6 miles easy morning run in Denver before work. 10 mile Tempo in San Fran at a 6 minute pace after work.
There has been a lot of interesting reading the last while on th subject of marathoning. I have only have about three years of experience in this sport and feel pretty new to it, but even so, I followed what was going on through the years that I wasn’t running. The marathon is changing again.
I began marathoning about the same time as the trend started to shift from an event that took a decent runner 4 months of planning and training to an event that you did on a weekend with your office buddies. Not that it's bad, either way it’s something to be proud of, but you have to miss the old magic of it sometimes. I read this week in Mens Fitness that the fastest men's age group for marathons by a huge margin is the 40 to 44 age group. Their average finishing time is 4:15. Really not that bad, but yesterday, one of the flight attendants that I was working with told me that she had just spent 4 months running one of Hal H’s programs to run a 3:37 for her first marathon. That’s what it’s about. Change your life with some dedication and do something special. I worry sometimes about what road racing is about, maybe because it’s given me so much even though I’m not really a fast runner, or maybe that I throw so much away because I just have fun with it sometimes.
As the sport gets bigger, is the identity getting blurred, especially the half marathon? That’s one of the reasons why I support the big money in marathons. Yep I don't agree with the crowd that wants to take it out of the sport now. Back in the day, my dad would tell me stories of the great marathoners and always envisioned them as odd outcasts in a way. Skinny bearded dorky guys that would never have taken money for the race. No professional would accept money. It just wasn’t right. It was against the very reason why you competed in the first place. But now, it seems to be holding part of the true spirit in the race. Countries with runners who chase the dream, who have the courage to try and redfine the marathon are changing the face of it. The February issue of Running Times has one of the best articles I’ve read in a while about the Kenyons redefining how a marathon is to be run. For the first time that I can recall, a running magazine now says the 2 hour marathon will be broken. That’s funny, didn’t the entire running community, especially those pessimistic bean counter runners on LetsRun.com, tear Hobie Call apart last year for saying that he was going to go for a two hour marathon? One of the longest threads there deals with the opinions and stats showing why it cannot be done. It will be done. It will be run by someone or some team that everyone says is too weird for the normal standard, someone who is running a 10k race for 26 miles. I love it.
Which brings me back to the sport. I keep reading articles in Outside magazine about the growing sport of adventure racing, mud racing and the legion of fire warrior races etc. Long regarded as the weekend warriors pastime, these races are taking off and attracting serious competition. We're talking 20,000 runners at events here! The guy that beat Hobie at the Beast (Spartan) was a member of the Canadian Olympic Biathlon team. Yowser! These guys are animals. What are they doing at these races? They say it’s more fun to train, to race and for your family to watch. I don’t know is it the warrior/soldier dream all us guys entertain sometimes? It makes you want to try one. It makes you also wonder if the day of mega marathons will start to taper. Will the marathon swing back to a small group of serious runners, almost every one of whom is considered a serious weirdo by the public, that compete like crazy with each other and away from the popular?
All right, thats my rambling for the week.. | 