Anniversary?

Occasionally the old-timers who continue to run on weekends beginning at the Spencerport, Union street bridge try to figure out when this all began. We don't exactly know, but the canal path definitely wasn't as developed as it is now. The path was more dirt and two lanes then the crushed gravel it is now. It really did feel like a trail run and there were lots of trees for shade and privacy when "nature" called.
I have log books of my running dating back to 1981, maybe earlier. Sometimes the details are a bit sketchy, but I sure was a lot faster. After a lot of digging some interesting facts came to light;

1. My daughter Amanda was toughened up by biking with me while I ran, beginning around the age of 10. She would carry my water (no energy drinks back then, or gels). Amanda biked with me in February when it was 30degrees and windy, then a week later 40 degrees and more wind. What a nut. I'm guessing there wasn't any snow, at least I didn't record that happening.
2. Sometimes Amanda and Andrea would run at the track with me. I don't think that lasted long. Too much soccer, softball, horses and Legos.
3. I remember seeing Mike Weinpress running around the village. He made me mad. It seemed he was close to my running speed! Then our daughters began playing softball and MW came wearing a Boston Marathon shirt. What a showoff! And he could throw the ball, hard. He hurt my hand. What recourse did I have but to start running with him?
4. The first official recorded run with MW I have in the logbook is August 15, 1992. We ran 2 hours and 29 minutes, the day after racing the St. Pius 5k (I finished in 19 minutes, not sure what MW ran). I'm sure we ran a few shorter distances before this date, but we will go with 8/15/92 as a day that will last in infamy.

We have been running slower and lost more hair ever since.

USA Track and Field Championships

For any track fans there is a great new online video station, USATF.tv. This weekend is the United States Track and Field championship, being held at Drake stadium in Des Moines, Iowa. Below is the video of the women's 10,000m race, being run in 84 degrees, humid and windy conditions. (the video actually appears if you use Firefox instead of Internet Explorer).

Shalane Flanagan wins and is headed to Moscow for the World Championships. Jordan Hasay (coached by Alberto Salazar) comes in second (her first pro race after graduating from college) and Tara Erdman third. Kara Goucher faded to fifth (32:59), but can still go to Moscow if Jordan or Tara don't make the qualifying standard of 32:05 or less before the end of July.
Some of the races are even shown live, so give up the Youtube music videos and enjoy watching athletes compete to become a champion.

Who Wudda Thunk

Congrats to the Sals Team for a nice showing at the Medved 5K this morning. Mike McWholethebearout and I have been doing some speed work at the track on Tuesday nights again. Our speed work has not been spectacular but we were putting in some effort and running together always results in a harder workout than if we were alone. When I do a 1/4 with Mike on the track it is a hard effort. When alone I start out hard, invent some sort of impending ailment, notice that a cloud looks like Kentucky, and wonder what's for dinner. And that's when doing a 200! Anything longer I start planning the weekend and finish with solid 9 min. pace. Rests are better measured with a calendar. So once again, we rediscover that a few hard efforts over a few weeks results in faster race times. We both raced to our goal times. A good start for the summer racing season. Eileen and my daughter Meg also ran well. Meg and I were 2nd in the Father/Daughter division. Meg is looking for a faster father. Maybe one with good hair.

Cross-Training for Injured Runners?

Many runners don't know what to do with themselves when an injury occurs. An injured runner will go through grief stages; denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance. It's worse if the runner has an injury that also denies them the opportunity to bike or swim, such as a stress fracture of the fifth metatarsal of a foot.
Jan unfortunately has this, which means she wears a "boot" all day to prevent movement and take weight off her bone so it heals. Jan has had about 27 foot injuries, stress fractures, heel spurs, tendons, sprains, basically a medical dictionary of what can go wrong. (I may be exaggerating a bit).
Today Jan began lifting weights again, which in my belief everyone should be doing anyhow. So this is good. But she also has another method to cross-train and here is the photographic proof.

That's right, Jan is a Wheel of Fortune Wheel Watcher member! The Wheel Mobile was in Syracuse last weekend and we drove there to tryout for the show. We filled out forms and waited for the show to begin. Over the course of an hour about 50 people were selected from the hundreds like us who were waiting to come up on "stage". Five contestants at a time talked about themselves and competed in one game while being filmed. Finalists will be chosen from those people and all of us in the audience within the next four months. From the finals a couple of lucky people will actually get to be part of the real Wheel of Fortune show.
So if you see Jan clomping around parking lots chasing down yellow buses just know she is training for television and a future race.

Natural Born Killer

Today (Monday, June 3) was the start of my new summer work hours, 8:30-4:45. Beginning at 8:30 instead of the normal 8:00am gives a notoriously non-morning runner such as myself the opportunity to get a run in without losing much sleep. This may be TMI, but it is also better for my bowels as I'm not continuously scanning the landscape for port-a-johns or thick bushes.

As I'm doing a loop around the village streets on this beautiful 52 degree sunny morning, a day made for running, a bird flies across the road and begins attacking my ankles! I'm not kidding. It was insanely trying to peck at me and flapping its' wings. I yelled at the thing and it continued so I kind of kicked it and the bird flew away.

Or so I thought. Suddenly the bird came at me from the other side, again attacking my ankles. I didn't want to hurt it but I didn't like being preyed upon either. So this time I kicked and hit the dumb thing. It landed in the grass and kept coming at me! I stepped on it. Yes, this sounds horrible, but imagine being out there and a wild animal won't leave you alone? The bird kept moving so I ran away hoping it wouldn't regain its' strength and renew the attack. I do hope the bird is okay, but I am going to be cautious running on that street again.

All the way home I heard birds caw-cawing and black crows and buzzards kept circling above my head. I know they were waiting for me to drop so they could come in to peck me.  Running in the morning may be over-rated.