A preview of Scott Jurek's upcoming book Eat & Run

For Scott Jurek, few things in life have come easily. And that’s why he’s the world’s best ultramarathoner. In his new book Eat & Run, Jurek reveals depth of character as he tells how sports offered a reprieve from a tough childhood spent as family caretaker in Minnesota’s backwoods. Running became his salvation, delivering him to the highest heights of a modernizing sport. Jurek’s journey shows him melding the best parts of those around him, grafting their toughness and attitudes about life, sports, and food onto his hardened athletic core.

The book’s race reports are its best feature as freelance writer Steve Friedman’s gritty, emotional writing style carries us along smoothly over the jagged terrain and rocky emotional struggles Jurek endures. Jurek puts us inside his head as he devours mammoth workouts in the mountains around Seattle and smashes course records at races like Western States and Badwater, often running brutal paces on torn ligaments and broken bones. Witnessing Jurek’s development as a person and philosopher-athlete transform his running performances into personal milestones more meaningful than any podium finish or new world record. Any runner will absorb Jurek’s subtle lessons about mental toughness and find invaluable his four-step process for handling crises.

Some readers might find the “Eat” parts of the book less fulfilling. While Jurek is clearly convinced that his vegan diet has carried him throughout his career, runners may find his workouts and racing more relatable than his clean-fuel diet. Jurek eats simply, yet the interjection of his somewhat involved recipes at the end of important chapters felt a little jarring.

Eat & Run is a fascinating and inspirational look at Scott Jurek, deepening the narrow portrait of him in Born to Run. Though many of us undoubtedly had an easier upbringing, Jurek’s inner fire and his transformation into the world’s best ultramarathoner are motivating reminders of why we run. Eat & Run will become a classic of ultrarunning lore. For runners and trailrunners, Jurek’s story is anthem.

Eat & Run will be available next week in bookstores and from its publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Learn more about Scott and his book at his brand-new website www.scottjurek.com.

Run Well. Not Too Much. Enjoy It.

Running seems pretty clear cut: put one foot in front of the other, lean forward, switch feet, swing your arms to stay balanced, repeat quickly.

Just a few years ago, few runners questioned their habits. Runners wore cotton socks and the latest Nikes. The stretched before every run. They figured running injuries were bad luck. Orthotics were thought to cure all running pains. They drank a lot of water during races. Their feet hit the ground heel first.

In the past year or so, catalyzed by Christopher McDougall's book Born to Run, academics, coaches, and the running media have begun asking fundamental questions that seem to have begun a revolution in the sport. The well-read runner of today is dizzy with differences of opinion on footwear, stretching, nutrition, training, and running form. Nearly every aspect of running is under attack:

• Should runners wear big shoes, traditional running shoes, low-drop shoes, minimalist shoes, or run barefoot?
• Should runners stretch? Does stretching shock muscles into weakness and contribute to injury? Will stretching hurt performance by reducing the body's built-in springiness?
• Why are 37-50% of runners hurt each year? Is it their shoes, their technique, the surfaces they run on, muscle tightness or weakness/imbalance, too much sitting?
• Should runners lift weights?
• Are orthotics harmful or helpful?
• How much water is safe to drink during exercise?
• How should my feet hit the ground? Forefoot first? Midfoot? Heel strike?

The sport has fractured into factions, with coaches, manufacturers, and academics all devoted to the sport yet unsure how to run. Runners are caught in the middle. Navigating running's new forks in the road is easier when you understand the sport's roadmap of ulterior motives.

Big name coaches spend years building careers by differentiating their approach from other coaches. When science finds a flaw in an approach, its adherents point to their years of athlete improvement. Nevermind that any coaching is probably better than none, that leading coaches attract the most inherently talented runners, that athletes might have run even better under a better training method. Coaches stick to their entrenched views.

Manufacturers are slaves to their customers. They will make what customers will buy. Successful products will become the basis for new products. Without some outside interference, manufacturers have little incentive to innovate when producing more of the same thing is more profitable than trying something new. Born to Run convinced enough runners that the "big shoe" status quo might not be ideal and soon after, minimalist shoes began to appear in stores.

Fortunately, there seems to be a common middle ground of accepted running truths, most of which have some scientific backing. Just as Michael Pollan offers food rules, here are three simple guidelines for confused runners: Run well. Not too much. Enjoy it.

RUN WELL

All the major run techniques - CHI running, Good Form Running, POSE Method, Natural Running, etc. - share a similar running posture that reduces the physical stresses of running on the body. Academic research shows that these techniques mimic many aspects of the way humans run without shoes. The technique is this:

1. Land each footfall roughly under your hips. Running like this requires a short, quick stride rate. This shorter stride will reduce or eliminate heel striking -- when your heel hits the ground before the rest of your foot. Academics and coaches seem to agree that heel striking is the genesis of many running form problems and injuries. 
2. Lean forward a bit, not from your neck or hips, but from your ankles. This sounds kind of impossible, but the idea is to avoid running with an upright posture that causes overstriding and heel striking.
3. Run with your arms hanging lightly and loosely from your shoulder. Your arms should swing freely. It's okay for your shoulders to move front and back with each stride. It's not okay for them to bounce up and down. When your arm comes forward with each stride, your hand should not cross the center line of your chest.
4. Look ahead, not down.

NOT TOO MUCH

Coaches say that the best predictor of running performance is the number of miles a runner runs. Those same coaches also say that the best predictor of the incidence of running injuries is the number of miles a runner runs. More miles means faster runners who are injured more often. Why? Practiced runners develop more efficient technique and they are simply more fit from more training. Yet runners who often run tired allow sloppy running technique to creep into their training. When the physical damage from too much bad running overcomes the body's ability to heal itself, runners break.

Runners should spend some time crosstraining and building strength. Cross training and strength training help runners avoid overusing those parts of the body required for running and helps strengthen and balance muscles so they can maintain good running technique longer during runs.

Don't run more than your body can handle. How will you know when you're running too much? See Rule #3.

ENJOY IT

Running writer Matt Fitzgerald has spent a lot of time thinking about how the brain interacts with the body. His books Brain Training for Runners and the more recent and more thoroughly developed book RUN: The Mind-Body Method of Running by Feel explore how enjoyment of a run is the brain's way of saying that the run was physically beneficial to the body. If you're having to drag yourself out the door because you've run yourself ragged, that's a sign that you're running too much. Back off until running is fun again.

Enjoyment offers some insight into the footwear debate, too. What little research has been done on footwear and running injuries has found that more comfortable shoes cause fewer injuries. That's not to say that we should run with pillows strapped to our feet, but that runners should probably buy new shoes based on comfort. Fitzgerald and others guess that our perception of one pair of shoes as being more comfortable than another is our body's way of indicating that the more comfortable shoes are more beneficial to the body. This isn't a foolproof method, though, because the comfort studies mostly compared pronation control against neutral shoes without considering minimalist or low-drop shoes or barefoot running. I like my low-drop Newton shoes because of the low drop; the heel is barely higher than the toe. I think this shoe design has helped to reduce my heel strike quite a bit -- it is certainly easier to land on the midfoot in my Newtons than in my high-drop Mizunos. And yes, I find the Newtons more comfortable.

Running in pain is obviously an indication that something is wrong. Danny Abshire's book Natural Running explains that pain and injury are symptoms of bad technique or overuse. Running should feel good, and if something hurts, that's a signal you shouldn't ignore. If muscles feel uncomfortably tight, stretch them gently until they are comfortable again. If your knee kills, run less until it feels better and then figure out a way to run that doesn't hurt. This will likely be one of the techniques I mentioned above in RUN WELL.

Physical and emotional enjoyment of running are the entire point of running, right? If you enjoy your running, you are doing it right. That seems like a clear-cut answer to any running debate.

What We Feel When We Run: a Review of Haruki Murakami's Book

What was I thinking?

This morning I finished reading Haruki Murakami's book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. For a few years, it had seemed to me that the book was mentioned in the running media with the same reverence normally reserved for books like Lore of Running and Once a Runner. We're publishing our own running memoir this year, and having seen What I Talk About laying around the office, I thought I should read it. I expected it to be taut, maybe a bit mystical. I think I thought it would be for running what Tim Krabbe's The Rider is for cycling.

Just two chapters in, I was thinking about putting it down. At first, it felt like Murakami was rambling and spending too much time qualifying that this book was simply about what running was like for him. After 50 pages, I realized I was reacting to Murakami's complete lack of pretense. There is no artifice between writer and reader. Murakami writes plainly. When Murakami runs, you run. When he tires, you tire. It's not because Murakami's descriptions are lively. They aren't. He describes passing roadkill during a run from Athens to Marathon with as much pragmatism as those whose job it is to remove roadkill. The reader knows Murakami's experience as a runner because the reader is also a runner. The genius of What I Talk About is not the creation of an experience for the reader, but its evocation of experiences the reader has already had. There is no need for Murakami to describe the act of running because we fill it in for him. Instead, he describes the feelings his running brings out in him, and we feel them in our own way. This common experience of running becomes a conversation with Murakami. He says: here is how running makes me feel. Naturally, I thought about how running feels different to me. I thought about how running is the same for me a Murakami and how we are different in our running. Did Murakami plan on this being my reaction? Murakami made me realize that, though everyone runs by alternating the left and right feet, running is a different experience for each runner. The act of running evokes a unique response in each of us, and Murakami's book asks us to think about how running is for us.

Murakami's book is thought of by longtime runners as being particularly quotable, but I don't think this is particularly true. Parts of his book leave strong impressions, but the words themselves are not succinct. When searching for the book's title, Google auto-suggests adding the word "quotes" after it. Clicking on the top result brings you to a blog that quotes literature. The three What I Talk About quotes are over 3,500 words. Murakami writes in impressions. Yet he quotes someone early in the book, "In the act of shaving lies a philosophy." He explains that he feels any act repeated often comes to reflect the person repeating it. For Murakami, running and writing are deeply personal rituals, in part because he has run and written so much.

What I Talk About is really an improvised run. Murakami is an impulsive man, and he felt it time to write this book, so he did. I imagine him sitting at his sun-bathed desk in his open-air office in Hawaii and completing a sentence. He looks up and his eyes focus. Something has stirred in him and broken his stream of thoughts. There will be no more writing now. I think of him rising out of his chair, stepping tightly to his running shoes, which lie neatly next to the door, facing outward. He lifts off his shirt, stretching upward, breathing a deep breath and tingling in anticipation. He opens the door and, head down, begins his run. Murakami has no route in mind, no thoughts, just an urge to move. He must run until he is spent. As his body warms and his legs unspool, he is able to lift his eyes from their clouded writer's haze to see the ocean-side, the trees, the signposts easing past. He tells us what this feels like to him and we feel what it would feel like to us.

For Murakami, running is a moving experience, pardon the pun, and his experience has moved me. What I Talk About has made me think differently about running. I feel sad for those who run blankly or not enough to feel some hint of the depth Murakami draws from running. In the end What I Talk About is more than a description of what we feel when we run, more than a conversation among runners. Murakami describes how this act of running, repeated often, has come to reflect the person he is. He describes how running has challenged him to become better. In making me more aware of this process, Murakami and I will run together for a long time.

Gear Up for Running at the Bolder Boulder CleaRUNce Sale!

Bolder Boulder Warehouse Sale

Friday, August 27, 8am-6pm

5500 Central Ave

Boulder, CO 80301-2847

(303) 444-7223

Check out the Bolder Boulder Warehouse Sale on Friday, August 27th. You can preview some of the sale items at the Bolder Boulder website clearance sale page.

I went last year and scored $5 Crocs, an awesome New Balance tech shirt that is now my favorite, a tech race shirt that's a little too skimpy for comfort, and a pair of tech socks. I don't remember what I paid, but I'm pretty sure it was under $25. They do take credit cards.

Quick warning: This sale is in a parking lot with tents, but if you're indecisive, make sure you wear sunblock!

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Check out Newton Running's "State of the Natural Running Movement" Panel Discussion

Newton Running invites you.

People who have been running for awhile and paying some attention to the sport are probably aware of the barefoot running movement. In a nutshell, barefoot runners believe that shoes mess with how our bodies evolved to run and cause injuries. The barefoot runner's manifesto, or at least its most successful foray into mainstream society, is Christopher McDougall's New York Times bestseller Born to Run (read my book review here).

Barefoot runners have always been a small minority of the running population, mostly because nobody wants to run without their shoes! And for good reason! It's kind of painful, it takes a long adjustment period, and everyone is terrified of broken glass, hypodermic needles, dog poop, and all the many gross things inhabiting our roads, running paths, and public parks.

So it turns out you can have your cake and eat it, too. Newton Running is leading the "natural running" movement, which seeks to teach people to run the barefoot way while keeping their feet firmly shod. The trick here is not to wear high heels. Take a look at your running shoes or, as Newton has done, saw them in half. Your shoe's heels are much higher than your shoe's toes. This angle forces your heel to strike the ground before your toes, which runs counter to many thousands of years of evolved human running form.

You see, humans have been running for tens of thousands of years. Some evolutionary biologists actually believe that the ability to run is the primary evolutionary advantage that spurred man to become homo sapiens, i.e. a big-brained tool user. Being hairless and sweaty, we're able to run far, far longer than any other animal on earth. (In fact, there is an annual organized race between horses and humans. Apparently, these particular humans and horses defy this particular hypothesis.) Humans can cool our bodies more effectively and avoid overheating. Other animals overheat quickly. There are those biologists who believe that ancient man simply ran down his prey, continually chasing until animals keeled over, half-cooked and nearly dead (a technique known as persistence hunting and covered in a story on This American Life and this BBC video). The ability to run long meant a boost to our meat supply, which supposedly allowed our brains to grow bigger and bigger.

Anyway... we've been running a very long time, but shoes weren't invited until just a few thousand years ago. (Man, that must have been a huge "Duh!" moment!). Those used to be simple moccasin-style foot coverings with little padding. Early 20th century running shoes were mostly canvas with laces. Since Nike's founding in in mid-20th century, running shoe companies have been adding more and more padding to shoes, raising the heel 10-12% above the toe, or even higher. Now when modern humans take off our high-heeled running shoes and go for a run, we start out banging our heels against the ground, because that's what we're used to. Soon, the brain is like, "Dang! Ouch! Watch it, bro!" and begins changing our foot strike so that the middle or the front of the foot hits the ground before the heel.

Newton Running's shoes feature a 0-3% grade from heel to toe. To me, this seems to be the company's biggest contribution to running shoes, and the major shoe manufacturers are all expected to announce similarly flat running shoes at the 2010 Running Event in Texas (I'll be there!).

So Newton is dedicated to teaching people how to run with barefoot form while they keep their shoes on (preferably Newtons, of course). Newton's panel next week will explore the state of this natural running movement. This fall, we're releasing a book by Newton's co-founder Danny Abshire that is all about natural running, so you'll find me among the audience of this panel event.

A quick note: I bought this pair of Newtons, partly out of curiosity, partly to help me understand the book, and partly because I want to get faster. My quick review is that they definitely help me heel strike less, though I found that no shoe is likely to fix technique alone. I'm excited to read our book so I can overhaul my running technique... again.

Born to Run: Too Far a Leap

Christopher McDougall's book Born to Run is not about running, at least not what most of us consider to be running. Born to Run is a wide-ranging adventure story about elite, ultra-distance trail running, a cultish specialty of running that involves 50-mile races through wilderness terrain. 

Ultra running shares little common ground with the intended reader of Born to Run, the average American runner. Hard-core ultra runners seem like rock climbers; McDougall describes dirtball outdoors people who camp out near trail systems to run all day and party all night. By contrast, the average American runner is delighted to run a few hours a week on sidewalks, roads, and paths. To say that Born to Run is about running would be more than a small stretch.

In Born to Run, McDougall describes the events leading to a 50-mile trail race through Mexico's Copper Canyon. The race features a handful of native Mexican runners and elite American trail runners, and McDougall builds the race into a clash of cultures. The Tarahumara Mexicans are an indigenous society of agrarian hunter-gatherers that practices long-distance running for sport and survival. The Americans are mostly professional ultra runners who run impressive distances -- 50-mile and 100-mile races are typical.

But McDougall's book is written more like fiction than nonfiction. He has a mythology -- the Tarahumara are like a mythical people living in Shangri-La where all societal evils are neutralized through running. The Tarahumara have no cancer or metabolic disease. They have no violence or theft. They have no concept of sexism. The Tarahumara are the perfect society, McDougall says, because of running.

McDougall explains that the Tarahumara began running to escape eradication at the hands of Spanish colonialism. The people were driven into Mexico's Copper Canyon, a brutal environment lacking water, farmland, and so baked under the hot Mexican sun that colonists could not give pursuit. Realistically, the Tarahumara are a destitute people who live hand to mouth in a lawless, cartel-infested Mexican desert because they have no choice and few opportunities. McDougall provides the historical context, but his book conjures innumerable opportunities to characterize the Tarahumara as an ideal society when, in fact, they are an unfortunate lot.

For McDougall, the Tarahumara way of running has a magical quality; he characterizes it as "easy, smooth, fast" with little motion above the waist, but it's difficult to imagine. This video profiles the Tarahumara and Caballo Blanco, the hero of Born to Run who organizes an annual Copper Canyon race between Tarahumara and Americans. You can watch them run.

To me, these runners simply look like people who run a lot. The Tarahumara are not magical runners; they simply look that much better when compared to the average running American.

Chapter 25 of Born to Run lays blame for bad American running at the feet of Nike. Educated runners (and anyone who reads the New York Times fitness section) know the story: padding reduces the sensation of impact when our feet hit the ground. Reducing the feeling of shock makes it seem as if running is more comfortable, so it changes how we run. Untrained runners wearing shoes tend to land their feet heel first into the ground. Barefoot runners tend to land farther forward on the foot. Many biomechanists have shown that padded shoes distort our naturally evolved running form and actually may cause injuries rather than prevent them. (Stay tuned for a VeloPress book on how to run with shoes as if you were barefoot.)

McDougall takes the blame a step farther, saying that Nike's padded shoes have caused far more than millions of running injuries, they've also turned people off running, which has led to obesity, metabolic disease, and cancer. In short, Nike is the root of all Western ailments. The book pretty much says this.

In all of Born to Run, only chapter 25 seems grounded in reality, mostly because McDougall so heavily relies on what seem like second-hand interviews of authoritative sources like academics and scientists from interviews in the New York Times and on National Public Radio (specifically this 1997 This American Life episode about persistence hunting.). Still, I feel the comparison between normal running and the running in Born to Run too far of a leap. Trail running is very different from road running, requiring very different motions. Perhaps trail running's soft surfaces and its inherent variety of motions reduce its incidence of injury. After all, trail running must mimic the conditions under which we evolved to run much more closely than the hard surfaces and repetitive motions of road running. Unfortunately, I'm aware of no studies comparing injury incidence between trail and road running.

It's easy to overlook an important point here: none of the characters in Born to Run run without shoes. The traditional Tarahumara -- not all of them -- run with tire treads laced to their feet. Take a look at the video above and you'll see that their tire tread shoes are at least a half-inch thick. Even the character "Barefoot Ted" runs with Vibram Five Fingers, though the book seems vague about how often he actually wore them. Born to Run's entire mythology is based on the benefits of running -- specifically barefoot running -- and McDougall proclaims that America would be a better place to live if we all ran barefoot... yet just one person in the book runs barefoot and only some of the time.

Even McDougall runs shod -- in Nikes nonetheless. McDougall says he was inspired to write the book while seeking a cure for his own running injuries. Along the way, he comes to believe that running shoes injured him, but his own description of his rehabilitation at the hands of a running coach illustrates that McDougall was simply another bad American runner. His coach teaches him proper run technique and McDougall is cured. His comeback is evidence that Born to Run is a work of fiction: McDougall keeps his shoes on and is cured long before he runs with the Tarahumara.

This is the great joke of Born to Run: its entire premise is detached from reality. Born to Run is a make-believe book. McDougall tells us we should all run trail ultra marathons. The average American runner, for very practical and sensible reasons, should be skeptical. McDougall proclaims the benefits of barefoot running, yet no one in the book runs barefoot and back in Kansas, few competitive runners seem interested. McDougall's hero, Caballo Blanco, nearly gets into a fistfight with Barefoot Ted over what Blanco considers to be Ted's ceaseless and suicidal evangelism of barefoot running. 

Born to Run was an interesting and entertaining read, but the book requires suspension of disbelief from the first page to the end. Its writing style, which I've heard many compare to Outside magazine, is full of overstatement, jumped conclusions, and wondrous imagery. The day after I finished the book, I found myself Googling "Tarahumara" and "Caballo Blanco" during lunch at work.

I found this Running Times interview with Caballo Blanco. (The last question is telling.) I learned that, although the race has grown from 25 to 200 runners, the Tarahumara don't win Caballo Blanco's race anymore. I wonder how many Tarahumara compete for the corn and cash prizes for participants. You can read about Blanco's mission on his website.

Despite selling over 125,000 copies in its first year, Born to Run does not seem to have inspired many to take up barefoot running. Running.Competitor.com has been searching for barefooters for some time, without much luck. 

Born to Run accomplished two things. First, it introduced readers to the idea that running shoes might cause injuries. There is certainly some science to back this up, some of which is cited in Born to Run. Second, it has been raising awareness that there are healthy and unhealthy ways to run. For everyone in the running industry, this is good business. Both runners and readers should beware.

GoLite Semi-Annual Warehouse Clearance Sale December 4-6

It's a Good Thing Flu Season Is Off Season: Exercise and Immunity

The New York Times Well blog, in its ever-snarked, contrarian way, asked recently "Does Exercise Boost Immunity?". The answer: moderate exercise boosts the immune system and intense exercise hampers it.

This answer requires some explanation. What do moderate and intense mean and just how much boosting and hampering are we talking about?

According to this article, moderate exercise is compared to a leisurely jog or walk. For endurance athletes, a leisurely jog is a warm-up. Intense exercise is described as "a workout or race of an hour or more during which your heart rate and respiration soar and you feel as if you are working hard". For endurance athletes, this is 2 out of every 3 workouts.

The endurance athlete's "neck check" needs some refinement. The traditional guideline for endurance athletes is to go ahead with a workout if your illness is a head cold -- above the neck. If you're sick below the neck -- with a cough or something intestinal (or a fever) -- ditch the workout to avoid getting worse. 

One expert interviewed said that "Moderate exercise...may prop up your immune response and lessen the duration and severity of a mild infection....It is okay to exercise if you have a simple head cold or congestion — in fact, it may improve the way you feel. I would avoid heavy, prolonged exercise with a head cold, though.". 

So endurance athletes fighting a cold (or fighting to stay healthy in a germ-ridden workplace) should adjust their workout intensity. Skip the intervals and stick with easy, aerobic workouts like a zone 1-2 ride or base run for intervals.

Heck, isn't that what the off season is for?

BolderBOULDER Warehouse Sale! Aug 28

The BolderBoulder is hosting its warehouse sale on Friday, August 28th!

BolderBoulder Warehouse Sale
Friday, August 28th
8am-6pm
5500 Central Ave.
Boulder, CO 80301

The official announcement is here.

The sale, which will somehow feature identical pricing on the online store and in person (how will they track inventory?), includes $5 technical t-shirts by adidas. Check out the tech tees here.

"Funemployed" and Staycationers Boosting Endurance Sports

Back in February, I declared that triathlon is not recession-proof and made some predictions about what would happen to the sport during this recession. Since this recession is likely to continue into spring 2010, time will tell how right I am. Right now, though, I'm happy to report my wrongness.

This is a great time for some in the endurance sports industry, especially athletes and producers of lower price-point products.

Aside from the Slowtwitch.com poll I mentioned in my February post, the June issue of Runner's World magazine ran the first story I've seen addressing endurance sports and the economy. "Fiscally Fit" by Yishane Lee is a survey article of how the recession is affecting run.

Some of her findings:

• Runners are running more now than pre-recession
• Race attendance is up and registrations are filling up faster than usual
• Race entry fees haven't changed
• Corporate sponsorships--both for races and elite pro runners--are way down

Read the Runner's World online survey that inspired this article at runnersworld.com/economy.

Reed Albergotti at The Wall Street Journal has found that "funemployed" and furloughed athletes are spending more time training and racing. In his June 9 article, Fast Times for Jobless Runners: As Unemployed Amp Up Their Training, Marathon Results and Participation Rise, Reed shows not only that there are more runners, but also that they are actually faster!

Some highlights:

• Participation in 2009 is up over 5%.
• Marathons, triathlons, and road runs are filling registrations in record time. "With the economy in the doldrums, more people are discovering thatwithout those 12-hour workdays, they're able to pursue fitness goalslike never before."
• In 2009, 4.6% of marathoners could qualify for the Boston Marathon. That's a 39% increase over 2008.
• Average gym membership has actually risen 18% this year.

And on July 6, Iowa's WCFCourier.com published a story "Road races not feeling sting of economy". This article provides several examples of running races selling out registrations--because of the down economy.

The main points:

• "Nationwide, several races appear to actually be prospering in the current economy." Even my hometown's Bolder Boulder 10K, which hit record participation numbers last year, "had its second highest number of entries and a record number of finishers."
• Endurance event race registrations, ranging from $70-$150, are cheap in comparison to travel and vacationing. By racing, endurance athletes are saving money. That's one way to "staycation".

Americans exercising? During a recession? We must reward these energetic people with The Pro Deal for All Americans!

UPDATE July 22: "Running for Lean Times" from the Wall Street Journal and "Spent, before race: Sales of marathon goods still strong" from the Boston Globe discuss the emotional benefits of running when times are tough and the shopping mentality of the "bucket list" marathon runner.

To Earn a PR, Pace Yourself

Joe Friel, one of the most respected coaches in endurance sports, just blogged about why the negative split is so crucial for endurance athletes. Joe says that he recently read about pacing and running world records.

"[The research] indicates that nearly all of the record-breaking times in the last 40 years or so have been run with negative splits."

A negative split is when you do the second half of something faster than the first half. For example, I can confirm that I eat the second half of an ice cream cone much faster than the first, mostly to prevent it from dripping all over my hand, which I hate. If I were to begin eating an ice cream cone really quickly at first, my tongue would go numb, I wouldn't savor the flavor, and I'd likely get a painful ice cream headache.

It's the same in endurance sports. If I burst off the start line, I'll likely get very tired quickly and then I'd have depleted much of my body's limited carbohydrate fuel stores (because I usually race without access to ice cream), and I'd be unable to recover. I'd either shock my muscles and they'd turn to lead or I'd race for awhile and then bonk.

Instead, the goal is to set a controlled pace, let the body, the muscles, and the fuel systems to adjust to that pace, and then gradually build into a higher speed. It's this gradual build to a higher, sustainable speed that makes the second half take less time than the first. This negative split is key to racing well. And when you do it right, it feels fantastic! Instead of feeling fastest at the beginning of the race and fading, which is frustrating, I race faster and faster all the way to the finish.

Joe concludes that "The bottom line here is, once again, that if you want to run a fast race it appears to be beneficial if you start conservatively and pace yourself so that the second half is run slightly faster than the first half.".

For cyclists who have on-handlebar computers, estimating pace is easy. How does one estimate pace while running?

• Run on a track.
• Run on a path that has mile markers.
• Trace a route on mapmyrun.com and get familiar with landmarks that approximate distances.
• Use a "foot pod". Foot pods relay stride length to a recording device, usually a wristwatch, but they must be calibrated and can't adjust for changes in stride length without recalibration. Many runners' stride lengths will change throughout a season and throughout a run, so food pods don't strike me as reliable.
• If you have an iPod, get the Nike+ device (Nike site, Apple site). This $29 device, profiled in the July issue of WIRED magazine, straps to your shoe and your iPod and estimates and records your running speed and distance. Next time you sync your iPod, you can upload your running data to the Nike+ website for logging and analysis. The Nike+ uses an accelerometer to measure how long your foot is in contact with the ground, which exercise physiologists have found to be a 95% accurate measure of running speed.
• Use a GPS device, like certain smartphones or a Garmin Forerunner wristwatch. Polar and Timex have GPS products, too, but they look enormous compared to Garmin products. GPS products track your speed over various time periods, which can give you your current pace, average pace, and much more.
  

Some day, running without a GPS watch will be like driving without a speedometer. Sure, there are purist runners out there who won't run with even a wristwatch, but there are purists in any sport until they've all become convinced by their faster peers. I just got a Garmin Forerunner 405, and I'll review it later.

Until then, pace yourself. It's the time-proven way to set a personal record.

The Bucket List Marathoner

A few days ago, Runner's World "tossed a rhetorical hand grenade" into its Daily Views column, asking "What do you think of folks who run a marathon for the sole reason of crossing it off some sort of 'bucket list'?". A bucket list being a list of things you want to do before you kick the bucket.

The article got over 200 comments and inspired this post today:

"Whew! Is it safe to come out now? Dear readers, before the weekend we sparked a doo-doo deluge when we asked for your thoughts on the "Bucket List Marathon." After more than 200 comments, including accusations of being "insulting," "elitist," and "off our rockers," we're ready to call a cease-fire. Let's all tip-toe away from that little battlefield, and agree that from this point forward, we'll never again mention the word "bucket" unless we need a synonym for a pail of water."

I thought the posted comments were refreshing, particularly the first one: "I've been running for 45 years (7+ miles per day) and I ran my one and only marathon to cross it off my bucket list. You don't have to be a marathon runner to be a runner!" (I've only read one issue of the Runner's World print magazine so far, but I was struck by how the editorial staff seemed to assume that all runners want to run a marathon.)

The reaction to the writer's tone and assumptions in "The 'Bucket List' Marathon" shows that many Runner's World readers are bucket list marathoners. Did the writer overestimate his readership? Should we take his post at face value, that it was a "rhetorical hand grenade". He certainly stirred up quite a conversation.

The Pros and Cons of Running in a Foot of Snow

Colorado has entered the "swing season" when the weather swings wildly and the forecasters pull their hair out trying to predict it. My trusted weather source, 9News.com, has failed me about four days in the past two weeks.

So it was to my surprise that I awoke this morning to a rightly predicted 6 inches of snow on the ground. I worked from home and called it a snow day at 4pm, when I decided to make good on my tri training plan and go for my prescribed run. By this time, there were 12 inches of snow on the ground.

I ran my usual 2-3 mile route around Gunbarrel's Twin Lakes (also Chrissie Wellington's stomping ground). There were moments when I was in snow up to my knees and stretches of path that the wind had blown clear.

The snow and wind was a nice preoccupation, but I also kept my mind off running by building a list of pros and cons for running in 12 inches of snow:

PROS	CONS
You won’t be hot!	Your hands and feet will freeze.
The path is all yours.	What path?
So soft! Snow makes running easy on the knees!	Low impact? More like snow impact!
Perfect mid-foot strike on every stride…	…but watch out for ankle rolling.
Quiet, peaceful, pretty…	…unlike your raspy breathing and runny nose.
No sweating = never parched.	Inhaling snowflakes not pleasant.
Beautiful.	Starkly so. And cold.
No need for sunscreen…	…but plenty of need for Chapstick.
No obnoxious dog walkers.	Little chance of rescue!
Uneven surface builds balance and core strength…	…so really won’t be expecting it when you fall!
A well-deserved sense of dedication…	…though you’ll likely cut the workout short.
Cool down is very quick.	Long warm-up.
Cocoa, the recovery drink.	Ouch! Hands and feet sting as they thaw!
No need to ice the knees...	...or the ankles, toes, shins, nose, ears...
Decent blog post?

Some advice for aspiring yeti runners:

• Cotton kills. Your sweatshirt becomes a fridge just seconds after you start sweating.
• Before your run, fill some small bottles with hot water. Run with them to keep your hands warm. They'll cool enough to drink sooner than you think. I like these Hammer Nutrition gel flasks.
• I love the double hat: a fleece hat for warmth and to cover the ears and a synthetic baseball cap to keep the snow out of my face.
• If it's below 30 degrees, consider mittens or ski gloves. My thick liner gloves above are great below 40, but my numb digits made it a struggle to work my watch.
• Wear your watch over the part of the glove that's covering your wrist and keep it loose to avoid reducing circulation to your fingers.
• My new favorite piece of running apparel is my GoLite Wisp Wind Shirt. This shirt is velvety to wear and so light you won't know it's on, except that no blast of icy wind can get through it. You can pack it into its own pocket and carry it if you get hot (not bloody likely today!).
  

Got advice for cold weather runs?