NYC Marathon: map and memories

The NYTimes has a pretty cool interactive map of the New York Marathon course.

Of course, I'm not running it this year, but it made me think about the course and the race.  Some memories:

• The pre-race "infinite pee trough" in the holding pen that can be seen by the trains going by.  (Or at least could be a long time ago...)
• The first mile up the bridge coming out of Staten Island.  All uphill, but you never notice with all the people around you.  It took me 3.5 minutes to get to the starting line in my first race, and there were no timing chips, so my 3:30 finish was only recorded on my watch...It was 3:33:30 or so in the books.
• The second mile down the bridge.  Can you believe a bridge is 2 miles long?  The crowd thinned for me here. Still crowded, but not nearly as bad.
• From right there at the bottom of the bridge - the crowds.  As you move from neighborhood to neighborhood, how the crowds change - in level of noise, manner of dress, everything.  Such an amazing city.
• The Queensboro Bridge.  Carpeting over grates at about mile 17 or so.  Not such a comfortable run at that point, but the crowds on the other side!
• Finally coming into Central Park with about 4 miles to go.  Like coming home.  
• WHY ARE THEY MAKING ME LEAVE THE PARK TO GO ON 59TH STREET!  I KNOW IT'S ONLY AN EXTRA 50 YARDS OR SOMETHING BUT I DON'T WANT TO GO!  I WANT TO TURN HERE AND STAY ON THE PATH!
• Gosh darn, I hate all this irregular pavement and stuff to get back on the Park path.  WHY COULDN'T I HAVE JUST STAYED ON THE PARK PATH IN THE FIRST PLACE!  
• Almost there, and then a great finish line.

The NY Times map is like a time lapse photo sequence taken from a car, except for the parts on the Central Park path.  It can't do the course justice, because the course is about the people at least as much as the scenery, and it's just a business day in NYC.  But this is still a cool link.  Have a look.

Sarah Palin's book deal

According to Politico, Sarah Palin only got $1.25 M for her book deal.  I have to say this surprises me.  I expected it would have been bigger.

'Nuther Newton Update and Boston

I am pretty excited.  Today in the mail I received confirmation of my Boston marathon entry.  It'll be the 114th running on April 19, 2010.  This means that this winter, I will focus mainly on running.  My secondary goal will be building bike power through shorter interval workouts, and swimming will take a bit of a back seat until spring.

By the time I write this, I've been running in the Newtons for the better part of 5 weeks.  I have allowed my workload to climb up to the ~6 hour/week mark.  No planning in particular yet, except for the general goal that by mid-December I want to be comfortably running 35-40 mi/week consistently and having a couple spins.  This will set me up for a marathon buildup of about 16 weeks.

Lengthening my runs by about a mile at a time, I can now consistently run an hour in the Newtons without feeling muscular fatigue.  I am no longer feeling pain in the soleus, and I have extended my long run up to about 11 miles in them.  I've put almost 100 miles in them total. The pace of my running has been unexceptional - certainly I would not attribute any particular pace to the Newtons (other than it's still hard to run VERY slowly in them).  The stride feels quite natural now.

Despite this progress, it seems that I am something of a slow adapter.  There is no doubt in my mind that there are simply different muscles involved here and that I need to strengthen them.  I am still sometimes getting some dull aches in my upper hamstrings the day after a longer run.  It's not enough to be a problem, but enough that I notice when I'm sitting.

Another thing I really notice is that it makes a much bigger difference to me whether I stretch properly.  For now, I believe that this simply has to do with the same need for strengthening that I feel otherwise. I called the folks at Newton, taking them up on their offer to chat, and I spoke to someone who seemed quite knowledgeable and reasonable.  Except that she hadn't dealt with too many people with dull hamstring aches.  Oh well.

At the very least, this has been a very interesting project/experiment to watch myself go through.  I think it's going to turn out well.

Political Cynicism 101 - McCain/Palin

There's really nothing more I need to add to this, other than the remark that it shows to what lengths people will go to elect their guy.

I've been clear that I thought Palin was a disqualifying choice by McCain, who was probably not such a bad guy that would have had a better shot at winning in another year.  But the fact that his campaign leader (Steve Schmidt) shares my opinion but still defends the choice....  Ouch.

Quick thoughts on the Nobel Prize

I didn't hear or read a lot of news yesterday, the day Barack Obama was given the Nobel Peace Prize, but you didn't have to hear or read a lot to figure out that a lot of people generally disposed to like BHO were a bit mystified or surprised, and a lot of people who dislike BHO were very angry and thought it wasn't just a surprise, but completely undeserved.

I'm not going to argue that it was obvious BHO should get the Nobel Prize.  I was surprised, and frankly, I was not sure that it was time yet.  But I do have a thought on the right wing reaction.

As far as I can tell, the prize was given in large part for the transformation BHO has wrought on world opinion of the USA.  We are relatively blind to that here, but the survey statistics are pretty dramatic.

However, the right wing, by and large, just doesn't care about world opinion of the USA.  As a matter of political theory, they think that we should act in our own interest and not particularly care what anyone thinks  (e.g., see invasion of Iraq).  I say that not as a criticism, but simply as an observation, and many of them would candidly agree (surely Tony Blankley would say exactly this, wouldn't he?).  Part of this has been accomplished by "not being Bush", but the transformation of the diplomatic outlook has certainly gone well beyond that.

As a matter of outlook then, if you don't care what the world or world leaders think, and if the major accomplishment of BHO has been to change something you don't care about, then he has accomplished nothing of worth....

Miscellaneous Rants: The Post-Game soccer "treat"

I'm an official with the local soccer club, so various vendors send me advertisements and the like.  One thing I get is offers for fundraisers, which are sometimes marketing devices for companies; and sometimes these marketing devices are win-win deals that are ok.  But many of them are not good for the club, as far as I am concerned, and we do not pursue them all.


Today, I got an email from someone with a company that is marketing a food product as " [a] great post match nutrition source for the players, offering carbohydrates to refuel and key nutrients from whole grains, real fruit, and nuts."  This product is probably reasonably healthful, but COME ON.  Kids who play 2/3 of a 60 minute soccer match on a small field DO NOT NEED TO REFUEL!

Soccer should be about fitness and fun (and soccer).  There is no resisting the "treat" mentality at the end of a game.  I personally don't like it, and always bring fruit.  But this kind of marketing is just disingenuous.  Kids of the age that get post-game "treats" can't be spending more than 200-300 calories in their games and just don't need to "refuel".  Please, if you want to give your kid a snack, fine...but don't rationalize that s/he needs to "refuel" just because of a little exercise.  They aren't exactly running marathons out there!  Exercise is not an excuse to eat unnecessarily.

Finally, I did get something great from my kids' swim team about this, published by the American Swimming Coaches Association.  The newsletter is below.  The part in italics was added by the local coach.  Someone gets it.

Carbohydrate Loading

 

By Keith B. Wheeler, Ph.D. And Angeline M. Cameron

 

Question:   What exactly is carbohydrate loading?  Is it appropriate for age group swimmers?

Answer:  Carbohydrate loading refers to the process by which the carbohydrate (glycogen) stores in an athlete's active muscles are increased significantly above normal levels.  This loading of carbohydrate in the muscles is accomplished through a combination of training and diet manipulation.

Specific techniques for carbohydrate loading have changed since the method was developed in Sweden.  The original program consisted of 7 days of dietary management, beginning with exhaustive exercise bouts on the 1st day, followed by 3 days of extremely low carbohydrate consumption.  The next 3 days consisted of an extremely high carbohydrate intake that caused the muscles to super increase their carbohydrate stores.  In some people, this regimen produced nausea, fatigue, and diarrhea.  Therefore, less drastic carbohydrate loading regimens were developed and are currently recommended.

Although, when done properly, it does increase muscle-glycogen stores above normal levels, carbohydrate loading is most useful for athletes who are preparing for endurance events such as triathons, marathons, cycling races, or open water long distance swimming.  It should be done only a few times in a year.  A nutritional concern that is more important to an age-group swimmer than carbohydrate loading is consuming enough carbohydrate on a daily basis.  Age-group swimmers should get at least 60% of their daily calories from carbohydrate, which will maintain their muscle glycogen at levels that will support their training.

From a physiology point, as stated at the end of the newsletter, carbohydrate loading is helpful for endurance events lasting longer than 2 hours. With events lasting less than that, there is no need for it, since those are not long enough to deplete normal glycogen storages. In swimming events (from 50s to the mile), the loss of energy that a swimmer experiences is due to a decrease in the muscle cell pH, which takes place because of the accumulation of by-products of the muscle contraction. Therefore, unless you are going for a 10K swim, we would not recommend carbohydrate loading, neither for age-groupers or senior swimmers. 

More Newtons. About a week

The pain from last week's runs had me worried.  I wrote to a friend, Rachelle, who uses them, and she scolded me something good for doing too much running in the first place after the IM.  She also informed me that my sore spot was my soleus and told me in nice, but firm terms to back off, buddy, and take it easy.  I hate that.

But she was probably right.  If I weren't doing the Newton thing, I think I'd be running more/longer by now, because I've just run so long that I do believe in the easy aerobic recovery run, at least for me.  But with the Newton thing, I needed to back off.

I have since done three more runs on them, two very short, and today back up to ~3.5 miles.  So sad, given what I was doing!  But I'll build up slowly but surely again, and my groin seems to think the bike isn't so bad any more.  (Maybe that borrowed saddle?)  I've also taken a couple pretty close to complete days off.  They were almost required by scheduling of soccer tournaments and the like, but they were also probably good for me.

So today's report is that run 5 was 28 minutes indoors, and felt much better than either of the first two.  I can feel a bit of soleus fatigue, but it's not bad.  I did not push the distance past this because I didn't want to hurt myself again.  Trying to work out in my mind whether high repetitions or time off followed by longer is better.  I will probably try a combination:  near-daily very short runs and extend one every few days a bit.  No speed yet, and not for a while.  It's all comfortable 8:00-8:15 type pace.

Newtons, post Day-2

Tuesday was the first (3-mile) run on the Newtons.  Wednesday morning, my calves were sore, pretty much right in the middle of my leg, below the "meat" of the muscle and above the tendon junction.

Wednesday afternoon, I went for another 3 mile run. "Torture" would be strong, but it was relatively painful, exactly where the calves were hurting.  Toward the end, I did have to focus to hold the form.  This did not seem too good...  Running more slowly would have been worse, so the pace held at a little over 8 minute miles.  I'm not trying to go fast at all, but I have to be at some minimum speed right now for this to work.

The wear pattern on the shoe so far is on the front of the middle two lugs.  Obviously there's not much wear at all, but that's basically the only place you can see much of anything.

Today, Thursday, it's raining.  The first few steps this morning I still felt the calves, and walking downstairs was a bit of a challenge.  By midday, the pain in the left one has more or less resolved, although that part of the muscle still feels fatigued.  The right one still hurts a bit.  No run today (swam instead).  Gotta heal up a bit before giving it another go.

I must say that, while I wouldn't yet call this a long adjustment period, I'm surprised at the intensity of it.