The Marathon Bug

On the Monterey Peninsula, most runners’ race calendars are anchored around two premier events: the Big Sur Half-Marathon On Monterey Bay each November, and the Big Sur International Marathon at the end of April.

While most local marathon runners typically do both events, only a small percentage of half-marathon runners go on to do the marathon the following spring. There’s nothing wrong with this, of course; for many people, a half-marathon represents the longest distance, and the largest time commitment, that they are compelled to complete. And that’s absolutely fine.

Each year, however, a certain number of half-marathon participants get filled with wide-eyed ambition, and start thinking about continuing down the road towards distance running’s holy grail. The following Monterey Herald article was written for them.

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Running Life “The Marathon Bug”

Let’s say you’re one of the thousands of runners who finished your first half-marathon this fall. By now, your body is reasonably well recovered, and you’ve got a great sense of accomplishment from running 13 miles.

Maybe you look adoringly at your finisher’s medal – and perhaps, every so often, you squint your left eye closed so that the word “half” is obscured. Maybe you find yourself wondering what it would take to get a medal like that. Sometimes you talk yourself out of it, but the idea lingers, and preoccupies your thoughts with each passing day.

If this is you – congratulations! You’ve caught the Marathon Bug. Chances are, it probably won’t go away. The only question now is what to do about it. How do you make the leap from 13.1 to 26.2?

The answer isn’t as hard as you may think. In fact, you can probably have yourself ready for a marathon by next spring. You’ve already got a foundation, and there’s plenty of time to build upon it.

Your first, most important step is to commit yourself NOW to reaching the goal. Go online and register for the race. Your motivation to train will be much greater after you’ve officially signed up. Where your money goes, your body is likely to follow.

Between now and springtime, you’ll gradually progress your training towards your marathon goal. At first, you don’t have to change the number of days, or the number of miles you ran to train for the half. The most important adjustment is to reserve one day per week for a marathon-specific training run.

Starting in January, your overall mileage will gradually build, as the length of your training runs increase. Long runs should increase by 1 or 2 miles every other week, and marathon pace workouts can be anywhere from 5 to 12 miles. Many runners will raise their mid-week mileage as well, but this is depends on how your body responds to the longer weekend runs.

Your longest run should be three weeks before the race, and should be at least 22 miles. Let’s say you’re training for our hometown race – the Big Sur Marathon at the end of April. Working backwards, your long runs in March should be 18 to 20 miles, in February should be 16 to 18, and in January should be 14 to 16. If you ran a recent half-marathon, and you keep training through December, starting a 14-mile long run in January shouldn’t be too intimidating.

Finally, don’t hesitate to enlist some help. Find someone who runs marathons and pester them for advice. Visit websites and read the blogs of experienced runners, and absorb their knowledge like a sponge.

Yes, the road to 26.2 is hard sometimes, but the rewards are worth it. If you thought the sense of accomplishment from running 13 miles was great, the pride of a marathon finish will blow you away. And it’s available to anyone who wants to make the leap.

Don’t be afraid to take a bold step and scratch that Marathon Bug. Chances are, it will never go away unless you do.

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All That I Requested

“I'm walking through the desert-
And I am not frightened although it's hot -
I have all that I requested –
And I do not want what I haven't got”
- Sinead O’Connor, “I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got” (click to play)

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As far as celebrities go, Sinead O’Connor was the musical equivalent of a shooting star.

She rocketed to fame on the success of her 1990 album I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got, featuring the ubiquitous “Nothing Compares 2 U” (written – in case the title wasn’t a giveaway – by Prince, at the height of his songwriting powers). She spent several months as the media's darling du jour before a few well-publicized and poorly considered public appearances (such as ripping up a picture of the Pope on live TV, refusing to perform after the National Anthem, etc.) brought her time in the spotlight to a turbulent, fiery end.

As for the album – it was the most poignant collection of songs many people had ever seen. The tracks are equal parts stark and passionate, vulnerable and strong, desperate and hopeful. They're the soundtrack of a lost romantic soul clamoring for peace and acceptance in her relationships, as well as her overall place in the world.

They are also the songs that my wife and I fell in love to.

Sinead’s hushed, passionate voice played in the background during countless long nights that my then-girlfriend and I spent together, talking into the wee hours, exchanging hopes and vulnerabilities on the long road to joining our lives together. When we didn’t feel like talking, we’d just lay in the dark and listen to the songs that spoke directly to our hearts. At that time in our lives, we were the center of each other’s world, and there was honestly nothing else I wanted other than the girl and the life that I already had.

Eighteen years later, I feel almost exactly the same way.

I don’t know why memories of the album’s title song came back to me recently – except perhaps that as Thanksgiving draws near, I’m thinking about the blessings I’ve been lucky enough to enjoy over the past two decades. Nowadays, it extends beyond just my wife – to my expanded family, and the beautiful place I live, and all the activities I’ve had the opportunity to enjoy.

When I listen to Sinead's remarkable voice today, I'm reminded to find meaning in the quiet moments, and comfort in the storms of life. My circumstances (not to mention my wife's) are certainly different than they used to be; life is more complex, more challenging, but at the same time, more fulfilled. It remains as desperate and hopeful as it did long ago – but with each passing day, more often than not, I find myself at peace with the way everything has played out.

For all of those things, I consider myself extremely fortunate. I have all that I requested – and I do not want what I haven’t got.

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Play-Doh Running

Suffice it to say, the post I had originally intended for Saturday never materialized – so it will be postponed until another day. In the meantime, I’ve found myself coming to grips with the passage of time quite frequently lately.

I mentioned a while back that my youngest daughter was soon to turn 5; that day has now come and gone, and our family has a freshly minted 5-year-old in our midst. It’s quite likely that she’ll forever and always remain the baby of our family, so watching her skip off to elementary school this year feels like a chapter of our epic parental adventure has come to a close.

I’m generally not nostalgic for having infants and toddlers around the house, and I don’t lament the progression of our children’s development. However, I realize that some routines and experiences that were once commonplace will become increasingly rare over the months and years to come, before disappearing forever. That’s not inherently a good thing or a bad one; it’s just the way things go.

For instance, it’s now almost hard for me to remember a certain peculiar habit I followed nearly every morning before lacing up my running shoes. Thankfully, I wrote most of the details down a few years ago – and the result is the post that follows below.

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My running shoes usually occupy the bottom shelves of a utility cabinet in our dining area. A few shelves higher on the same cabinet is the storage area for our children’s Play-Doh containers and accessories. Surrounding the containers are leftover bits of dough that linger on the cabinet before eventually falling towards the floor.

Consequently, I’ve acquired an odd habit early in the morning before I go running: as I sit on our steps, preparing to lace up my shoes, the first thing I do is turn them upside down to empty out stray clods of Play-Doh.

Recently I’ve wondered if my daily runs would be any different if I just left the Play-Doh in my shoes; in many ways, the multi-purpose toy serves the same purposes for kids that running does for adults.

Play-Doh has been around for almost 50 years, primarily because it is an ideal interactive toy. It appeals to kids of all ages (and think about it- hasn’t every kid you’ve ever known had some? It must be the most ubiquitous toy ever), and has countless practical applications. It stimulates a child’s creativity, as well as his emotional and physical growth.

For babies, it exposes them to a unique texture, and helps develop their grasp. It teaches them basic colors, and how certain colors can be mixed to make other colors. (Of course, the lesson that everyone remembers best is that all colors crammed together for long enough eventually make brown.)

Toddlers use Play-Doh to develop fine motor skills, and to experience how objects can be manipulated to change their form. Older kids use it in a more scientific context – either to learn how it’s made, what causes it to dry out and harden, or why water can rehabilitate a partially-parched clump.

Play-Doh has therapeutic properties as well. In fact, there’s a whole subset of child psychology called “clay therapy” which utilizes the material to help draw out aspects of a child’s personality that otherwise stay unrevealed.

Now compare the wide-ranging functions of Play-Doh to those that grown-ups reap from the sport of running. While the most obvious gains are to our physical well-being, our sport provides numerous creative and emotional benefits as well.

For example, most of the ideas for articles I write are hatched in the midst of a run somewhere. The physical exertion and endorphin surge somehow open a creative reservoir that is inaccessible at other times of the day. It’s a common phenomenon, as many people have stories of some business or relationship problem that was finally figured out while running.

Running exposes us to our physical surroundings, and instills an acute awareness of their impact on us. Rolling hills and sloping sand dunes become much more impressive structures when you’re struggling up the sides of them - and running at the feet of majestic redwood trees, or along a mountain trail, is enough to ingrain a sense of humility in almost any of us.

Finally, running also displays qualities of people that aren’t otherwise obvious in their daily lives. Whether it’s the competitive nature of a shy middle-aged woman, the focused discipline of a marathon runner, or the perseverance and determination of an ultrarunner, running is the means by which these traits are developed and later revealed.

Author Robert Fulghum once contemplated what the world would be like if, instead of bombing enemy countries, we dropped packs of Crayola crayons instead. He envisioned creating a generation that was too busy developing their creative and artistic talents to cultivate hatred. The scenario could just as easily pertain to dropping Play-Doh - or for that matter, to developing a generation of runners.

(Incidentally, this story also plays into my father’s theory of how to topple Communist nations: instead of isolating them, we should just open the floodgates and give them the full capitalistic, decadent American experience. Once they start playing GameBoys, eating French fries and Krispy Kremes, buying iPods and watching Beyonce videos, they’ll get addicted, and overthrow their dictators to acquire more. It’s not a bad idea, really. But I digress…)

After all, newcomers often comment about what a nice group of people runners typically are – so it’s not too far-fetched to suppose that the world might be a better place if more people were runners. It seems that when people have some activity that brings them satisfaction, humility and joy on a regular basis, they’ll be less inclined to foster the petty grievances that grow into bitterness or insecurity.

In light of all these things, I’ve started leaving the Play-Doh in my shoes when I head out the door for my morning run. I’m hoping that it helps me to appreciate the world around me, and reminds me that childhood is never too far behind me. As I head out the door, the Play-Doh is a silent reminder of the possibilities that lie before me with each morning’s run, and with the rest of the day that follows.

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Sunrise Revisited

Admin note: things have been kind of crazy around here lately. I had planned a full-length post for Friday, but I'm way behind - so let's aim for Saturday and see how that goes. Come to think of it ... Saturday's a more appropriate day, anyway. I'll see what I can do. In the meantime, here's a snapshot from a few mornings ago.

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It's been awfully tough for me to get out of bed lately. In the middle of my self-imposed off-season, and as the mornings get colder and darker with each passing day, I spend far more sunrises tucked inside my bed than out on the trails. But every now and then, I rally myself out the door and into the hills.

This was my view from the top of a Carmel Valley ridge line on Tuesday morning:


It's not necessarily anything to take your breath away - but it's always enough to make me glad that I made it out of bed. Whenever I'm standing atop some hill after a long climb while most of the world is stirring from their slumber, I ask myself why I can't do this everyday.

Soon enough, there will come a time when that's my normal routine. For now, I'm content to revisit those hilltop sunrises and those feelings of satisfaction in small amounts - just to remind myself that they are still there.

**update** I won't have a post by Saturday, either. It's not happening.

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The Story of (Someone Else's) Success

Having role models can be a mixed blessing sometimes.

We’re all familiar with the positive aspects of focusing attention on those we admire. Whether it’s the company CEO, or a famous athlete, or simply an upstanding family person who seems to have his or her life in balance, those types of people are sources of inspiration and encouragement about what might be possible in our own lives.

Athletes tend to latch onto role models more frequently than the population at large. High school athletes make scholarship decisions based on which coaching guru they want to instruct them. Rookie professionals look to seasoned veterans for tips on how to succeed in the big leagues. Novice marathoners or triathletes seek advice and mentoring from hired coaches or experienced members of their training club. It’s basic human nature that in order to improve ourselves, we need to learn from those who are better than us.

Occasionally, however, consideration of someone else’s abilities or accomplishments is enough to make a person feel woefully inadequate. Sure, an African-American can be elected President, and a cancer survivor can win the Tour de France, and a college dropout can become the world’s richest man - but the amount of toil and commitment and (to some extent) good fortune that is required for somebody else to duplicate those achievements seems entirely too staggering to comprehend. Sometimes it’s easier to just let the great people do what they do, while the rest of us remain content with our own meager attempts to emulate them.

The reason all this comes to mind is because Malcolm Gladwell has a new book out this week.

It’s no secret around these parts that I’m completely in the tank for Gladwell. This isn’t a recent development - as the following paragraphs from a post I wrote in May of 2006 shortly after reading his then-current book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking should make perfectly clear:

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Now, I just happen to have this thing about Malcolm Gladwell. He’s a brilliant writer with razor sharp insight, and has a way of writing about all manner of esoteric subjects in a way that reads like an espionage thriller. He can tell you about a syphilis epidemic in Baltimore, or an Ivy League admissions policy, or a retrospective analysis of the “Pepsi Challenge” taste tests in a style that’s not merely interesting – he actually makes you wonder why you didn’t realize these topics were so darn compelling a long time ago.

Over the past two years he has become my favorite author. I’ve also learned that he’s a passionate, knowledgeable sports fan, a runner, and – to top it all off – he even has a blog. It’s probably a good thing I don’t actually know him, or else I’d be in danger of developing some kind of man-crush on him.

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The new book is called Outliers: The Story of Success, and it deals – ironically enough, in the context of this post – with the factors that determine individual success. He looks at conventional beliefs about how great people succeed in life - whether it's gifted physical ability, innate genius, privileged socioeconomic origins, or just good-old fashioned hard work – and analyzes the relative validity of such theories in modern-day society. He discusses the underlying reasons why successful people excel, and what the rest of us can learn from them.

(On a completely random side note: be sure to check out the link above - if not to buy the book, at least to see Gladwell's fantastic Sideshow Bob hairdo. I swear, if growing my hair like that would make me an author, I'd do it in a heartbeat. You think I'm kidding.)

Obviously, this new book has jumped straight to the top of my current reading list – but in some ways, I’m almost reluctant to read it. Whenever I read anything written by Gladwell – either from his New Yorker articles or his books – I’m completely astonished at his writing ability. I marvel at the way he strings words together, and at how he finds the most interesting angles to any subject matter he tackles. He makes me think about everyday situations in ways that are both unconventional, and unexpectedly insightful.

I try to emulate his style a little bit in my own writing – which is somewhat akin to a Pee Wee hoops player saying he emulates LeBron James. Maybe I can do a crossover dribble or sink a long-range jump shot every now and then - but I can’t soar above the rim, and I can’t carry a team on my back night after night, and I can’t make it all look nearly as effortless as the superstars do. Reading Gladwell’s stuff makes me want to be a better writer; at the same time, it makes me realize that I’ll never be a great writer.

In that respect, I’ve learned to enjoy his works for the achievements they are, and take the good feelings along with the bad. After all, those mixed emotions are just part of the tradeoff with having such accomplished role models.

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Lost and (Partially) Found

Admin note: Although autumn is easily my favorite season of the year, it always brings a bit of the doldrums as far as my competitive side is concerned. This year, my off-season from racing coincides with recuperation from injury, and training has dropped way down the ladder of priorities for a couple of months.

Accordingly, some of the posts you see around here in the near future may be a bit of a departure from your garden-variety athletic blog. I’ve got a couple other ideas up my sleeve for the weeks to come; for today, here’s a snapshot of one of those parenting moments that seem all too fleeting. Sometimes I just like to get these things in print so I’ll remember that they actually happened.

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Like most other people, I believe that I was born with my fair share of marbles. But somehow, somewhere on the journey from adolescence to adulthood, I started to misplace them.

I can’t really track the condition to one specific episode, or any particular series of events – although I suspect that having kids played some role in the matter. All I know is that very often, in the course of my day to day activities, I feel like I’ve completely lost my marbles.

I’ve told some variation of this goofy little story to my kids – most often when they’re in the middle of a game of marbles - enough times that the oldest two have become sick of it; it’s just one more silly thing their idiot father does to try and get cheap laughs. My youngest daughter, however, hasn’t quite seen through the fog yet – which makes for some interesting conversations, many of which go something like this:

Me: What are you guys doing?

7-year-old: We’re playing marbles.

Me: Cool.

4-year-old: Yeah – and look at all the pretty marbles I have! (She proceeds to show me all her favorites)

Me: These are great. You know, I used to have a lot of marbles, but then I lost them.

7-year-old: Uh-huh.

4-year-old: Really?

10-year-old: Don’t listen to him. He’s making a joke.

Me: No, I’m serious – I lost my marbles a long time ago.

4-year-old: Where did they go?

Me: I have no idea. But I wish I knew – I’d try to get some of them back.

10-year-old: STOP LISTENING TO HIM!!

It won’t win me any Father of the Year awards to say this … but honestly, that kind of conversation never gets old. I’ll be 70 years old someday, playing marbles with my grandkids, and I’ll probably say something like “Hey - Did your Dad ever tell you about how I lost my marbles? You should ask him sometime – he’d love to talk about it.”

One day last week, a package was waiting for me when I came home from work: a gift from my 4-year-old daughter. It was a piece of construction paper folded up, with something slightly heavy taking up space inside the creases. When I unfolded it, I found the paper had been decorated with a handful of her favorite stickers:


Off to the side of the above picture are the items that rolled out of the paper once it was unfolded:


That’s right … four colorful marbles. It immediately triggered the following exchange:

Me: Wow! Marbles!

4-year-old: Yeah – they’re for you, since you lost yours. I gave you some of mine.

Me: Thank you, sweetie. I love them.

4-year-old: You’re welcome.

So now I have four more marbles than I used to have, courtesy of my youngest daughter. It’s not nearly enough to bring me up to a full supply, but they’re plenty sufficient to keep me happy. The trade-off is a pretty good one, actually; the experience of little moments like this over the course of many years is definitely worth sacrificing a portion of my sanity.

And if I continue to lose my marbles as I creep into old age, I’ll know which kid I can ask to help me replace them.

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An Uphill Push

My four-year-old daughter – who is soon to become my five-year-old daughter – has become quite the little ballerina this year. She takes regular lessons, and prances about the house showing off plies and piques and tendu stretches (with her flexible little body, she can touch her toes to the back of her head – it makes me wince just to watch sometimes). It’s all very cute, and might make for an interesting post someday.

But today’s story isn’t about my four-year-old – it’s about her 10-year-old brother, who looks forward to his sister’s ballet lessons just as much as she does.

That’s because when my wife drives our daughter to her late-afternoon ballet lessons in Salinas, she drops my son off with me, and we unload two mountain bikes from our cars. (My middle child, to her dismay, has to go and watch the ballet lesson. Don’t feel bad for her, though – other days of the week are juggled around her schedule. By the way ... isn't parenting fun?) My son and I then spend the remainder of the day riding the trails and enjoying some precious one-on-one time.

Over the course of several months, he’s developed into a somewhat decent rider: our five-mile rides have stretched out to eight or nine; our cruising speed has become noticeably faster; and our once-maddeningly frequent rest breaks have become much less common.

The most noticeable change is how our short, gentle hills have become steeper, more challenging climbs. His improved climbing skills offer a two-fold benefit for my son: it gives us access to about 10 times as many trails as before, and it increases his chances of encountering some “real” mountain bikers using the same trails, most of whom never fail to shout some encouragement to a 10-year-old kid working his way up a large hill. (It also has an obvious health benefit, but I’m not going to ruin his fun by reminding him that he’s exercising.)

Nevertheless, there are numerous climbs that are still too steep for him to climb all at once. In most cases, we’ll stop for a brief rest, then resume the climb from the same spot. However, on some slopes, he’s forced to dismount and walk his bike up the steepest portions, which for obvious reasons has become his least favorite part of bike riding.

In these moments, I know the activity isn’t fun for him, and I try to think of ways to keep him from getting discouraged. I tell him that I had to walk a lot of hills when I first started riding, and that there are still some hills I’d have to walk even if I was trying my hardest (although, in my defense, my mountain bike only has four usable gears – but that’s another story), and that even the best riders have to get off and walk sometimes. Later, as we drive home after each ride, I find myself hoping that he either remembers the fun parts more than the difficult ones, or understands that the hard stretches are what make the good ones possible. I’m never really sure if the lessons sink in, though.

That’s why I was glad to find an outstanding video from the New York Times: a profile of Dave Wiens, the defending champion of the Leadville 100 MTB Race. The video (and its companion print article) describes Wiens’s training and race strategy in preparation for facing a certain 7-time Tour De France winner who decided to drop in on the 2008 Leadville race.

(Armstrong and Wiens)

The entire video is time well-spent (but, sadly, is not embeddable – I’ll link to it below) – but the revelation that immediately captured my attention comes briefly at the 3:07 mark, and again from 3:15-3:22. It was impressive enough for me to call my son over to the computer, and start the following exchange:

Me: You know who that is, right?

Son: Is it Lance Armstrong?

Me: Yeah. See what he’s doing?

Son: Pushing his bike up the hill.

Me: Yup. This is in the middle of a race. And these are two of the best riders in the world. I told you it happens to everybody.

Son: Whoa.

I didn’t bother explaining that this particular scene probably took place at an elevation close to 12,000’, or that it was something like 80 miles into one of the most demanding off-road cycling events imaginable. For that matter, I didn’t even tell him that Armstrong lost the race, as Wiens pulled away with about 15 miles to go to claim the victory. In this case, the details are superfluous; the important thing was that my son saw Lance Armstrong pushing his bike up a hill.

I honestly don’t know if this little pearl of insight made any impression upon my son, or reassured him about his own struggles on the bike, or encouraged him to approach our major climbs with a different mindset - all I know is that he wants to go riding again this week. I figure that as long as we keep doing one ride after another, and one hill after another, the larger lessons will eventually fall into place.

(See the New York Times video on Dave Wiens here)

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