As I was running the other day, I found my mind wandering. I found myself thinking about two of my favorite things in life: music and beer. I consider myself a connoisseur of sorts of them both, and tend to prefer the same characteristics in both. In beers, I tend to go for darker, more complex brews, like porters and stouts, and disdain the mass-produced, simpler beers that are so popular in America. At times, Read more…
Prepare yourselves; this is going to be a doozie. On Saturday, June 22nd, Ashlie and I both ran Grandma’s Marathon, a mid-size point-to-point marathon starting in Two Harbors, Minnesota, and ending in downtown Duluth. Both of us had high hopes for it; Ashlie had been training hard and was looking to knock some time off on her way to a Boston Qualifier, and I was using this as one final attempt at a sub-2:40 performance. Read more…
Grandma’s Marathon is two days away. I don’t know how I feel about that. Usually, I am excited for a marathon, and have entered the last few marathons knowing that I could run well. After missing four weeks during my heaviest training period, however, I am not as confident as I would like to be today. Rather than dwell on the negatives, though, I have to think about the positives. If I toe the starting Read more…
Finding the perfect marathon flat has been a lifelong quest of mine. I don’t think I have worn the same flat for more than two marathons before. For a while I thought I had found a shoe that was just the right mixture of cushioning and responsiveness in the Adidas AdiZero LT, but sadly, they were discontinued. Then the Puma RoadRacer 4 seemed to work well, but again are not in production any more. I Read more…
Exactly 29 days ago, I ran a terrific workout that proved to me that I was quickly getting into the best shape of my life. After jogging to a local high school track, I did 4x 2 miles with 3 minutes rest, averaging 5:40 pace. The pace came to me easily and effortlessly, and I honestly felt like I could have done another repeat without much strain. Since it was still somewhat early in my season, though, Read more…
One of the reasons I started this blog was to encourage younger runners who may not be the best or the fastest, but want to improve. As I mentioned previously, I was never a standout runner, in high school or college. Even at the small Class C high school I attended, I was never higher than 8th on the team. Despite running for a small community college, and later a small Division III college, I Read more…
March 16th was Johnny’s Running of the Green, which is a very popular and very competitive 5-miler, usually being won in under 25 minutes. Most recent victors have included the 2005 NCAA Division 3 cross country champion and a Division 1 runner with a 5K PR of 14:18. I’ve been doing a lot of miles lately, but not a whole lot of workouts, so I knew I was in decent shape, but certainly not PR Read more…
I’ve been listening to two bands almost exclusively for the past week or two now. This isn’t particularly noteworthy; I tend to focus on one band and listen to one or two of their albums for a while, until I tire of them and move on the next obsession. It’s not uncommon for me to keep one CD in my car for weeks and listen to nothing else while I’m driving. What is unusual about Read more…
Being a runner means being in-tune with your body, and making sure that you are taking care of it as well as you can. This means that in addition to working out, what you are putting into your body is very important as well. While the adage that anything will burn if the fire is hit enough may be true, if you are looking for maximum performance, you had better not be sucking down Big Read more…
I am not elite. Hopefully you would have understood that from this post title, but one can never be too sure. So why am I writing this, and why are you (I hope) reading this? Because, with respects to Dennis Leary, I’m just a regular Joe, with a regular job. I am not blessed with raw natural talent that allowed me to run under 17 minutes for a 5K with no training. In fact, I Read more…