05:00

Feast with Oju's family.

Running Log, 12/26/10 -- about 4 miles, out and back from L'Oasis

Our first full day in Arusha was in many ways, as remarkable and memorable as any we experienced during the trip. And yet, when I describe it, it sounds commonplace. I woke up, I went for a short run, we went into town to the market, we visited Oju's family's house. We returned to the hotel. Why was it so extraordinary?

I had gone to bed the previous evening listening to loud voices and music from the alley behind our hut, and in the distance, the barking of dogs back and forth in the night. When I woke up, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was actually morning and that I had slept through the night. The wild barking of the dogs had been replaced by the reassuring crowing of roosters. Without stopping long to think, I pulled on my running stuff and prepared for my first solo run in Tanzania. It was Sunday morning, and I figured that there wouldn't be many people out and about this early. I figured wrong.

I had planned to follow the same route that Joni and I had run the previous afternoon, going a little bit further this time. I went down to the gate and stepped out into the lane, trying to pretend that it was just another run. The first thing I noticed as I took my first tentative steps was that I was not alone. Someone was already walking along the lane. I took my first turn and there were more people walking, plus a bicyclist. After a couple of hundred meters I turned again onto a slightly wider road and was amazed to see people of all ages walking in both directions, some heading down to the main highway, others coming back. Sometimes a bicycle or motorcycle would go by, sometimes a truck or car. This was at 6:45 on a Sunday morning.

I ran down the road avoiding the pedestrians, bikes, and vehicles, and at the same being careful not to stumble on the stones and ruts. I had to keep reminding myself that Tanzanians drive on the left side of the road, not the right, and I tried hard to stay well out of the way of the few motorists. I reached the main highway and decided to turn East, out of town, instead of West the way Joni and I had gone the day before. There were lots of of people walking or standing on the side of the road, many of them waiting to catch a ride from a dala dala, one of a motley fleet of minivans that seemed to run at all hours. I'll have more to say about the dala dalas, but I had not yet ridden on one and knew nothing of their ways.

Although there were some stretches where I had to be cautious, for the most part I was able to progress more or less unimpeded by running on the shoulder between the pedestrians and the lanes of traffic. I started running faster, but soon felt a tightness in my lungs. Even at this early hour, the air was foul with the black haze from diesel trucks, buses, and the dala dalas, as well as from the smoke from open fires. After a few days, all of us would find that being in the city left us with persistent sore throats and hacking coughs. When we blew our noses, the tissues would be black with airborn pollution.

I ran for about a mile and a half, reaching the top of a fairly long rise where a wide dirt road came in from the side. This seemed like a good place to turn around if I didn't want to miss breakfast, so I headed back. Ten minutes later I was feeling pretty pleased with myself as I made my turn off the highway onto the dirt road, and ran confidently up the hill. The smaller road that led to the hotel was around here somewhere... but suddenly I was passing buildings I had never seen before. For a moment I felt complete disorientation -- like waking up and not recognizing the room you are in. I had a moment of panic thinking that I had no way to find my way back, but then regained my composure and realized I had only to backtrack a little bit. Retracing my steps for fifty meters, I saw that I had passed right by what now seemed like an insignificant alley between two houses. This was, in fact, the lane back to the hotel.

After a shower and breakfast -- eggs, toast, some nondescript cereal, and delicious fresh pineapples, bananas, and mangos -- Joni, Loren, Ann, Ann's brother Peter, and I headed toward town. We walked down to the main road, turning West this time, and then continued for another mile or so until we got to downtown Arusha.

In writing this, I searched for pictures to help convey what the downtown area was like. Unfortunately, all I found were a handful of mostly antiseptic pictures of big buildings, statues, and ourselves. There's a picture of Loren and me, on some quiet street outside some nice building, and I want to turn the camera in some other direction away from the calmness. Maybe the absence of any photos with grit reflects that fact that we were feeling uncomfortable at being so obviously from somewhere else; maybe we thought we would be insulting the inhabitants by taking pictures of what we found unusual -- the street vendors, the teeming market, the garbage in the streets; or maybe it just didn't occur to us to try to capture the hot, hustling, unwashed heart of the city. Whatever the reason, I have no images other than the ones in my memory that capture the feeling of that first walk into downtown.

Loren and Jon find a quiet corner in downtown Arusha. Not even a hint of tan yet.

It soon became obvious that what we were doing was following Joni, who led us through a series of errands. Much of the cityscape was familiar -- big, modern buildings, with well-dressed men and women coming in and out, billboards for cell phones and coca cola, traffic lights and uniformed policemen. But much was exotic and unexpected -- the women with full baskets of fruit on their heads, the men pulling impossibly heavy wooden carts filled with produce.

And then there were the flycatchers. These were young men who hung around downtown waiting for white tourists to show up. They would then engage the tourists in English, Italian, German, or whatever was needed in a clever sales pitch for some cheap painting or trinket. If the victim tried to say hapana, asante -- no, thank you, they would smile and pull out a slim English-Swahili phrasebook for sale. If the customer grew really annoyed, they would reach into a bag and offer to sell a t-shirt emblazoned with the words "I am a mzungu, no I do not want to buy anything." The flycatchers loved talking to Loren, who would engage them in discussions of their favorite American hip hop artists.

Our plan for the day involved meeting Joni's friend Oju, and taking a dala dala to his family's house in a neighborhood a few miles from our hotel. Oju himself lived in the village of Monduli, about 30 kilometers from Arusha and the place where Joni had stayed in 2007. I will have a lot more to say about Oju. After buying some gifts for Oju's family at the central market, we met Oju and found a dala dala headed in our direction.

Here's how the dala dalas worked: each one had a driver and a "runner" who leaned out a window or the sliding door of the van to announce the destination and encourage people to get on board. At a stop, the runner would leap out of the van and make sure everyone and everything got in. We found out that dala dala carried not only people, but cargo, too -- baskets of fruit or vegetables being popular. When we thought the van was full, it wasn't. More people would get on. When it was time to pull away, the runner would bang his hand on the roof as a signal to the driver, and the dala dala would speed off to its next stop where even MORE people or bananas would get on.

There were dala dalas everywhere and almost every one sported an image or slogan to make that particular vehicle stand out among all the others. Some of these decorations were solemn -- for example, references to the bible or Koran -- but most of them were images or logos taken from popular culture. Some proclaimed their allegiance to American sports teams or English football clubs. Others had the face or name of a famous public figure -- a hip hop artist or politician. Together they formed a kind of garish and bizarre art form, a series of glimpses into Arusha's and our collective unconscience. Loren and I found them fascinating and hilarious.

The dala dala took us back in the same general direction we had come from, continuing on the highway that I had run that morning. I was surprised when we stopped at precisely the point where I had turned around on my run, and we all tumbled out of the van and collected ourselves.

We were at the beginning of another dirt road that snaked uphill into another recently built neighborhood of shops and two-room houses. As Oju led us up the hill, it began to rain. At first the rain was pleasant, making the heat less oppressive. But soon it was a full downpour and the dirt road was a river of mud. We took shelter under the porch of a low concrete building, while Oju and his cousin disappeared. Considering the heavy rain, I was struck by the lack of urgency to cover bins of produce or other things. Although activity slowed down in the street, it didn't completely stop, and there were people and animals who simply continued to let the rain fall on them. In about ten minutes, maybe less, Oju returned with three umbrellas. We paired off and continued walking up the road, through the mud, two people to an umbrella, which was really like not having an umbrella at all. Luckily, the rain was already less intense, and by the time we reached Oju's family's house about a half mile up the road, the rain had stopped.

On the way to Oju's house, waiting for the rain to let up.

How can I describe what it was like to arrive at Oju's house? It was a distinctly strange and wonderful experiences to step off the soupy dirt lane, duck through a gap in the trees and find ourselves in the open courtyard of their home. There was the main house with a room for sleeping and a room for living/eating; there was a separate structure for cooking meals, an outhouse, and a pen with goats. I think there might have been a chicken coop, too. When we entered this compound, we were treated like long lost relatives by this Tanzanian family. Although our clothes were now sodden and caked with red mud from the road, we felt like honored guests at a state dinner.

Oju's father (left), mother (middle), and brother (right).

To be continued...

One Shoe, One Sock, One Win

2011-02-11T09:26:00.002-05:00

The 3000m at Saturday's New Balance Indoor Grand Prix was one of the most exciting races most of us had ever seen. The last lap is such a desperate struggle among such good athletes that it takes your breath away. It's also a treat to have Tim Hutchings calling the race!

If you didn't see it on ESPN2 on Sunday, the broadcast is now posted on YouTube, and embedded below. Enjoy!

Penn Runs MA #1 300m

2011-02-10T08:50:00.002-05:00

Isaiah Penn won the 300 at last night's Bay State Conference Meet, running 35.58, the fastest time in the state this year.

Penn was one of several Tigers to win their events. Justin Keefe won a deep and highly competitive mile, running a season's best 4:29.02 (sixth place was 4:32.72). Tylor Hart won the high jump at 6-2. Swardick Mayanja won the shot put by three feet with a heave of 49-8. North also won the 4x400 and 4x800 relays. The 4x400 team of Orion Wagner, Ben Clark, Terrell Doyle, and Penn ran a season's best time of 3:32.71. The 4x800 team of Keefe, Jon Long, Mike Schlichting, and Ezra Lichtman ran 8:32.93 to win by seven seconds.

Earlier Lichtman finished second by .03 to Framingham's Ben Groleau in the 1000. Dan Ranti took 2nd in the 2-mile. Nate Menninger was 4th in the 55.

For the girls, Kayla Wong won the 55 hurdles, running 8.53 in the final (and matching her season's best 8.47 in the qualifying heat). Carla Forbes won the 55 in 7.39. Forbes (18-3.25) and Wong (16-9.5) also went 1-2 in the long jump. Meghan Bellerose had a great race in the 600, running 1:37.99, a personal best and the 11th fastest time in the state this year. Emily Hutchinson and Lucia Grigoli went 2-3 in the high jump. Devika Banerjee finished 3rd in the 2-mile. Madi Nadeau took 3rd in the 300.

North's 4x200 and 4x800 relay teams finished 2nd in their respective races.

Bay State Conference Meet - Boys Results

Bay State Conference Meet - Girls Results