I threw away my favorite shoes today. Calling them shoes at this point is overstating their structural integrity. They each had a hole in the sole, the tread was completely worn off, the uppers had split long ago freeing my toes of the constraints of laces. I don’t remember where I met those shoes. I know they weren’t my first pair of Saucony Kinvara 3s. I had just come back…
After racing at Sears/Willis last year I decided that I'd focus it as my goal race in 2013, working to break 20'. However, a few days later I decided to sign up for a marathon just three weeks before Sears/Willis. Bad idea, lesson learned; I'm not doing any serious distance run training until I've kicked the stair climbing bug from my system. I think I peaked about a week too early…
As many of you know, I've never been much of a runner. I ran in high school when I played field hockey and softball but I rarely ran outside of that. About two years ago I started hanging out with more runners and slowly got sucked into their world. I started with a 10k last October and, on the eve of heading off to Asia, I registered for a marathon. At…
Bay Staters love locals who accomplish great things; they also love their sports heroes. The best example of this is Doug Flutie. If you ever want to start a fight in Massachusetts, walk into a bar and tell someone that Doug Flutie was overrated or was too short to make it in the NFL. The subject of Marathon Man, Bill Rodgers, is another figure who is among those folk heroes in…
I will be offering a workshop for endurance athletes on 20 July from 5-7pm at Tranquil Space Arlington (3528 Wilson Blvd Arlington,VA). This workshop will be focused on learning what poses may be beneficial and which are counterproductive at various points in your training cycle. From there we will discuss how to incorporate these modifications into an all levels class so that you can still enjoy your weekly yoga class without…
Now that I'm back to my regular yoga practice, I have noticed some major changes that I have had to make due to running.1. Replace Warrior One with High LungeI rarely practice warrior one anymore. This used to be a staple of mine; I always practiced it and I always taught long sequences based on it. Since I've started running I've noticed that the torque on my ankle is too much.…
I love large community events. I think it is important for a school, company, or city to effectively cease operations so that everyone can go out and enjoy themselves. These types of events tend to happen in the spring, when the weather first starts to warm up and people are itching to get out of their winter hideouts. In college, on the last Friday of the spring semester we celebrated Georgetown…
The focus of this first month was to start building up my mileage. I started with fifteen, then did four weeks of around 23 miles. I've never been good about sticking to rigid schedules so I didn't try to force myself into one. I always did one long run on the weekend. One week the weather was kind of gross so I only did one other long run. The other weeks…
Earlier this year, when I decided to start running, I started searching the internet for some articles for beginner runners. However, after a lot of searching I couldn't find many articles for people like me: already relatively fit but with no real running background. Most of the beginner articles I found were "couch to 5k" type advice. I wasn't just getting off the couch; I had no problem going for a…
I'm sure many of you have heard me complain about running. It's never been my favorite way to exercise and as far as transportation is concerned, there are much more efficient ways to get someplace. Unfortunately, I'm pretty competitive and I've been hanging around runners. After some friendly reminders of looming registration deadlines, my non-runner friend and I decided to sign up for the Marine Corps 10k this October. When we…