At 7:10 p.m., the crowd pressed forward, squeezing through the narrow gates that limited access to Charles Street from the Boston Common. I tried to slide forward, tried to improve my chances of making it to the front of the throng of 12,000 runners, while at the same time not being too obnoxious about it. What I really wanted right then was a pass, or a special number certifying that I belonged with the few true 5:00-6:00 minute milers in attendance.
I glanced back to make sure that Riley was following me. We had discussed what we had to do to avoid being buried in the back of the crowd, and he was proving an apt pupil. I could also see that as we moved closer and closer to the front, his eyes got wider. I had tried to describe the uneasy feeling of having so many people behind you, all of them ready to run up and down your back if you faltered. Riley got to a certain point, perhaps six rows of people from the front, and then stopped. I moved up a bit more, and then settled into place about three rows back. I looked down at the feet of the runners around me. "At least," I thought "most of these people are wearing racing shoes."
I was also wearing racing shoes. I knew that for most of the people behind me it was a fun run, and I had no problem with that. I knew that up here at the front we were the oddballs -- the ones who warmed up, the ones who brought racing shoes, the ones who discreetly changed our company-issued cotton t-shirts for our coolmax singlets. I felt another twinge of concern for Riley, who was running in exactly his second road race ever, and was straddling the world of the fun run and the serious race. He would be on his own soon.
What a strange event that Corporate Challenge is! Incredibly popular among Boston-area coporations, the race always reaches its capacity shortly after making entries available. It is a bonding event for employees, a rare opportunity to express pride in where you work. As I've said before, it's not necessarily about running fast, but about getting 20-30 of your co-workers to show up in shorts and sneakers, wear the clever or not-so-clever t-shirt designed by the graphic arts department, and sweat a little on a hot summer night.
And it was hot! Although temperatures had dropped into the 80s by the 7:30 start, the air was heavy with humidity. I was planning to start cautiously. I had urged Riley to do the same.
At exactly 7:30, having listened to several speeches, having been harangued by a zealous aerobics instructor who was supposed to lead us through a "warm-up" routine of steps, kicks, and arm swings, even though we were jammed tightly together like hot, human french fries in a 12,000 person happy meal -- after having been exhorted to "do our best," we were ready to go. After a verbal command, an air horn set us our way.
I had only one goal for the first half mile -- not to be tripped. I achieved this goal, although there were some near misses as exuberant runners around me darted to and fro across the road looking for some sliver of daylight through which to advance. I thought, "there's plenty of time for moving up." I passed the first mile in a very relaxed 5:40, well back in the pack. I would guess there were at least 50-60 runners in front of me at that point, maybe more. The leaders were out of sight already and I wasn't much concerned about them. Riley was somewhere behind me, but he was no longer my concern. I began to concentrate on continuing to run relaxed and "cool" and on catching people.
At the turnaround, just before 2 Miles, I had moved up to perhaps 35th-40th. I was feeling pretty good, not over-heated at all and striding out well - as in a good tempo run. The people I passed looked were putting up little resistance, most likely victims of the early pace and the heat. The third mile is a long straight shot on Comonwealth Avenue, before it reaches the Public Garden. Towards the end of this stretch, I finally caught a big group of 8-10 runners that had been my objective since the turnaround. As I caught them, the group seemed to be splitting up, and I managed to latch on to two guys at the front who were breaking away.
We rounded the Public Garden, and turned onto Charles Street for the final 150 meters. I was hoping it would not come down to a sprint, but my bid to lose these two other guys failed, and we all kicked in together. My time was 19:24 (5:32 pace) -- quite a bit slower than last year, but not too bad considering the heat. I had run conservatively and had enjoyed myself. I could live with that today.
After grabbing some water, I waited for Riley. He arrived a little later than I expected, at just over 23 minutes. He had run his first mile in about six minutes, as he had planned, and then suffered in the heat, slowing to seven-minute miles by the end. His training hadn't prepared him to handle the sustained fast pace, although I noticed he recovered quickly and was in good spirits when we all went out to eat afterwards. Youth must be served. If not this year, then soon. Very soon.
June 29, 2007
June 28, 2007
Heat Wave!
I blame everything on the heat.
Don't click on this link: www.nnhsxc.net -- the domain name has expired, and I need to renewe it. I blame the heat.
(If you just can't live without the site for a few days, you can follow this link:
Newton North Track and XC Web Site.
Why haven't I updated the site since November? It got too cold, then it was too rainy, and now it's too hot.
Last night, newly minted high school graduate Matt Centrowitz ran 4:03.47 for the mile, finishing one place ahead of certified old guy Jim Sorenson, who ran 4:05.27. Both of them missed breaking 4:00, so mostly yawns from the T&F message boards. It's hotter than heck out there in Indiana.
I have a list of things I want to write about:
- Heat waves
- Barry Bonds and Ben Johnson
- the Evils of Treadmills
- Gender-Based Differences in Training Run Conversations
- My Brilliant High Jump Career
But I can't get started on any of them. There is a fuzziness in my brain that is exactly the fuzziness that sets in when one has been running for 40-50 minutes in these humid conditions, unable to shed the heat that builds up with every step.
I like the heat, really I do. It's an all-purpose excuse for slow runs, software failures, and writer's block.
Don't click on this link: www.nnhsxc.net -- the domain name has expired, and I need to renewe it. I blame the heat.
(If you just can't live without the site for a few days, you can follow this link:
Newton North Track and XC Web Site.
Why haven't I updated the site since November? It got too cold, then it was too rainy, and now it's too hot.
Last night, newly minted high school graduate Matt Centrowitz ran 4:03.47 for the mile, finishing one place ahead of certified old guy Jim Sorenson, who ran 4:05.27. Both of them missed breaking 4:00, so mostly yawns from the T&F message boards. It's hotter than heck out there in Indiana.
I have a list of things I want to write about:
- Heat waves
- Barry Bonds and Ben Johnson
- the Evils of Treadmills
- Gender-Based Differences in Training Run Conversations
- My Brilliant High Jump Career
But I can't get started on any of them. There is a fuzziness in my brain that is exactly the fuzziness that sets in when one has been running for 40-50 minutes in these humid conditions, unable to shed the heat that builds up with every step.
I like the heat, really I do. It's an all-purpose excuse for slow runs, software failures, and writer's block.
June 27, 2007
Youth vs. Age in Bloomington
The American Milers Club High Performance Series features a mile event tonight in which two well-known athletes will be in the field taking a shot at running a sub-4:00 mile. What makes the race unique is that one of them is (officially) still a high-school athlete, and the other has celebrated his 40th birthday.
The kid is Matt Centrowitz. He won the NON 2-Mile two weeks ago in 8:41, and finished second (by 0.01!) to A.J. Acosta in the 1500m at USATF Junior Nationals last weekend. Centrowitz is bidding to become the fifth American high school runner ever to run sub 4:00 (after Jim Ryun, Marty Liquori, Tim Danielson, and Alan Webb).
The geezer is Jim Sorenson, who turned 40 this year. Earlier this month, Sorenson set the World M40 record at 1500m, running 3:44.06. No M40 runner has ever run sub-4:00 outdoors. The listed world record is 4:02.53, held by Great Britain's Dave Moorcroft. Indoors, Eamonn Coughlin ran 3:58.13 (at the Harvard Track!). Sorenson would dearly love to take a crack at the outdoor record.
The prospect of both runners challenging 4:00 in the same race is tantalizing.
Start list for the 1M on Wednesday night
The kid is Matt Centrowitz. He won the NON 2-Mile two weeks ago in 8:41, and finished second (by 0.01!) to A.J. Acosta in the 1500m at USATF Junior Nationals last weekend. Centrowitz is bidding to become the fifth American high school runner ever to run sub 4:00 (after Jim Ryun, Marty Liquori, Tim Danielson, and Alan Webb).
The geezer is Jim Sorenson, who turned 40 this year. Earlier this month, Sorenson set the World M40 record at 1500m, running 3:44.06. No M40 runner has ever run sub-4:00 outdoors. The listed world record is 4:02.53, held by Great Britain's Dave Moorcroft. Indoors, Eamonn Coughlin ran 3:58.13 (at the Harvard Track!). Sorenson would dearly love to take a crack at the outdoor record.
The prospect of both runners challenging 4:00 in the same race is tantalizing.
Start list for the 1M on Wednesday night
June 26, 2007
Everest Race Report; Riley Update
Tom Dmukauskas, my clubmate in the Cambridge Sports intrepid hiker and endurance runner, has written a fascinating account of his experience competing in the Everest Marathon.
Everest Marathon 2007 - The Infinite Course
I don't know about you, but when I hear about something as ridiculously extreme as running a marathon down the side of Mt. everest, my brain dismisses it as a kind of warped fantasy. This sense of detachment is blown to smithereens by Tom's detailed account of the race. Here's a little sample:
"The little bit of running I had done at Dingboche on the trek up taught me that flats or the slightest uphill camber left the legs in hypoxic shock after 200m. More than just a flash of exhaustion, the sensation also resembled the pins and needles feeling derived from cutting off circulation to an extremity. This race would be tough enough without that feeling, so my strategy until we had descended below 4000m was to only run on the downhills."
Riley Update
For all you doubters out there, I asked Riley how his training was going for this Thursday's 3.5M Corporate Challenge event. He said that yesterday he ran 3.5 miles in practice at about 6:00 per mile pace. if it was an accurate course, then that's an excellent effort! I think the race between us will be closer than many (here) have predicted.
Everest Marathon 2007 - The Infinite Course
I don't know about you, but when I hear about something as ridiculously extreme as running a marathon down the side of Mt. everest, my brain dismisses it as a kind of warped fantasy. This sense of detachment is blown to smithereens by Tom's detailed account of the race. Here's a little sample:
"The little bit of running I had done at Dingboche on the trek up taught me that flats or the slightest uphill camber left the legs in hypoxic shock after 200m. More than just a flash of exhaustion, the sensation also resembled the pins and needles feeling derived from cutting off circulation to an extremity. This race would be tough enough without that feeling, so my strategy until we had descended below 4000m was to only run on the downhills."
Riley Update
For all you doubters out there, I asked Riley how his training was going for this Thursday's 3.5M Corporate Challenge event. He said that yesterday he ran 3.5 miles in practice at about 6:00 per mile pace. if it was an accurate course, then that's an excellent effort! I think the race between us will be closer than many (here) have predicted.
June 24, 2007
After the USATF National Championships
A few random thoughts after following the USATF National Championships for the last four days...
The last time I noticed, Jennifer Barringer was finishing 10th at Footlocker XC Nationals in December 2004. Next thing I know, the Colorado sophomore is winning the U.S. Championship in the 3000m steeplechase. Not only did she win, she set a meet record of 9:34.64, only five seconds off the American record. Although she calls herself a "baby" in the event, it looks like Barringer has found a home in the steeple.
As defending world champion in the 400m, Jeremey Wariner already had a free ticket to Osaka in his main event, so he went to Indianapolis to work on his speed -- in the 200. He did pretty well, finishing fourth. But does anyone else wonder what Wariner could do if he headed in the opposite direction and tried the 800? I know, I know, he's the best in the world at 400m, why would he ever put himself through the pain of moving up to the 800? But with his ability to run sub 44:00, and with that smooth, efficient stride, he looks like he could be one of the all time greats. On the other hand, he'd have to fight for position, learn tactics. No more running in his own lane for the entire race. But wouldn't you love to see what he could do?
Tyson Gay -- 9.84 100m, 19.62 200m. Both times were run into mild headwinds. The 200 in 19.62 was the second fastest 200m in history, behind only Michael Johnson's other-worldy 19.32 from the 1996 Olympics. Tyson Gay trains with another ex-Arkansas guy Wallace Spearmon, who ran a not-too-shabby 19.89 for second. Imagine what their practice sessions are like!
Why is it so fascinating to watch Alan Webb? Ever since he ran that 3:53 as a high school kid, we have wondered what he could do when he "grew up" and reached his peak. It hasn't been easy for Webb to be the focus of so much hype, so many expectations. He went to Michigan, but struggled with injury. He returned home to Virginia and struggled some more. He got healthy again but struggled to learn how to race in championship events. In the last two years, Webb has run well, but inconsistently. He set an American Record for 2-Miles, ran a 3:50 mile. Won in Europe. But still, we wonder what he will do when he really puts it all together.
It's not fair, really, but what can we do? We see the talent and potential and we expect Webb's performance to be spectacular. One thing is for sure, Web himself cares more than anyone else about running well, as his reaction to winning the 1500m yesterday shows.
Here's a video link to NBC coverage of Webb winning the 1500m in meet record time.
By the way, that's Boston English graduate Said Ahmed (not Achmed!) leading the race on the first lap and finishing 6th in 3:40.8.
Anyone else wonder about those Japanese flags being handed to race winners? Finish Line Pundit has a good essay on the weirdness and inappropriateness of forcing the athletes to wave the flags. I'd go a step further and downplay the display of any flag around the shoulders of a sweaty athlete.
The last time I noticed, Jennifer Barringer was finishing 10th at Footlocker XC Nationals in December 2004. Next thing I know, the Colorado sophomore is winning the U.S. Championship in the 3000m steeplechase. Not only did she win, she set a meet record of 9:34.64, only five seconds off the American record. Although she calls herself a "baby" in the event, it looks like Barringer has found a home in the steeple.
As defending world champion in the 400m, Jeremey Wariner already had a free ticket to Osaka in his main event, so he went to Indianapolis to work on his speed -- in the 200. He did pretty well, finishing fourth. But does anyone else wonder what Wariner could do if he headed in the opposite direction and tried the 800? I know, I know, he's the best in the world at 400m, why would he ever put himself through the pain of moving up to the 800? But with his ability to run sub 44:00, and with that smooth, efficient stride, he looks like he could be one of the all time greats. On the other hand, he'd have to fight for position, learn tactics. No more running in his own lane for the entire race. But wouldn't you love to see what he could do?
Tyson Gay -- 9.84 100m, 19.62 200m. Both times were run into mild headwinds. The 200 in 19.62 was the second fastest 200m in history, behind only Michael Johnson's other-worldy 19.32 from the 1996 Olympics. Tyson Gay trains with another ex-Arkansas guy Wallace Spearmon, who ran a not-too-shabby 19.89 for second. Imagine what their practice sessions are like!
Why is it so fascinating to watch Alan Webb? Ever since he ran that 3:53 as a high school kid, we have wondered what he could do when he "grew up" and reached his peak. It hasn't been easy for Webb to be the focus of so much hype, so many expectations. He went to Michigan, but struggled with injury. He returned home to Virginia and struggled some more. He got healthy again but struggled to learn how to race in championship events. In the last two years, Webb has run well, but inconsistently. He set an American Record for 2-Miles, ran a 3:50 mile. Won in Europe. But still, we wonder what he will do when he really puts it all together.
It's not fair, really, but what can we do? We see the talent and potential and we expect Webb's performance to be spectacular. One thing is for sure, Web himself cares more than anyone else about running well, as his reaction to winning the 1500m yesterday shows.
Here's a video link to NBC coverage of Webb winning the 1500m in meet record time.
By the way, that's Boston English graduate Said Ahmed (not Achmed!) leading the race on the first lap and finishing 6th in 3:40.8.
Anyone else wonder about those Japanese flags being handed to race winners? Finish Line Pundit has a good essay on the weirdness and inappropriateness of forcing the athletes to wave the flags. I'd go a step further and downplay the display of any flag around the shoulders of a sweaty athlete.
Avoiding the Competition
No corner of the world has so many road races as New England. On any weekend of the year -- even in the dead of winter -- an intrepid runner can find a race, and in summer the calendar is filled to bursting with opportunities to run.
For example, coolrunning.com lists no fewer than ten road races taking place in Massachusetts today. The president of my running club compiled a list of 25(!) organized, advertised road races taking place in New England on July 4th.
Surprisingly, given the number of events, there's almost always decent competition at these race. Seek out the smallest town, the most obscure race, and you are still likely to run into someone fast. That's a testament to the overall depth of talent in these parts and the enthusiasm for the sport.
In fact, it's kind of surprising when you show up at a race and you don't encounter fast guys. Occasionally, the competition goes elsewhere and you pick up a trophy because all the fast guys were chasing money somewhere else. I used to write a feature for my club web site called "The Cheap Win of the Week" in which I highlighted the victories of club members in races too insignificant to attract the notice of the racing elite.
It never struck me as anything but amusing that one would sometimes achieve a kind of questionable glory by beating weak competition, but apparently even tainted glory is better than none. A friend sent me a link to a bizarre article from the Wall Street Journal that describes how some triathlon competitors spend hours researching races to identify the ones with the least competition. Aided by the Internet, they avoid events in which they would be buried by the big boys and girls.
It seems like a lot of trouble to me. I mean, wouldn't it be easier to hold your own road race, in your own neighborhood? You could invite your neighbors (well, only the ones who pose no threat to your eventual triumph), and at the end award yourself a medal. At the end of the day, you could call in your times to the newspaper, and if there aren't enough finishers, you can make up some names -- the way they used to do for the Saturday races at Fresh Pond. (Oops, I shouldn't have let that slip.)
On the other hand, a win is a win, right?
Well, no, it isn't. Because winning (or losing) against real competition is invigorating, stimulating, while avoiding competition is bloodless and weakens, rather than strengthens one's toughness and resolve. Don't be tempted by the easy path. Those trophies are only plastic, after all.
For example, coolrunning.com lists no fewer than ten road races taking place in Massachusetts today. The president of my running club compiled a list of 25(!) organized, advertised road races taking place in New England on July 4th.
Surprisingly, given the number of events, there's almost always decent competition at these race. Seek out the smallest town, the most obscure race, and you are still likely to run into someone fast. That's a testament to the overall depth of talent in these parts and the enthusiasm for the sport.
In fact, it's kind of surprising when you show up at a race and you don't encounter fast guys. Occasionally, the competition goes elsewhere and you pick up a trophy because all the fast guys were chasing money somewhere else. I used to write a feature for my club web site called "The Cheap Win of the Week" in which I highlighted the victories of club members in races too insignificant to attract the notice of the racing elite.
It never struck me as anything but amusing that one would sometimes achieve a kind of questionable glory by beating weak competition, but apparently even tainted glory is better than none. A friend sent me a link to a bizarre article from the Wall Street Journal that describes how some triathlon competitors spend hours researching races to identify the ones with the least competition. Aided by the Internet, they avoid events in which they would be buried by the big boys and girls.
It seems like a lot of trouble to me. I mean, wouldn't it be easier to hold your own road race, in your own neighborhood? You could invite your neighbors (well, only the ones who pose no threat to your eventual triumph), and at the end award yourself a medal. At the end of the day, you could call in your times to the newspaper, and if there aren't enough finishers, you can make up some names -- the way they used to do for the Saturday races at Fresh Pond. (Oops, I shouldn't have let that slip.)
On the other hand, a win is a win, right?
Well, no, it isn't. Because winning (or losing) against real competition is invigorating, stimulating, while avoiding competition is bloodless and weakens, rather than strengthens one's toughness and resolve. Don't be tempted by the easy path. Those trophies are only plastic, after all.
June 23, 2007
The End of HS Sports?
As reported in today's Boston Globe article, the town of Stoneham is facing the elimination of the entire HS sports program after voters defeated a tax override proposal on Tuesday. Facing rising costs, the Stoneham School Committee voted to impose a number of cuts and cost-savings measures, including cutting Arts, Music, and all Varsity sports.
Stoneham, a town of 22,000 without a great deal of commercial property, has a school budget of $22.9 million. The school sports budget is $600,000 (2.6%).
The Stoneham School Committee took a similar action in 2004, voting to eliminate the school sports programs, but sports were restored after parents raised funds to help defray the costs of the programs.
Is Stoneham a bellwether for other schools around the Commonwealth? So far, cities like Newton have continued to fund sports through user fees and overrides. But even in an affluent community like Newton, even as the city breaks ground on its new high school, debates fester about the costs --- and value -- associated with public schools and school sports.
Although only about 20% of the households in Newton have school-age children, it is recognized that having good schools makes Newton a more attractive place to live, increasing property values. However, this cuts both ways, as older residents on fixed incomes see their taxes climb steadily, with no way to continue living in their house while also benefiting from the increased value of their property. The issue creates an ugly divide between those who feel the schools are underfunded and those who feel that the school system is a budget monster prone to waste and spending on frivolous programs. The usual culprits are Art, Music, anything to do with politics or social issues, and yes, Sports.
The open struggle over how to pay for high school sports sharpens the contrast between the haves and the have-nots. The Globe article quotes several parents who are considering putting their kids in private schools so they can continue to play on teams during their high school years. Is the "pay-as-you-play" trend so severe that only the upper-middle class kids will be able to participate? Isn't there some greater good served by making sports available to everyone? And if so, how does a community find a way to pay for the value of that greater good?
I've always believed that there is a middle way between writing a blank check to the schools, and cutting them off without an extra penny. I believe that the key is to recognize that schools are -- in fact and in spirit -- inseparable from the larger community that makes them possible. As a consequence, school resources, including athletic resources, need to be conceived as serving everyone in the community, not just the few who play on the football team or run track. Take track as an example. A track is an expensive facility; why should it be in use only one-two hours a day for track team practices and meets? It should be seen as a community resource, serving senior citizens who want to walk in safety, adult fitness programs, summer recreational programs (see Waltham Track Club, Needham Youth Track Club), Special Olympics, special events (Walk for Life), etc. the concept is multiple use, and it needs to be built into the assumptions about the facility, before the first shovel hits the ground to begin construction.
The logic of "multiple use" applies, or could be made to apply, to other athletic resources as well. The school track team can raise money by putting on a community road race, or volunteer at summer track programs. They can help with maintenance of the park areas used for the cross-country course. I have seen all of these things happen, and the mutual goodwill between town and team that ensues.
Ultimately, residents of a city or town have the right to fund, or not fund, schools and sports. As costs rise, cuts are inevitable, and then the question is, "what has the greatest value to the community?" For HS sports to survive as an institution accessible to all, regardless of ability to pay, they must be perceived as having broad value, not as a luxury that benefits only a few.
Stoneham, a town of 22,000 without a great deal of commercial property, has a school budget of $22.9 million. The school sports budget is $600,000 (2.6%).
The Stoneham School Committee took a similar action in 2004, voting to eliminate the school sports programs, but sports were restored after parents raised funds to help defray the costs of the programs.
Is Stoneham a bellwether for other schools around the Commonwealth? So far, cities like Newton have continued to fund sports through user fees and overrides. But even in an affluent community like Newton, even as the city breaks ground on its new high school, debates fester about the costs --- and value -- associated with public schools and school sports.
Although only about 20% of the households in Newton have school-age children, it is recognized that having good schools makes Newton a more attractive place to live, increasing property values. However, this cuts both ways, as older residents on fixed incomes see their taxes climb steadily, with no way to continue living in their house while also benefiting from the increased value of their property. The issue creates an ugly divide between those who feel the schools are underfunded and those who feel that the school system is a budget monster prone to waste and spending on frivolous programs. The usual culprits are Art, Music, anything to do with politics or social issues, and yes, Sports.
The open struggle over how to pay for high school sports sharpens the contrast between the haves and the have-nots. The Globe article quotes several parents who are considering putting their kids in private schools so they can continue to play on teams during their high school years. Is the "pay-as-you-play" trend so severe that only the upper-middle class kids will be able to participate? Isn't there some greater good served by making sports available to everyone? And if so, how does a community find a way to pay for the value of that greater good?
I've always believed that there is a middle way between writing a blank check to the schools, and cutting them off without an extra penny. I believe that the key is to recognize that schools are -- in fact and in spirit -- inseparable from the larger community that makes them possible. As a consequence, school resources, including athletic resources, need to be conceived as serving everyone in the community, not just the few who play on the football team or run track. Take track as an example. A track is an expensive facility; why should it be in use only one-two hours a day for track team practices and meets? It should be seen as a community resource, serving senior citizens who want to walk in safety, adult fitness programs, summer recreational programs (see Waltham Track Club, Needham Youth Track Club), Special Olympics, special events (Walk for Life), etc. the concept is multiple use, and it needs to be built into the assumptions about the facility, before the first shovel hits the ground to begin construction.
The logic of "multiple use" applies, or could be made to apply, to other athletic resources as well. The school track team can raise money by putting on a community road race, or volunteer at summer track programs. They can help with maintenance of the park areas used for the cross-country course. I have seen all of these things happen, and the mutual goodwill between town and team that ensues.
Ultimately, residents of a city or town have the right to fund, or not fund, schools and sports. As costs rise, cuts are inevitable, and then the question is, "what has the greatest value to the community?" For HS sports to survive as an institution accessible to all, regardless of ability to pay, they must be perceived as having broad value, not as a luxury that benefits only a few.
June 22, 2007
Challenged!
It's Youth vs. Middle Age on June 28th!
I was at work minding my own business, when Christine, one of my co-workers, pulled me aside and asked in a conspiratorial whisper, "Are you the fastest runner in the office?" I was somewhat taken aback by her bluntness, and I wondered whether it would be prudent to evade the question and respond with some witty, light-hearted remark. But then again, we're a very small company -- only 75 people, and I knew them all and knew that there were no other serious runners there -- so I admitted that yes, it was possible that, provided we were talking about a mile or more, I might be able to cover the distance in less time than my colleagues. Christine brushed aside my attempt at modesty and got right to the point. "My son says he wants to beat you in the corporate challenge next week," she said.
Ah, the Chase Corporate Challenge! A 3.5-mile race that comes around to Boston every June and attracts an enormous crowd of would-be champions (12,000 people at least), most of whom are running in their only race of the year. My company always enters a team, and although I don't much like the race, I always participate because, after all, I'm "the runner" in the office, the crazy guy who runs a lot. I find it easier to do the race than answer the questions about why I find it so annoying (let's start with the fact that the front of the pack is inevitably crowded with 15-minute-per mile power walkers, that there is no electronic timing, that the t-shirt contest is more important than the race results...)
I remembered that Christine's 19-year-old son Riley was working as an intern in our office for the summer. Christine had signed him up to run the race for our team. I was delighted to hear that he was planning to beat me. But it turned out that actually Christine didn't want that to happen.
"Riley is super-competitive," she said, "but I think it might be good for him if he lost to you."
I pondered this for a moment. "How fast," I asked, "does he think he can run 3.5 miles?"
Well, Christine wasn't exactly sure, but she knew that a couple of years ago he had run a road race and finished fourth in his age group. That didn't tell me much, nor did Christine's additional confidence that he was the fastest kid on his soccer team. I needed more information. Would Christine be able to find out his time for the mile, for 5K, for any measured distance? Christine said she would find out. I went back to my work.
The next day, Christine came by again.
"Riley doesn't know how fast he can run a mile, but when he was 16, he ran a five mile race in 34 minutes." Then she added, "And he's been running 30 minutes a day."
"Very impressive," I said.
So... Riley had run 6:40 pace for five miles when he was 16. He hadn't done any races since, but he played soccer throughout high school and was surely in good shape. Now he was running half an hour a day. How would he do running 3.5 miles?
Compared to Riley, I felt boring and predictable. I knew that, barring disaster, I would run between 18:40 and 19:20 -- 5:20-5:30 pace. There was no mystery at all to me. But Riley was a young pup, full of enthusiasm and competitive spirit, and surely improving by leaps and bounds every day.
My old coach used to say "youth must be served," meaning that the next generation must always overtake the current generation eventually. Had my time come?
What do you think, readers? The race is on Thursday, June 28th. Let's hear your predictions. What do you think Riley will run? Which one of us will win?
I was at work minding my own business, when Christine, one of my co-workers, pulled me aside and asked in a conspiratorial whisper, "Are you the fastest runner in the office?" I was somewhat taken aback by her bluntness, and I wondered whether it would be prudent to evade the question and respond with some witty, light-hearted remark. But then again, we're a very small company -- only 75 people, and I knew them all and knew that there were no other serious runners there -- so I admitted that yes, it was possible that, provided we were talking about a mile or more, I might be able to cover the distance in less time than my colleagues. Christine brushed aside my attempt at modesty and got right to the point. "My son says he wants to beat you in the corporate challenge next week," she said.
Ah, the Chase Corporate Challenge! A 3.5-mile race that comes around to Boston every June and attracts an enormous crowd of would-be champions (12,000 people at least), most of whom are running in their only race of the year. My company always enters a team, and although I don't much like the race, I always participate because, after all, I'm "the runner" in the office, the crazy guy who runs a lot. I find it easier to do the race than answer the questions about why I find it so annoying (let's start with the fact that the front of the pack is inevitably crowded with 15-minute-per mile power walkers, that there is no electronic timing, that the t-shirt contest is more important than the race results...)
I remembered that Christine's 19-year-old son Riley was working as an intern in our office for the summer. Christine had signed him up to run the race for our team. I was delighted to hear that he was planning to beat me. But it turned out that actually Christine didn't want that to happen.
"Riley is super-competitive," she said, "but I think it might be good for him if he lost to you."
I pondered this for a moment. "How fast," I asked, "does he think he can run 3.5 miles?"
Well, Christine wasn't exactly sure, but she knew that a couple of years ago he had run a road race and finished fourth in his age group. That didn't tell me much, nor did Christine's additional confidence that he was the fastest kid on his soccer team. I needed more information. Would Christine be able to find out his time for the mile, for 5K, for any measured distance? Christine said she would find out. I went back to my work.
The next day, Christine came by again.
"Riley doesn't know how fast he can run a mile, but when he was 16, he ran a five mile race in 34 minutes." Then she added, "And he's been running 30 minutes a day."
"Very impressive," I said.
So... Riley had run 6:40 pace for five miles when he was 16. He hadn't done any races since, but he played soccer throughout high school and was surely in good shape. Now he was running half an hour a day. How would he do running 3.5 miles?
Compared to Riley, I felt boring and predictable. I knew that, barring disaster, I would run between 18:40 and 19:20 -- 5:20-5:30 pace. There was no mystery at all to me. But Riley was a young pup, full of enthusiasm and competitive spirit, and surely improving by leaps and bounds every day.
My old coach used to say "youth must be served," meaning that the next generation must always overtake the current generation eventually. Had my time come?
What do you think, readers? The race is on Thursday, June 28th. Let's hear your predictions. What do you think Riley will run? Which one of us will win?
June 21, 2007
Summer Solstice
Summer begins in the Northern hemisphere at 2:06 p.m. EDT today, June 21.
School is over for almost everybody. Summer vacations have begun, or summer jobs. Summer camps are open for business. Pools and public beaches are getting busy.
It is light before 5 a.m. and stays light until almost 9 p.m. Runners are out early and late, and almost everyone is a runner, it seems. Back in the early spring, I saw only one or two hardy dog walkers on my morning excursions, but now I see a dozen or more joggers out before the hot sun and traffic take over the day.
In most of Europe this day is celebrated as Midsummer (also, the Feast of St. John the Baptist). Here, we think of it as the beginning of summer, by which we really mean the beginning of our summer vacations. If there were any logic to our current calendar, Memorial Day would mark the beginning of summer and Labor Day the end, but never mind.
Fall seems a long way off, and winter is almost unthinkably distant. On this day, it's hard to even imagine a world without green grass and green leaves on the trees. For today, at least, let us think that summer is endless and that there is time for everything we want to do.
Soon enough, it will be really hot. Green lawns will begin to look thirsty. It will be humid and people will start to complain. And then one day, we'll notice that the days are a little bit shorter. But let's not think about that yet. Let's think about how nice it is to be outside just now, how nice it is to run in the woods and on the trails.
School is over for almost everybody. Summer vacations have begun, or summer jobs. Summer camps are open for business. Pools and public beaches are getting busy.
It is light before 5 a.m. and stays light until almost 9 p.m. Runners are out early and late, and almost everyone is a runner, it seems. Back in the early spring, I saw only one or two hardy dog walkers on my morning excursions, but now I see a dozen or more joggers out before the hot sun and traffic take over the day.
In most of Europe this day is celebrated as Midsummer (also, the Feast of St. John the Baptist). Here, we think of it as the beginning of summer, by which we really mean the beginning of our summer vacations. If there were any logic to our current calendar, Memorial Day would mark the beginning of summer and Labor Day the end, but never mind.
Fall seems a long way off, and winter is almost unthinkably distant. On this day, it's hard to even imagine a world without green grass and green leaves on the trees. For today, at least, let us think that summer is endless and that there is time for everything we want to do.
Soon enough, it will be really hot. Green lawns will begin to look thirsty. It will be humid and people will start to complain. And then one day, we'll notice that the days are a little bit shorter. But let's not think about that yet. Let's think about how nice it is to be outside just now, how nice it is to run in the woods and on the trails.
June 20, 2007
Doing Other People's Workouts
My friend Lorin was complaining the other day about his recent race performances. "I don't understand it," he said. "I've been doing really good workouts on the track with Terry, but when we race 5K, I'm a minute behind him."
"And how have those workouts felt?" I asked him.
"Really hard! I've been trying to run with Terry as long as i can. I get through most of the workout OK, but I kind of die on the last couple of intervals. It's definitely my hardest day of the week."
"Well, maybe you're too tired from your workouts with Terry to race well on the weekends..."
Lorin allowed that it was possible that his track workouts were too demanding, but the very next time he stepped on the track, he repeated the pattern he had set for himself, exerting himself to the utmost to stay with his teammate in the early stages of the workout, and then dying at the end.
His experience is all-too-common. It's very easy to fall into the habit of running someone's else's workout in the hope of matching their race performances. It rarely works and often leads to frustration and setback. The way I see it, there are two problems with training by imitation: the first is that everyone responds to training differently -- what is right for your running buddies isn't necessarily optimal for you; the second is that training isn't just about what you do for an hour on the track once or twice a week -- it's the entire picture of stress and recovery that takes place over weeks and months. It's sleep patterns and diet and cross-training and stress at work. What you do on the track doesn't operate on your fitness in a vacuum.
Now I don't fault Lorin for wanting to work harder to improve. Nor do I deny how useful it is to be able to run with people rather than by oneself. running with others is a really good way to get more out of yourself than you thought was possible. But it does more harm than good if running with others means running too easy or too hard for your own fitness. In Lorin's case, I might suggest that if he was trying to "step up" the intensity and duration of his interval workouts, he might have to wait for a while to see results. After all, Terry had been doing similar workouts for years.
I think it was Peter Coe (Sebastian Coe's father and coach) who articulated the principal that in training, one should strive to achieve the desired results doing the least amount of work. That amount might be more than what your buddies or less, or it might be very, very different.
If you want to train more effectively, start by asking yourself whether your workouts are based on what is best for you, or are based on what everyone else is doing.
"And how have those workouts felt?" I asked him.
"Really hard! I've been trying to run with Terry as long as i can. I get through most of the workout OK, but I kind of die on the last couple of intervals. It's definitely my hardest day of the week."
"Well, maybe you're too tired from your workouts with Terry to race well on the weekends..."
Lorin allowed that it was possible that his track workouts were too demanding, but the very next time he stepped on the track, he repeated the pattern he had set for himself, exerting himself to the utmost to stay with his teammate in the early stages of the workout, and then dying at the end.
His experience is all-too-common. It's very easy to fall into the habit of running someone's else's workout in the hope of matching their race performances. It rarely works and often leads to frustration and setback. The way I see it, there are two problems with training by imitation: the first is that everyone responds to training differently -- what is right for your running buddies isn't necessarily optimal for you; the second is that training isn't just about what you do for an hour on the track once or twice a week -- it's the entire picture of stress and recovery that takes place over weeks and months. It's sleep patterns and diet and cross-training and stress at work. What you do on the track doesn't operate on your fitness in a vacuum.
Now I don't fault Lorin for wanting to work harder to improve. Nor do I deny how useful it is to be able to run with people rather than by oneself. running with others is a really good way to get more out of yourself than you thought was possible. But it does more harm than good if running with others means running too easy or too hard for your own fitness. In Lorin's case, I might suggest that if he was trying to "step up" the intensity and duration of his interval workouts, he might have to wait for a while to see results. After all, Terry had been doing similar workouts for years.
I think it was Peter Coe (Sebastian Coe's father and coach) who articulated the principal that in training, one should strive to achieve the desired results doing the least amount of work. That amount might be more than what your buddies or less, or it might be very, very different.
If you want to train more effectively, start by asking yourself whether your workouts are based on what is best for you, or are based on what everyone else is doing.
June 18, 2007
Summers, Empty and Full
(I originally wrote a version of this essay for New England Runner Magazine, but it seemed an appropriate time to re-post parts of it here)
"We spent an awful lot of time doing nothing. There was an occupation called 'just running around.' It was no game. It had no rules. It didn't start and it didn't stop. Maybe we were all idiots, but a good deal of the time we just plain ran around."
- Robert Paul Smith, Where Did You Go? OUT. What Did You Do? NOTHING
Coaching high school athletes has been something of a second adolescence for me. On an almost daily basis, I see or hear things that remind me of my own experience coming of age and becoming a competitive runner. While in many ways the experience of a high school runner today is comparable to the experience I had back in the early 70's, one thing that seems really different to me is how structured and directed life has become for the average high school kid.
Nothing illustrates this point better than summer vacation. The kids I work with use their summer months to travel to Europe and study foreign languages; they go to Guatemala for eight weeks to build roads and schools; they take major roles in theater productions; they hike the Pacific Coast Trail; they volunteer at the State House; they bicycle around Nova Scotia; and if they aren't doing any of that, they are either in camp or working full time. In short, they are not hanging around with time on their hands.
Now, maybe we were all idiots out in Western Massachusetts where I grew up, but from my early years through my years of high school, I remember summer as a kind of vast expanse of empty canvas, on which I was more or less free to paint as I chose. Of course, this involved a lot of running around with other kids in organized and disorganized ways. For example, we devoted hours to staging elaborate whiffleball games and tournaments in each other's backyards, or devising games that involved throwing a tennis ball off some part of the house or barn and then catching it, or playing basketball on the eight-foot hoops over at the elementary school.
But for me, running around also meant literally running. By the time I was 12, I was often running to places around town. In the summer, I used to run over to Alumni stadium on University Drive to watch the football players at their pre-season camp. I also ran to Memorial Pool to swim. I even ran to a few of my little league games, a distance of a couple of miles, until I realized that I hated being yelled at all the time and I quit baseball for good.
Like the summers before them, my High School summers were long and relatively empty, punctuated by bouts of house painting or lawn mowing, one or two badly planned bicycle trips to New Hampshire, and a lot of reading. I wasn't ashamed of this leisurely schedule, because I wasn't alone. Most of my friends were about as idle as I was. We hung around a lot, and no one deserted the town, unless it was for a family vacation. Otherwise, we stayed put and found things to do together. One of those things was running, both deliberate and incidental. I remember one year we made a habit of meeting every Saturday morning for full-field soccer games at the Amherst College soccer field, four or five to a side. We would run like idiots up and down the field for about two hours until everyone collapsed. Then we would go to the All-Star market to buy sodas, ice cream sandwiches, and Hostess fruit pies. Then we'd go to someone's back yard to play basketball. Somehow, I can't imagine today's teenagers doing that.
I remember particularly the summer between my sophomore and junior years in high school, a time that today's High School student would spend at the University of Madrid or climbing Macchu Pichu. I spent mornings scraping and painting houses, and afternoons hanging out with my friends. Oh yeah, in the ten weeks between the last day of school in June, and the first day of school after Labor Day, I also ran over 500 miles, recorded on a daily basis on a few sheets of lined paper that I kept in my room.
Nowadays, no kid I know spends summer like that. If some kid did, he'd be all alone because all his friends would be busy traveling, or taking classes, or at overnight camp, or working full-time. As a parent of two teenagers myself, I feel guilty if my kids find themselves with a week of unstructured time, because I know all of their friends are occupied in exotic experiences elsewhere.
In the town where I grew up, July was wide and hot and full of patterns, like the alternating corn fields and cow pastures that lined the roads of South Amherst and Hadley where I did most of my running. The day began with the song of grasshoppers and cicadas, and ended with the ethereal sounds of a baseball game on an AM station that faded in and out in the night. It was that expansiveness, that emptiness, that whispered and cajoled me into the few creative acts of my young life, one of which was running 500 miles and writing the daily story of doing it.
With so much for a kid to do these days, I'm not sure it would be good to worry about running so much. They'd have to fit it in between their summer school classes and their trips to Europe, and where's the fun in that? One thing I am sure of, I never thought of running as something that I had to fit in. If anything, running was the pure expression of the freedom I felt, and the exhaustion that followed was the enjoyment of the fruits of that freedom. It was so cool, so sweet, to be idle in the afternoon after running for hours past the farms and ranch houses that lined the Connecticut River. It was the perfect way to spend a summer day, and it would have been unthinkable if there had been someplace I had to be.
In early June, high school coaches hold organizational meetings for the upcoming fall cross-country season. They talk about the value of running over the summer, and the senior captains urge the underclassmen to run every day, if possible. I have no doubt that even with all the other things going on in their lives, most of these young athletes will find a way to train over the summer, maybe not every day, but perhaps most days. I have to wonder though, whether any of them will look back on this summer, as I look back on summers over 25 years ago, as something more than training, as a time, indeed, when summer and running and one's own free will seemed to fuse into a single essence, and the miles were like so many notes of a favorite song, still poignant and unforgettable many years later.
"We spent an awful lot of time doing nothing. There was an occupation called 'just running around.' It was no game. It had no rules. It didn't start and it didn't stop. Maybe we were all idiots, but a good deal of the time we just plain ran around."
- Robert Paul Smith, Where Did You Go? OUT. What Did You Do? NOTHING
Coaching high school athletes has been something of a second adolescence for me. On an almost daily basis, I see or hear things that remind me of my own experience coming of age and becoming a competitive runner. While in many ways the experience of a high school runner today is comparable to the experience I had back in the early 70's, one thing that seems really different to me is how structured and directed life has become for the average high school kid.
Nothing illustrates this point better than summer vacation. The kids I work with use their summer months to travel to Europe and study foreign languages; they go to Guatemala for eight weeks to build roads and schools; they take major roles in theater productions; they hike the Pacific Coast Trail; they volunteer at the State House; they bicycle around Nova Scotia; and if they aren't doing any of that, they are either in camp or working full time. In short, they are not hanging around with time on their hands.
Now, maybe we were all idiots out in Western Massachusetts where I grew up, but from my early years through my years of high school, I remember summer as a kind of vast expanse of empty canvas, on which I was more or less free to paint as I chose. Of course, this involved a lot of running around with other kids in organized and disorganized ways. For example, we devoted hours to staging elaborate whiffleball games and tournaments in each other's backyards, or devising games that involved throwing a tennis ball off some part of the house or barn and then catching it, or playing basketball on the eight-foot hoops over at the elementary school.
But for me, running around also meant literally running. By the time I was 12, I was often running to places around town. In the summer, I used to run over to Alumni stadium on University Drive to watch the football players at their pre-season camp. I also ran to Memorial Pool to swim. I even ran to a few of my little league games, a distance of a couple of miles, until I realized that I hated being yelled at all the time and I quit baseball for good.
Like the summers before them, my High School summers were long and relatively empty, punctuated by bouts of house painting or lawn mowing, one or two badly planned bicycle trips to New Hampshire, and a lot of reading. I wasn't ashamed of this leisurely schedule, because I wasn't alone. Most of my friends were about as idle as I was. We hung around a lot, and no one deserted the town, unless it was for a family vacation. Otherwise, we stayed put and found things to do together. One of those things was running, both deliberate and incidental. I remember one year we made a habit of meeting every Saturday morning for full-field soccer games at the Amherst College soccer field, four or five to a side. We would run like idiots up and down the field for about two hours until everyone collapsed. Then we would go to the All-Star market to buy sodas, ice cream sandwiches, and Hostess fruit pies. Then we'd go to someone's back yard to play basketball. Somehow, I can't imagine today's teenagers doing that.
I remember particularly the summer between my sophomore and junior years in high school, a time that today's High School student would spend at the University of Madrid or climbing Macchu Pichu. I spent mornings scraping and painting houses, and afternoons hanging out with my friends. Oh yeah, in the ten weeks between the last day of school in June, and the first day of school after Labor Day, I also ran over 500 miles, recorded on a daily basis on a few sheets of lined paper that I kept in my room.
Nowadays, no kid I know spends summer like that. If some kid did, he'd be all alone because all his friends would be busy traveling, or taking classes, or at overnight camp, or working full-time. As a parent of two teenagers myself, I feel guilty if my kids find themselves with a week of unstructured time, because I know all of their friends are occupied in exotic experiences elsewhere.
In the town where I grew up, July was wide and hot and full of patterns, like the alternating corn fields and cow pastures that lined the roads of South Amherst and Hadley where I did most of my running. The day began with the song of grasshoppers and cicadas, and ended with the ethereal sounds of a baseball game on an AM station that faded in and out in the night. It was that expansiveness, that emptiness, that whispered and cajoled me into the few creative acts of my young life, one of which was running 500 miles and writing the daily story of doing it.
With so much for a kid to do these days, I'm not sure it would be good to worry about running so much. They'd have to fit it in between their summer school classes and their trips to Europe, and where's the fun in that? One thing I am sure of, I never thought of running as something that I had to fit in. If anything, running was the pure expression of the freedom I felt, and the exhaustion that followed was the enjoyment of the fruits of that freedom. It was so cool, so sweet, to be idle in the afternoon after running for hours past the farms and ranch houses that lined the Connecticut River. It was the perfect way to spend a summer day, and it would have been unthinkable if there had been someplace I had to be.
In early June, high school coaches hold organizational meetings for the upcoming fall cross-country season. They talk about the value of running over the summer, and the senior captains urge the underclassmen to run every day, if possible. I have no doubt that even with all the other things going on in their lives, most of these young athletes will find a way to train over the summer, maybe not every day, but perhaps most days. I have to wonder though, whether any of them will look back on this summer, as I look back on summers over 25 years ago, as something more than training, as a time, indeed, when summer and running and one's own free will seemed to fuse into a single essence, and the miles were like so many notes of a favorite song, still poignant and unforgettable many years later.
June 16, 2007
Barton - 7th at NON in 7:01.37
Newton North senior Jess Barton placed 7th in the 2000m steeplechase at the Nike Outdoor Nationals meet on Saturday, just missing All-America status. Barton ran most of the race in 3-4th, but was overtaken by several runners in the final 200m. Her time of 7:01.37 is four seconds slower than here best, run at the Hartford Public meet earlier this spring.
June 15, 2007
Only One Hill
The Mt. Washington Road Race is tomorrow, and I'll be thinking about the runners as they begin in the valley at Pinkham Notch and ascend nearly 5000 feet to the top of the highest peak on the East Coast and home to some of the worst weather on Earth.
Having run the race a mere three times (and not since the early 90's), I'm hardly a veteran of Mt. Washington. But the memories of being humbled by that long climb are still fresh in my mind.
From the race website:
The Course: The Mt. Washington Auto Road is 7.6 miles in length, has an average grade of 11.5% with extended sections of 18%, and the last 50 yards is a 22% "wall" to the finish.... The course rises 4650 vertical feet from start to finish. Relax, there's Only One Hill!
The raw data notwithstanding, it's hard to describe the experience of the race. One struggles for the right words, the right comparisons. On the one hand, most competitive runners have a hard time grasping how slow it is -- I never averaged better than 9:30 miles, and that got me 25th place! On the other hand, the intensity of the race is at odds with the agonizingly incremental progress up the mountain.
In fact, I never once managed to run the entire way. No matter how hard I tried to temper my early pace, I always went out too fast, and always ended up walking, usually around the five mile mark where the trees disappear and there's nothing but road and rocks and sky.
One year, the last two miles of the course were shrouded in fog, and visibility dropped to 10-15 feet. Near the top, I heard the shriek from the cog railway, somewhere near, but completely invisible in the swirling mists. I shiver still, when I think of that moment.
One of the reasons I think about the race every June is that I feel I have unfinished business there. I never felt that I learned how to run the race well, and I'd like to take one more shot at it. I'll be 50 next year, and that seems like a good time to make the attempt. Maybe I've learned enough patience to run the entire way.
Dave Dunham, a three-time winner of the race, has written a book called
Only One Hill!. if you are interested in knowing more about the history of this unique and extraordinary event, I urge you to get the book.
June 14, 2007
Barton, Smith Conclude HS Careers at NON
This weekend is Nike Outdoor Nationals, for all intents and purposes, the end of the high school outdoor season. If history is any guide, the weekend will be highlighted by best-of-the-year performances in many events. And after it is over and the tartan dust has settled, thoughts will turn to cross-country, as they must.
For the third year in a row, the two-day meet will be held at North Carolina A&T in Greensboro, NC. Here is a schedule of events:
NON Schedule
Newton North's Jess Barton will be running at NON -- she is entered in the 2000m steeplechase, which takes place Saturday June 16 at 1:45 p.m. Jess won the only other steeple she ran this year -- at the Hartford Public meet -- in 6:57.44, the fourth fastest time in the country this year. The favorite is Ashley Higginson of Colt's Neck New Jersey, who has run 6:50.
Also competing for Newton North in the boys shot put is David Smith. David, the defending indoor state champion and 2006 outdoor state champion will be competing on Saturday afternoon, beginning at 5:15 p.m.
Other Massachusetts competitors at NON include Xaverian's Mark Amirault and Mansfield's Ryan Collins, both entered in the 2-Mile, Brockton's Kevin Gill and Haverhill's Danny Wang in the 1M (also Brockton's 4x800 team, which ran to a Mass. state record 7:44 last week at New Englands), several competitors in the boys 5000m run, Emily Mepham of Lincoln-Sudbury, who is entered in the 800, and a girls 4x1 Mile team from Newton South that should be quite competitive.
Framingham's Jordan Maddocks and Mattapoisett's Peter Asci are both entered in the boys high jump. Medford's Aranxta King is entered in the girls long jump. Tewksbury's Kristen Judge is in the girls high jump.
Here are the complete start lists for boys and girls:
Boys Start Lists
Girls Start Lists
results of the meet will be posted here.
For the third year in a row, the two-day meet will be held at North Carolina A&T in Greensboro, NC. Here is a schedule of events:
NON Schedule
Newton North's Jess Barton will be running at NON -- she is entered in the 2000m steeplechase, which takes place Saturday June 16 at 1:45 p.m. Jess won the only other steeple she ran this year -- at the Hartford Public meet -- in 6:57.44, the fourth fastest time in the country this year. The favorite is Ashley Higginson of Colt's Neck New Jersey, who has run 6:50.
Also competing for Newton North in the boys shot put is David Smith. David, the defending indoor state champion and 2006 outdoor state champion will be competing on Saturday afternoon, beginning at 5:15 p.m.
Other Massachusetts competitors at NON include Xaverian's Mark Amirault and Mansfield's Ryan Collins, both entered in the 2-Mile, Brockton's Kevin Gill and Haverhill's Danny Wang in the 1M (also Brockton's 4x800 team, which ran to a Mass. state record 7:44 last week at New Englands), several competitors in the boys 5000m run, Emily Mepham of Lincoln-Sudbury, who is entered in the 800, and a girls 4x1 Mile team from Newton South that should be quite competitive.
Framingham's Jordan Maddocks and Mattapoisett's Peter Asci are both entered in the boys high jump. Medford's Aranxta King is entered in the girls long jump. Tewksbury's Kristen Judge is in the girls high jump.
Here are the complete start lists for boys and girls:
Boys Start Lists
Girls Start Lists
results of the meet will be posted here.
June 13, 2007
The Day I Drove to Shelburne Falls
A long. long time ago in the days when I ran track and cross-country for Amherst Regional High School, I was part of what was then an intense rivalry between our school and Mohawk Trail High School in Shelburne Falls. Both schools had very successful cross-country programs. Amherst was coached by Randy Crowley. Thanks to him, we trained hard and were very good. Mohawk was coached by Connie Putnam. Coach Putnam went on from Mohawk to become head coach at Tufts University, where he has been a successful collegiate coach for many years. At that time, Mohawk had several excellent runners, including the McMullin brothers, Fritz and Dave. They also trained hard and were very good.
We hated Mohawk and they hated us.
When the Mohawk team arrived for a dual meet in my junior year, I remember that we were hostile and aloof. We didn't want them to feel welcome, and went out of our way to be rude. I'm sure they felt the same way about us. We won that meet, and it made us feel superior to them. Of course, we didn't know anything about them except their times on a yellow score sheet, but we weren't curious to know anything more.
In the summer between my junior year and senior year, I became good friends with Becky Ashenden, who lived in Shelburne and attended Mohawk Trail Regional High School. She and her sister Amy would drive down to Amherst once a week for folk music and folk dancing parties. I went to the same parties and so we saw a lot of each other. One day we were talking, and the conversation turned to the rivalry between the Amherst and Mohawk cross-country teams. Becky thought the whole rivalry was ridiculous, and she said something surprising: she knew Dave McMullin, sat next to him in Algebra class, and she thought that he was a perfectly nice kid.
I was amazed and incredulous. It had never occurred to me that any member of the Mohawk team might be a pleasant person, or possess any other redeeming qualities. Becky suggested that I should come up to Shelburne Falls sometime and meet Dave. I resolved to do it, and I decided that the way to do it would be to join him for a run.
I was impulsive then, and I never planned anything ahead of time or thought about consequences. That's how it happened that a few weeks later toward the end of August I borrowed my Mom's car and drove to Shelburne Falls. I hadn't told anyone about what i was doing -- not my coach, not the Mohawk coach, not the runners on my team. all I knew was that I was on my way to someone else's practice. (Becky had acted as my accomplice by interrogating Dave about Mohawk's pre-season practice schedule.)
When I arrived, there were only a few kids at the high school fields. I wasn't sure what to do, so I said "Hi" to the kids and told a lie: I said I was thinking of going out for the team. They didn't know who i was, so they just figured I was some random kid that they didn't know. More people showed up, and I began to get nervous. Finally, Coach Putnam showed up, along with a few runners and they recognized me. It was a scary moment, but after being unmasked as an intruder from Amherst, they actually welcomed me, and said it was fine if I wanted to run with their team that day.
So I did. I ran with their top runners for a few miles, and then, on a particularly tough hill, the McMullin brothers broke away from the group and disappeared off into the distance. I lagged behind with some of their slower runner. When we returned to the school, the brothers made no secret of their delight in having dropped me on the hills of our little 8-mile run. I figured I deserved it.
I returned to Amherst. That Fall, we ran against Mohawk on their home course and they beat us in a very close meet. The McMullin brothers went 1-2 on us. I was fourth. After the race, they were very gracious in victory. They said they would never have run such fast times if we hadn't pushed them so hard. We all shook hands and wished each other well in the upcoming Western Mass meet.
That's most of the story. Thanks to Becky, I got to know my hated rivals better and, to my great surprise, discovered they were a lot like me.
But there's one more thing: the next spring, I ran the mile in the All-State meet. I was very nervous before the race, very worried about how I would do. As I was warming up, I happened to run into Coach Putnam. We had a little chat, and he gave me some very good, very supportive advice. In fact, it was advice that was to prove useful for years to come. On that day, I went on to run a 5-second PR in what was probably one of the best races of my high school career.
The lesson I learned is that even though Amherst has a fine high school and is a wonderful place to be a kid, if you want to grow up, sometimes you need to drive to Shelburne Falls.
We hated Mohawk and they hated us.
When the Mohawk team arrived for a dual meet in my junior year, I remember that we were hostile and aloof. We didn't want them to feel welcome, and went out of our way to be rude. I'm sure they felt the same way about us. We won that meet, and it made us feel superior to them. Of course, we didn't know anything about them except their times on a yellow score sheet, but we weren't curious to know anything more.
In the summer between my junior year and senior year, I became good friends with Becky Ashenden, who lived in Shelburne and attended Mohawk Trail Regional High School. She and her sister Amy would drive down to Amherst once a week for folk music and folk dancing parties. I went to the same parties and so we saw a lot of each other. One day we were talking, and the conversation turned to the rivalry between the Amherst and Mohawk cross-country teams. Becky thought the whole rivalry was ridiculous, and she said something surprising: she knew Dave McMullin, sat next to him in Algebra class, and she thought that he was a perfectly nice kid.
I was amazed and incredulous. It had never occurred to me that any member of the Mohawk team might be a pleasant person, or possess any other redeeming qualities. Becky suggested that I should come up to Shelburne Falls sometime and meet Dave. I resolved to do it, and I decided that the way to do it would be to join him for a run.
I was impulsive then, and I never planned anything ahead of time or thought about consequences. That's how it happened that a few weeks later toward the end of August I borrowed my Mom's car and drove to Shelburne Falls. I hadn't told anyone about what i was doing -- not my coach, not the Mohawk coach, not the runners on my team. all I knew was that I was on my way to someone else's practice. (Becky had acted as my accomplice by interrogating Dave about Mohawk's pre-season practice schedule.)
When I arrived, there were only a few kids at the high school fields. I wasn't sure what to do, so I said "Hi" to the kids and told a lie: I said I was thinking of going out for the team. They didn't know who i was, so they just figured I was some random kid that they didn't know. More people showed up, and I began to get nervous. Finally, Coach Putnam showed up, along with a few runners and they recognized me. It was a scary moment, but after being unmasked as an intruder from Amherst, they actually welcomed me, and said it was fine if I wanted to run with their team that day.
So I did. I ran with their top runners for a few miles, and then, on a particularly tough hill, the McMullin brothers broke away from the group and disappeared off into the distance. I lagged behind with some of their slower runner. When we returned to the school, the brothers made no secret of their delight in having dropped me on the hills of our little 8-mile run. I figured I deserved it.
I returned to Amherst. That Fall, we ran against Mohawk on their home course and they beat us in a very close meet. The McMullin brothers went 1-2 on us. I was fourth. After the race, they were very gracious in victory. They said they would never have run such fast times if we hadn't pushed them so hard. We all shook hands and wished each other well in the upcoming Western Mass meet.
That's most of the story. Thanks to Becky, I got to know my hated rivals better and, to my great surprise, discovered they were a lot like me.
But there's one more thing: the next spring, I ran the mile in the All-State meet. I was very nervous before the race, very worried about how I would do. As I was warming up, I happened to run into Coach Putnam. We had a little chat, and he gave me some very good, very supportive advice. In fact, it was advice that was to prove useful for years to come. On that day, I went on to run a 5-second PR in what was probably one of the best races of my high school career.
The lesson I learned is that even though Amherst has a fine high school and is a wonderful place to be a kid, if you want to grow up, sometimes you need to drive to Shelburne Falls.
June 12, 2007
MIAA Rules Regarding Out-of-Season Activities
Everyone should understand the MIAA rules regarding out-of-season activities for teams and individuals. I urge people to read the relevant MIAA rules and become familiar with both the letter and spirit of those rules (links are provided below). I intend to comply fully with both.
The rules for coaches and out-of-season activity are spelled out in the MIAA Handbook for 2005-2007. The MIAA has also written a summary of the rule and its implications:
MIAA Position on Out-of-Season Activities (PDF)
The latter document makes it clear that coaches and volunteers for high school teams are not allowed to coach their athletes out of season. There are a few very specific and limited exceptions, one of which (40.5.3) refers to supervising groups. That exception states:
"At no time may the coach supervise any group or subgroup which includes 50% or more students who are among his/her candidates."
The NSRP is not some way of getting around the technicalities of the MIAA rule. The clear intent of the rule is to make sure that students and their parents are completely free to make their own decisions about how to train or not train during the summer months and at other out-of-season periods with NO consequences for eventual participation on the team. I completely support this position.
The NSRP is not affiliated in any way with Newton North High School. It is barely an organized activity at all. (You would know this if you stopped by). It is primarily a chance for a group of (mostly) NNHS alumni and their friends to get together for summer runs. However, one of my goals is to promote more communication and camaraderie between runners from surrounding towns. That's why I'd like to invite alumni, parents, and others from surrounding towns to stop by run with us from time to time.
So far, nobody but me has been representing the middle-aged population, but I have hope, I have hope...
The rules for coaches and out-of-season activity are spelled out in the MIAA Handbook for 2005-2007. The MIAA has also written a summary of the rule and its implications:
MIAA Position on Out-of-Season Activities (PDF)
The latter document makes it clear that coaches and volunteers for high school teams are not allowed to coach their athletes out of season. There are a few very specific and limited exceptions, one of which (40.5.3) refers to supervising groups. That exception states:
"At no time may the coach supervise any group or subgroup which includes 50% or more students who are among his/her candidates."
The NSRP is not some way of getting around the technicalities of the MIAA rule. The clear intent of the rule is to make sure that students and their parents are completely free to make their own decisions about how to train or not train during the summer months and at other out-of-season periods with NO consequences for eventual participation on the team. I completely support this position.
The NSRP is not affiliated in any way with Newton North High School. It is barely an organized activity at all. (You would know this if you stopped by). It is primarily a chance for a group of (mostly) NNHS alumni and their friends to get together for summer runs. However, one of my goals is to promote more communication and camaraderie between runners from surrounding towns. That's why I'd like to invite alumni, parents, and others from surrounding towns to stop by run with us from time to time.
So far, nobody but me has been representing the middle-aged population, but I have hope, I have hope...
June 11, 2007
Newton Summer Running Project
After the intensity of spring track and before the rigors of fall cross-country, summer offers a chance for distance runners to build an aerobic base without the challenge of weekly or even bi-weekly meets. Building an aerobic base is a long-term project. It is a gently rising path in which no particular run is that hard, but the overall amount of running increases over time, giving the body a chance to adapt to a greater workload.
Building a base is not just a physical challenge, it is mental challenge, especially a test of one's ability to establish a habit of running regularly -- every day, if possible. It helps to have a routine. It helps to have a long-term plan. It also helps to have people to run with.
We have a group of runners in Newton who try to meet regularly during the summer to run, talk, and stay in touch. We meet on Mondays and Wednesdays at 6:15 at the entrance of Cold Spring Park in Newton. So far, the group has included mostly NNHS alumni who are now in or just out of college. However, I have great hopes that we will have more current high schoolers, and not just from Newton but from other schools around the area (are you reading this Brookline kids, Needham kids?).
Since different people have different goals, we try to break into groups that respect a variety of distances and paces. One group runs 6-8 miles. Another (a small one so far) runs only about 3 miles. We don't race the workouts. Well, sometimes David Polgar races the traffic, but we try not to encourage that behavior. We would love to have new people drop in.
These runs won't, by themselves, make anyone a world-beater. But they will help runners get into the habit of running, and will offer support for a variety of training goals.
If you would like to be put on my mailing list for the NSRP, leave a comment here and I will make sure you get all the announcements.
(design by Ankit Prakash - used with absolutely no permission)
Building a base is not just a physical challenge, it is mental challenge, especially a test of one's ability to establish a habit of running regularly -- every day, if possible. It helps to have a routine. It helps to have a long-term plan. It also helps to have people to run with.
We have a group of runners in Newton who try to meet regularly during the summer to run, talk, and stay in touch. We meet on Mondays and Wednesdays at 6:15 at the entrance of Cold Spring Park in Newton. So far, the group has included mostly NNHS alumni who are now in or just out of college. However, I have great hopes that we will have more current high schoolers, and not just from Newton but from other schools around the area (are you reading this Brookline kids, Needham kids?).
Since different people have different goals, we try to break into groups that respect a variety of distances and paces. One group runs 6-8 miles. Another (a small one so far) runs only about 3 miles. We don't race the workouts. Well, sometimes David Polgar races the traffic, but we try not to encourage that behavior. We would love to have new people drop in.
These runs won't, by themselves, make anyone a world-beater. But they will help runners get into the habit of running, and will offer support for a variety of training goals.
If you would like to be put on my mailing list for the NSRP, leave a comment here and I will make sure you get all the announcements.
(design by Ankit Prakash - used with absolutely no permission)
June 10, 2007
New Englands
For Avery Mitchel, David Smith, Cailean Robinson, and Gordon Forbes, their final day of high school track competition was, like the weather, a little dreary, a little less than ideal. The rain delayed the start of the New England championships, and affected times and performances in the sprints and field events. (Distance runners loved the cool, wet temperatures after last week's heat, but North had no distance runners competing.)
In the 100m, Cailean Robinson slipped into the final as the 7th qualifier, and then placed 5th in the final in 11.10 against a slight headwind.
Avery Mitchell ran 49.92 to place 6th in the seeded heat of the 400m. Mitchell had hoped to go under 49 at this meet, but had a sub-par race.
Mitchell, Robinson, Forbes, and Hymlaire Lamisere teamed up to place 4th in the 4x100m in 43.24, well off their state championship winning time from last week.
David Smith had the best individual finish of the Newton North boys, placing 4th in the shot put with a throw of 54-7.
Congratulations to the Brookline team, who ran a school record 7:51.06 to place 5th in the 4x800m.
Also congratulations to Natick's Rebecca White, who ran a big PR of 10:55.81 to place 5th in the 3200m.
New England Championship Results
In the 100m, Cailean Robinson slipped into the final as the 7th qualifier, and then placed 5th in the final in 11.10 against a slight headwind.
Avery Mitchell ran 49.92 to place 6th in the seeded heat of the 400m. Mitchell had hoped to go under 49 at this meet, but had a sub-par race.
Mitchell, Robinson, Forbes, and Hymlaire Lamisere teamed up to place 4th in the 4x100m in 43.24, well off their state championship winning time from last week.
David Smith had the best individual finish of the Newton North boys, placing 4th in the shot put with a throw of 54-7.
Congratulations to the Brookline team, who ran a school record 7:51.06 to place 5th in the 4x800m.
Also congratulations to Natick's Rebecca White, who ran a big PR of 10:55.81 to place 5th in the 3200m.
New England Championship Results
June 09, 2007
"Outside" Explains It All For You
Beginning a few months ago, I started receiving Outside Magazine in the mail. If you have never seen Outside Magazine, it is kind of like Runner's World for gear heads, with beautiful people who promise to tell you how to "stay fit forever." I don't remember subscribing -- maybe it was a perk from some race I entered or maybe someone signed me up for a gift subscription and I forgot about it -- I don't know, but I don't have much interest, and I pretty much just toss them into the recycle bin.
But something about the cover of the latest issue caught my eye. There was the usual photo of a rugged, but handsome outdoorsman smiling as he contemplated the number of summits he had summited, or the number of grizzly bears he had fought off using nothing but a tent peg... but that wasn't what drew my attention. It was the headline "How to Do Everything," and the promise to teach me all the really important stuff in life, from "How to Fake a Sick Day" to "How to Fix a Motorcycle With Your Teeth" (I am NOT making this up)... And there it was, listed as #18 of the things every Outside reader should know: "How to Run Faster."
I couldn't ignore that, so instead of recycling the magazine immediately, I turned to page 78 and eagerly began reading the keys to running like the wind. Since I am a generous guy, I will share what I learned so that you don't have to go out and buy a copy of "Outside" for yourself. Ready? Here are the three secrets of running faster:
1. Do strides (4 x 20s, work them into normal runs)
2. Skip (2 sets of 3 x 30s, work them into a few runs a week)
3. Build core strength through doing "planks" -- a kind of isometric exercise that resembles a push-up frozen in mid-push.
That's it. There's nothing else left but to rue all the days I have run without the benefit of this advice. Why, I could have been faster decades ago if I had only known. Outside Magazine, where were you when I needed you?
But seriously, these might be perfectly helpful tips, and I'm sure they are well-intentioned, but what really annoyed me was that they chose to illustrate this 100-word treatise on developing speed with a photo of Steve Prefontaine jogging on the infield at Hayward Field at the U of Oregon. Prefontaine? An advocate of skipping and planks? Hmmm...
Actually, a couple weeks ago I got my hands on a copy of a book called "How They Train" by Fred Wilt. Wilt compiled the training schedules of the great runners of his day and days of yore. Thanks to Wilt, I can actually look up what kind of training Prefontaine did around the time of his freshman year at Oregon. It's a little bit different than what Outside Magazine recommends:
Mon: AM: 4-6 miles easy; PM: 4-8 miles at 5:30-6:00 pace
Tue: AM: 4-6 miles easy; PM: 10 miles at 5:00 pace (!)
6-12x300m @52s
Wed: AM: 4-6 miles easy; PM: 5-8 miles at 5:30-6:30 pace
Thu: AM: 4-6 miles easy;
PM: 24x300m (6@52, 6@48, 6@46, 6@44) with 100m jog rest
4-5 miles easy,
6-12 x 300m in sets of 52-50-48-46-44-all out, 100m jog rest
Fri: AM: 4-6 miles easy; PM: 4-6 miles easy
Sat: AM: 3x1M @ 4:24, 4:22, 4:18, with 800m jog rest,
4-5 miles easy, then 18x300 (6@52, 6@48, 6@46)
PM: 4 mile run
Sun: AM: 15 Miles @6:30 pace
So there you have it: two training philosophies. Run faster by striding and skipping, or run faster by working your butt off with 90-100 miles per week, and a lot of very fast running. I think the choice is clear. If only Pre had known these secrets he could have saved himself a lot of trouble.
June 08, 2007
Volleyball and Lots of Track
Volleyball: NN Advances to State Finals
Congratulations to Richard Barton and the Newton North boys volleyball team who advanced to the state finals last night with a 3-2 win over West champion Agawam. The Tigers, who made a Cinderella run through the state tournament last year only to fall in the state semis, have made an even better run this year. They overcame a very skilled and powerful Agawam team to earn the right to play Bay State league foe Natick for the state title. The championship match is Saturday night in Hudson.
Volleyball Coverage in the Daily News Tribune
Track: NE Championships
The New England H.S. Track and Field championships will be held Saturday at Fitchburg State College, site of last year's Mass. State Championships. Two athletes from Newton North are entered in individual events (David Smith - seeded 4th in the shot put, and Avery Mitchell - seeded 3rd in the 400m). The girls 4x800 team is seeded first overall, and the boys 4x100 team is seeded 2nd.
Field events start at 10:00, and running events get underway at 11:00 with the 4x800 relays.
Meet Information (PDF)
Performance Lists for the New England Championships
Track: NCAA Div I Championships
The NCAA Div I Track and Field Championships are underway in Sacramento, CA. The four-day meet includes several former New England high school stars. Last night, Archbishop Williams grad Sean Quigley finished fourth in the 10,000 meters right behind Galen Rupp and Josh McDougal. On Saturday, former Bromfield star Ari Lambie competes in the 1500.
Link to the NCAA Championships Host Website (including live results)
Track: Prefontaine Classic
On Sunday, CBS will televise two hours LIVE of the Prefontaine Classic in Eugene, Oregon. The meet features some tremendous fields, and annually produces some of the fastest time of the year for U.S. athletes.
Alan Webb made news recently by switching out of the 1500m and into the 2-Mile, where he takes on Keninisa and Tariku Bekele, Craig Mottram, and a deep, deep field, and also seeks to best his own American Record for the distance.
The 200m might be the race of the day, as the field is incredibly stacked, and has the added attraction of Olympic 400m Jeremy Wariner, who is stepping down in distance to take on the world's best at the half-lap distance. Here are the entrants:
Xavier Carter
Wallace Spearmon
Shawn Crawford
Rodney Martin
Chris Williams (Jamaica)
Jeremy Wariner
Asafa Powell (Jamaica)
Chris Berrian
You can see the other performance lists at the Pre Classic web site.
Congratulations to Richard Barton and the Newton North boys volleyball team who advanced to the state finals last night with a 3-2 win over West champion Agawam. The Tigers, who made a Cinderella run through the state tournament last year only to fall in the state semis, have made an even better run this year. They overcame a very skilled and powerful Agawam team to earn the right to play Bay State league foe Natick for the state title. The championship match is Saturday night in Hudson.
Volleyball Coverage in the Daily News Tribune
Track: NE Championships
The New England H.S. Track and Field championships will be held Saturday at Fitchburg State College, site of last year's Mass. State Championships. Two athletes from Newton North are entered in individual events (David Smith - seeded 4th in the shot put, and Avery Mitchell - seeded 3rd in the 400m). The girls 4x800 team is seeded first overall, and the boys 4x100 team is seeded 2nd.
Field events start at 10:00, and running events get underway at 11:00 with the 4x800 relays.
Meet Information (PDF)
Performance Lists for the New England Championships
Track: NCAA Div I Championships
The NCAA Div I Track and Field Championships are underway in Sacramento, CA. The four-day meet includes several former New England high school stars. Last night, Archbishop Williams grad Sean Quigley finished fourth in the 10,000 meters right behind Galen Rupp and Josh McDougal. On Saturday, former Bromfield star Ari Lambie competes in the 1500.
Link to the NCAA Championships Host Website (including live results)
Track: Prefontaine Classic
On Sunday, CBS will televise two hours LIVE of the Prefontaine Classic in Eugene, Oregon. The meet features some tremendous fields, and annually produces some of the fastest time of the year for U.S. athletes.
Alan Webb made news recently by switching out of the 1500m and into the 2-Mile, where he takes on Keninisa and Tariku Bekele, Craig Mottram, and a deep, deep field, and also seeks to best his own American Record for the distance.
The 200m might be the race of the day, as the field is incredibly stacked, and has the added attraction of Olympic 400m Jeremy Wariner, who is stepping down in distance to take on the world's best at the half-lap distance. Here are the entrants:
Xavier Carter
Wallace Spearmon
Shawn Crawford
Rodney Martin
Chris Williams (Jamaica)
Jeremy Wariner
Asafa Powell (Jamaica)
Chris Berrian
You can see the other performance lists at the Pre Classic web site.
June 06, 2007
The "B" word
On Sunday night, during CNN's televised debate among Democratic Presidential hopefuls, New Mexico governor Bill Richardson suggested that the U.S. consider boycotting the 2008 Beijing Olympics to protest China's support for the Sudanese government and its role in the Darfur genocide.
It's hard to know whether Gov. Richardson's comment reflects significant public support for the idea of boycotting the Beijing games, or whether it was just a sound bite to help him stand out from the other candidates. It does suggest that with 2008 right around the corner, those seeking political gain from taking a position for or against a boycott are going to be getting more attention.
Ever since China was awarded the 2008 games back in 2001, there have been calls for a boycott. Human Rights groups were among the first organizations to protest China's selection. Advocates for freedom of the press have also gone on record calling for a boycott. In 2005, Paul McCartney, the former Beatle, called for a boycott based on China's alleged animal rights violations. Recently, Japan's prime minister Shinzo Abe went on record as saying that Japan would NOT boycott the Olympics. "Sports and politics should be considered separately," he said.
Do boycotts work? Do they help call attention to, or help change the evil policies of national governments? or do they rather inflame international tensions? or are they simply irrelevant, a moral statement without consequence?
The U.S. boycotted the Moscow Olympics in 1980 to protest the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan Over 60 other countries followed suit, including Japan, West Germany, China and Canada (several NATO countries such as Great Britain and France supported the boycott, but allowed their athletes to compete if they wished). Four years later, citing anti-soviet hysteria, the USSR and other soviet bloc countries returned the favor by boycotting the 1984 games in Los Angeles. For many years, African nations threatened Olympic boycotts to prevent the admission of apartheid South Africa into the games.
Maybe a better question to ask than "do boycotts work," is whether participation in an athletic event represents tacit approval of the political policies of the host country for that event. Or can the two be kept separate?
One thing is certain, with the Olympics coming only once every four years, athletes who willingly or unwillingly participate in a boycott lose what might be a once-in-a-lifetime chance to compete. If you google "1980 U.S. Olympic team", you'll find pages and pages of links to the "Miracle on Ice" -- the U.S. hockey team's unlikely victory over the Soviet Union in the 1980 Winter Games in Lake Placid. None of the top links mention the individual athletes and teams that didn't get a chance to compete against the Soviets in Moscow.
Among the track athletes who qualified in the 1980 US Olympic Trials were Don Paige (800m), Steve Scott (1500m), Mary Decker (1500m), Henry Marsh (3000sc), Matt Centrowitz and Bill McChesney (5000m), Craig Virgin (10,000m), and Tony Sandoval (Marathon). all were at the peak of their athletic careers. All had medal chances. Some competed four years later at Los Angeles, but none -- except for Slaney perhaps -- were still at their peak, and none ever stood on the podium.
Moral issues are hard. Moral issues often demand sacrifices. Still, I hope that those who use the "B" word now, and, like Bill Richardson call for sacrifice from others (without themselves sacrificing), have weighed carefully the losses and gains of such an action.
It's hard to know whether Gov. Richardson's comment reflects significant public support for the idea of boycotting the Beijing games, or whether it was just a sound bite to help him stand out from the other candidates. It does suggest that with 2008 right around the corner, those seeking political gain from taking a position for or against a boycott are going to be getting more attention.
Ever since China was awarded the 2008 games back in 2001, there have been calls for a boycott. Human Rights groups were among the first organizations to protest China's selection. Advocates for freedom of the press have also gone on record calling for a boycott. In 2005, Paul McCartney, the former Beatle, called for a boycott based on China's alleged animal rights violations. Recently, Japan's prime minister Shinzo Abe went on record as saying that Japan would NOT boycott the Olympics. "Sports and politics should be considered separately," he said.
Do boycotts work? Do they help call attention to, or help change the evil policies of national governments? or do they rather inflame international tensions? or are they simply irrelevant, a moral statement without consequence?
The U.S. boycotted the Moscow Olympics in 1980 to protest the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan Over 60 other countries followed suit, including Japan, West Germany, China and Canada (several NATO countries such as Great Britain and France supported the boycott, but allowed their athletes to compete if they wished). Four years later, citing anti-soviet hysteria, the USSR and other soviet bloc countries returned the favor by boycotting the 1984 games in Los Angeles. For many years, African nations threatened Olympic boycotts to prevent the admission of apartheid South Africa into the games.
Maybe a better question to ask than "do boycotts work," is whether participation in an athletic event represents tacit approval of the political policies of the host country for that event. Or can the two be kept separate?
One thing is certain, with the Olympics coming only once every four years, athletes who willingly or unwillingly participate in a boycott lose what might be a once-in-a-lifetime chance to compete. If you google "1980 U.S. Olympic team", you'll find pages and pages of links to the "Miracle on Ice" -- the U.S. hockey team's unlikely victory over the Soviet Union in the 1980 Winter Games in Lake Placid. None of the top links mention the individual athletes and teams that didn't get a chance to compete against the Soviets in Moscow.
Among the track athletes who qualified in the 1980 US Olympic Trials were Don Paige (800m), Steve Scott (1500m), Mary Decker (1500m), Henry Marsh (3000sc), Matt Centrowitz and Bill McChesney (5000m), Craig Virgin (10,000m), and Tony Sandoval (Marathon). all were at the peak of their athletic careers. All had medal chances. Some competed four years later at Los Angeles, but none -- except for Slaney perhaps -- were still at their peak, and none ever stood on the podium.
Moral issues are hard. Moral issues often demand sacrifices. Still, I hope that those who use the "B" word now, and, like Bill Richardson call for sacrifice from others (without themselves sacrificing), have weighed carefully the losses and gains of such an action.
June 05, 2007
2012 Olympics Unveil New Look
The Beijing Olympics might still seem far away, but in London, a lot of people are focused on the 2012 games. On Monday, Sebastian Coe, a double Olympic Gold medalist at 1500m and now chairman of the Organising (sic) committee for the 2012 London Olympics -- unveiled the new look/logo/brand for the games. According to a story on the BBC web site, "the jagged emblem, based on the date 2012, comes in a series of shades of pink, blue, green and orange and will evolve in the run-up to the Games."
To me the shape looks a discus thrower winding up for a toss, and it took me a while to recognize the numerals. But never mind that, the London Olympics wanted an image that would be modern and inclusive and appealing to abroad audience, including young viewers. It's all about branding as we know, and Coe promised that the new brand "...will define the venues we build and the Games we hold and act as a reminder of our promise to use the Olympic spirit to inspire everyone and reach out to young people around the world."
The BBC article goes on to quote Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell who continues the theme: "This is an iconic brand that sums up what London 2012 is all about - an inclusive, welcoming and diverse Games that involves the whole country. It takes our values to the world beyond our shores, acting both as an invitation and an inspiration."
Unfortunately but predictably, reaction to the logo has been tepid, with only 3% of roughly 3600 respondents giving the new logo/brand a "gold medal," and nearly 85% giving it a "wooden spoon." Ouch!
I don't think it's THAT bad, but it certainly is a departure from previous games. The logo for the 1948 London Olympics was more of a travel poster than an actual logo. But that was before color television and YouTube and billion dollar advertising and licensing revenues. The new look, which cost roughly the organising committee nearly a million dollars, has the advantage of easily dissolving into colored pixels at the touch of a computer mouse. To see how it is being used in promotional materials, check out the following promotional video. If you are prone to seizures, mind the flashing images!!
Anyway, the London brand or logo or whatever it is seems far superior to the USATF mascot, Spike, who was introduced to long suffering US track fans five years ago. Spike seems to have passed away - a victim of his own annoying cuteness. Let's hope that London's new look has a happier life.
June 04, 2007
Daily Reading...
Once upon a time, I had a boss who regularly described our futile attempts to glean manageable amounts of useful information from Internet sources as "...like trying to drink water from a fire hose..."
Well, I certainly know how that feels. Whenever I try to do Internet research, or just keep up with current events, I find myself dog-paddling in a vast ocean of marginally interesting web sites.
Recently, in an attempt to instill some discipline into my forays through the Web news landscape, I created for myself a "daily reading" list. The only links that make it onto this list are for sites that consistently provide interesting information and a distinct and recognizable point of view. My daily reading list has a section for running-related sites, of course, and I thought I'd share the "elite" sites that met my standards.
Finish Line Pundit
I only started reading FLP a few weeks ago, but I have been really impressed by the topics covered and the quality of the posts. In the last week, the pundit (42-year-old Jimmie Markham) has tackled the subject of racial advantage in T&F, the limits of human potential, how to improve televised coverage of T&F (including a harsh critique of CBS' coverage of the Reebok Grand Prix meet), and the case of Oscar Pistorius.
IAAF.ORG
More of a traditional news site (rather than a blog), I try to read IAAF.org every day to know what's going on in the world. On days when nothing's happening, I browse their world rankings and records sections.
Masters Muse and News
Ken Stone writes about Masters Athletics, and boy does he write, covering everything happening in the world of age-group track and field. This includes his sometimes acid criticism of political bodies within the sport, and frequent updates on athletes in their late thirties still competing at a world-class level. He gives ample space to field events (today I found out that 45-year-old Roald Bradstock just qualified for the USATF OPEN Nationals) and also scans the web for other interesting sites.
Just Your Average Joggler
When I tell you that this is a site devoted to the arcane art of "joggling" -- running while juggling -- I'm sure you'll assume that it's in my list as a novelty, a one-hit wonder. But surprisingly, this is an excellent site for practical information and discussion about everyday running topics such as how long to keep your running shoes, what exercises and stretches you should be doing, how to tell if you are over-training, and so on. Even if you've never had the urge to run the Chicago Marathon while continuously tossing and catching three balls, you might like this site.
This Day in Athletics
This is another recent addition to my list. There's no discussion, only brief news items from this day in athletics history. From this site I learn that on June 4, 1954, Wes Santee ran a world record for 1500m en route to a 4:00.6 mile at the Compton relays. If you want a dose of T&F history with your cornflakes, this is the site for you.
Well, I certainly know how that feels. Whenever I try to do Internet research, or just keep up with current events, I find myself dog-paddling in a vast ocean of marginally interesting web sites.
Recently, in an attempt to instill some discipline into my forays through the Web news landscape, I created for myself a "daily reading" list. The only links that make it onto this list are for sites that consistently provide interesting information and a distinct and recognizable point of view. My daily reading list has a section for running-related sites, of course, and I thought I'd share the "elite" sites that met my standards.
Finish Line Pundit
I only started reading FLP a few weeks ago, but I have been really impressed by the topics covered and the quality of the posts. In the last week, the pundit (42-year-old Jimmie Markham) has tackled the subject of racial advantage in T&F, the limits of human potential, how to improve televised coverage of T&F (including a harsh critique of CBS' coverage of the Reebok Grand Prix meet), and the case of Oscar Pistorius.
IAAF.ORG
More of a traditional news site (rather than a blog), I try to read IAAF.org every day to know what's going on in the world. On days when nothing's happening, I browse their world rankings and records sections.
Masters Muse and News
Ken Stone writes about Masters Athletics, and boy does he write, covering everything happening in the world of age-group track and field. This includes his sometimes acid criticism of political bodies within the sport, and frequent updates on athletes in their late thirties still competing at a world-class level. He gives ample space to field events (today I found out that 45-year-old Roald Bradstock just qualified for the USATF OPEN Nationals) and also scans the web for other interesting sites.
Just Your Average Joggler
When I tell you that this is a site devoted to the arcane art of "joggling" -- running while juggling -- I'm sure you'll assume that it's in my list as a novelty, a one-hit wonder. But surprisingly, this is an excellent site for practical information and discussion about everyday running topics such as how long to keep your running shoes, what exercises and stretches you should be doing, how to tell if you are over-training, and so on. Even if you've never had the urge to run the Chicago Marathon while continuously tossing and catching three balls, you might like this site.
This Day in Athletics
This is another recent addition to my list. There's no discussion, only brief news items from this day in athletics history. From this site I learn that on June 4, 1954, Wes Santee ran a world record for 1500m en route to a 4:00.6 mile at the Compton relays. If you want a dose of T&F history with your cornflakes, this is the site for you.
June 03, 2007
NNHS Alumni Results - June 2, 2007
A number of recent and not-so-recent NNHS grads raced at the Boston High Performance meet Saturday evening, June 2nd.
Caroline Occean won the women's open 1500m by nearly six seconds, running 4:44.70.
In the open 800m, Peter Sun placed 2nd with a time of 2:04.99. Josh Seeherman was 4th in 2:06.47.
Dave Cahill placed 4th in the open 400m with a time of 51.32.
After hanging out in the hot sun at the state meet all day, Tom Davis somehow managed to run 4:03.52 in the second section of the elite 1500m. That's about a 4:22 mile...
Full Meet Results
Caroline Occean won the women's open 1500m by nearly six seconds, running 4:44.70.
In the open 800m, Peter Sun placed 2nd with a time of 2:04.99. Josh Seeherman was 4th in 2:06.47.
Dave Cahill placed 4th in the open 400m with a time of 51.32.
After hanging out in the hot sun at the state meet all day, Tom Davis somehow managed to run 4:03.52 in the second section of the elite 1500m. That's about a 4:22 mile...
Full Meet Results
Mass State Meet:: Titles for Girls 4x800, Boys 4x100
The Newton North girls ran a state meet record in the 4x800 relay, and the Newton North boys continued to be untouchable in the 4x400 relay. Jess Barton battled heat and humidity to take 4th in the 2M. Avery Mitchell ran brilliantly to take second in the 400 while flirting with a sub 49, and Cailean Robinson was the model of consistency running identical times in the prelims and finals of the 100, where he finished second. David Smith finished second in the shot put, and also scored in the discus.
At the end of the day, the Newton North boys had scored 38 points, which clinched second-place and the runner-up trophy (although the pole vault will be contested Monday, no team can catch the Tigers).
Running events got underway with the girls 2M. Jess Barton, owner of the second-fastest time in the state looked good through about five laps, but faded to fourth in the intense heat -- it was close to 90 degrees on the track, and Jess doesn't much care for the heat.
In the boys 400, Avery Mitchell raced to a personal best 49.01 to take second behind Lexington's Meikle Paschal.
Cailean Robinson ran 11.13 in the 100 prelims, and duplicated that time into a slight headwind in the finals to take second.
Mitchell, Robinson, Hylaire Lamisere, and Gordon Forbes teamed up to run 42.55 to win the Boys 4x400 Relay.
In the girls 4x800, Emma Kornetsky opened with a 2:19.9 leg and a share of the lead. Kornetsky handed off to Kat Chiong, who ran the best 800 of her life - 2:20.1 in a relentless display of speed that opened up a 25m lead on the pack. Jess Barton took the baton and proceeded to absolutely bury the field, running 2:19. Carolyn Ranti knew what to do and scorched a16th. 63-second first lap and the race was over. Ranti brought the baton around in 2:15, and the girls set a state meet record, running 9:15.13.
In the field events, David Smith fell short of repeating as shot put champion, but did battle for second place, throwing 54-10.25. Smith also scored in the discus, placing 5th with a throw of 147-8. Hester Breen also competed in the discus, throwing 99-4 for 16th.
All-State Meet Boys Results
All-State Meet Girls Results
At the end of the day, the Newton North boys had scored 38 points, which clinched second-place and the runner-up trophy (although the pole vault will be contested Monday, no team can catch the Tigers).
Running events got underway with the girls 2M. Jess Barton, owner of the second-fastest time in the state looked good through about five laps, but faded to fourth in the intense heat -- it was close to 90 degrees on the track, and Jess doesn't much care for the heat.
In the boys 400, Avery Mitchell raced to a personal best 49.01 to take second behind Lexington's Meikle Paschal.
Cailean Robinson ran 11.13 in the 100 prelims, and duplicated that time into a slight headwind in the finals to take second.
Mitchell, Robinson, Hylaire Lamisere, and Gordon Forbes teamed up to run 42.55 to win the Boys 4x400 Relay.
In the girls 4x800, Emma Kornetsky opened with a 2:19.9 leg and a share of the lead. Kornetsky handed off to Kat Chiong, who ran the best 800 of her life - 2:20.1 in a relentless display of speed that opened up a 25m lead on the pack. Jess Barton took the baton and proceeded to absolutely bury the field, running 2:19. Carolyn Ranti knew what to do and scorched a16th. 63-second first lap and the race was over. Ranti brought the baton around in 2:15, and the girls set a state meet record, running 9:15.13.
In the field events, David Smith fell short of repeating as shot put champion, but did battle for second place, throwing 54-10.25. Smith also scored in the discus, placing 5th with a throw of 147-8. Hester Breen also competed in the discus, throwing 99-4 for 16th.
All-State Meet Boys Results
All-State Meet Girls Results
June 02, 2007
State Meet, High Performance Meet, and Reebok Grand Prix Today
While many of us are out in Holyoke watching the State Meet, there are two other meets today that should be of interest to track and field junkies.
Bentley College hosts the second meet of the Boston High Performance Series this evening. If you have never been to one of these meets, you definitely should give it a try. There's no hype and no huge crowds to deal with. Spectators can watch the meet for free and see watch high quality athletes go for fast times. At tonight's meet, Victor Gras and Tom Davis are entered in the Elite 1500 (separate heats). Peter Sun and Josh Seehermen will battle it out in open 800m. You can find more information, as well as complete start lists here:
Boston High Performance Series Web Site
Today is also the third annual Reebok Grand Prix meet in New York City. This is probably the highest quality international meet in the U.S., with more than a dozen Olympic gold medalists from around the world, including World Record-holder Liu Xiang (110m hurdles), Veronica Campbell (100m), Nick Hysong (pole vault) and Stacy Dragila (pole vault). Also in the lineup are World Champions Allyson Felix, who will double
at 100 meters and 400 meters; Bershawn Jackson (400m hurdles); Torri Edwards (100 meters); and Tirunesh Dibaba, the double World Champion at 5000 and 10,000 meters and World Indoor Record-holder at 5000 meters.
Here's more info from the meet press release:
"Last year, Meseret Defar thrilled the crowd when she broke the 5000-meter World Record, and rumor has it that Dibaba will be aiming to break it again. On the mens side, a deep international field is out to run the 5000 meters in under 13 minutes for the first time on US soil. At least five athletes in the field, led by Kenyas Edwin Soi, ran under 13 minutes in 2006. The All-Comers Record they willl be shooting for was set here last year, when Abraham Chebii won in 13:04.56."
"The Reebok Grand Prix will also be your chance to see rising American superstars Tyson Gay and Jenn Stuczynski. Gay, ranked #1 in the world at 200 meters and #2 at 100 meters, last summer became the fastest 100m-200m combination sprinter in history, according to IAAF scoring tables. On May 20, he won the 100m at the Addidas Track Classic in 9.79 seconds, a time that would have tied the American Record had the tailwind not been slightly over (2.5) the allowable (2.0) limit. At that same meet, Stuczynski vaulted 15 feet, 10.5 inches to break the American Record in the pole vault, held for 11 years by Dragila. That mark makes Stuczynski the third-best woman on the world all-time list."
"In a top-flight Mile field, two-time Olympic medalist Bernard Lagat and Craig Mottram, the World Championship bronze medalist at 5000 meters, headline a field that
includes Alan Webb, who holds the 2-Mile American Record; and Nick Willis, the 2006 Commonwealth Games gold medalist at 1500 meters. In a special treat, high schooler Matthew Centrowitz, son of 1970s Power Memorial High School legend Matt Centrowitz, will be in the elite open field, chasing his fathers high school personal best of 4:02.7."
The running events get underway shortly after 5 p.m. Saturday.
You can find more info at the Reebox Grand Prix web site.
Bentley College hosts the second meet of the Boston High Performance Series this evening. If you have never been to one of these meets, you definitely should give it a try. There's no hype and no huge crowds to deal with. Spectators can watch the meet for free and see watch high quality athletes go for fast times. At tonight's meet, Victor Gras and Tom Davis are entered in the Elite 1500 (separate heats). Peter Sun and Josh Seehermen will battle it out in open 800m. You can find more information, as well as complete start lists here:
Boston High Performance Series Web Site
Today is also the third annual Reebok Grand Prix meet in New York City. This is probably the highest quality international meet in the U.S., with more than a dozen Olympic gold medalists from around the world, including World Record-holder Liu Xiang (110m hurdles), Veronica Campbell (100m), Nick Hysong (pole vault) and Stacy Dragila (pole vault). Also in the lineup are World Champions Allyson Felix, who will double
at 100 meters and 400 meters; Bershawn Jackson (400m hurdles); Torri Edwards (100 meters); and Tirunesh Dibaba, the double World Champion at 5000 and 10,000 meters and World Indoor Record-holder at 5000 meters.
Here's more info from the meet press release:
"Last year, Meseret Defar thrilled the crowd when she broke the 5000-meter World Record, and rumor has it that Dibaba will be aiming to break it again. On the mens side, a deep international field is out to run the 5000 meters in under 13 minutes for the first time on US soil. At least five athletes in the field, led by Kenyas Edwin Soi, ran under 13 minutes in 2006. The All-Comers Record they willl be shooting for was set here last year, when Abraham Chebii won in 13:04.56."
"The Reebok Grand Prix will also be your chance to see rising American superstars Tyson Gay and Jenn Stuczynski. Gay, ranked #1 in the world at 200 meters and #2 at 100 meters, last summer became the fastest 100m-200m combination sprinter in history, according to IAAF scoring tables. On May 20, he won the 100m at the Addidas Track Classic in 9.79 seconds, a time that would have tied the American Record had the tailwind not been slightly over (2.5) the allowable (2.0) limit. At that same meet, Stuczynski vaulted 15 feet, 10.5 inches to break the American Record in the pole vault, held for 11 years by Dragila. That mark makes Stuczynski the third-best woman on the world all-time list."
"In a top-flight Mile field, two-time Olympic medalist Bernard Lagat and Craig Mottram, the World Championship bronze medalist at 5000 meters, headline a field that
includes Alan Webb, who holds the 2-Mile American Record; and Nick Willis, the 2006 Commonwealth Games gold medalist at 1500 meters. In a special treat, high schooler Matthew Centrowitz, son of 1970s Power Memorial High School legend Matt Centrowitz, will be in the elite open field, chasing his fathers high school personal best of 4:02.7."
The running events get underway shortly after 5 p.m. Saturday.
You can find more info at the Reebox Grand Prix web site.
June 01, 2007
The Next Great One
With the state meet taking place tomorrow, I keep wondering who will emerge next year as the next dominant Mass. high school distance runner. In other words, who will take up the mantle of expectations and achievements that attends the very best runners that Massachusetts produces? I'm thinking of runners like Jonathon Riley, Abdirizak Mohammed, Said Ahmed, Andy Powell, Franklyn Sanchez, Victor Gras, Chris Barnicle, and yes, Mark Amirault and Ryan Collins. Who will be next?
And before I take a beating for ignoring Massachusetts' girls, I want to point out that Emily Jones, Bridget Dahlberg, and Kristen Kasper are all sophomores. Even with the graduations of Jess Barton and Colleen Wetherbee (and Caroline O'Laughlin and Sydney Fitzpatrick and Colleen McNaughton), the ranks of fine distance runners who will be back next year is impressive.
But on the boys side, there appears to be a vacuum.
Well, there is Robert Gibson, and he seems poised to emerge as the dominant distance runner of his year, but I wonder if he will take the next step to become what we think of as a great runner -- someone who makes an impact on the national scene.
Are we in for a lull, or is the next great male distance runner, even now, planning out a summer of training that will have him winning big XC races in the Fall? Is it someone we already know -- a junior like Gloucester's Liam Anastasia-Murphy or a sophomore like Medford's Phil Galebach? Is it Hamilton-Wenham's Gabe Pacione? Oliver Ames' Mike Moverman? Is it Charlestown sophomore Omar Aden?
Or could it be someone we have never heard of, someone who has been playing soccer and is ready to give running a try? Could it be someone who moves into this area with an already-impressive resumé -- someone like Riley who was already a special runner when he moved to Brookline?
There is only one thing I am sure of, and that is that even if no national-class runner emerges next year, it is only a matter of time before a "great one" emerges and stirs memories and comparisons with great ones of the past.
And before I take a beating for ignoring Massachusetts' girls, I want to point out that Emily Jones, Bridget Dahlberg, and Kristen Kasper are all sophomores. Even with the graduations of Jess Barton and Colleen Wetherbee (and Caroline O'Laughlin and Sydney Fitzpatrick and Colleen McNaughton), the ranks of fine distance runners who will be back next year is impressive.
But on the boys side, there appears to be a vacuum.
Well, there is Robert Gibson, and he seems poised to emerge as the dominant distance runner of his year, but I wonder if he will take the next step to become what we think of as a great runner -- someone who makes an impact on the national scene.
Are we in for a lull, or is the next great male distance runner, even now, planning out a summer of training that will have him winning big XC races in the Fall? Is it someone we already know -- a junior like Gloucester's Liam Anastasia-Murphy or a sophomore like Medford's Phil Galebach? Is it Hamilton-Wenham's Gabe Pacione? Oliver Ames' Mike Moverman? Is it Charlestown sophomore Omar Aden?
Or could it be someone we have never heard of, someone who has been playing soccer and is ready to give running a try? Could it be someone who moves into this area with an already-impressive resumé -- someone like Riley who was already a special runner when he moved to Brookline?
There is only one thing I am sure of, and that is that even if no national-class runner emerges next year, it is only a matter of time before a "great one" emerges and stirs memories and comparisons with great ones of the past.
May 31, 2007
All-State Meet Saturday
The Massachusetts All-State meet will be held Saturday at Holyoke, with field events getting underway at 10:00 and running events at 11:00. Here are directions to the meet:
Take Mass pike West to Rte 91N. Take exit 16 and take a right off the ramp, continue straight (you will go by the Yankee Pedlar on you left, Holyoke Medical Center on left...) through 3 sets of lights, take a right into the front of HHS to enter the building...you can park along the side of the field or go straight thru 4 sets of lights at 5th set take a right by the softball field (you will see a gas station on your left) and then your next right into the back parking lot of HHS...Roberts' Complex is up near the building.
Here is the schedule of events:
State Meet Schedule of Events:
10:00 AM - FIELD EVENTS
TRIPLE JUMP (G-B)
HIGH JUMP (B-G)
SHOT PUT (B-G)
DISCUS (G-B)
JAVELIN (G-B)
LONG JUMP (B-G)
POLE VAULT (G-B)
11:00 AM - RUNNING EVENTS GIRLS FOLLOWED BY BOYS
TWO MILE RUN FINAL ON TIME
800 METER RUN FINAL ON TIME
300 METER HURDLES FINAL ON TIME
400 METER RUN FINAL ON TIME
*200 METER DASH TRIALS
ONE MILE RUN FINAL ON TIME
*100 METER DASH TRIALS
*100 METER HURDLES TRIALS
*110 METER HURDLES TRIALS
200 METER DASH FINALS
100 METER DASH FINALS
110 METER HURDLES FINAL
100 METER HURDLES FINAL
**3200 METER RELAY FINAL ON TIME
400 METER RELAY FINAL ON TIME
1600 METER RELAY FINAL ON TIME
** The 3200M Relay will not start until at least 30 minutes after the last runner has finished the One Mile Run.
Newton North will be sending quite a few athletes to the meet.
For the girls, Carolyn Ranti is seeded 3rd in the 1M, Jess Barton is seeded 4th in the 2M, Michelle Kaufman is seeded 14th in the high hurdles, and Hester Breen is seeded 15th in the discus. In addition, the girls 4x800 team is seeded first after running 9:29 in last week's Div I meet.
For the boys, David Smith is seeded first in the shot and 6th in the discus. Marvin Chan also qualified in the discus and is seeded 17th. Avery Mitchell is seeded 2nd in the 400, Cailean Robinson is seeded 3rd in the 100, and Sam Arsenault is seeded 7th in the HJ. The boys 4x100 team is the top seed, after running a school record 42.37 to win the Div I meet last week.
Here's a link to the complete performance lists
Take Mass pike West to Rte 91N. Take exit 16 and take a right off the ramp, continue straight (you will go by the Yankee Pedlar on you left, Holyoke Medical Center on left...) through 3 sets of lights, take a right into the front of HHS to enter the building...you can park along the side of the field or go straight thru 4 sets of lights at 5th set take a right by the softball field (you will see a gas station on your left) and then your next right into the back parking lot of HHS...Roberts' Complex is up near the building.
Here is the schedule of events:
State Meet Schedule of Events:
10:00 AM - FIELD EVENTS
TRIPLE JUMP (G-B)
HIGH JUMP (B-G)
SHOT PUT (B-G)
DISCUS (G-B)
JAVELIN (G-B)
LONG JUMP (B-G)
POLE VAULT (G-B)
11:00 AM - RUNNING EVENTS GIRLS FOLLOWED BY BOYS
TWO MILE RUN FINAL ON TIME
800 METER RUN FINAL ON TIME
300 METER HURDLES FINAL ON TIME
400 METER RUN FINAL ON TIME
*200 METER DASH TRIALS
ONE MILE RUN FINAL ON TIME
*100 METER DASH TRIALS
*100 METER HURDLES TRIALS
*110 METER HURDLES TRIALS
200 METER DASH FINALS
100 METER DASH FINALS
110 METER HURDLES FINAL
100 METER HURDLES FINAL
**3200 METER RELAY FINAL ON TIME
400 METER RELAY FINAL ON TIME
1600 METER RELAY FINAL ON TIME
** The 3200M Relay will not start until at least 30 minutes after the last runner has finished the One Mile Run.
Newton North will be sending quite a few athletes to the meet.
For the girls, Carolyn Ranti is seeded 3rd in the 1M, Jess Barton is seeded 4th in the 2M, Michelle Kaufman is seeded 14th in the high hurdles, and Hester Breen is seeded 15th in the discus. In addition, the girls 4x800 team is seeded first after running 9:29 in last week's Div I meet.
For the boys, David Smith is seeded first in the shot and 6th in the discus. Marvin Chan also qualified in the discus and is seeded 17th. Avery Mitchell is seeded 2nd in the 400, Cailean Robinson is seeded 3rd in the 100, and Sam Arsenault is seeded 7th in the HJ. The boys 4x100 team is the top seed, after running a school record 42.37 to win the Div I meet last week.
Here's a link to the complete performance lists
May 29, 2007
Results from Everest Marathon
A few days ago, I wrote about my friend Tom Dmukauskus who was preparing to run the enzing Hillary Everest Marathon today (well, it was yesterday our time). He finished the race (and was the third foreigner).
Here's a news story reporting some race results.
Tom also emailed his quick summary:
"- First place overall: Deepak Rai in 3:59+ -- he won the race last year in 3:28,
but we learned that the course in '06 was 39k only...and they added a couple of
more substantial climbs this year, and made it 43k instead of just 42.2k for
good measure"
"- First foreigner: Antoine LePoint in 4:51 (I think). He is a professional
runner for France (competed in the World XC championships this year, and has a
1:06 half-marathon to his credit).
- Second foreigner: Alan ??? from the UK in his first marathon in 6:06:15. He
passed me 1k into the race, and was the only person I never passed back.
- Third foreigner: Me in 6:06:47. Having lost contact with Alan for the middle
41k of the race, I saw him in the last 800m of switchbacks down to Namche
Bazaar, but had syncopated spasms of calves and quads that prevented me from
erasing the gaps."
"Unbelievable stat: My final 10k was in ~2:07, and I was able to reel in people
that were an hour ahead of me! For those of you in the Northeast -- consider
what Boston marathon would be like if Heartbreak hill were Mt. Washington (well,
maybe 60% of the elevation gain in 1/3 the distance), and you had to start
climbing from an elevation of 11000ft."
Here's a news story reporting some race results.
Tom also emailed his quick summary:
"- First place overall: Deepak Rai in 3:59+ -- he won the race last year in 3:28,
but we learned that the course in '06 was 39k only...and they added a couple of
more substantial climbs this year, and made it 43k instead of just 42.2k for
good measure"
"- First foreigner: Antoine LePoint in 4:51 (I think). He is a professional
runner for France (competed in the World XC championships this year, and has a
1:06 half-marathon to his credit).
- Second foreigner: Alan ??? from the UK in his first marathon in 6:06:15. He
passed me 1k into the race, and was the only person I never passed back.
- Third foreigner: Me in 6:06:47. Having lost contact with Alan for the middle
41k of the race, I saw him in the last 800m of switchbacks down to Namche
Bazaar, but had syncopated spasms of calves and quads that prevented me from
erasing the gaps."
"Unbelievable stat: My final 10k was in ~2:07, and I was able to reel in people
that were an hour ahead of me! For those of you in the Northeast -- consider
what Boston marathon would be like if Heartbreak hill were Mt. Washington (well,
maybe 60% of the elevation gain in 1/3 the distance), and you had to start
climbing from an elevation of 11000ft."
May 27, 2007
EMass Division I Meet Results
On Saturday night I drove into Southwest Harbor on Mt. Desert Island in Maine, and parked in back of the Southwest Harbor Public Library. I turned on my laptop, and - sure enough - I am able to connect to the Library's Internet account. My first instinct is to check coolrunning.com, but results from the Emass Div I meet aren't posted yet. So I turn to dyestat, where I read the good news - that the NN boys have finished second to Lexington, that David Smith has won the shot AND the discus, that Cailean Robinson has finished second to Darius Walker in the 100, and that North's 4x100 team has run some ungodly fast time to win the relay.
Exciting stuff! But not a word about the girls...
So on Sunday, I drive over to Bar Harbor where my nephew lives in an off-campus apartment, log on via his Internet connection and get the full story. And here it is:
Emass Div I Meet Results
Very impressive results from the NN boys. The 4x100 team has really been something special this year, and I'm looking forward to watching them compete at the state meet next weekend.
David Smith proves once again that he is a big-meet competitor, winning the shot (56-2) and the discus (151-11). Congratulations to Marvin Chan (3rd in the discus at 138-6, with a tie breaker of 136-11). Mike Bower deserves a ton of credit, as NN throwers go 1-3-9.
Great job by Cailean Robinson to take 2nd in the 100 (11.02), and congratulations to Avery Mitchell, who finished second in the 400 with a season's best (PR?) 49.53. Also, Sam Arsenault came up huge in the HJ, placing 3rd with an all-time best 6-4!
For the girls, congratulations to Jess Barton for winning the 2M in 11:16. Carolyn Ranti ran a PR in the mile to place second in 5:12.41. The girls 4x800 team dominated, winning by over 10 seconds in 9:29.65.
Michelle Kaufman placed in two events, the 100 hurdles and the long jump. Hester Breen placed 4th in the discus, and Sarah Berkland tied for 5th in the HJ.
Here are all the Newton North results:
Exciting stuff! But not a word about the girls...
So on Sunday, I drive over to Bar Harbor where my nephew lives in an off-campus apartment, log on via his Internet connection and get the full story. And here it is:
Emass Div I Meet Results
Very impressive results from the NN boys. The 4x100 team has really been something special this year, and I'm looking forward to watching them compete at the state meet next weekend.
David Smith proves once again that he is a big-meet competitor, winning the shot (56-2) and the discus (151-11). Congratulations to Marvin Chan (3rd in the discus at 138-6, with a tie breaker of 136-11). Mike Bower deserves a ton of credit, as NN throwers go 1-3-9.
Great job by Cailean Robinson to take 2nd in the 100 (11.02), and congratulations to Avery Mitchell, who finished second in the 400 with a season's best (PR?) 49.53. Also, Sam Arsenault came up huge in the HJ, placing 3rd with an all-time best 6-4!
For the girls, congratulations to Jess Barton for winning the 2M in 11:16. Carolyn Ranti ran a PR in the mile to place second in 5:12.41. The girls 4x800 team dominated, winning by over 10 seconds in 9:29.65.
Michelle Kaufman placed in two events, the 100 hurdles and the long jump. Hester Breen placed 4th in the discus, and Sarah Berkland tied for 5th in the HJ.
Here are all the Newton North results:
Girls 400 Meter Dash
20 Tabatabaie, Ariana FR NEWTON NORTH 1:04.90
Girls 1 Mile Run
2 Ranti, Carolyn SO NEWTON NORTH 5:12.41
14 Hamley-Bronstein, Adina SO NEWTON NORTH 5:34.29
29 Barnicle, Nora SO NEWTON NORTH 5:46.05
Girls 2 Mile Run
1 Barton, Jess SR NEWTON NORTH 11:16.33
23 Godenzi, Franca SO NEWTON NORTH 12:33.95
Girls 100 Meter Hurdles
Prelims
6 Kaufman, Michele SO NEWTON NORTH 16.45q 2
10 Faer, Morgan SR NEWTON NORTH 17.05 1
12 Mongo, Paris SO NEWTON NORTH 17.10 2
16 Marone, Vicki JR NEWTON NORTH 17.36 2
Girls 100 Meter Hurdles
Finals
6 Kaufman, Michele SO NEWTON NORTH 16.10
Girls 300 Meter Hurdles
24 Varadian, Nevart SO NEWTON NORTH 52.40 1
28 Gluck, Sam FR NEWTON NORTH 53.33 3
Girls 4x100 Meter Relay
10 NEWTON NORTH HS 'A' 52.03 4
Girls 4x400 Meter Relay
12 NEWTON NORTH HS 'A' 4:22.77 2
Girls 4x800 Meter Relay
1 NEWTON NORTH HS 'A' 9:29.65
Girls High Jump
5 Berkland, Sarah SR NEWTON NORTH 5-00.00
Girls Long Jump
6 Kaufman, Michele SO NEWTON NORTH 15-05.50
11 Manigat, Laryssa SR NEWTON NORTH 15-01.50
Girls Triple Jump
13 Manigat, Laryssa SR NEWTON NORTH 32-03.75
14 Berkland, Sarah SR NEWTON NORTH 31-11.00
30 Marone, Vicki JR NEWTON NORTH 29-05.25
Girls Discus Throw
4 Breen, Hester SR NEWTON NORTH 105-06
8 Brown, Lily SR NEWTON NORTH 91-03
12 Faer, Morgan SR NEWTON NORTH 83-11
13 Mongo, Paris SO NEWTON NORTH 83-03
Boys 100 Meter Dash
Preliminaries
2 Robinson, Cailean SR NEWTON NORTH 11.14q 2
11 Lamisere, Hymlaire JR NEWTON NORTH 11.60 3
Boys 100 Meter Dash
Finals
2 Robinson, Cailean SR NEWTON NORTH 11.02
Boys 400 Meter Dash
2 Mitchell, Avery SR NEWTON NORTH 49.53 5
Boys 800 Meter Run
15 Sun, Peter SR NEWTON NORTH 2:01.44
Boys 1 Mile Run
19 Putzeys, Seb JR NEWTON NORTH 4:39.51
Boys 110 Meter Hurdles
Preliminaries
8 Forbes, Gordan SR NEWTON NORTH 15.90 7
Boys 300 Meter Hurdles
20 Wagner, Rojay JR NEWTON NORTH 43.26 1
Boys 4x100 Meter Relay
1 NEWTON NORTH HS 'A' 42.37 5
Boys High Jump
3 Arsenault, Sam SO NEWTON NORTH 6-04.00
Boys Long Jump
8 Kostadinov, Ivan JR NEWTON NORTH 19-08.50
25 Arsenault, Sam SO NEWTON NORTH 16-11.25
Boys Triple Jump
12 Bao, Sam JR NEWTON NORTH 40-02.25
20 Lamisere, Hymlaire JR NEWTON NORTH 37-06.50
Boys Discus Throw
1 Smith, David SR NEWTON NORTH 151-11
3 Chan, Marvin SR NEWTON NORTH 138-06 136-11
9 Chang, Marcus SR NEWTON NORTH 127-05
Boys Shot Put
1 Smith, David SR NEWTON NORTH 56-02.00
Barnicle 7th at NCAA Mideast Regionals
Chris Barnicle placed 7th in the 5000m at the NCAA Div I Mideast Regionals with a time of 14:06.01.
Results
Results
May 24, 2007
EMass Division I Meet Preview
As I'm sure everyone knows, Saturday is the day of the Western Mass, Central Mass, and Eastern Mass Divisional Meets, also known as the "Class Meets." The EMass Division I meet (or "Class A" meet) will be held at Cawley Stadium in Lowell. The filed evens get underway at 9:30, and the running events start at 10:00 with the Girls 2-Mile. The schedule of running events is:
The complete info can be found here.
The Division I Performance Lists contain a few surprises:
For the girls, the biggest shocker is that Carolyn Ranti, owner of one of the fastest girls' 800 times in the state this year is not entered in the 800, but in the mile, where she will have to contend with Bridget Dahlberg, among others.
Jess Barton is in the 2M, where she will be the favorite in Div I. In Central Mass, Emily Jones is entered in the 2M, so the odds are in favor of a rematch of the tremendous duel between the two runners earlier this month at the Weston Invite.
Emma Kornetsky and Kat Chiong are both entered in the 400, but it will be interesting to see whether they run, given that they are both valuable for either or both of North's 4x400 and 4x800 relays.
The girls 4x800 team should be very strong. With a likely line-up of Ranti, Kornetsky, Chiong, and Barton, the team could run sub 9:30.
Hester Breen is seeded first in the Discus, where North has four competitors.
For the boys, there are no real surprises. Avery Mitchell is seeded third in the 400m, where he will get a rematch with L-S's Nick Colontuono and Lexington's Meikle Paschal. Cailean Robinson is seeded third in the 100m. Gordon Forbes will be running the 110 hurdles, where he is seeded fifth.
David Smith is seeded first in both the shot put and discus, with Marvin Chan seeded fourth in the shot.
Seb Putzys will have his hands full in the mile, which is the deepest event on the track. Seb will be facing no fewer than THREE all-state title holders at the 1M distance (Mark Amirault - 2006 indoor, Kevin Gill - 2006 outdoor, Robert Gibson - 2007 indoor).
The boys 4x100 team is seeded first based on their meet record 43.09 at the State Coaches meet.
Unfortunately, I will be out of town for the Class meet, so I am hoping that EVERYONE from North qualifies for the state meet, so I can see them compete one more time before the season ends.
TWO MILE RUN
800 METER RUN
300 METER HURDLES
400 METER RUN
100 METER DASH TRIALS
100 METER HURDLES TRIALS
110 METER HURDLES TRIALS
200 METER DASH TRIALS
ONE MILE RUN
100 METER DASH SEMI FINALS IF NECESSARY
110 METER HIGH HURDLES SEMI FINAL IF NECESSARY
100 METER HURDLES SEMI FINAL IF NECESSARY
200 METER DASH FINALS
100 METER DASH FINALS
100 METER HURDLES FINAL
110 METER HIGH HURDLES FINAL
4x800 METER RELAY
4x100 METER RELAY
4x400 METER RELAY
The complete info can be found here.
The Division I Performance Lists contain a few surprises:
For the girls, the biggest shocker is that Carolyn Ranti, owner of one of the fastest girls' 800 times in the state this year is not entered in the 800, but in the mile, where she will have to contend with Bridget Dahlberg, among others.
Jess Barton is in the 2M, where she will be the favorite in Div I. In Central Mass, Emily Jones is entered in the 2M, so the odds are in favor of a rematch of the tremendous duel between the two runners earlier this month at the Weston Invite.
Emma Kornetsky and Kat Chiong are both entered in the 400, but it will be interesting to see whether they run, given that they are both valuable for either or both of North's 4x400 and 4x800 relays.
The girls 4x800 team should be very strong. With a likely line-up of Ranti, Kornetsky, Chiong, and Barton, the team could run sub 9:30.
Hester Breen is seeded first in the Discus, where North has four competitors.
For the boys, there are no real surprises. Avery Mitchell is seeded third in the 400m, where he will get a rematch with L-S's Nick Colontuono and Lexington's Meikle Paschal. Cailean Robinson is seeded third in the 100m. Gordon Forbes will be running the 110 hurdles, where he is seeded fifth.
David Smith is seeded first in both the shot put and discus, with Marvin Chan seeded fourth in the shot.
Seb Putzys will have his hands full in the mile, which is the deepest event on the track. Seb will be facing no fewer than THREE all-state title holders at the 1M distance (Mark Amirault - 2006 indoor, Kevin Gill - 2006 outdoor, Robert Gibson - 2007 indoor).
The boys 4x100 team is seeded first based on their meet record 43.09 at the State Coaches meet.
Unfortunately, I will be out of town for the Class meet, so I am hoping that EVERYONE from North qualifies for the state meet, so I can see them compete one more time before the season ends.
May 23, 2007
Good to Great
How can you tell that an athlete with great promise will become a great runner?
At the 2003 Mass All-State outdoor state championships, there was a lot of promise on display in the distance events. For the girls, there was Ari Lambie running 4:37 to win the girls mile (with Lindsay Donaldson second). Both have had highly successful college careers, Lambie at Stanford and Donaldson at Yale.
For the boys in 2003, Victor Gras (a junior), ran 4:09 to win the boys mile and qualify for the seeded heat at the Nike Outdoor Nationals. Behind him, Andrew Pitts ran 4:13, and Nick Krouse, 4:16, and Keith Gill 4:20. In the 2-Mile, Chris Barnicle (a sophomore) ran 9:04, which was one of the top soph times in the country and only four seconds off the meet record. Mike Banks (a junior) was injured that Spring, but he would get healthy over the summer and go on to run 4:11 in the mile and 9:06 in the 2-mile in his senior year. It was a year of great promise!
And yet, a case could be made that among the boys running that day, the runner who has had the most successful and impressive college career would be Sean Quigley, who, as a HS senior in 2003, finished a distant second to Barnicle in the 2M. Quigley went on to La Salle University and has been a monster in the distance events there.
For example, among Gras, Barnicle, Banks, Pitts, and all the rest of the Mass runners in 2003, Quigley has the best time at 1M, 3K, and 5K. Quigley was good enough in high school to win a Div II State XC title, a New England track title in the 2M, and the NSIC 5000m title. But he was overshadowed by Gras and Barnicle. I don't know how many people tagged him as "great" in H.S., but look at his PR's now:
1M 4:02.04
3K 8:04.25
5K 13:49.62
10K 28:29.61
Yikes! In fact, his most impressive PR might be his 10K on the track, which he set this season. His time of 28:29 is good enough to qualify him for the NCAA Div I finals in that event and for the next U.S. Olympic Trials.
This Friday, Quigley is scheduled to run the 5000m at the NCAA Div I East Regionals.
For further reading, here's a recent Boston Globe article about Quigley.
Postscript: In that same 2003 meet, Dan Vassallo also ran the 2-Mile. he was in the slow heat and recorded a time of 10:01.29, finishing 19th overall. I'm pretty sure no one tagged him as a likely college star. Vassallo went to Colby where he blossomed as a distance runner. This season he has run 31:05 for 10K and recently finished 2nd in the 5000 at the NE Div III Championships. So hang in there, all you 10:00 2-Milers; you, too, can go from good to great.
At the 2003 Mass All-State outdoor state championships, there was a lot of promise on display in the distance events. For the girls, there was Ari Lambie running 4:37 to win the girls mile (with Lindsay Donaldson second). Both have had highly successful college careers, Lambie at Stanford and Donaldson at Yale.
For the boys in 2003, Victor Gras (a junior), ran 4:09 to win the boys mile and qualify for the seeded heat at the Nike Outdoor Nationals. Behind him, Andrew Pitts ran 4:13, and Nick Krouse, 4:16, and Keith Gill 4:20. In the 2-Mile, Chris Barnicle (a sophomore) ran 9:04, which was one of the top soph times in the country and only four seconds off the meet record. Mike Banks (a junior) was injured that Spring, but he would get healthy over the summer and go on to run 4:11 in the mile and 9:06 in the 2-mile in his senior year. It was a year of great promise!
And yet, a case could be made that among the boys running that day, the runner who has had the most successful and impressive college career would be Sean Quigley, who, as a HS senior in 2003, finished a distant second to Barnicle in the 2M. Quigley went on to La Salle University and has been a monster in the distance events there.
For example, among Gras, Barnicle, Banks, Pitts, and all the rest of the Mass runners in 2003, Quigley has the best time at 1M, 3K, and 5K. Quigley was good enough in high school to win a Div II State XC title, a New England track title in the 2M, and the NSIC 5000m title. But he was overshadowed by Gras and Barnicle. I don't know how many people tagged him as "great" in H.S., but look at his PR's now:
1M 4:02.04
3K 8:04.25
5K 13:49.62
10K 28:29.61
Yikes! In fact, his most impressive PR might be his 10K on the track, which he set this season. His time of 28:29 is good enough to qualify him for the NCAA Div I finals in that event and for the next U.S. Olympic Trials.
This Friday, Quigley is scheduled to run the 5000m at the NCAA Div I East Regionals.
For further reading, here's a recent Boston Globe article about Quigley.
Postscript: In that same 2003 meet, Dan Vassallo also ran the 2-Mile. he was in the slow heat and recorded a time of 10:01.29, finishing 19th overall. I'm pretty sure no one tagged him as a likely college star. Vassallo went to Colby where he blossomed as a distance runner. This season he has run 31:05 for 10K and recently finished 2nd in the 5000 at the NE Div III Championships. So hang in there, all you 10:00 2-Milers; you, too, can go from good to great.
May 21, 2007
Letter from Nepal
I received an email the other day from my friend and occasional running buddy, Tom Dmukauskus. In his professional life, Tom designs microchips for Intel; in his free time, he is a seasoned adventure-seeker. Tom's approach to life is to work until he has saved up 4-5 weeks of vacation time, and then take trips that involve trekking around the globe through some pretty rugged environments. In 2006, he spent a month hiking through remote Greenland. This year he is in Nepal for the Tenzing-Hillary Everest Marathon
It's good to have friends like Tom who can help put the normal vicissitudes of training into perspective. Let's just say that whenever I'm tempted to think of how tough my training is, contemplating running down Everest makes it seem pretty tame.
Anyway, I thought I would share some of Tom's email, partly because the event in which he is participating sounds interesting and partly because it sounds insane. Here's Tom:
"...we took off on a 16-passenger plane of Yeti Airways, able to see the
enormity of the Himalayas for the first time. The arrival in Lukla is quite
harrowing, with the runway basically going all the way to the edge of cliff.
Getting out of the plane, every single person's jaw dropped. We hung out there
for the morning, enjoying the feeling of suspense of planes taking off and landing. A relatively easy trek (3 hours) to the town of Phakding followed. It was along this trek that I first comprehend the unbelievable strength of the Nepali porters -- commonly carrying 90-120 kg (not pounds, kilograms) of sundry items (several rucksacks, cookware, groceries/supplies to upvalley villages, meat, 15 sheets of plywood to be used as tables, etc.) In general, they lean forward quite a bit and actually use a cloth strap around their forehead to counterbalance their load -- their neck muscles have to be absolutely ridiculous."
"After arriving in camp, I went for a 25-minute run, and even at the modest 2600m altitude, breath does not come easy when going uphill. As I returned toward camp, 4 Nepali schoolgirls, I'd guess around 8-12 years old starting running with me, through a little village, up and down a hill and onto a suspension bridge. There was no age reported in the results of previous marathons. I now wonder if I will get my clock cleaned by a 7-year old or something. On Friday, we got our first taste of uphill, climbing reasonably steeply (but nothing worse than the Alps for instance) to Namche Bazaar. This is a major town and the gateway to Everest...."
"Saturday was a rest day for the trek, and boy did I rest. After breakfast, it would appear that I was hit hard with AMS (Altitude Mountain Sickness)-- I wanted to do nothing other than lie down. In addition to being incredibly sleepy, my resting heart rate was 50% faster than normal, my breathing erratic, and I briefly had a headache. I was just shy of fainting at dinner, and had the doctor examine me where he gave me rehydration powder, which really seemed to do an amazing job -- by this (Sunday) morning, I had bounced back up and was able to tackle a 4+ hour hike that gave us a preview of the finish of the marathon."
"It is absolutely, positively, brutal -- at about the 21-mile mark, there is a
~1700ft elevation gain in the next ~2 miles. I suppose I should take solace in the fact that much of the route is up stairs, so all of the training I did in the Harvard football stadium should pay off. The downhill section we covered was also somewhat narrow with a bit of loose rock sitting in the trail as well. It seems that the runner will not be able to take away his focus for even a second, or he will be plummeting to the ground. I can't imagine how incredible it will feel to cross the finish line 9 days from today."
"A little more on a couple of the other folks I've met here -- Gunter: A German fellow who made it his goal to run 100 marathons before his 50th birthday...he made this resolution when he was 43. Everest will be his 104th. His 50th birthday is May
31st. This means that he has run 104 marathons all in the time since I have run
my last one (October 2000). Nick & Phil: A couple of running buddies from the UK who are trying to do the highest (Everest), lowest (Dead Sea), coldest (North Pole) and hottest (Marathon du Sable) in a calendar year. As Nick parenthetically mentions, Badwater (the 135 mile ultra from Death Valley to Mount Whitney is technically the hottest, but a little too ridiculous even for him.)Alright, that's an earful out of me for now. If I survive the marathon, you will hear from me on the 29th. Cheers, - Tom"
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