Spartan Race and GIVEAWAY!

One of my more popular posts to date has been an article that I wrote on what I called "cross-obstacle races." Since I wrote that post, a number of similar events that combine running with strength and balance challenging obstacles have cropped up. One such event is the Reebok Spartan Race.

Race Report: Rock 'n' Roll Philadelphia Half-Marathon

A year ago, I was just starting up chiropractic school, and I was in the beginning of the training cycle building up to the Philadelphia Marathon, a race that I felt I had executed well and signaled a successful return from surgery. A year later, I've returned to Philly and run...an okay race. Not bad, but certainly not good...just okay. But it's only a complete failure if you don't take anything away from the experience, so here goes!

Race Report: Philadelphia Marathon 2012

As some of you may know, I spent yesterday in Philly running the marathon (and if you don't know and are here via Google search looking for a course description, skip down a few paragraphs past the fluff...I'll get there). This is the second marathon I've done, and the first that wasn't a complete disaster (brought on by being the first 88 degree day of the spring and terrible pacing for my first marathon). Not somewhere I really expected to be given where I was last year at this time, but my friend Molly, who agreed to coach me, was convinced that my body would be better able to handle the high mileage and long tempos of marathon training than the fast intervals and tight turns of the track at this stage in the game, and considering her propensity for coming back from her own injuries faster than before, I figured I'd listen. So at some point in August, it became time to stop messing around and actually begin marathon training (which meant taking a week off first, but downtime is pretty necessary, you know). And now, about three months and nearly 1300 miles later, here's what I have to show.

ING New York City Marathon cancelled

EXCLUSIVE: Pre-New York City Marathon Interview with elite runner Molly Pritz!

Molly Pritz and her crew. Photo courtesy of Brad Hudson

I recently had the opportunity to talk with ASICS America's Molly Pritz about well...not exclusively running, so let's just say I had a chance to interview her. As one of the nation's top runners, she's done quite a few interviews lately, but many of them don't truly capture the essence of Molly (full disclosure: this woman is my best friend, and she's absolutely hilarious, and I wanted to try to show you guys that side of her too. And to be honest, I talk to her multiple times per week, but no one wants to hear those conversations...seriously).

Women's Olympic 1500

Women's 2012 Olympic 1500m final Source

Oh boy, here we go again. I hate to be the person who rants all the time, but those of you who know me know that I love watching mid-distance just as much as I love watching distance. Can't run MD for crap, but watching it is fun. You don't have as much time to get into it the way you do a distance race, but they have all the tactics and strategy that distance races have, and they can take on different personalities the same was as distance races. A 100m dash is always fast. That's not to say it's any less exciting, but you know it's going to be fast. A mid-distance race, like a distance race, can involve a furious pace from the gun (a la the men's 2012 Olympic 800 that we just saw, courtesy of David Rudisha), or it can start slow and tactical and end with the kind of dead sprint to the finish that every kicker hopes for (a la the women's 2012 Olympic 1500...more on that later). Plus male mid-distance runners are beautiful and female mid-distance runners have the body I wish I had, but I digress. So, needless to say, I was watching the women's 1500. For those of you who missed it, the 1500 opened in a pedestrian (for them) 75 second jog. The race itself didn't start until the bell lap...which is when Morgan Uceny fell. At the end of the race, former doper Asli Çakır Alptekin emerged as the winner. Fail. Fail fail fail.

GALEN RUPP TAKES SILVER MEDAL!

Galen Rupp (silver) and his training partner Mo Farah of Great Britain (gold) Source

RUPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP!!!

Full results after the jump.

Molly Pritz 1:10:45 at San Fran Half!

Seeing as track hasn't yet started in London (well, except for the athletes, because for them it started a long time ago), allow me to steer your attention towards the San Francisco Half-Marathon, where Molly Pritz, running for ASICS, went 1:10:45 to shatter the old course record and set herself a new PR...in the middle of marathon training. Which makes it all the more impressive because running marathon pace for 13 miles is a pretty tough thing to do during marathon training. You heard it here first...that girl is going to be the next big thing. Better update later when I'm not at XC camp in the woods with spotty Internet.

Galen Rupp 26:48.00 AR! ...and also a Brian Sell video

Whaaat?!

This photo is not mine. It belongs to Steve Richie of steverichieontrack.com. And that mask belongs to Galen Rupp, who is one BAMF.

2011 USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships

Just a heads up for anyone interested: Along with the live feed (that I keep missing because I haven't been paying attention to start times), RunnerSpace.com also has videos available of all the races. Here are the links to the women's 10,000, men's 5000, and women's 1500, and anything else can be found using the list on the left hand side of the screen.

Warrior Dash, Tough Mudder, and Other Cross-Obstacle Races

Over the weekend, one of my Facebook friends recently put up a status asking why the sudden proliferation of events like the Warrior Dash, Tough Mudder, Muddy Buddy, and urban adventure races. It seemed that the comments on this status fell onto one of two sides. The first side declared that such races are a show of false bravado for weekend warriors, a money making scheme that lacks the seriousness of a "real" competition, and an injury risk for "real" athletes. The other side stated that such races are a ton of fun, a great way to get people moving, and an excuse to push one's limits. A similar discussion was posted on LetsRun last week, with similar arguments on both sides (though LetsRun being LetsRun, I'm sure you can guess which side most posters took).

Molly Pritz is the 2011 USATF 25K National Champion!

Molly Pritz, of the Hansons Brooks Distance Project, won the Fifth Third River Bank Run in 1:25:38 to become the 2011 USATF 25K National Champion! And just in case this isn't impressive enough, she just did it at 23 years old. Expect big things from this girl in the future. Check out the interview on Runnerspace.

Sorry for the long deadspace between updates. End of the semester = exam week and other craziness. I have a good one in the works, just have to proofread it.

Carbo-Loading

With marathon season underway, there are surely several nutrition questions running through people's minds. "What should I eat the day before the race?" "What should I eat the morning of the race?" "Should I alter my morning routine at all?" "Should I do a carbo-load?" "What is a carbo-load?" Et cetera. Nutrition is a big topic that's impossible to cover in one blog post (or even one blog!), but in this post, I'll attempt to explain carbohydrate loading.

Crazy times at Boston

Holy s*** Desi Davila second overall in 2:22:38! That's almost a four minute PR from her time in Chicago last year, and is the third best time run by an American woman. Deena Kastor has the AR of 2:19:36 from London '06, and Joan Benoit Samuelson ran 2:21:21 at Chicago '85.

Running Playlist

The big news today is the new Boston qualifying standards. Kudos to the B.A.A. for taking action so that there's not a repeat of 2010 in the future. I think rolling registration is the fairest way to go. I know a lot of people are upset about the standards being tightened, to which I say, train harder! It'll make you a better runner, I promise. Anyway, I've ranted on marathons enough in my last post, so I'll refrain from commenting any further on the Boston situation.

I feel like I wrote a lot of heavy stuff lately, and I feel like putting up something fun.

A Race to Remember

Since I obviously don't have any new race reports for you, I figured I'd post up some more older stories. In chronological order, my top three races:

2001 PIAA District II Cross-Country Championship - Scranton, PA
I started running freshman year of high school, but it wasn't until my junior year that I began to see real results. That year, I was running #2 for Bishop Hafey High School, behind #1 Kira. For me, Districts was the most important race of the season, since it determined who qualified for the PIAA State Championship. Kira had qualified for States as an individual in 2000 and had a good chance of going again in '01. For me, it would be more of a stretch. I had my goals though. For the first time, Districts was to be held on the Scranton Municipal Golf Course, a course that no runners had been allowed on earlier in the season, so no one had any idea what the course was going to look like. To further complicate things, Districts also fell on an unseasonably hot day, quite a change from the cool to cold conditions we had been practicing in and from the League meet a week earlier that had been in the  high 30's and rainy. No one in Northeastern Pennsylvania had run in these kind of conditions since the early season.

2010 in Review

Seeing as it's New Year's Eve, I decided to do a look back over the past year.

Mileage this year was looow. 2546 miles for an average weekly total of 59.2. Weak in comparison to 2009's 4362 (average week was 83.9). To be fair, last year was a healthy year for me, and I only took off somewhere between 5 and 6 weeks. This year, on the other hand, my year pretty much ended in early August (I had 2368 logged as of August 12th). It would probably be comparable if I measured overall training since I logged a lot of hours on the bike, but I don't feel like counting up cross-training for the past two years and I don't do the whole virtual miles thing.

There's More to Running than the Marathon

Today at physical therapy, the guy on the treadmill next to my elliptical asked me if I was training for a marathon. A Marathon. The Holy Grail of Running. Everyone and their brother seems to be chasing that same white stag, training to someday run a marathon. Additionally, whenever someone finds out you're a runner, they always seem to ask the same question: "Have you run a marathon?" followed by "What did you run for it?" Never mind that most of these people don't know the first thing about marathon times, and whether I said "2:05" or "5:00" they'd respond the same way, which, of course, is "Wow. Is that good? My sister-in-law is training for a marathon now. She can run XX miles without stopping! I get tired just thinking about it!"