Amby and Me (and The Running Life!)

*Admin note: an important announcement about our upcoming Running Life book follows at the end of this post - but you know I won't let you get there without submitting you to a story.

**

“Writers like Donald and Mike work at the grassroots level to promote and support our sport. Their love of running shines through every page of what they write. They have a unique perspective on “The Running Life” and make us smile and gain insight at the same time. Whether you are an experienced runner, a novice, or even a non-runner, this compilation of articles will inspire.”
- Amby Burfoot, Editor at Large, Runner’s World Magazine and 1968 Boston Marathon winner


Like most other writers who ventured into the wild frontier of the Internet in the early part of the last decade (The Oughts? The Oh’s? Did we ever settle this?), I had fanciful dreams of what this newfangled blogging business might lead to.

I’ve previously described how I did a lot of writing even before I had a website, and how one of my longtime ambitions was to be published in Runner’s World magazine someday. So when I found a vehicle to have my writing viewed by a larger audience – at least, larger than the 20 or so people I used to pester via e-mail with attached word documents whenever I wrote something previously – and to have it potentially circulated to anyone in the world with the click of a mouse … well, that sounded pretty darn cool. I figured it was only a matter of time before somebody discovered my work and threw an obscene amount of money at me to quit my day job and become a full-time writer.

You can guess how that one turned out. It didn’t take very long at all before I realized that I was just another small fish in the overwhelmingly large ocean of amateur writers rushing to the blogosphere with similar ambitions. But since the process was something I truly enjoyed, I kept plugging away at the website more as a hobby than a pathway to success.

Then in the summer of 2006, something happened which quite simply blew me away. Glancing through my website’s inbox one day, I noticed an e-mail titled “A quick appreciation,” with a name in the sender column that literally made my heart skip a beat.

It was from Amby Burfoot.

Amby Burfoot, Boston, 1968; photo from AmbyBurfoot.com

Now, to a running geek like me, seeing this name in my inbox is like a Little Leaguer getting an e-mail from Derek Jeter, or a playground basketball player being contacted out of the blue by Michael Jordan. In my mind, Amby was an idol – not only because he won the Boston Marathon, but also because he is a fantastic writer who served for many years as the Editor in Chief of Runner’s World. Honestly, I’m not sure which of those accomplishments I admired more, but suffice it to say that the guy was living the dream, from what I could see.

And this was the e-mail he sent me:

Donald: I was just tipped off about your blog and web site. Terrific stuff. I'll probably become a regular visitor.

Amby Burfoot
Executive Editor, Runner’s World Magazine


There’s a classic Bill Cosby bit where he imagines how Noah probably reacted to hearing the voice of the Lord for the first time - just for fun, I embedded it below – and this is exactly how I felt when seeing Amby’s e-mail. But before I wrote back and said “Riiight. Who is this really??”, I forwarded the e-mail to my friend Mike, who is a casual acquaintance of Amby’s going back several years.

My question to him was simply, Does this look legit to you?, and Mike’s reply was equally simple: Yup, that’s the address I have for him. Somehow, someway, the Internet helped Amby Burfoot find me.

(By the way, if you’re wondering how I remember exactly when this all happened, and how I can recall his e-mail word for word, it’s because I’ve kept the e-mail in my inbox for more than four years. I’m telling you, I'm a complete fanboy.)

Now I had to reply to Amby. I’ll spare you the details, but it went something along the lines of OH MY GOD AMBY BURFOOT I CAN’T BELIEVE IT’S REALLY YOU THIS IS SO COOL I THINK YOU’RE AWESOME THANK YOU SO MUCH THIS IS LIKE THE GREATEST THING THAT’S EVER HAPPENED TO ME.

So, um … I didn’t exactly play it cool. Even worse, at the end I decided to throw this one out there:

CAN I WRITE FOR RUNNER’S WORLD SOMEDAY?

His response was about as polite as I could have hoped for, considering that I came across as a complete lunatic: he told me that he basically held an emeritus designation now and didn’t really make day-to-day editorial decisions anymore, but he’d pass along my contact info to other editors on staff. And after a couple more exchanged replies where I tried to convince him that I wasn’t really a stalker despite my insistence that he fly to Monterey and train with me and run the Big Sur Marathon sometime, we gradually fell out of contact with each other.

As the years went by, my inner fire to write for RW gradually faded, and I never made another effort to contact Amby. I figured I was all but forgotten to him as well, until Mike and I were considering people to request endorsements of our book. One of the first things he said was, “Hey … why don’t we ask Amby Burfoot?”

So we did – and to our indescribable delight, Amby graciously agreed. His blurb that you see above now graces both the front and back covers of our book – just to make darn sure that you can see it, no matter what side is facing up. Because that’s how much his support means to us.

**

So this seems like an appropriate time to announce that advance orders of our Running Life book are now officially available online. We’ll have physical copies in our hands by mid-November, and between now and November 14th, we’re offering a special pre-publication price of $15.95, which is a 20% discount off the cover price. Check out our Running Life website, and use the PayPal link on that page to place your order.

I’ll post a general overview of the book and include a few more promotional reminders in the weeks to come, but in the meantime, have we mentioned that the book is recommended by Amby Burfoot? That should give you all the incentive you need.

**

Bill Cosby, "Noah" (click to play):

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Random Shots of Beauty

They call it Toro Park for a reason:


Since most of my ultra-long training runs are done solo, there are many mornings when cattle are the only living souls I see on the trails. Sometimes when I'm lacking motivation to get out of bed early, I'll imagine that the cows are expecting me - like they're holding me accountable to get my mileage in.

And if that sounds a little weird ... OK, yeah. It's weird. So be it.

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Yurbuds Review

As I’ve done one time before – and perhaps should do more often, really - today I’m turning the blog over to my IT department.

My friend Brian is the Bunsen Honeydew to my Beaker, the tech geek of our running group as well as a long-time Apple devotee. He also happens to run with headphones fairly often, so when I received a request to review a pair of headphones that are compatible with Apple music players, I knew just who to delegate this one to.

In the review that follows, Brian describes his experience using a product called Yurbuds. He also talks about the size of his equipment … but that’s really rather incidental. Read on for details.

**

I have never been a big fan of earbuds. Maybe it is the size and shape of my equipment, but I don't like the sloppy fit and all the ambient noise. So from my first iPod (any of you remember the original scroll wheel?) and through two later generations, two shuffles, and two iPhones (that’s seven if you are counting: 3 dead, 4 in service) I have owned a lot of headphones. Each model came with more buds, but I would just pass them on to one of my daughters and buy some in-ear replacements from Sure, Sennheiser, Etymotic, Bose, Audio-Technica, and so on.

I prefer the stability of the in-ear models for running and really appreciate the sound isolating qualities for gym workouts. While some have been more comfortable than others, and I have witnessed a huge spectrum of audio fidelity (not necessarily correlated to price), I have found all of them more fatiguing than open-air headphones. I'm also concerned about just how isolated you are running in sound isolating earphones, so I just use them at the gym and on the track.

So I was excited when Donald directed an opportunity to review new earbuds my way. Would this be an opportunity to get some use out of those Apple earbuds? Yurbuds are soft flexible caps that fit over the standard Apple earbuds (and lots of other buds too) and fit snugly, just above the ear canal, with a small tip that extends into your ear canal. They achieve a personalized fit by offering them in a rage of sizes. Your size is determined by uploading a picture of your ear with a reference object.

Not Brian's actual ear - it's a model.

I took a few self-conscious photos of my ear (I resisted the temptation to open them in Photoshop) and picked one to upload. In less than a week, I received a nylon carrying case containing my personalized performance Yurbuds and a some more white earbud-style headphones (These are $29.99 at the Yurbuds website, you can get them without the headphones for $19.99).

The Yurbuds fit snugly in your outer ear and have a small tip that extends just into the ear canal. They don't seal the canal like sound isolating in-ear models but they do deliver more sound pressure into the ear than ear buds alone, while allowing some ambient noise into the mix.

I found that the Yurbuds let in just the right amount of ambient noise, so I don't feel too cut-off from what is going on around me, but not distracted by it. I also found them more comfortable to wear for extended periods compared to in-ear earphones. I wore them in the gym, on our local recreation trial (bike path) and at the track for fast workouts and never had a problem with them falling out of my ear like I do with ear buds alone.

They come off easily for cleaning, and when your earbuds inevitably die, you can just pop them on another pair and you are good to go. Yurbuds are a nice little product.

Yurbuds personalized performance earbuds are available for $29.99 from the company website.

*Product provided by Yurbuds
**See other product reviews on sidebar at right. If you have a product you’d like reviewed, contact me at info@runningandrambling.com.





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Hey, This Sounds Fun!

I'm not entirely sure how I landed on this guest list, but the following invitation made its way to my inbox last week:

"Please join the people of CLIF Bar and Company at the New Headquarters Open House"

Remember my post about how insanely cool it would be to work at the CLIF Bar Company? Well, apparently the workplace I visited last spring was just a practice run for the brand new, bigger and (somehow) better CLIF headquarters in Emeryville, CA. The company is showing off the new digs at an open house this week, and I must have accidentally slipped through the filter when they were going through their e-mail lists to distribute the invites.

Obviously, this is an opportunity I wouldn't dare pass up, so I'll be spending Thursday afternoon doing a bit of field research on behalf of Running and Rambling, Inc. I'm guessing there are some pretty cool things in store - but knowing this company, I'm half expecting there to be some amazingly cool things in store.

The best part is, I get to bring my camera! No background checks, no oaths of secrecy - just show up, have a good time, and tell the world about it afterward.  Which, as you might have guessed already, I'll gladly do here sometime soon.


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GU Island Nectars Roctane Giveaway Winners

Keeping this short and sweet so I can jump into another (equally short and sweet) post tonight: Dallas and Lesser is More - e-mail your address to me at info@runningandrambling.com - the random number generator smiled upon you this evening! You've got a box of Island Nectars Roctane headed your way.

Thanks to everyone else for playing!


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kigo edge Shoe Review (and Coupon Code)

When I started venturing into minimalist waters last year, one of the most intriguing companies out there was kigo. They had a great back story: three fun-loving ladies - one of whom is an e.e. cummings fan, thus the lack of capitalization anywhere (seriously) - who needed simple, functional footwear and committed themselves to environmentally responsible manufacturing, eventually introducing a product that was a promising example of minimalist footwear that doesn’t compromise either performance or style.

My review of that shoe, the shel, was generally very favorable, with one significant exception: the toe box was rather narrow, and therefore uncomfortable for long-distance running. So when I heard that kigo had plans in the works for a more athletic shoe that would better support natural running, I was eager to try the new pair.

kigo edge

That shoe is the edge, and it’s better than the shel in a lot of ways … but not in the most important way that I had hoped. Before I qualify that statement a bit more, let’s look at the specs.

kigo edge on left, shel on right

Honestly, it took me a few days to realize that this was a whole different shoe model than the one I had reviewed last year; by outward appearance, the edge looks nearly identical to the shel. kigo is establishing brand recognition with its distinctive look, but it might be hard for first-time customers to distinguish one model from another aside from keeping track of the color schemes.

The good news is that all of the things I liked about the shel remain unchanged: the super light weight of 5 oz per shoe, the breathable low-profile uppers, and the eco-friendly construction are all present with the edge as well.

Outstanding kigo outsole

I was pleased to see that the edge does away with the “fold in half” feature of the shel that I considered something of a gimmick. This enables the overall thickness of the outsole to be a bit thinner in the heel and forefoot than the previous model. Best of all, the edge retains the same durable, flexible 1.5mm non-slip outsole that I considered the biggest strength of the shel last year. Traction from this fingerprint-style tread is outstanding for either road or trails, in both wet and dry conditions – in fact, I’ve done a handful of river crossings with them, and their grip is as good as any other trail shoe I’ve tried.

Eco-friendly uppers

One improvement that isn’t immediately obvious is the flexibility of the uppers. kigo uses a fairly remarkable innovation called CYCLEPET which incorporates post-consumer plastic (think recycled bottles) into its construction. It’s also water and stain resistant, and maintains decent ventilation. The trouble with the shel was that the material was rather inflexible, which made it difficult to get the shoe on, and hard to accommodate wider feet that might strain against the narrow toe box.

Most of those fit concerns were addressed with the edge: the upper material has a four-way stretch component along with stretch stitching to improve its flexibility. There is more flexibility built into the foot hole for an easier on/off transition, and the vertical volume of the toe box is noticeably increased. In other words, they made almost all the changes I would have liked to improve the fit …

kigo edge at left and center, kigo shel on right; no discernible difference in toebox width

… except for changing the darn toe box. It’s essentially identical in width to the shel, which makes the edge just as problematic for running as its predecessor was for me. Taking the removable insole out provides a marginal increase in width, but not nearly enough to make these comfortable for anything but short runs around the neighborhood.

Considering how close this is to being a fantastic shoe, and considering that I thought the toebox issue was going to be addressed with this revision, it’s a bit frustrating to see that kigo hasn’t quite nailed the running shoe design yet. My contact person (one of the owners) assures me that they are working hard on new lasts and molds for a wider toe box, but by the time they finally arrive, kigo is bound to find the market far more congested with minimalist running shoe makers than there were one year ago, or even today. I believe the company was an early arriver who had an ideal opportunity to make its mark with this shoe – but I fear the window on that chance might be closing.

I hope not, because the company really does have a lot of very admirable traits, and they seem honestly committed to promoting natural foot function with a wide range of athletic activities. In the meantime, the edge is a comfortable shoe for those with somewhat narrow feet – the shoes are officially unisex, but I suspect they are much better suited for women than for men - or for a general minimalist walking around shoe.

If you fit into either of those categories, kigo is making it easier to give its unique footwear a try. They’re offering free shipping (a $12 value) if you purchase a pair of kigos from now through October 26. Enter coupon code RAMBLE at the end of your checkout, and the deduction will apply. The kigo edge retails for $70 from the company website.

*Product provided by kigo
**See other product reviews on sidebar at right. If you have a product you’d like reviewed, contact me at info@runningandrambling.com



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GU Island Nectars Roctane Giveaway!

All right, kanes and wahines, I’m back with an update on GU’s new Island Nectars Roctane I introduced a couple of weeks ago. And yeah ... we’ll go ahead and do this with a Hawaiian theme.

There’s a popular phrase of Hawaiian pidgin used to describe something delicious: brok’ da mouf. As in, This shave ice just brok’ da mouf, brah. You might also recall that GU’s initial press release described the new Mai Tai-inspired Island Nectars flavor as “frickin’ delicious.”

Shortly afterward, I received a generous makana (gift) from GU: my own supply of Island Nectars to try out – and since I was running the Firetrails 50 that weekend, the timing seemed no ka oi (perfect) for me to put them to the test.

Gettin' my Roc on at Firetrails

Throughout the day, the only calories I took in were from GU Brew (the sports drink on course), standard GU packs from the aid stations, CLIF BLOKs, and the new GU Roctane flavor. I took calories every half-hour, with every second or third pack being the Island Nectars. This system worked nani (beautifully) for me, and I never experienced an energy lag through the nine hours I was on the course.

As for the taste: it’s not quite brok’ da mouf, but it’s definitely ono (tasty). It’s got a mildly tart and slightly salty tropical taste, like an island drink you’d order from a poolside bar. I think they might get difficult to stomach if you were taking one after another repeatedly, but interspersed with other flavors (my preference is  typically vanilla or blackberry), it goes down quite easily.

Compared to other Roctane flavors, I’d rank it just behind vanilla orange, and probably tied with blueberry pomegranate. However, if you’re a fan of GU’s pineapple Roctane, the Island Nectars just might vault to the top of your list. But since taste is a subjective thing, that’s a decision you’ll just have to make for yourself.

So let’s get to the hau’oli (good news): in conjunction with this post, GU is giving away two more boxes of Island Nectars Roctane – one to each of two winners. These are still a pretty rare commodity on the market, so chances are you’ll be the first in your training group to try them. Leave a comment below by 5PM PDT Wednesday to enter, and I’ll announce two random winners on Wednesday night.

Mahalo (thank you) to GU for hosting this giveaway, and pomaika’i (good luck) to everyone who enters! I hope they break yo’ mouf.


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