Marin Running Company

MBT Pulls Back, But Not Out

2011-12-13T23:01:00.000-08:00

Reading the latest interview of Joe Casagrande, the new president of MBT is like reading a story where every other paragraph the person is looking down talking around their most recent failure without admitting that they ever did anything wrong. It reads like an abasement in public, which is essentially what it is.

What is most important, however, is reading that:

Casagrande eschews the toning label and instead refers to MBT as "Euro comfort with physiological footwear properties"

Seriously? Do I have to do a quick internet search wherein we find MBT sitting on their "rocker technology" as their main selling point, telling the gullible consumer how this great new tech was going to change how they wallked forever and make everything all better. Of course, since a $25 million dollar class action lawsuit was settled over "toning footwear" and its patently false claims, its no wonder that they want to distance themselves from the "toning" label. Whether they can distance themselves from all the consumers that they've hurt with their $200+ shoes is another question. The "great new direction" of MBT should ring alarm bells of everyone who bought their outrageous claims, and had to pay through the nose for the privilege.

Odd how Joe says that "2007 through 2009 were strong growth years" and at the same time says that some of the retailers who were responsible for that strong growth "... were not set up to sell premium product inthe $200-$275 price range...". So which is it? You grew, so they obviously sold the product, and yet now you'll pull the line because they were not set up to sell the product?

Whats sad is that I'm going to continue to customers who come in with their knees and back hurting after purchasing MBT products, especially older consumers, and who force them selves to wear the shoes (as a good friend's mother did) not because they like them, but because they spent a lot of money on them. Sad.

Again NBC Dumps on Runners: Oly Trials Won't Be Live

2011-12-01T14:56:00.001-08:00

They’ve done it again. NBC is refusing to air the MensOlympic Trails Marathon live. Is that why they have Universal Sports? So thatthey can refuse to televise fascinating sports events? How easy is it to matchthe drama of the all-or-nothing top-3-or-stay-home drama of the Oly Trials? Nottoo easy, and yet, again, they refuse to air it.

Anyone remember the great battle for making the Olympic MarathonTeam back in 2004? Culpepper surging past Meb in a make or break move thatturned into Culpepper’s only marathon victory? Of course you don’t. Because NBCrefused to air it AT ALL. The localaffiliate actually asked to televise and NBC didn’t even allow them to.

The level of outright hatred to our sport is showing here.The people at NBC had repeatedly, against everyone hoping otherwise, shown howmuch they HATE our sport. Go back to 1996, when they didn’t air Bob Kennedytaking the lead in the 5,000m with two laps to go on the east coast. I know,because I kept the TV on til 2am thatmorning waiting for them to show even a single lap of the event.

For everyone who thought that the Trials going to Houstonwas a good thing: for the difference of $600,000, the idiots at USATF scuttledthe sport and forgot how big the 2008 Trials were. If they were in New York, Whittenberg would never allow the race not tobe streamed live. Moving the race to a city that far off the radar was moronic,and now the lack of live race shows how little anyone at NBC cares. It makeseven less sense to realize that they could charge a fee and get the dedicatedrunners to watch the web, and then get national advertising on the general showin the afternoon. You don’t have to have 20 different anchors NBC.

They have forgotten how dramatic the race was in November of2007. Multiple changes to the third place, favorites falling out, Hall runningat 2:06 pace in the middle of therace on the hills of Central Park, Sell being pursued bythe former world record holder for the final spot. It was brilliant. Dramatic,Exciting.

Everything that sports is supposed to be. And now none of uswill be able to see it.

We can see marathons from Berlinand Frankfurt and Rotterdamand others live on the web or on Universal Sports. But we can’t watch the selectionof our own Olympic Team.

They’re fools, and they hate us. Not just disinterested,they can’t stand us. They hate the sport and wish to hell that we would alljust go away. That way their Olympics could be swimmers and gymnastics andbeach volleyball without all the boring running to get in the way.

You like being hated? Think that NBC having control over theOlympics has literally been the worst possible thing for this sport to have inthe last 20 years? Tell them how much you hate being dumped on, and having thebest part of your sport taken from you.

Let your voice be heard and contact NBCSports & the HoustonMarathon:
NBCSports- Twitter: @nbc_sports Email: nbcsportshelp@nbcuni.com
Houston Marathon- Facebook Twitter: @HoustonMarathon
Race Director,Steve Karpas
skarpas@chevronhoustonmarathon.com
Phone: 713-957-3453

Elite Distance Running: How Do We Define Successful?

2011-11-30T18:41:00.001-08:00

Toni revis has hit the nail on the head so many times in his recent blog post that I won’t post it here in its entirety (just go read it), but simply add a bit more to the pot.

Except for strong fields at their San Diego home marathon, the Carlsbad 5000 up the coast, and the RnR Philadelphia Half Marathon, CGI’s working model pays one marquee athlete (like American Olympic medalists Shalane Flanagan in the recent Rock `n’ Roll San Antonio Half Marathon, or Meb Keflizighi at their Los Angeles and San Jose half-marathons) a healthy appearance fee to run a solo effort without the inconvenience of competition.

Taking on the Competitor Group for its business policies is pretty easy: we assume that they’re putting on a race, and they are, but not an elite race. They pay to have one show pony and then the rest of us poor slobs get to show up and race each other. So what’s the problem?

The problem is the sport of running versus the sport of elite running, of world class and Olympic running. As your average master’s competitor, I will have no problem finding lots of age group competition at pretty much any race I go to. It’ll be a dog fight most of the time.

Yet, it is elite racing at the highest level that interests some of us, even though recent demographics will show that there aren’t that many of us out there. What Toni is talking about is seeing the complete ladder, from jogger to NCAA athlete, to USA competitor, to Olympian. Its not just the elite runners and the rest of the shlubs below (quite a few rungs missing on the ladder there), it’s the whole numbers game that makes the ladder work.

If you have 1,000 high school runners, you likely have 100 college runners, and maybe 1 who will go on to become elite. Make that number 10,000 in high school and you’ve got an even greater chance to have more elite runners. So, yes, it is disturbing when a fairly elite college athlete like Lukas Verzbicas ditches Oregon because he looks about two or three rungs up and realizes, “I don’t think that I’ll ever get there.”

You only get so many of those athletes.

The IAAF and the IOC only have themselves to blame in a lot of ways. They have given away all the marketing that might have given them new generations of runners, mostly black Africans, that could have replaced Geb and Tergat in the minds and hearts of runners the world over. They have let the TV stations and sponsors take away the distance races because it was easy to concentrate on the sprints and the crowd-pleasing showboating and now they’re left without any distance runners who can dream of taking on the Kenyan and Ethiopian dominance in XC, nor any who have the chance to queue up in a global 10,000 and go after Bekele. Ritzenhein tracking him down in 2009 in his Paris 5K was certainly a rare event.

So why don’t you have a new Geb and Tergat? Because, just like baseball’s insane steroid fueled race to get new home runs, the idiotic obsession on times and times alone has taken all of the great racing out of the sport. And without great competition, there goes the sport.

It really isn’t hard to make the case. People remember Coe and Ovett trading the mile and 1500 records but none of them can remember the time. They remember Geb and Tergat racing each other down to the inch in the Sydney Games because it was played over and over again. For every one that wants a Lasse Viren/Michael Jordan/Pete Sampras you have to remember that it was their greatness being defined by great competition that makes us remember them.

The oddities in the drug testing (or lack of testing thereof), the arcane nature of the sports governing bodies (Paula Radcliffe’s off and on world record), and NBC’s desire to Up Close and Personal athletes, wringing every ounce of tragedy out of their backstory, while not televising the actual competition, have all shifted the spotlight away from what used to be memorable sporting competitions. After all, what we remember in sports are the match-ups, the great battles, the edge of your seat moments in sports.

For the elite runners community to change this is to have to learn what the rest of the world has learned, from Tennis to Futbol to Rugby to Baseball: how you market the sport matters. Matters a lot. The answer is not to start cutting events but to make the events better competitions. The cancellation of World XC to an every other year event is disturbing because it represents yet another loss for the world’s runners to stay in the limelight. Or to see the race live on TV in HD and decide that next year they want to be running over hill and through mud and try to chase down a leader. We know from the numbers game that if we don’t have youngsters who are inspired to join the chase then there is no chance to ever have another Ryan Hall pushing the leaders at mile 24 of the London Marathon.

Peter Vigneron of Outside Magazine commented on Toni’s blog post –

Reavis sees competitive running as a commodity. Or he must, because that is the only metric by which it is not wildly successful. Otherwise, things are humming along nicely: international competitive running has never been more competitive, American competitive distance running has never been more competitive, and more people are running and entering races in the United States than ever before.

And while I agree with Peter that American running is more competitive than ever in the last decade than since the 1970’s, a huge achievement given the black pit that was the ‘90’s, I disagree that distance running is wildly successful. There are a dearth of races for the almost world class, there is the distressing lack of world cross country for the national class athlete to test himself/herself in. There is a distressing lack of the rest of the world in the lead pack of the Olympic Marathon. My ideal? The lead pack of the Athens Olympic Marathon (and I’m doing this from memory here): an Italian, an American, South African, Kenyan, Brasilian, Ethiopian & Englishman. That is my successful metric for international distance running.

Thoughts?

Occupy Your Local Economy: Voting With Your Dollars

2011-11-22T22:46:00.001-08:00

With Black Friday rapidly approaching, the economy still influx, and Facebook all a–jitter with worker-to-CEO ratios, here is a scarythought: retrain yourself and do your holiday shopping differently this year.Don’t buy over the internet and put $0 back into your local economy, buy everythinglocally. Need a book? Don’t go to Amazon, have your local bookseller order it.

Be the smarter than the Wal-Marts of the world think youare. Don’t line up at 5am for BlackFriday deals at Target. Understand that companies, especially large corporations,only understand the bottom line, so you vote with every single dollar youspend.

We have to look past the familiar logos to see that notevery company is what they would like to be seen as. Example number one isLululemon, the Canadian yoga firm built upon a "fluffy warm bunny/empowerment" reputation,the same company that is putting the phrase “Who is John Galt?” on their bags.

Now, Lululemon is not the first firm to use shock to keepthemselves in the news and on the lips of their customers. Benetton was doingthat in the 1980’s with provocative marketing. But somehow, using an Ayn Randreference from “Atlas Shrugged” (the aforementioned “Who is John Galt?” phrase),a novel that is being drawn upon by the Tea Party for inspiration, and one thatreferences unregulated capitalism and selfishness, seems to fly directly in theface of the community building that inspires the yoga crowd.

Where does the money go on those $98 yoga pants?

Do more shopping with cash, check or debit cards as opposed tocredit cards, especially with small business, which pay more to run a Visa orMC than the larger stores.

All of this will have more of a profound effect on yourlocal economy than sitting in a park. Like viewing election results, you can’tcomplain if you didn’t vote. You vote with your wallet every day, we all do,and it can, a little bit every day, change the world we live in.

Can't You Just Pick A Shoe? Asics 33 series and NB MT00

2011-11-15T14:49:00.000-08:00

Those of us in the shoe biz find ourselves continually walking a tightrope of figuring out what the customer might want to actually spend money on versus what we might want to be able to recommend to help the feet/ankles/knees etc. And in what color. Its not easy to do so even in a stable environment, and the current shoe selling market is anything but. There are move versions of shoes and colors and designs on the horizon than ever before, and more corresponding confusion than ever before.

Take Asics, which has had the guts to take a stand when it comes to exactly how far they’re going to follow the minimalistic trend. They’ve even produced a video or two explaining it.

Key to what they're designing is in this line:

We find it interesting that this definition has traditionally described racing flats, a product not traditionally associated with every-day training for the average runner.

And I certainly enjoyed finally seeing this line in "print" by one of the shoe companies. I've been using this same line to customers for a year a half now, and even bringing out old racing flats to show that the minimalist shoe really isn't a new thing. All in the way to bringing the conversation around to what the customer hopes to gain by going to the vastly thinner and lighter shoe. That means that Asics is going to go lightweight and flexible but still with a 20mm high heel/10mm high forefoot on the whole 33 line. I have two of the 33 line, what i think are the very best two, one for the road and for the trail, coming in the spring.

Asics has their 33 collection coming out now and continuing into the spring, and has taken, for better or worse depending how you feel about it, a principled stand on what they think is safe and can sell to their customers and still go home and sleep well at night.

And one wonders how the makers of MBT and Reebok and other toning shoes can do the same. At this point, I suspect that they’re going home and sleeping less well from the $25 million lawsuit filed by the Federal Trade Commission over false advertising related to the toning shoes. Sketchers has voluntarily changed their verbage in their ads to avoid being sued in a similar fashion one suspects.

It has been an interesting time in the shoe world, trying to separate out claims of zero drop vs barefoot vs minimalist given how many of the categories overlap in design. The Zero Drop aspect, one of the most intriguing, given that it can allow for two of the things the most bother the novice barefoot user: lack of protection and lack of tread, while not putting the runner into any sort of pitched forward position. We’ve not see a ton of shoes that fit the bill yet, although the Altras and Hokas have ventured there, and New Balance’s new spring line looks exceptionally promising (sadly it won’t be here til March).

The very fact that it takes me this long, and this many words to even start to describe that changes in design to the shoes should tell you just how much variation there is today.

Winter is a Pain in Northern CA – Hard to find any takers for rain jackets when it’s a brutal 60 degrees and sunny in the middle of November. Gloves? Ski mask? Baklava? No, its still t-shirt and shorts weather for a walk or run. Wow.

With that in mind, I have a new shipment of Havaianas flip flops coming in this week. All beautiful colors and designs and, I get to say this, just PERFECT for mid November!

NYC Marathon & Adam Goucher

2011-11-09T18:43:00.001-08:00

Wrap up to the ING New York City Marathon –

Pulled up two different feeds on the computer, the official Universal Sports feed with Larry Rawson and a number of others who were so embarrassing with regards to the race that I was shocked that this is considered professional behavior. Not being able to actually pronounce the names of the Ethiopians tracking Mary down in the lead is utterly, utterly embarrassing.

Moved over to the feed from Eurosport and found Geoff Smith and company doing a brilliant job of commenting on the marathon. They knew names, knew the sport and brought a wealth of knowledge to the event.

You know why the marathon isn’t shown live nationally anymore? So that American TV doesn’t embarrass themselves coast to coast.

It was strange to see Meb running not in a Nike kit. His arm warmers are the most interesting thing about what Sketchers put him in. That being said, running a PR at his age and with the miles on his legs is impressive. It points out that his PR really should have been much, much faster but he never quite put a marathon together the way that he did a couple of great 10Ks over the years. For Salazar to run 2:08 off of a 27:25 10K, you have to believe that Meb should have been able to run that when he was in 27:13 – 27:20 shape.

Seen at the NYC Marathon expo: the girl demonstrating the new lightweight Sketchers running shoes finishing her demo, and very quickly changing into her Asics when she was done. Ouch.

Very cool: the special New Balance yellow taxi cab shoes at the expo. Beautifully designed with lots of little touches to them.

Noted – the great job that New Balance’s art department did to get rid of the Nike swoosh on the Jenny Barringer-Simpson poster that they’re release from the World Championships.

Milestones - Adam Goucher announced his retirement, which isn’t a big deal except that Adam was the first big light after the dark ages of the 1990’s, where you literally were putting all your faith in Bob Kennedy and Todd Williams. Goucher’s gutty running was just the opening bell to the next generation of Americans answering the call.

His running at the University of Colorado (well documented in Running with the Buffalos) made him a cult figure and continued when he overcame injuries and time off to win the 2000 Olympic Trials 5000m on pure guts and anger. Most people will miss his excellent top 10 World XC finish on the short course as well, at a time when most people had pretty much given up on him.

check out what Adam has to say about it:
http://www.blog.runtheedge.com/2011/11/a-new-starting-line/

The Multi-Headed Monster that is the New York City Marathon

2011-11-03T17:32:00.000-07:00

When is a phenomenon not a phenomenon? What if there is a huge life changing sporting event that happens and no one knows about it, did it really happen? Or better yet, given the nature of reality shows and TV today, if the media doesn’t acknowledge that it happened, should we take it seriously?

All of this and more pertains to the curious state of track and field and marathoning today. The New York City Marathon is happening this weekend, will have a pack field of over 45,000 runners, take over one of the most important cities in the world for an entire day, and, potentially, take over the entire weekend if we’re to believe the coming expansion of the race.

And you wouldn’t quite know it from the media of the United States. The race, which was once a live staple on national networks, has been relegated to tape-delayed/NBC style “up close and personal” hell for over a decade. So perhaps we should be asking the question, what is more interesting and important: a sport that 45,000 people participate (the New York City Marathon), or a sport that 45,000 people sit and watch (the New York Jets)?

The answer is clearly the latter, except if you’re in New York City. There, you can’t get away from the Marathon, it has taken over like a spider, extending its legs out from Columbus Circle in all directions with advertising that is so extreme that it would have made the promoting mavens of 100 years yellow with envy. And other marathons have a way of doing so in their own cities as well, even if they’re missing the star power of New York. The list of filled up marathons in Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Washington DC, San Francisco is just as amazing.

So why is there no love from the media? Lack of star power? Lack of pretty faces? Lack of recent American success in the event? Or, perhaps, lack of new ideas? I cite the last one. We’ve all heard the excuses over the last 20 years, and for many years they did have a ring of truth. However, we’ve a run of great performances in the marathon in the last 7 years, since Meb and Deena both medaled in the Athens Games, including other great runs by Deena and Shalane Flanagan and Kara Goucher, a NYC Marathon victory by Meb and some truly excellent runs by Ryan Hall that the running community continues to slag off instead of appreciating. We have the faces and we have the personalities and we have the performances, but we have a long line of media heads that still remember televising and promoting running in exactly the same boring way. If I have to watch one more long shot without a single drop of drama, I promise to fall asleep, and I’m someone who loves this sport.

The challenge here is to get someone to listen. This isn’t something that can easily be done with a guerilla approach the way Flotrack did by going to the meets and doing the camera work and commentary by themselves. Televising marathons is monstrous hassle logistically and monetarily and the it won’t be until someone is sat down and convinced to direct the shots differently at one of the major networks that we will have a better example. And since money is always the motivating factor, its convincing that director/producer that better TV will be better for sponsors.

Is anyone out there listening? Is there anyone out there in TV land that cares?

Softer Surfaces: The Runner's Enemy?

2011-07-21T13:13:00.000-07:00

Anecdotal evidence gets a bad rap, and yet, also a well deserved one.

Confused? So is the New York Times and their Sports Department.

For Runners, Soft Ground Can Be Hard on the Body

For years runners have operated on the idea that moving onto trails takes some of the pounding away from the body, allowing older runners a chance to get out and get more miles with less chance of injury to the aging legs. Runners of all ages have decided to take to a dirt surface with the hopes of getting less hurt. Now, Gina Kolata supposes, it doesn’t really help at all.

But lets take a look at her article. She interviews a single exercise physiologist who uses anecdotal evidence about himself. She then interviews herself, using her own anecdote, interviews a couple of doctors who say that there is no real evidence either way, and, after all that copious research, she starts to make conclusions.

So we continue to use anecdotal evidence, with the hope of finding a truth here? Unfortunately, it’s a tough sell, when generations of runners have turned to trails and will tell you that they have less injuries from the impact on trails (which negates any laterally oriented injuries, such as turned ankles and the like). But anecdotal evidence also postulated that the Earth was flat for a whole lot of years, and we all know how that turned out.

The US National Library of Medicine, however, contains an abstract that might prove a little more useful than pure anecdotal evidence, or the Times rather lame attempt at baiting the runners who read their articles.

From 2002, here is the final line of the abstract, the full text of which is provided below:

The 12.5-fold decrease in surface stiffness resulted in a 12% decrease in the runner's metabolic rate and a 29% increase in their leg stiffness. The runner's support mechanics remained essentially unchanged. These results indicate that surface stiffness affects running economy without affecting running support mechanics. We postulate that an increased energy rebound from the compliant surfaces studied contributes to the enhanced running economy.

So, simply put, a softer surface took less energy and didn’t affect support. The last sentence is great as well: a compliant surface contributes to enhanced running economy.

Do I need to state that concrete is not a compliant surface?

So if we are running on a non-compliant surface, doesn’t it make sense to have strap a compliant surface to our foot? If we’re using logic, then we have now worked our way back to shoes.

Now, what kind of shoes is a huge, huge discussion, and one that is basically endless, since there is an unending stream of people with different feet, different ages, different training histories, different injury histories to fit.

What’s sad and annoying is that the Times article, which doesn’t even purport to say what the headline says, will get emailed around and, like the Born to Run story, be believed by any number of people who skim through the first three paragraphs and don’t bother to read any further. There is a wealth of better material out there to read and digest, but its whole wheat bread and requires context to digest, rather than Gina’s thin slice of white bread.

Energetics and mechanics of human running on surfaces of different stiffnesses.

Kerdok AE, Biewener AA, McMahon TA, Weyand PG, Herr HM.

Source

Harvard Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge 02138, Massachusetts. kerdok@fas.harvard.edu

Abstract

Mammals use the elastic components in their legs (principally tendons, ligaments, and muscles) to run economically, while maintaining consistent support mechanics across various surfaces. To examine how leg stiffness and metabolic cost are affected by changes in substrate stiffness, we built experimental platforms with adjustable stiffness to fit on a force-plate-fitted treadmill. Eight male subjects [mean body mass: 74.4 +/- 7.1 (SD) kg; leg length: 0.96 +/- 0.05 m] ran at 3.7 m/s over five different surface stiffnesses(75.4, 97.5, 216.8, 454.2, and 945.7 kN/m). Metabolic, ground-reaction force, and kinematic data were collected. The 12.5-fold decrease in surface stiffness resulted in a 12% decrease in the runner's metabolic rate and a 29% increase in their leg stiffness. The runner's support mechanics remained essentially unchanged. These results indicate that surface stiffness affects running economy without affecting running support mechanics. We postulate that an increased energy rebound from the compliant surfaces studied contributes to the enhanced running economy.

Does The Heat Slow Us Down, or Do WE Slow Ourselves Down?

2011-05-19T10:19:00.000-07:00

OK, we know that its been drilled into your head time and time again: Drink to so that you can sweat, sweating cools you and makes your body perform better. Simply correlation, right?

Except that some have weighed in with the theory that heat doesn't diminish our athletic performance at all, it is our brain's expectation that the heat will cause problems with out bodies that makes us slow down and be more cautious.

Novel, you might say, if you're the sort that thinks about these sorts of things. Except, no matter how simple or outlandish the theory, there will be scientists somewhere who will try to challenge conventional wisdom.

And an interesting study was published in the European Journal of Applied Physiology, conducted at the University of Bedfordshire and University of Brighton, with cyclists as lab monkeys. They had seven riders riding a time trial under three different heat conditions:

a control trial @ 21.8 centigrade
a hot trial @ 31.4 C
and a "faux" trial @ 31.6 C with false indicators that the room was at 26.0 C

So what happened? The cyclists covered less distance on the hot trial than the control trial, which was expected, but performed just as well, even a little bit better, in the "faux" trial when conventional wisdom says that they shouldn't have performed as well!

Now this obviously brings up the discussion of why runners typically slow down in heat, is it because we THINK we're going to over heat, and the body's protective mechanism is to lessen our effort so that we don't get into core heat trouble. Ross Tucker, part of Tim Noakes' group in South Africa (Noake's Lore of Running book in an indispensible work BTW), argues that exactly that: we slow down so we don't get into trouble IN THE FUTURE, not at what our body is at currently.

So what do we make of this in regards to, say, running a Double Dipsea? One, that the longer we're exercising the higher our core temp will go, that's an unchallenged given, so a testing duration of 30 minutes is very different than one of 2 hours, 4 times as much. Part of our brain telling us to be careful may be dictated by our knowledge of just how long, or how short, we'll be out there. Obviously extreme core temp changes can be dangerous long term, but it certainly appears that we can trick our bodies into moving less blood to the surface of the skin for a period of time. And in a close race, that may be all the difference you need.

We have seen Kenyan runners, especially the late Sammy Wanjiru, in the heat of Beijing, run performances that are so utterly beyond what we think is possible that it is tempting to put the onus not on Sammy being a world class athlete, which he was, but on having a brain that simply refused to acknowledge that the heat would slow him down. Because what we saw was Sammy run the race in a time that, while fast, is not beyond what he had already run at London. What is interesting is that Sammy ran AS IF he was at London in cool temps, while the REST OF THE WORLD CLASS MARATHONERS ran as if they ran in the heat.

So can the average runner benefit? It might be interesting to have coached "lie" a bit to athletes, to see what happens. It would not be the first time. And if its not a marathon, perhaps what you don't know won't hurt you.

Sammy Wanjiru RIP November 1986 – May 2011

2011-05-17T11:14:00.000-07:00

Usually, when an athlete who has so utterly changed the face of the game dies, it creates tidal waves of shock among the sporting world. When Sammy Wanjiru, the Olympic Champion at the marathon, died two days ago, amidst all the stories out of Kenya of domestic violence, weapons, multiple women claiming to be his wives, etc., it takes a on a bit more of a "well, we should have seen this coming" tone. And, sadly, that is what may be remembered over the long haul.

But the long haul, for Sammy, wasn't as long as it was for everyone else. The 26 mile, 385 yard slog over pavement was a sprint for him, more so than anyone else in the history of the event, never mind that a few men have actually run faster than he did. Here was an athlete who changed the mindset of the event in such a way that it was very close to universally acknowledged that, given the right conditions, he would one day hold the world record. Sammy died at the tender age of 24, so, no, there is no long haul either in his racing or his life.

Wanjiru was an athlete without fear, utterly and completely without fear of the distance that he would have to run, and it showed most importantly in Beijing, in an unshaded Olympic course that simply baked the athletes in a most even and unrelenting form. Sammy, unafraid and clearly lacking the Olympic handbook that said all championship races are won in the later stages, too off from the opening, running a 4:41 mile and not letting up. For anyone else, this would have been suicide, but Sammy had thrown down the gauntlet and, fortunately for him, some others picked it up. Martin Lel, Kibet and Merga were all willing to not only go with him but would actually take turns pushing each other in as macho a contest as has ever been seen. Like boxing, there was almost no let up to the desire to inflict pain on one another, even in short bursts, as if to say, "Yes, I'm still here."

Lel, the former best marathoner on the planet for the last two years was not at his best after a bout with malaria, and Kibet had only been added to the team given his strength on running the heat. Neither would be the toughest runners that Wanjiru would go against. Merga, the Ethiopian, was the one who wouldn't back down an inch until his body dictated that he had to, because he ran with the same sort of abandon as Wanjiru. Merga, in the final 400 meters would pay the price for his agression by losing the bronze to teammate Kebede, himself running a very fast but slightly more controlled race.

And it was Kebede who would run with Wanjiru at this last fall's 2010 Chicago Marathon to a thrilling race that many are calling Wanjiru's best. Arriving at 85% fitness ( his coach would estimate), Sammy would be dropped three time in the final miles by Kebede, only to come back time and again before finally out sprinting the Ethiopian in the final KM. Find the clip on YouTube. The announcers have stepped out of their professional roles and are simply going bonkers. (Its a shame that no one else in the United States has seen this, since it was a brilliant run but then marathons, even in the greatest media capital of the country, don't have the attraction to get shown nationally live. And what a shame.)

Now in the saddest of all possible scenarios, we'll never have the chance to see what Sammy could have done at the race on a perfect day. I was worried that we would lose Sammy to booze, the way we lost Henry Rono for years, or to getting fat or simply to lack of motivation. But instead we lost Sammy to fame and money and youth and a complete and utter lack of guidance and common sense. There is no other way to see this than as a complete waste. There should have been so much more. So much less partying and so much more training and so many more victories.

Sammy, you will always remind me of Bikila, an athlete who died far too young and with many more races in you. Your Olympic victory will be on my mind as much as Bikila's was so an entire generation of runners before me. It was inspirational in every sense of the word, and that is such an overused word. Some would say godspeed, but, then, you already had that.

Running Against Time: The Athlete's Dilemma

2011-05-10T19:07:00.000-07:00

This will be complete waste of a blog post to anyone who is younger than 30, since, I have to say, you have youth on your side. Or a relative version of youth at least. No, today we’re talking to the older athlete, one who is slowing down even as they read these words, in little tiny incremental ways. And yet, despite all that, the shoes continue to get laced up, and body is shoved out the door in yet another exercise session.

I’m 45, and I’ve been running for almost 34 years now, and I find myself talking constantly to older athletes, comparing notes. Especially now that I’m back training for a Dipsea race that isn’t going to come and feeling every one of those 45 years. I’ve always relied on my watch as a tool, an objective way to keep track of the runs, both easy and hard, and while it still lets me do that, it also serves as a terrific reminder of the limitations of the contemporary body.

He who races time has an opponent who does not suffer casualty, and never is it more true than in the aging athlete. However, I was in a meeting with non-runners who kept referring to some local 20minute 5K runners as “elite runners”, and I made a correction: that they should see them as competitive runners, not elite.

Because therein lies our salvation really. Should I get to race day on Memorial Day and lace up the Tarther racing shoes and really go for it, I’m running down not the younger me that could get into the mid-30’s for a 10K but other masters athletes who are on the same race course. The watch, the oppressive training aid, becomes useless to the trained athlete who wishes to actually compete with those around him. Singlets in front and back and your mission, your mission is to beat as many of them as you can. Yes, split times can help but that’s missing the point.

The point is that, while I can’t run as fast on the little black Timex as I used to, I can still finish up a hard training session with the same head to toes buzz that was so addictive when I was in my 20’s. I’m chasing the drug addled exercise brain of my youth more than I’m chasing my youth and I’m ok with that race, because I’m going to get more out of it.

I won’t catch my youth. Its not possible and I know that. I followed it for a while in my early 30’s til it surged away up and around the corner with ease wearing racing flats that aren’t made anymore. (That was around the same time someone handed me a child instead of a cup at a water stop.) What may be possible to capture and hold on to the moments that inspire post race conversations: the surge that pulled you away from the rival, the great hill climb, the final push into the finish chute. I a great couple moments of that in the 2009 Dipsea that made me realize just how much I enjoy this sport and the competition part of it. Especially when I can finally put the little black Timex into its place: as a tool on race day, and not the master it is on the training day.

Get on out there and go for it.

Grete Waitz – A Remembrance

2011-04-25T23:06:00.000-07:00

Grete Waitz is dead. And the world is poorer for the loss.

Sadly, this International sportswoman who amazed so many and charmed so many more with her quiet stature and tremendous ability, has not only moved on, but done so far enough away from the public light as to be forgotten. And she shouldn’t be.

Grete, a quiet Norwegian school teacher was also a world class cross country runner competing against steroid induced East Germans and Russians back in the 1970’s, and even then occasionally coming out on top. She was quiet and tough and talented as hell. In 1978, Fred Lebow, chief organizer, marketer and visionary for the New York Road Runners, invited her to come to the states to run his marathon. Grete and her husband accepted, thinking, great, we’ll get a free trip to New York. She ran, and won, and set the world record in her first try. On a slow course. And such was history.

You see, the dominos tend to fall sometimes slowly and sometimes quickly and only years later can you start to see clearly which pieces hit the other pieces to make them fall. The New York City Marathon was televised nationally, live, starting in 1981, the only year in 10 that she didn’t win. (I know it’s hard to imagine isn’t it? An American marathon actually on television, live) Grete was now running all over the world, and a prime example, this quiet brilliant woman who proved that women could not only run distance but race it and race it better than the men, someone that could be pointed to to convince the hidebound Olympic movement to add the marathon for women in 1984. Her running moved the women into the same battle for legitimacy as professional athletes as the men were fighting.

I’d like to think beyond just her athletic achievements, but everything is wrapped up together. Her achievements on the roads created a world wide force to help women gain equality through sport, which in turn created more places for her to excel and win, increasing her ability to achieve social change. She won a world championship in 1983, had a back injury that she didn’t discuss beforehand, limiting her to the silver in 1984. She won New York City Marathon 9 times, a number that will certainly never be equaled much less surpassed, because women’s marathoning is simply too competitive these days, and yes, it harkens back to Grete helping the rest of the world see that women could kick ass in the race. Races became professional, money came into it, and the rise of Africans seeing their chance to run their way to unheard of riches and are all dominos that have long since fallen after that fateful 1978 marathon.

Grete made headlines jogging the New York City Marathon with Fred Lebow many years later, when Fred was suffering from the brain tumor that would take his life. Many people cite that memory as their most powerful of Grete, but that’s likely only because it was the last time that she was in the national spotlight. They have forgotten the Grete of her prime: long blond hair behind her as she hammered her opponents in the distance, eyes half closed in effort, her slightly stiff arm action not betraying a bit of her determination to win. She was magnificent in her prime, every bit as exciting to watch run as the best men in the world, which, back then, you couldn’t have said about any other female marathoner in the world.

She was a pioneer. She had incredible talent. And she had class.

She was Grete. And you’ll never get another like her.

Ok, we're moving. And here's the scoop.

2011-04-25T22:05:00.000-07:00

Ok, so we’re moving. During the first week of June. Lets get that out there.

The most often asked question is, “Why?” And I’ve given the answer so often verbally that I thought it was worth putting into the blog as well.

Back in 2000, when Ron and Rhonda Jacobs opened this particular business as an extension of the Fleet Feet franchise that they owned in Santa Rosa, I doubt that they would have ever been able to imagine the next 10 years and what a different landscape they would have been in.

When I purchased the business in 2005, I had the idea to finally be able to make a running store that would be able to not just sell shoes but actually solve problems for people, that they could rely on to help settle aching knees and feet. Ask anyone in retail sales; I’m sure that you know someone. It is, quite bluntly, not the most rewarding job for most people. The register goes beep, they swipe a card, and mumble at the person. Repeat. Ad Nauseum. But then there are jobs where you get actually help people, where people come in and tell you that they just jogged for 25 minutes for the first time and their back doesn’t hurt, or that their kid just finished his first cross country season at Brookside and got a trophy and he’s incredibly psyched. Yes, there are plenty of times to pull a size 8.5 for someone and send them on their way, but it is the helping that you go home and talk about.

Being able to carry the very best shoes that I can find, regardless of logo, bringing in the slow motion video gait analysis system to analyze people on a 25 frames a minute loop, focusing on minimalist/barefoot running after doing it myself for almost 27 years: these are all tools that I enjoy being able to use to actually help people. Fleet Feet used to have an 80/20 rule: that 80% of the people who walked through your door would be covered by only 20% of your models. So carrying the outlying shoes, the shoes that wouldn’t work for most people, was, in essence, a bit of a waste of money. Surely all you would want to do was focus on ordering a ton of the same model. In an area as diverse as Marin, where the trails and roads combine to a potent mix of training surfaces, your 80/20 was already out the window. Mix in the current desire for many people to experiment with something other than what conventional wisdom has told them they need as “support” and you’ve opened up yet another kettle of fish.

Moving just across the street to the space currently occupied by Jump ‘N Bounce, and most memorably occupied by Noodle Soup in years past will allow me to change things up a bit: continue to bring all sorts of amazing new shoes, both robust and lean for people. We’ll be on the sunny side of the street, with a view of Mt. Tam’s peak if you lean out the window just right. Many is the time we’ll get to peer out at that and plan a long run up Eldritch Trail to the summit from the north side. And, with the new Coffee Roasters just across the street, we’ll be able to caffeinate properly before and after our runs. It’ll be the chance to re-engage with Marin’s running and wanting-to-run/be fit community. We have great plans for beginning runs on Saturday mornings, an evening pub run that will allow us to combine those two great tastes: a trail run and beer. And we even have plans for some great prizes to give away when you visit our new location!

I Love to Watch... heh heh

2011-03-29T11:31:00.001-07:00

What so sad about being in the US, and following a sport that has very little media cache, is how you miss seeing the excitement that builds when you get closer to a major sporting event.

The London Marathon is the premier event of its kind in the world, and has been for the last 10 years. Flora has somehow decided to put up the money to allow almost every one of the worlds best marathoners to toe the line and bash each other in the face for 26.2 miles. And it has been, if you know what you're looking for, incredibly entertaining to watch.

Here, in a real running area, the San Francisco Bay Area, Oakland decides to put on a marathon that ends up being covered outside of the sports section? How is putting on a marathon not a sport?

Once again we see the difference between how people perceive a participation sport. I've long tried to figure out why there is such a disconnect between runners who run and those who might want to follow the sport. Does the weekend golfer thank that, but for a small change in form, he might be vieing for the Masters? And does the same runner look at the diminutive runners clocking repeat 5 minute miles and feel a complete disconnect?

Maybe its because we know that Football and Baseball and Basketball are all, when we purchase a ticket, sports that we're just going to spectate at. There is never any hope of us leaving the stands and joining the game. With runners, there are no track meets to go essentially, and road racing makes for poor spectating anyway, so its join in and run your own race or stay home and have another doughnut.

What are your thoughts? Would you ever go to a professional track meet? Or watch a marathon on television? And if not, why not?

The Endocannabinoids vs Endorphin Grudge Match

2011-03-04T16:16:00.000-08:00

It used to be easy, this whole “runner’s high” thing. We’re decades beyond the 1970’s and ‘80’s when well meaning smokers chortled, “ I couldn’t run that far if you put a gun to my head, or a beer at the end!” and you had to describe to Aunt Mertyl just exactly why you were zipping up a windbreaker to go run 10 miles in the rain. You couldn’t say, “ Because when I get done I alternately feel numb and powerful at the same time.” (Poor Aunt Mertyl never felt powerful a day in her life) So you fell back on, “I like the runner’s high.” After all, Donohue had done a program on it, you could read about it in the paper’s, we all knew that the endorphins were taking good care of making you feel great, run after run.

However, once again, science comes along and takes the easy part and makes it hard again. Endorphins are composed of relatively large molecules, “which are unable to pass the blood-brain barrier,” said Matthew Hill, a postdoctoral fellow at Rockefeller University in New York. Finding endorphins in the bloodstream after exercise could not, in other words, constitute proof that the substance was having an effect on the mind.

In an experiment in 2003, scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology found that 50 minutes of hard running on a treadmill or riding a stationary bicycle significantly increased blood levels of endocannabinoid molecules in a group of college students. The endocannabinoid system was first mapped some years before that, when scientists set out to determine just how cannabis, a k a marijuana, acts upon the body. They found that a widespread group of receptors, clustered in the brain but also found elsewhere in the body, allow the active ingredient in marijuana to bind to the nervous system and set off reactions that reduce pain and anxiety and produce a floaty, free-form sense of well-being. Even more intriguing, the researchers found that with the right stimuli, the body creates its own cannabinoids (the endocannabinoids). These cannabinoids are composed of molecules known as lipids, which are small enough to cross the blood-brain barrier, so cannabinoids found in the blood after exercise could be affecting the brain.

Psychologists coined the term “positive addiction” back in the 1970’s for those patients who they tried to get off of drugs and alcohol by replacing that behavior with exercise. Surprise, those same people became addicted to the “runner’s high”, in ways that were occasionally as destructive as their prior behavior. Whether some of this had to do with the basic personality traits of the individuals involved is up to debate. “Positive addiction” is about as good a term to describe runners as any you will ever find.

What isn’t open to debate is how amazing we know that a good hard workout makes you feel. The description of that has taken up reams of paper and edged into plenty of bad poetry quite often, because there are some things that are just really damn hard to describe in words. I would make the case that the whole point of the “runner’s high” is anti-words, anti-linear. You are more present in your body at that time, and more out of it than at almost any other time. You shouldn’t be able to put it all into words, it should make you feel more. We spend a lot of time in the 21^st Century over thinking things anyway.

It appears that we can let the endocannabinoid system suffice for now, or at least until science decides to make a few more stride some years from now and we find out that THAT isn’t the actual reason. By then, most of us will have even more miles under our belt and hopefully even more reasons to enjoy our runner’s high, even if we can’t pronounce endocannabinoid.

The New Shoes May Be Smarter Than You Are

2011-02-03T23:54:00.000-08:00

Everyone has become very comfortable out in the real world with the terms “neutral” “stability” and “motion control”, as if there were just three different types of biomechanics that needed to be addressed in the world. And yet we all know that that isn’t true, so why do we hold on to these terms?

First, because we have to have a common language for discussion, and there is a need for a starting place. I’ll be the first to admit that. However, as we move forward, and its not just the runners and walkers and cross fitters that are asking these questions, but the shoes themselves that are asking, “Are you sophisticated enough to understand how I’m going to work with you?”

After being in this business for over 20 years, I’m frankly astounded at the innovation in shoe design that we’re seeing in 2011. And this is not something that I would have imagined saying in the last two years. As the economy crashed around us, shoe manufacturers did the obvious things: lean on established models, make less of them so that they’re carrying less inventory, etc.

But a funny thing must have happened on the way to being conservative; a little thing that appears to be innovation in all sorts of different places. Its not just Nike trying hard to reinvent itself in the new Lunar products, which they are. Its Columbia coming to the plate with shoes like the Switchback that very clearly blur the line between lighter weight running shoe, trail hiker and fashion inspired kick around. It’s the minimalism trend expanding with fall’s INOV-8 line, where you have three different shoes with either a zero drop or mere 3 millimeter differential and they all feel and fit differently. Its Somnio bringing new shoes that can be customized to each foot individually with both interior cant and cushion.

Frankly, it will come, I believe, as more of a shock to the orthotic wearing traditionalist when these new designs come to play. No longer can we simply say, “This shoe runs narrow.” The modern version of the Mizuno Inspire runs both wider around the metatarsals and narrower in the heel than many other shoes. It makes a mockery of us humans, with our complex feet, trying to jam them into unsophisticated sheaths. Thankfully, they’re upgrading to the point where they can really help, or conversely, hurt us if not fit properly.

I’ll be addressing a bunch of the new models that will be hitting your back rooms of your favorite shoe store this fall soon, and posting pics as well. Stay tuned!

Orthotics don't work. Or they do. But we don't know why.

2011-01-20T18:02:00.000-08:00

OK, I guess we’ve moved into the era where we can figure out that, basically, nothing works. Or, things work, but not the way that we expected and since we’ve thrown out all the old science, we have no way of quite knowing how the new science works.

Confused? So is the New York Times.

Today’s article regarding orthotics should be a political hot potato in the shoe world. Benno Nigg, a professor of biomechanics and co-director of the Human Performance Lab at the University of Calgary in Alberta, has spent 30 looking at orthotics and come to some interesting conclusions. The most interesting: Shoe inserts or orthotics may be helpful as a short-term solution, preventing injuries in some athletes. But it is not clear how to make inserts that work.

Part of the key may be the confusion of what aspects of the body the orthotics work upon. Instead of aligning the skeletal structure, as we might have supposed, Prof essor Nigg believes that they turn out to have little effect on kinematics — the actual movement of the skeleton during a run. But they can have large effects on muscles and joints, often making muscles work as much as 50 percent harder for the same movement and increasing stress on joints by a similar amount.

So does this tie in well to the cited Canadian soldiers study? Half of the 240 soldiers got inserts and the others, for comparison, did not. The findings were somewhat puzzling: While the group that used inserts had about half as many injuries — defined as pain that kept them from exercising for at least half a day — there was no obvious relation between the insert a soldier chose and his biomechanics without it.

What is funny is that, to anyone in the retail business of fitting and selling orthotics, the fact that the soldiers were able to pick inserts that they felt were comfortable had a huge effect on their efficacy. I have found, after 20+ years in retail, that most people will gravitate towards an insole that fits the shape of their foot. So it comes as no surprise that people would find insoles that fit, and that those actually had a measurable effect on their feet.

I think part of the problem is that the business of orthotics has long operated with a far greater percentage of art than science, perhaps more than most docs would want to admit. And there is plenty of anecdotal evidence, of ordinary people to Olympians who have cured a knee pain with an orthotic in a shoe, it just turns out to be more guesswork than science.

Joseph Hamill, who studies lower-limb biomechanics at the University of Massachusettsin Amherst, agrees.

“We have found many of the same results,” said Dr. Hamill, professor of kinesiology and the director of the university’s biomechanics laboratory. “I guess the main thing to note is that, as biomechanists, we really do not know how orthotics work.”

And yet, we know, that when you guess right, they do.

So how does this affect us in the shoe/orthotic industry? I have been flamed for contradicting Steve Magness in a much earlier post when he wrote that stability and motion control shoes don’t do a damn thing. My contention then, and now, is to say that: for whatever reason, we have lucked on to certain wedges under the foot that can alleviate pain. How they work, we clearly don’t know. Yet too much of our anecdotal evidence shows that they do have a positive function when used correctly for me to want to stop using them. If we can get the art part to work, then we’ll have to remain artists whenever necessary. Just artists with restraint.

In a shop like mine, where I’ve pretty much always preached a fairly conservative approach to shoes with stabilizing features or the use of Superfeet inserts, its not a real change. Although I will find myself changing what I tell the customer when I do resort to using an over the counter orthotic. For other shops, certain running speciality franchises where the clerks are supposed to be upselling the Superfeet to prescribed percentage of customers, or Le Foot in Berkeley, which has always preached motion control for all, it may be a much bigger change. Especially if the customer has been doing his/her reading of articles like this one.

So is it dishonest for me to show my customer a video of them running straighter in shoe A than shoe B, and to nudge them to wearing shoe A? My video analysis lacks scientific rigor, but I have to believe that, once we take into account what the person has been used to (there is that darn art side again), then it is easier to make the connection on how much correction we might want to put in.

It would be interesting to see how much thought has been put into seeing the foot in isolation versus at the end of a long, interconnected series of levers and pulleys. When Dr. Nigg points out that they have a huge effect upon muscles and joints, we have to wonder how many orthotists look that far up the chain? I have some brilliant podiatrists in my area and if they have a blind spot, its sometimes treating the foot in pure isolation as opposed to part of a very complex system. If a person’s knee is used to rotating inward as the arch collapses 2%, then a 2% wedge n a fairly supportive shoe can theoretically not just straighten the knee but cause an exterior rotation, or a tightening of the IT band to counteract the knee suddenly tracking differently. I’m not sure that all of that is always taken into account. (Yes, I know that there are likely going to be some who believe that by going to only minimalist or barefoot shoes, the foot will strengthen to the point where an orthotic will not be necessary, but this discussion presupposed that that is not a short term option.)

What are your thoughts?

If A runner sets a WR in the woods, does anyone care?

2011-01-12T23:57:00.000-08:00

So the best runners in the world started to warm up in the snowy conditions of Scotland with some intro cross country racing. Galen Rupp, a 2008 Olympian, and second fastest American ever at 10,000 meters was second in the non-African race. World XC is coming up, the single best race in the world for runners.

I know that you’re pumped up, right?

And if you’re reading this, perhaps you are, but the real likelihood is that you have no idea who the hell I’m talking about, nor do you care. Running has a marketing problem, and it is one that, as a sport, hasn’t been addressed for a long time. The people who control the sport have very different ideas of what they think works on TV, and since they’re the ones with the money, they get final say. And, it appears, that they’ll be content with watching the meager ratings that the sport gets as it slides deeper into obscurity.

I have a ton of ideas how the sport could be marketed better, but that’s a blog post for another time. Here is the other side of coin: unlike a lot of other sports, running for so many people has nothing to do with ”sport” and everything to do with losing weight, getting a little time alone, getting time to talk with you friends, getting out in the fresh air, getting away from it all. Its about personal time, personal fulfillment, following doctor’s orders, seeing the scenery. Its no wonder that these people have absolutely no interest whatsoever in Rupp’s placing in a snowy cross country race. Unlike your weekend football athlete who, I guarantee you, has an opinion about the Ravens-Steelers game this weekend, your weekend runner doesn’t even want to see competition anywhere near him or her. Their interest is in everything but.

And while its too bad, I understand that. I don’t mind shoot a basketball, but watching an NBA game is like a sleep drug. I don’t understand much about the game and, frankly, don’t bother to. So discussing mile splits and training stints at altitude for Ryan Hall is not likely to excite the ardent Duane Wade/LeBron fan either. But I wish that there was some middle ground, some running events that were so well broadcast that it could turn non-fans into fans simply because the drama, the very thing that we most want to see in sports, is so intense.

At the first of the year, people started to post their bests lists, and a frequent one was the best race of the last decade. Instead of posting a top ten list, I’ll name one: the 2002 London Marathon. How many races unfold exactly the way that you wish they would? That, in the end, you would have the world record holder in the 10K running stride for stride with the world record holder in the half marathon, right behind the often injured world record holder in the marathon. That these three men would hammer it out to a new world record in the end? I can honestly say that I don’t believe that we have ever seen the world record holders in those three distances ever go head to head when healthy in the history of the sport.

More on the 2002 London Marathon in the next post…

Who owns the "real" Boston Marathon?

2010-12-21T22:29:00.000-08:00

Who owns a marathon? The amorphous traveling mob that shows up on a particular day and runs through the streets splattering cups of water and sticky gu in its wake? The people who filed the permits with city hall? The desk that assigns the numbers? Who owns the idea of the marathon?

This question was terribly relevant back in the early 1980’s when the all volunteer BAA supposedly sold the Boston Marathon to Marshall Medoff who was going to promote the race. There was worry that the professionalism would ruin the marathon. Although it seems silly now, there was quite a debate about gaining sponsorship, with runners making outlandish claims that regular mile markers and water stations and paying to get the best runners to come would “ruin” the race.

The BAA was slow to react to the changes in the sport in the 1980’s and the race paid a steep price. By 1985 it was irrelevant. The traditionalists hugged and nearly loved their marathon into extinction. And now, instead of being extinct, the problem is the opposite: too many want to run the marathon, and, again, the BAA is too slow to react.

And it’s a shame that they didn’t see it coming. They have long since moved from the position, the one position that kept them unique: the idea that you had to qualify. And they did so for one reason: cold, hard cash. And lets be simple and direct, and not answer real, pressing questions with Teflon coated PR doublespeak like Guy Morse did in the recent Boston Globe article: the economics of allowing all the non-qualifying charities and doctors and foreign tours in has allowed the non-profit BAA to get rich. Rich beyond their wildest dreams. And all they had to do was lose the stupid qualifying stuff, which they have, slowly but surely, inch by inch.

So what do they have left? A name, of course, and a ton of happy people who will say that they have run the Boston Marathon and who flew to the Boston area, stayed in Boston hotels, ate at Boston restaurants and who raised a great deal of money for charities and positive press for the race around the world. And it also left a small but vocal number of runners who saw the limbo bar of time and struggled to get under it, as if it meant something. And until last year, there was plenty of room for both. But the race closed in 66 days last year, and this year in less than one day. And those people who ducked under that limbo bar are pissed. Not just because they can’t run the marathon, but because their “Boston” has been taken away from them.

And maybe the BAA gets that, but they’re professionals, and they see all the people who came and spent and were happy and they have to think about them as well. So maybe the mythical idea of the ‘real’ Boston Marathon will eventually go by the wayside. I certainly never thought that I would see New York go to a wave start, putting thousands on the course for even longer numbers of hours.

Or maybe they’ll have the guts to realize that the long time selling point of their race is that you had to work to get into it, and reinstitute the qualifying times again for the early run of the Boston Marathon, and then start the others in the “People’s Boston”. It may sound hard ass to a great many charity runners, but it also may need to be long term strategy to keep the race marketable and on the calendars of many runners. But they might decide that its not necessary, and that they would rather have the money and the numbers and that’s ok. Only time will tell which path the rulers of the Boston Marathon will take.

But if they decide that they want the numbers, will the real owners of the “idea” of the Boston Marathon, serious runners who believe in training and who see goals as sign posts to get past, runners decried as “elitists” by those who lack the talent to run the times, or the will to actually train hard enough to get to those goals, where will they go? And just what will they do with the “idea”, or the ideals of the Boston Marathon?

Tips and Tricks For California International Marathon

2010-12-04T12:59:00.000-08:00

The 2010 California International Marathon is almost upon us, and while it is a net downhill course, its worth noting that it can be a tricky course to run! So, without further ado, here are a few quick tips on running Cal International well -

Its cold and lonely out in the middle of night in Granite Bay. Last year it was in the 20's and only climbed into the 30's for the rest of the race, so it can be freezing out there. You'll have to overcome your seasonal affective disorder and convince yourself that you shouldn't just crawl back under the covers as well. You're out in the middle of nowhere and its dark.

Take rain gear, layer lightly so that you don't overheat along the way, but absolutely take layers out to the start with you, preferably stuff that you can strip off and throw away if need be.

The course drops and undulates quite a bit for the first 12 or so miles, and it is easy to overrun those small hills, only to get a little beat up for the longer stretches of the course after 14 miles. That is where you would like to be able to get your rhythm going and really feel good.

Be conservative with your pace and time goals in the early going. The course is deceptive in stealing energy in small amounts from you. Don't try to bank time in the first half.

There is a very subtle uphill grade once you're past mile 21, so be prepared for those last few miles to feel a little tougher than you might think given that 1% uphill.

The course, as a point to point, some years has the wind in your face, and in its in your face for almost 26 miles as you head west.

Be ready to change your time goals, if you have some, to deal with the effects of a continuous headwind for 3 hour straight.

Ultima is the fluid replacement on the course. It has no sugar to it, so no glycemic backlash when you take it. If you've not used it during your training, it can be a little scary to take that for the first time during the race, but its one of the better formulations out there.

Make sure that you have dry, warm clothes waiting at the end. If the day continues colder, or if the wind is still going, then that warmth of running will get stolen really quickly when you're finished. Make sure to change quickly prior to post-race schmoozing.

Best of luck out there! Have a great marathon!

An Open Letter to Steve Magness

2010-11-23T17:53:00.000-08:00

Steve's Original post here

Dear Steve -

Unlike so many of the people posting about barefoot running and minimalism, you do a wonderful job of actually making a credible case. You actually cite studies and try to present a credible argument by discussing both the design of the running shoes and what that particular design is trying to accomplish. You cite numbers and scientists who have tried to create actual control groups so that proper use of the empirical method and modern testing equipment can be brought into play. From all this, you form a thesis and arrive at a conclusion.

So how did you get it wrong?

First lets get this out of the way: “We’ll start with the customary statistic of 33-56% of runners get injured every year (Bruggerman, 2007). That is kind of mind blowing when you think about it.” Yes, it is, because it’s been reduced so dramatically by the shoes that are now available. Look, I’ve been working in running stores since 1982, and in all these years I’ve had the good fortune to see a greater cross section of runners and walkers than any one scientist is ever going to be able to. Back in the early 1980’s you had a much higher injury rate, typically 9 out of every 10 people would walk in the store and begin with: “Well, my knee is acting up, but I have Boston coming up…” so dropping down to a high of 56% is a HUGE gain. Especially since your population of runners back then was far more likely to fitter athletes who were genetically more likely to have better form. Today’s statistics have to include an older population, with a dramatic shift in the male/female ratio, and completely different training methods.

As far as your motion control shoes discussion; lets take the argument apart a little bit, and perhaps see the forest as a forest and not just a huge group of trees, each one of which we can isolate and catalog. You’re calling for the abolition of Motion Control shoes is a perfect example of missing that forest. The three tests that you cite show a profound disregard for a conceit that we runners have long held dear: that keeping the body aligned will prevent injuries. As well, the Stacoff study from 2001 seems to show that Motion Control shoes don’t even prevent overpronation, that somehow the eversion of the foot is not contained by all the fancy medial posts that shoe business can come up with.

Yet the one simple factor missing here is the reality test: how come I can post a video from my iPhone showing a person who overpronates in a Nike Pegasus not over pronating in a New Balance 1012? Its very simple to see, and yet difficult to explain, but science has a tendency to miss that forest for the trees, because its hard to measure the forest without looking at the trees.

The very organic nature of biomechanics shows an interrelationship that is difficult to quantify. Witness the recent studies on lactate and very nature of lactic acid, something that didn’t seem to be a mystery whatsoever.

So back to the studies that show motion control shoes don’t work versus the video. When the eyeball test tells us something other than what science tells us, it simply means that science hasn’t quite described all the variables to degree where it can explain everything. To what degree can we measure the relative tightness of the hip flexor and gluteus muscle in reaction to years of constant overpronation? We can’t. The number of women that I see who have taught themselves to walk on the outside of their feet out of habit as a way to counteract the lack of support under the arch of their foot is simply astounding. Putting their foot in isolation for a scientific study will, without fail, generate incorrect data.

The data brought on from the Cushioned shoes is a good example. Almost anyone in the shoe world would expect that relative difference in the shape of the bed of the Nimbus and Glycerin would lead to pressure changes in the foot through the gait cycle. It would be odd to expect anything other than that. Not only should we prescribing shoes based on the plantar pressure, which is fairly easy to see by dissecting the older shoes the runner brings in, but by body mass as well. Given the different in the durometer of the Asics’ Solyte versus the Brooks Mogo foam, we should expect to put a larger man in a different shoe than a smaller woman.

The problem here is your over arching desire to combine all these different studies, all of which have different parameters and different control groups and different methodologies, and to come up with one cohesive overarching statement. I don’t think that you can do that. The modern running shoe was a decision to back away from the minimal slippers of the early 1970’s, and while we can all agree that there have been plenty of times that the running shoe companies can be accused of piling on, over thinking and just plain overdesigning shoes, there are far more people out running than ever before, and, given the nature of the activity, continuing to run without injury than ever before. Marathon participation numbers are up in staggering amounts, and the median time is now hours slower than it ever used to be, so we can do the math and calculate very easily that there are greater numbers of runners and walkers out on the roads for a greater number of hours than there ever used to be.

Remember, many of the variables that you cite are obvious to you and I: stride frequency for one, greater sensory input leading to better choices in foot plant and body alignment. But these are things that people who are born to run tend to learn, especially if they have any sort of ability and learn to run in a structured environment with coaching. You’re a nationally ranked runner in your day, and I was a NCAA D2 walk-on, but that puts both of us ahead of the 43 year old mother of 2 with 16 lbs of baby fat to work off. No one is there to correct her form, and its likely that she’ll never get to the stage where her stride rate will increase because she senses the subtle muscle tuning. Her stimulus with a minimalist shoe will be overwhelming and its likely that she’ll never adjust to it. Don’t take away her Adrenaline or Structure Triax or 2150 just because you can’t measure why it works.

Look, I’ve been training in minimalist shoes since 1983, and have always been proponent of that, the vast majority of the runners out there would be hurt by that philosophy. Everything that you’re writing in this post makes sense to ME, and to YOU, but there are a lot fewer of us than there are of THEM, the mother of 2 who needs to get out of the house and work out.

The injury prevention in a large group of Army Basic Training participants (Knapik, 2009) that you cite is something that I’m going to look up. It points out that chosing shoes based a criteria as simple as arch height is fairly stupid, since the arch doesn’t work alone anywhere through the gait cycle. Perhaps it means that instead of trying to simplify the subtle aspects of the running gait, our national running publications should be telling us how much more complex it all really is to say healthy and happy and out on the roads. I also believe that the generic terms that we use to classify running shoes for the general public need to be redone. Certainly we can dissect any of the recent catalogs from the major players in the shoe industry and find any number of “fence sitters”, shoes that don’t fall easily into the neutral or stability classifications. I think that the shoe manufacturers are further ahead of the curve than we want to suppose, but making niche shoes requires people to be properly fit within that niche, and that’s a tricky one.

Thanks for taking time to collate all this. Great food for thought. We’ll see how it all pans out in the spring with all the great minimalist product coming out.

Best –

Charles Yoakum

Owner
Marin Running Company

New York Marathon: Thoughts and Bon Mots

2010-11-19T13:18:00.000-08:00

If you ignore the debris, from the millions of cups handed out to the marathoners, to the sore quads and aching feet from finisher and non-finisher alike, you get down and dirty to the base level of dreams fulfilled or dreams crushed. From the fantasy of PRs achieved to the reality of limitations, we watch with fascination as some of the fittest humans on the planet attempt to conquer the distance and each other.

New York, unlike many other marathons, makes for a fascinating marathon to actually race, so we shouldn’t be surprised by two different facts that emerge just about every year: One – that on a course not known for being fast, people continue to go in and expect to run fast times. (You can count on your hands the number of truly fast times that have been run on that course.) A little later we’ll look at perhaps why this is. Two – that this course shapes race tactics, and that very few tacticians really run the race well.

Lets put to rest a few of the thoughts that people had about Dathan Ritzenhein and Tim Nelson. Dathan, who has never run under 2:10, finished yesterday in 2:12:33, which certainly is far slower than he would have wished. Far slower than his coach Alberto Salazar would have wished as well. But we have to question the wisdom of expecting this race to produce a PR for Dathan. Everyone ran slower than their PR. The winner, Gebre Gebrmariam, ran 2:08:14, essentially equal to what Salazar ran back in 1981 for his second time at the distance. Certainly his PRs, like Dathan’s, indicated that he should be able to run much much faster. Yet he didn’t. Abderrahim Goumri, who has run 2:06 at Chicago ran 2:10:51 yesterday. The great Martin Lel, for two years the greatest marathoner on the planet and a man who had run 2:05 only ran 2:09:04 here in 2007. No one ran particularly fast and, in fact, many ran significantly slower than you would have guessed. If we were expecting Dathan to suddenly drop down to 2:08 status, when the 2:06 guys were going to run up to 5 minutes slower, should have been looking elsewhere.

It still appears that many people are chasing the ghosts of the great runners in the past who lucked onto that one great day weather-wise and a field that pushed them just enough to run into great times. Unlike the flat time trials races, New York still needs all the factors to come into play at once or we end up with times that Bill Rodgers ran back in the 1970’s. They’re all still chasing Salazar’s 2:08:13, Steve Jones’ 2;08:20, Juma Ikangaa’s 2:08:01, John Kagwe’s 2:08:12 or Jifar’s 2:07:43. (and a note: taking Salazar’s 1981 record off the books is ridiculous, there is no way that he didn’t run the full route as a decent examination of what video evidence remains, and NYRRC was so desperate for a new course record by 2001 that they eliminated a tougher entrance to Central Park, already changing the parameters of the “course record”)

It is interesting that many of the elite male runners seem to adopt the pack mentality and have started to run the course the same way. The twists and turns and open areas discourage anyone to really be able to run away, so having a fairly large pack in the first half, and then a series of insanely fast miles down 1st avenue leading to a survival run for most and a battle among the leading runners as they exit manhattan for the Bronx. Except for a few solo runs along the way, I’ve described the race as we’ve seen it play out the vast majority of the last 20 years.

The women’s races have been more varied along the way, but this is likely more to the greater level of disparity in women’s running than the mens. Perhaps. I’m not totally sure that I believe that even as I type it. Perhaps the presence of a Grete or Paula is so intimidating that it changes how most all the other women in the race view their ability to run it.

I’m still appreciating that they’re not using rabbits in the race, and I’m appreciating that they have been trying to do live streams on the internet for those of us who love to actually follow all the twists and turns to race, although it is hard to imagine that they can’t do a better job of spotting for the announcers. Unlike having Larry Rawson droning on again and again, they’ve got real commentators who, if they were given better info, or at least better glasses, might be able to comment more on the runners who have dropped off the pack and who had been able to hang on during the surges.

One thing that was a huge innovation in the last few years with the advent of the marathon majors were the ideas of separate shorts and singlets for the contenders so that they were easier to pick out. London did an excellent job of this, with the BBC actually showing the race kit in a graphic on TV that each athlete would be wearing. Somehow, we’re starting to move away from that again, and it’s a real shame. It was a great idea whose time had certainly come.

Those are my first impressions with New York. What are yours?

New York City Marathon: Tips and Tricks!

2010-10-26T23:22:00.000-07:00

The New York Marathon is looming, the gun goes off on November 7th, 2010, and I’m never surprised to have a large number of customers preparing for such an interesting and diverse race!

This is more than street Hot Dogs and slices of Pizza and knowing how to get the subway to 34th street! It’s the New York Marathon, looming with its impending deadline of November 7th! Here is the spotters guide to lots of the little things that you need to think about for NYC (written by a former Brooklyn resident whose apartment was around the 12 mile mark). The first half of the race was like running home. Unfortunately, that isn’t always as easy as it sounds.

There are two different ways to get out to Staten Island, and whether you take the buses or the Staten Island Ferry, it means that you’re stuck out on the island for a while before the start of the race. What are you taking out there with you? Your singlet, a short sleeve, a long sleeve, gloves, arm sleeves, a waterproof hat, sun block. Yes, you’re going to take a range of clothes that you need in case the weather is wet and cold, wet and warm, cold and dry, or just plain hot. Take a little of everything and decide what you need when you get there. In 1995 it was snowing before the gun at 32 degrees and it got colder during the race, with a wind chill down to 18 degrees! The following year it poured cats and dogs until mile 4 in the race and then heated up with all that moisture in the air. The rest of the race was run in soaked clothes and soggy shoe in New Orleans weather. Motto: be prepared for a little of anything.

The race undulates a lot, and the two bridges are tough little climbs that can throw off your pace targets. Make sure to chill out on those if you don’t hit your pace on the long uphills. This is a race to take in chunks: the first two miles on the bridge, the flats of Brooklyn up 4th Avenue to the Hall of Music, the winding sections through Williamsburg and Long Island City to the 59th St Bridge, 1st Avenue in Manhattan, the short Bronx stretch and 5th Avenue to the park, and finally Central Park.

Best viewing for family members: they can see you in Brooklyn, in Williamsburg on Bedford st, hop the L into Manhattan, take the 4, 5 or 6 up to the upper east side, see you on 1st Avenue when the crowd thins out around E80th st. then walk across to the Park and see you there. Minimal effort, maximum viewing time! Works every time.

My legs always were pretty sore from New York, so I got used to using new shoes that maybe had 20 or 30 miles to them for the race. Something about the constantly changing road surfaces I think. Perhaps it was the downhills from the bridges.

Ah, the bridges! Keep to the middle if you’re on the lower level of the Verranzano Bridge, people are busy peeing from the top level sometimes and the wind can whip that around on the lower deck. When you leave Manhattan to go to the Bronx, stay on the carpeting. The metal grating will cut through your shoes and hurt your feet. The carpeting isn’t perfect, but it definitely helps.

Remember that you’re going to be picking that same bag that you checked on Staten Island in Central Park, and trying to figure what to put on to stop from getting chilled and cramping up. Your spouse or friends can bring some clothes but you may wish to put on some of the pieces that you didn’t use for the race! You’ll want some comfort on the way to food or the hotel. I don’t normally say to think all the way to the finish line, but this time thinking past it will be huge help.

Best of luck in the race! While not flat or fast like Chicago, this race is a great microcosm of what makes New York such a great city: It’s a stunning array of people from all walks of life in celebration of tens of thousands of runners completing an amazing journey for as many reasons as there are people!

Doug Logan and Brooks Johnson: Round 1

2010-09-22T11:07:00.000-07:00

Doug Logan, CEO of USATF, the national governing body of track and field was ousted last week by a text message. Can you imagine? And we wonder why, in the New York Times, Logan calls the board that ousted him, “unprofessional”. Was Logan right? Was he the right man for the job? Did he leave USATF a better place than when he started?

The aswers to these questions are complex, but there is no question here: the bad guys won. One only has to look at the rambling, incoherent rant that infamous coach Brooks Johnson left on his blog to see that, even if Logan wasn’t the right man for the job, he hasn’t been around to hurt the sport as long as Brooks Johnson has.

Brooks has had a long history of screwing athletes, primarily distance runners, and making a hash of people’s dreams. Johnson is part of the long time crew that have held power at USATF and have delighted in making athlete’s lives miserable, if not derailing their dreams entirely. Chairman of USATF's International Competition Committee, John Chaplin is another of the cronies that fit that same description.

Did you see the Prefontaine movies? The head of the then-governing body, TAC, was such a petty, small-minded beauracrat that he made the perfect straw man villain. It was almost too simple actually.

Today, remarkably, things are no better, perhaps even worse, given that there is more money involved. Logan was looking at bigger television contracts to deal with, larger dollar signs from Nike as primary sponsor, larger purses dedicated to athletes via the training grants and centers, larger payrolls, larger bids from centers looking to host the Olympic Trials. And yet the documentation exists, including a court case by the athlete Shannon Butler, about athlete after athlete screwed by Johnson and Chaplin.

I thought it wasn’t the best idea for someone outside of track to take over the position, but then I was hoping that someone with more business sense would be able to see the marketing problem that the sport has and fix it, and to do that it doesn’t take a sub-2:20 marathon PR. Perhaps Logan would have had a fresh take on the problem. Certainly, as of the time of his firing, it certainly doesn’t seem as if we’re any worse than we were before he was hired.

And given Brooks Johnson’s track record over the last 25 years, if he’s against the guy, that almost makes me for him. Just on principle.

We need for this sport to continue to figure out how to make sense in the media. Because the sport has relevance in our everyday lives. Millions of people run, every day they run. And most of them have never seen a great track race or a marathon unless they signed up for one. We need to figure out the connection between the average jogger and the racer and Olympic level athlete and let them see how intertwined it all is, in the way that the high school quarterback looks at the NFL and sees a dream.

What do you think would make track attractive to the novice athlete?

What the AP doesn't get about Semenya and the 800 meters

2010-08-26T13:07:00.000-07:00

"Is she man, is she lady?" was the question posed by Canadian 800m runner Diane Cummins after Semenya’s victory the other night, and AP sports columnist John Leicester has taken the Canadian to task for insensitivity. I think that John is missing the forest for the trees here.

Leicester blasts Cummins for making those comments, but then blasts that IAAF for not making a more transparent case to the competitor, which is rather like shifting the blame. Given that the IAAF and WADA have had a terrible time when it comes to policing the use of performance enhancing drugs over the last 20 years, it can’t come as a terrible shock when a competitor, in this case Diane Cummins, gets exasperated with what appears to be yet another case of the competition field not being level at all.

Semenya’s recent 800 meters, while not spectacular on paper, was a thing to watch on video. It is likely that you’ve almost never seen anyone run a world leading time with such ease, toy with her world class competitors, all while admitting that she’s not doing speedwork and hasn’t gotten the rust off.

You have to think that, maybe, what is needed is not telling Diane to shut up, in the same way as censoring Paula Radcliffe’s “EPO cheats out” sign during the 3000K in the 2003 World Championships, but is considering that what is good for Semenya may not be good for the needs of the sport. The IAAF being more transparent here would do little to make the playing field level, but it would go a little way towards explaining as to why Semenya is able to be that good, and make it look that easy.

That will do little to pacify Cummins or any of the other female competitors who are going to get their clocks cleaned as easily as the the western women were during the East German/Russian drug oriented domination of the late ‘70’s and early ‘80’s. Its not good for the sport, its not good television, its not good PR frankly. Cummins was saying what all the rest of us will be saying over the next few years, and then its going to be a lot harder for all the rest of the athletes to keep quiet or to accuse them of ignorance.

We can get mad at the IAAF and their decision to allow Semenya to compete, which is likely going to make a mockery of the event for the next couple years, but not at the athletes who will be running up against that wall for quite some time.

Does the Logo matter? The Myth of Customer Loyalty

2010-08-18T09:05:00.000-07:00

You know what would make my job easier selling shoes? And would make my customers happy? If shoe company X, maker of the best selling Trail Comp 6 would simply keep making the Trail Comp 6, or, worse case scenario, make the Trail Comp 7 the same shoe with an olive colored stripe as opposed to a navy colored stripe.

Its not going to happen.

In fact, they've totally redesigned the Trail Comp 7 from the Trail Comp 6, and when that customer comes in looking for the 6, I have to tell him that, essentially, we have a totally new shoe on the wall for him/her to try.

"But it says Trail Comp on the box," says the customer, "It must be the same shoe."

Its not. Anymore than the 2010 version of the car you drove to the store is the same as the one you bought in 2002. It may have a "Camry" sticker on the back, but that doesn't mean its the same car.

Recently I've brought in shoes by companies that even 5 years ago I would have never thought would be making great, not good, great shoes to run in. But 5 years in the shoe world, like in the computer world, is a very very long time.

At the same time ASICS radically changed the fit on the current Kayano 16 to something utterly different from the Kayano 14 and Kayano 15, K-Swiss showed me great shoes. And Etonic. And the new verison of Montrail, now owned by Mountain Hardware. And the new Columbia shoes. And suddenly we have an utter revolution on our hands. And a rapidly evolving shoe wall.

It goes back to the old philosophical question: If you buy an axe, replace the blade a few years later, and then replace the handle a year after that, is it still the same axe? It occupies the same space time as the original axe, but doesn't share a molecule with the current blade or handle. If ASICS makes a shoe that you love, but then changes the cut and materials for the upper a year later, and a year after that totally changes the foam material in the base of the shoe, is it really the same shoe? Philosophy and common sense dictate one thing, its not the same shoe, despite the logo on the side.

Judge each one independently, look before you leap, buyer beware. In face, buyer be smarter than ever.

Tradition, tradition, everywhere i look a Dipsea tradition

2010-06-09T17:32:00.000-07:00

I watched the movie about the fictional Dipsea race, “On The Edge” last night as a primer to getting ready for the Centennial Dipsea race this weekend. It accomplished the job, psyching me up so much that I wanted to go out and hit the trails right then, at 11 at night, when the tape finished.

But it also made me wonder, is it possible to conserve a race to death? To love the traditions so much that the race strangles from lack of oxygen?

Early on in the film, the coach Elmo comments that now that the new evil race director has taken over, and put the race on TV, it’ll be ruined, it’ll be, in his words, “huckster’s heaven.” Well, the ruined race is characterized by having a Dixie band show up to play at the start, and likely to have sponsored numbers. It is, honestly, a quaint remark more likely to spark a giggle from runners used to attractive technical fiber shirts, online results by the time they get home and a great expo with goodies before the start.

The Boston Marathon in the late ’70’s and early ‘80’s prided itself on not having mileage markers or regular water stops. Why? Tradition. It didn’t have crowd control or an organized start. Why? Tradition.

Say it again and you start to sound like you’re in Fiddler on the Roof.

Boston derided New York City for having all of those things and more. And yet, by 1985, Boston was about as relevant on the international scene as the Bay to Breakers is the Olympics: i.e. not at all. Only one world class runner showed up for the men, and on a hot day with little water, he ended up walking it in and winning.

With Centennial Dipsea almost upon us, the second oldest race in the US is just now staging its first expo on Saturday, which may or may not become a large affair. Hard to tell. Marin Running Company, New Balance, Montrail and a few others will be in attendance. That’s only taken 99 years to implement that as a welcome mat to its runners.

And it begs the question of what the Dipsea Committee sees as value to the runners. The nature of the course, with it’s narrow winding trails and delicate ecological concerns, can’t handle growth, so getting more runners in ala Boston or New York isn’t the answer. So is maintaining an experience that is the same as it was back in 1980 or 1960 or 1935 the answer? Is that more valuable to the participant than timing chips and a bigger expo and more water stops? I think that if you ask 20 different runners, you’ll a wide variety of answers. And therein lies the issue.

If the race doesn’t change, ever, is it in any danger of becoming a delightful anachronism, or a staunch bastion of how great running and competing used to be? If it does change, how do you manage the experience? And how quickly or slowly do you manage the changes? Because all I know is that somewhere, in the middle of a sloping slippery hill named Dynamite, my race experience will be defined by the singular sensation of the burning in my thighs and calves, its likely to stay that way until I hit Stinson Beach.

When the sweat drips into your eyes, you know its fun

2010-05-28T15:13:00.000-07:00

It’s the end of May, and we are less than three weeks before the Dipsea, the 7.4 mile trail race about to celebrate its Centennial this year. It’s the second oldest race in the United States and, quite frankly, with its up and down course and oddly spaced handicaps, it’s a hoot.

A hoot that is incredibly difficult to get into. Space is limited. Randomly people will get lucky and get in and cancer survivors looking to restore their place after years away will be stymied. It’s important enough for Runners World to feature it in this month’s edition with a number of full color photos, including the table to contents.

And none of this knowledge availed me of any sort while I was struggling up the hill appropriately named Dynamite yesterday. A season of fairly heavy rains, rains that continued to erode the trails deep into May (which is extremely unusual) have left the trails quite a bit rockier in places and the narrow wooden steps on the downhills very slick.

With no one to chase in front of me, the training run left me plenty of time to contemplate just how humid it was, and how poor the footing was in places, and how much larger some of the hills had grown over the last year. There were no distractions. And, in this case, that was a bad thing.

It left me thinking that one of the best parts of the race were the races within the race. Last year I found myself dueling back and forth with a man who was clearly better at the uphills than I, but I was a better downhiller than him, and so back and forth we went from the starting line til, literally, the last 5 feet before the line. Neither of us are in line for any prizes or black shirts, but it mattered not a whit. Neither of us gave a single quarter on any inch of the course. Unlike a flat course, the undulating nature of the course and of the footing was bound to favor different runners for different sections, and make it all the more interesting.

Back to yesterday. I found myself very quickly gauging the level of fatigue and how much that contributes to the missteps that happen along the way. The heart, all mammalian and red-blooded, is powered by dreams of split times and light legs and the fantasy of having that perfect run on race day. It has all the desire. But there is, on the other side, the cold reptilian side that on the back half of the course starts to calculate the amount of energy left in the body and how much it will take to get down to the finish without doing a face plant. Run to fatigue too early on and you’ll go down on a rock or tree root before your legs give out. It’s a delicate balance, and more than a few runners have miscalculated, sometimes by less than 200 meters.

My prediction is that, even with good sunshine out there, that three distinct areas of the course will remain wet, and that we’ll have more people than usual going down this year. Dynamite, the rain forest section of the Hogsback and Steep Ravine will be extra dangerous this year. Keep your eyes open and your feet planted!

Floyd Landis: PEDs and the Myth of the Victimless Crime

2010-05-22T16:44:00.000-07:00

It was certainly a big bit of news when Charlie Francis, the coach of the disgraced Ben Johnson died last week, and Floyd Landis, former disgraced winner of the Tour De France, came out to not only reveal that he did, in fact, use performance enhancing drugs, but also implicated a number of who’s who in the cycling pantheon.

The reaction in cycling has essentially been the same that it’s always been, especially since it implicates Lance Armstrong: one side believes that you are innocent until proven guilty, especially since the allegations come from a rider who has spent years lying with a straight face already, and the other believes that all top level cyclists are dirty, especially one who spent years hammering other riders who has since admitted that they were doping.

Coming from the sport of running, we have seen essentially the same parallels in both the track and field world as the world of cycling. The same denials, the same “trying to same my name” defenses in the press, the same disbelief in the wake of yet another positive to a sport hero that NBC shoved down our faces. And we’re tired of it.

So why would Landis come out now and should we believe him? There are plenty of theories, one is that he’s out of money and this will be a great way to generate some headlines and a new book deal. Another is that the statute of limitations is running out and he wants to take advantage of getting some leniency from the anti-doping brigade by bringing others in. And lastly, my personal favorite, is that he’s decided to bring the others down to his level. Create a hellfire that burns down the current pantheon of cyclists from the last 10 years: Armstrong, Hincapie and Levi Leipheimer.

Chances are you’re going to sit on one side of the debate or the other here and very little that is said is going to convince you either way. What is sad is that we’ve moved into the phase where we cease to be surprised by the use of PEDs, and we’ve become so cynical that it seems like the height of idiocy to idolize any of the sport starts since they will invariably disappoint us.

The one part that should make us sit up and take notice is the International Cycling Union (UCI) president Pat McQuaid’s comment: "These guys coming out now with things like this from the past is only damaging the sport." Really? I would think that ANYTHING that cleans up the sport is going to help things. This bury your head in the sand and pretend that you’re not dirty as hell mentality is what brought you to this place. And it might, by the time all is said and done, bring down more than you think.

In the running world, there is plenty acedotal evidence that the rise of EPO in the 1990’s led to a plethora or world records on the track that would never have happened otherwise. But none of those runners have ever tested positive for EPO: the tests didn’t come early enough. And, as we’ve learned from Marion Jones, even then it is too little too late.

Ben Johnson and Marion Jones are the poster children for drugs in sport. One was caught red handed for drugs, but not the drugs he and his coach used, leading to a world of conspiracy theorists allegations of what really went on during the 1988 Olympic 100m final. The other never tested positive once. Marion, the queen of denial, never did anything wrong if you talk to her, and all it did was cost everyone their medals from the Sydney Games.

Landis’ emails, made public, have a wealth of information, names and dates and places, and, generally, far more data than almost anyone could ever manufacture is a falsehood. Armstrong’s people say, “Bring us the proof,” but they many not want to start to have to bear the burden of denying the avalanche of details that Landis provides. Stay tuned.

If a tree falls in the forest...

2010-03-13T09:45:00.000-08:00

and you put on a great event, can you think of it as a great event if no one comes?

The oddity is trying to figure out why an event doesn't work. Could be because no one knows about it, and yet we did blanket saturation of all the online media, handed out flyers for 8 weeks, send flyers all the local high school coaches and even emailed the local swim league.

What I'm talking about is having an Olympic Bronze Medalist in the 200m backstroke (1988 games) come in to talk about racing and mental focus and preparation. Now, I will fully admit that i get excited as can be by meeting famous runners. After 32 years of being a runner, its a thrill to meet a Khalid Khannouchi, Dathan Ritzenhein, Rod Dixon or Alberto Salazar. They all attained the platform that I would have loved to have gotten to if it hadn't been for the small matter of a lack of world class talent. Its a football player meeting Lawrence Taylor or Tom Brady, or a baseball player meeting Nolan Ryan or Willie Mays. They reached the pinnacle of your sport. They're the gods.

Not a single swimmer showed up to hear what it would take to get an Olympic Bronze medal, much less the thrill of holding it in your hand and imagining what it would feel like around your neck. And I have to ask myself, why?

Is the time wrong? Is wednesday, at 6pm just too late for an event? Too early? Is it possible that the time is ok, but that wednesday is just the wrong day for an event? Could it be that no one cares? Or is it that everyone is so packed up with things on their schedule that there is simply no room for, well, basically, ANYTHING that isn't already in the weekly routine?

Perhaps all of the above?

In these economic times, the idea is to actually use all these FREE events to do things so that it doesn't cost you an arm and a leg to do stuff with your kids. Pretty easy to find things to do if you start to look over the websites and newspaper calendars. There are a ton of free things to do on almost every given day. So why not take advantage of them?

All answers to the questions above are welcomed. These are not rhetorical whatsoever.

In the meantime, I'll go back to trying to plan our next event and see who shows up then...

Classic Race Night - March 17th 6pm to 7pm

2010-02-25T23:32:00.001-08:00

Can you picture a football player who doesn't know who Joe Montana is? Or Jerry Rice? Or Bart Starr? Or Terry Bradshaw? Or a High School baseball player who doesn't know Babe Ruth? Or Hank Aaron?

Now how many runners know Henry Rono? Or Mary Decker? Or Steve Ovett?

Who?

One thing that track doesn't lack is a great history. A history of everything that we like about sports in general: compelling stories, personal sacrifice, performances that are unearthly and stand the test of time, performances of failing on the world stage in epic wipeouts, rivalrys that are the stuff of legend, underdogs coming from behind to land world championships.

And hardly anyone knows about it. The two major sport leagues in this country have spent a great deal of time creating their own mythology and then showing footage to support that. Track has Bud Greenspan, who, for a time, created documentaries narrated by the voice of God himself that elevated the clash of the 100 meters in 1924, or the marathon of 1960, or the 5,000 meters of 1952 to the status of pure legend.

But they're not shown repeatedly on cable. And much of track's great history is lost in the mists of forgotten videotape or scratchy films.

Marin Running Company's Classic Race Night is designed to change all that. Well, in our own little way. A couple of times a year, we haul out the old tapes and DVDs and order some pizza and bring back some of the greatest races that have ever been run, championship or no, and not only learn some history of the immortal runners that have come before us, but a few race tactics as well.

March 17th, Classic Race Night, 6pm to 7pm, we'll provide the pizza and the races. As always, its FREE to swing by a catch a mile race or two!

New Date! Paul Kingsman, Olympic Bronze Medalist March 10!

2010-02-25T23:16:00.000-08:00

I'll be upfront about it: I was a competitive cripple when it came to running in High School.

Loved running, don't get me wrong, but i was likely the worst racer that my poor HS coach ever had the misfortune to deal with. Now, mind you, I can certainly enumerate the reasons for why I was such a bad competitive athlete back then, but it speaks to the fact that I eventually overcame many of the problems that plagued the 17 year old runner I was. The fact is, once you get past the usual shin splints and growing pains, it becomes clear that my mind wasn't on right.

My head wasn't in the game. Or, frequently, it was too much in the game. And that is how i asked Paul to come talk at Marin Running Company.

Paul is a native New Zealander who found himself in the pool in Seoul Korea, in the final of the 200m, in 4th place. Not necessarily a bad place to be, especially if you're not a true physical freak of nature like the German Albatross, Michael Gross, or Michael Phelps. But 4th place is not a medal position. 4th place tends to suck more than 6th place in the Olympics. But Paul did, especially for that race, everything right when it came to the end of the race. He kept his head so far in to the game that he moved to 3rd in the final strokes, and ended up with a piece of Olympic glory.

How many of us put artificial limitations upon what we can do? How many of us are distracted from getting to our goals, or put barriers in directly in front of ourselves? How many high schoolers come to the sport looking to try track or cross country (to name my two most favorites, but it certainly is applicable to others as well) and immediately find themselves nervous when being thrown into their first mile, or 800m or 400m?

I wanted someone with impeccable credentials (an Olympic bronze is pretty hard to argue with) to talk about using the mind to race, not just the heart or the legs. How does our mind drive us, limit us, help us or prevent us? Come listen to Paul on March 10th, from 6pm to 7pm at Marin Running Company in downtown San Anselmo, and see what you come away with.

You're outside the norm, what to do?

2010-02-17T13:21:00.000-08:00

For every research junkie, the internet is practically a heroin fix. You can research basically anything to death at any time of the day and get answers to your questions.

Much of the time, the information is exactly worth what you paid for it.

Certainly when it pertains to running shoes, there is a lot of good information and great specs and all sorts of useful data out there, the problem is context. Just as going to RoadRunnerSports.com and looking at the "shoe dog" feature will give you a general idea of where to start, it lacks a certain sense of subtlety. The customer reviews, however, generally tell you nothing other than most of the people who like a certain shoe will go on and say, "I really like this shoe."

Case in point is this post on Active.com: http://community.active.com/message/709394#709394 for a heavier runner with high arches. Here is someone who, once they deviate from the norm, generally falls completely outside the "easy to diagnose" pattern that most internet shoe recommendation fall into.

In fitting shoes since 1982, I've run across a decent number of high arched supinators over the years, and found different types of cures for their "shoe ails". Partly it depends upon their weight and running economy (i.e. how smooth a runner they are, how much bounce or excess motion they have). Obviously long time runners are smoother runners than newbies, even with some extra weight on them. It seems that you want to avoid going to too soft a neutral shoe with varying arch heights so that you're not being overcompensated. New Balance's 1064 has a lower arch with the last that its manufactured on, but sometimes that allows it to have a flex point through the gait cycle when the runner gets up to full speed. New Balance's 758 or Asics' Nimbus fit the profile a little more of having a slightly higher when all is said and done. Puma's new Velosis also could fit the bill as well.

All in all, we're seeing a trend among the shoe manufacturers where they have micro niched the shoes so much that the stability shoes have the potential to actually overcompensate the mild over pronator, not because the medial post is too firm, but because the outside of the shoe is becoming too soft. As the shoes become less and less general, its be coming easier and easier to find small things throwing off the gait because there are more break points that have to hit the person's foot just right.

More tricky feet questions later!

Barefoot Runnig with the Neanderthals

2010-01-29T10:43:00.000-08:00

After our barefoot running summit here at Marin Running Company (which drew over 50 people, which was pretty awesome to see), the metaphorical fur continues to fly at the internet message boards over the merits, or lack thereof, of running shoes.

Brooks CEO Jim Weber has put out the first salvo from any of the major shoe companies (I previously linked out to what Newton Running Shoes had to say about this). NPR joins that chase with their article noting the Harvard study done by Lieberman and a liberal sprinkling of quotes, including this one:

Lieberman published his findings in the journal Nature. He received research funding from a company that makes "minimal" shoes, which mimic barefoot conditions, but he adds that he received no personal income from the company. He also says he's not taking sides over which style of running is better or safer.
"I mean, I think we have to be really, really careful about what we do and don't know. We have not done any injury studies; this is not an injury study," he says. That's next.

and he's right to note that, because the message boards have been awash with runners who don't understand the scientific process quoting his study. Brooks has also posted this on their site, with much of their science behind their shoe manufacturing, that will no doubt be shouted at the by barefoot runners.

Part of the problem here is the lack of civility in the discussion. The barefoot runners, on LetsRun.com's message board, and Runner's World's Message board and in the comments section of the Weber's blog post are so sure of their personal, anecdotal evidence that they then apply it to the rest of humanity. Should anyone try to tell that it might need a more reasoned approach, they get flamed.

Its hard to discuss this with someone who has just discovered religion. The recent converts are the worst.

What constantly gets shouted down is the idea that there might be a middle ground, which is where many of us long time runners fall. I've been running in minimalist trainers since 1983, and my form is long since adapted to that, but after fracturing my sesimoid bone(s) in 1998, I find that my foot no longer can act quite the way that it did prior to the break. The barefoot crowd doesn't want to hear that there are quite literally thousands of thousands of people out there who have injury histories that might prevent them from doing their precious barefoot running.

And therein lies the rub. Just as in politics, there is no room for civil discourse anymore, and that just destroys everything, which is really, really sad to me.

Running Shoes and Injuries: A Direct Correlation?

2010-01-12T13:18:00.000-08:00

When did we decide to hold the seminar about barefoot running? Was it when the Vibram 5 fingers started selling out across the country? Was it reading "Born To Run"? Maybe it was when i started to have the same conversation about improving biomechanics three times a day for the last couple months. Perhaps it was the ER nurse who has been seeing severe injuries in her Emergency Room from 5 fingers runners. Whatever the impetus, it is clear that there is a tremendous amount of controversy over the role that barefoot running, or perhaps more naturalistic running, has to play in the development of the athlete.

The first thing that i've been having to do is explain the geometry of the shoes as they exist now, which was almost never something that people would ask about, nor care about, although when trying on two different shoes in the shop they were almost sure to notice the difference. Newton's Director of Education, Ian Adamson over at The running Front chimes in with some great math on the slopes of different running shoes, the angle of each having a different effect up the gait of the runner using them.

It used to be that 24 mm heel height (1 inch) and 12 mm (1/2″) forefoot was standard, but those numbers have changed dramatically in the last few years. Some popular running shoes are up to 35 mm in the heel. The old standard drop (24-12) gives an 8% grade in a Men’s US size 9 shoe, but most are now far in excess of that, up to 15% in some cases. The Nike Shox as noted above is one of the worst offenders.

So this certainly points out how many variations exist in different shoes, and just how wide that variation can be once you factor in the different density of midsoles (i.e. soft to firm). But there two problems here: the one size fits all approach to shoe (or non-shoe) buying and diagnosis, and ignoring the past evidence of the flat training shoe in a comcrete world, which is what we had in the early 1970's.

Lets take the second one first and go back to the cover of Jim Fixx's seminal book on running. The Tigers that he's wearing there are, while not perfectly flat, pretty damn flat. This should be evidence to the recent coverts that the idea of a minimalist shoe is not a new one. Running was essentially a niche sport back then, in a lots of way because your average overweight housewife never thought that she was going to be able to run. It hurt. The pavement was too hard and she was too heavy. The development of the modern running, that evolution from 1978 to 1982, was the reaction to all these non-skinny, non-biomechanically gifted runners trying to get out and hit the pavement and finding that the pavement could hit back.

When Ian displays his credentials -

There is no doubt in my experience (running competitively since 1973, 12 years as a professional athlete, 10 years in the shoe industry, 10 years as a bio-mechanical engineer) that lifted heels in running shoes introduce an unnatural geometry that interferes with our natural (and injury protective) gait.

- what he is also displaying is the viewpoint of a biomechanically efficient individual. An individual predisposed to being good at the sport. And unfortunately much of what is written is by people who love running, are good at running, have BECOME good at running. Of course they like a shoe that allows them to run efficiently. They're already efficient and becoming more so. That overweight housewife who joins Team in Training at the age of 50 is none of those things, nor is she likely to write an article in the Sunday Parade circular to discuss her love of her orthotics and how they work in the Brooks Ariel. It becomes a cart and horse argument.

The second part to address is the notion of one size fits all. As a running store that has to carry a minimum of 44 different shoes, which means letting a lot of good shoes fall by the wayside to cut down to 44, there are a tremendous number of niches that need to be served for all the obvious factors: age, sex, workouts, injury history, weight, form, etc. The study that Ian links to admits lower down in the abstract they had to compromise on the shoes choices for the benefits of the study:

Although more cushioned or motion control footwear may have been more optimally suited for the foot characteristics of a portion of the study population [22 ], the control shoe used in this study was the Brooks Adrenaline (Brooks, Bothell, WA), selected for its neutral classification and design characteristics typical of most running footwear.

An herein lies the problem with the scientific method: you go with a single control shoe, and admit that your subjects might really need to different shoes for optimal biomechanics, yet you extrapolate data showing that running shoes don't work as well barefoot. I understand that you wish to control your variables, but given that you have different sexed subjects ranging from 21 to 41, it seems a rather broad generalization to make when your 20 year range of subjects aren't allowed to use the best shoe for them.

My empirical data is that there are more people running and walking marathons than ever before, and more of them are out there getting less injuries than there were when I started selling the shoes back in 1982. Of course there are still injuries, there ALWAYS will be injuries, but most of us live in a concrete environment that is predisposed to giving little or none when we land on it. It is a disservice to tar everyone with the need to be in a control shoe, or tar everyone with the minimalist brush on the same stroke.

And my personal take: I've been running in more minimalist shoes since 1984, and have always been a believer in the less is more approach for myself, and for others. But I take into account factors such as age. My body is telling me that 1 week before my 44th birthday that i can't do what i could do at 20. The 20 year old me ran 70 miles a week in slippers. It can't do that now. But i believe that we can all get more efficient, and that running barefoot, or minimalist, part of that time can be an essential part of keeping ourselves stronger and in our best form.

Born to Run? Nature vs Nurture!

2009-12-23T22:55:00.000-08:00

Of everything that has come across the running community, nothing has garnered as much as attention as the concept of running barefoot or natural running. Born to Run has dovetailed on all the marketing work that Nike had started with the Free a few years ago, albeit in a slightly different fashion. So it becomes a simple question: are we born to run? And we have a simple answer, yes, but once we start to quantify all sorts of other factors: age, injury history, environment, and weight, well... then the answers start to become a lot less clear cut.

Miwok indians that lived here in the San Francisco Bay Area had it, by all accounts, pretty easy. The climate was temperate, plentiful game to hunt, and rich plant life to pick from. They also didn't have a scrap of concrete 800 years ago to navigate. They didn't have cars to drive their children to and from school and piano practice and soccer games and ballet school and the gym. In short, they had an extremely different environment than we do today. The were on their feet constantly, likely barefoot or with a simple covering, and they were exercising all those small muscles and tendons in their feet from the first day that they could walk. They were also on dirt, lovely dirt, pine needles and leaves and plenty of nature's covering to help soften the blow of each foot fall.

Sadly, we have very few of those factors now. But what is funny is that while the idea of barefoot running (or minimally cushioned running) is being sold to the general public now, experienced runners have had those shoes basically forever in the form of road racing or cross country racing flats. And being experienced, those runners were usually in very good shape, with strong legs and solid form, traits that allowed them to use the slippers with fewer injuries!

For everyone that is being enticed with the concept of running like Tarahumara Indian I say this: it is not about buying a 5 toed shoe that will make you run like that Indian. It is taking the time to strengthen your legs and feet and developing the form that will allow you to run like the Indian. You can get more minimal shoes that will allow you to work on this form as you go, but it is work; work to strengthen to parts of your body that haven't been used that way since you were running around the yard barefoot when you were a kid. More than likely that was a lot of years ago for many of you. Running long distances barefoot may not be a reality for everyone, but if you want to get there then you need to be smart about.

Dathan Ritzenhein: An Appreciation

2009-08-21T12:33:00.000-07:00

Watching Dathan Ritzenhein run the final part of the Worlds 10K was a look both at his past and the real promise of talent fulfilled on the world stage at the same time.

When Dathan burst on to people’s radar it was with a stunning run at the Junior World XC Championships in 2001. In a muddy, sloppy course that most HS coaches in the US wouldn’t allow their team to run on, Dathan and Matt Tegencamp ran 3rd and 5th respectively against the Kenyans and Ethiopians, Dathan showing an ability to take his twice winning Foot Locker nationals talent and have it translate to real guts and glory on the international stage. Yes, we had seen any number of great high school runners win Foot Locker, only to be shown up on the larger stage, or to stall out in college and never run again. The list of great HS runners to make that transition is a lot smaller than the list of those that failed.

With the moribund level of US distance running in the 1990’s, it was great to see the big 3 come along in 1999: Meb, Alan and Abdi. The three of them would trade off the US nationals XC title for the next 7 or 8 years for the most part, as well as the US 10K titles. And the emergence of Dathan and Matt in that 2001 Junior Worlds gave us hope that there was a generation that would come up behind the Big 3.

Ritz had showed an ability to push himself outside the envelope to get the win in the heat and humidity of his second Foot Locker win that reminded me of watching Alberto Salazar back in the early 80’s. Neither had killer foot speed, but a preternatural desire to win that would really push them beyond their limits. It also has a tendency to produce injuries and burnout as the body goes to the well again and again.

Ritz’s career at Colorado and post-college as a pro was solid but also a frustrating combination of injuries. I believed that he would never run 2:08 without two years of uninterrupted training. History is rife with guys whose 10K speed never translates to sub-2:10 simply because they can’t get the training in, consistently, over years. Those guys always run 2:13 and wonder why they can’t get that last couple of minutes. And its because you run the marathon off of your last 2 to 3 years of training, not your last one year.

The move to train with Salazar this year was a welcome announcement to those of us who were fans. The training under Hudson, while not the slow motion car wreck that was happening over at the Alan Webb camp, was yet another situation of unfulfilled expectations. I respect Dathan’s run to get 9th in the Olympic Marathon as a tremendous achievement, especially given the unparalleled pace that was set up front, but I think that Victor Rothlin’s 6th place should have been his. I think that he’s as tough an athlete as the Swiss, and with more talent. Somehow, in the Colorado/Hudson years, Ritz’s ability to make the race defining moves had been blunted and lost. He simply didn’t look like the same athlete. Neither did Salazar in 2003.

Cut to 2009, and there was Dathan, running the final laps of the World’s 10K final with a leg turnover and laser like focus that I hadn’t seen in years. It reminded me of the 2001 race all over again, and his time, making him the 4th fastest American of all time in warm conditions is a tremendous achievement. Unlike Alberto, who by 1983’s inaugural World’s 10K had completely cooked his body, Dathan looks to be responding to the change in training and environment, and, as a fan who has followed his career for all these years, it’s a great thing to see. 27:21 is a staggering achievement in those conditions.

The Asics 2140: the vanishing species

2009-07-18T17:10:00.000-07:00

There is a certain level of scarcity on shoes sometimes, and while we retailers try our hardest to predict exactly what we need, often there is no way to fully predict these things.

And here is the shoe that shows just how difficult it can be. Asics' workhorse shoe, the 2140, has suddenly become almost unavailable on speical order. Now, Asics claims that they made, even in this economy, almost 40% more than last year, which is interesting given that almost every other company seems to have scaled back. And yet, somehow, they're out. I think that there is a bit of them learning the Nike game: Create the demand and then don't fill it. And it certainly seems like there are a plethora of 2140s online to order. Is this a mirage or is it the brick and mortar retailers like us again paying the price?

The last time this happened, it was a boon to the other shoe companies, as consumers learned that there are a host of other shoes out there that may not fit exactly the same but work just as well once you bother to use them for a week or two. Sales on the Brooks Adrenaline, NB 769 and Adidas Sequence will most likely go up as people realize that there are other shoes out there.

Soon have reviews and exclusive peaks at the shoes for 2010 coming to the blog!

Dipsea 2009: One man's journal

2009-07-18T16:29:00.000-07:00

While race reports aren't the sort of thing that usually i would think that most people are interested in, the Dipsea is such a marin tradition that I wanted to at least share the short version of the race, so forgive the indulgence!

I hadn't run the Dipsea since 1985, but was intrigued to see if I could get my invitational status back after a 24 year layoff. Especially with the 100th coming up in 2010, I was hoping to secure one of those coveted 750 spots! Also, the course had changed in the last 20+ years, so I knew that i had a learning curve to worry about here.

Two practice Dipsea, one of the salmon runs and a morning run with prepetual black shirt winner Jenny Wong (tech rep for New Balance here in northern California) gave me an idea of the changes to the course. My plan to somehow break 70 was in jepardy when I realized that the course was now 7.4 as opposed to 7.1.

Why 70 minutes? I had looked over prior results and realized that 70 would pretty much secure a spot on the Invitational section for next year. My all time fastest transits of the course occured in the 1980's as a college runner, when breaking 60 minutes was a given. Now, it would be a goal for 70 to help me make next year.

I was also coming off of being really sick most of the spring, not swine flu sick but walking pneumonia style sick, so there was no base to speak of. I got my postcard announcing my place in the 2009 Dipsea after my second run of 2009: a 4 mile run at 8:30 pace with one hill that left me quite exhausted. Just how much work could I do in 6 weeks of training?

I did as much as I could with 4 weeks, and then pulled back for two weeks. The Stick and the foam roller were my companions to get me to the starting line. Come race day, I parked in my secret Mill Valley parking place and warmed up the start. Picked up my number and checked my bag and then warmed down to the car. Stripped off the warm-ups to my Tamalpa Runners racing vest and went to put on the racing trail shoes... and realized that i had checked them already. My good friend Tim quipped, "Your racing shoes are so fast that they'll get to Stinson before you."

I proceeded to rummage through the back of the car and found one pair of lighter shoes. This then, thanks to my rookie mistake, would be my companion to getting that Invitational status.

The Dipse has always, like the Boston Marathon, the only race older in the United States that the Dipsea, been a thinking person's race. You can, of course, just go run it, but to run it well requires a little ingenuity: knowing your strengths and weaknesses and running accordingly. You can run better than you think with a plan. There are those races where the strategy is, "Go out and run and see how you hold up," but this is not one of them.

72 minutes later i was at the final straight, trying to not do a face plant in front of the assembled crowd at Stinson. I had a sprint ready to uncork in my legs, but in the last 15 minutes my calves had started to cramp, ever so slightly, and on that final last half mile they had moved from "ever so slightly" into "outright rebellion" so holding form and keeping pace seemed to be the better part of valor.

Little did I know that my 72 minutes and 18 seconds and 12 places would be the margin that would get me in to that coveted Invitational for next year. It appears that my best that day would be enough to get me there again in 2010. the photo above was by Craig Stern, who has taken some great photos from the Dipsea race as well as others. Thanks Craig.

hello

2009-07-16T22:37:00.001-07:00

lets try this again...