Mind, Motion & Matter

Running, Essentially . . .

Category Archives: Running


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Run two miles in my shoes

The other week, I ran with a neighbour who had recently purchased a couple of pairs of running shoes.  She was not altogether pleased with early signs of wear and tear on the mesh toe box.  Turns out that we both have the same size foot so with two miles to go, I suggested that she take a test run in my shoes.  I have been wearing New Balance running shoes exclusively since 1995, ever since winning a pair at the Spring-Run Off 8K in High Park.

New Balance 758's

I had purchased only one pair of New Balance shoes prior to that and due to poor advice from a salesperson, ended up with a too-big pair of New Balance shoes back in the early 80’s.  Unfortunately, this bad fitting, deterred me from the brand, and highlights the importance of buying your shoes at a place with a reputation for knowledgeable staff, such as New Balance stores.

New Balance is known to long-time runners as being at the footwear-forefront of the first running boom of the 70′s and 80′s.  The Boston based company started out in 1906 as the New Balance Arch Support (NBAS) company and evolved into the New Balance Athletic Shoe (NBAS) company

Like many long-lived companies, the philosophy has been to avoid expensive advertising in favour of research and design excellence.  In spite of competition from larger athletic shoe companies  it has exceptional brand recognition for state-of-the-art shoe design and competitive pricing.  It sponsors world-class runners and local champions (a story for another day) with an emphasis on the community involvement of these athletes.  The price tag for New Balance shoes  is far less than companies who market their products by seeking endorsements of the Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan’s of the world.

The pair my neighbour test-ran were the NB760’s and she asked me to quote her, “good shoes, good shoes” as she ran along, and again, “good shoes, good shoes”.  She also commented that my shoes felt more cushioned than her new shoes in spite of the fact that my shoes were at the end of their life.  I also use the NB special insoles that you can buy for about $30, and last for a couple of years.  The other New Balance shoe I wear is the NB950.  This shoe is a bit lighter and streamlined so I wear this for my faster paced workouts.

As for my experience of wearing another brand, truthfully, I was surprised in my dissappointment.  Go New Balance!

“Yet if a woman never lets herself go, how will she ever know how far she might have got? If she never takes off her high-heeled shoes, how will she ever know how far she could walk or how fast she could run?”  Germaine Greer

New Balance 950


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The promise of winter

So today, on the heels of yesterday’s exhilarating run I woke to wet, cold rain. It is time to mulch the garden and pull out the cold weather running gear. I had some speedwork planned, and there is some risk involved in running fast in the cold and wet, so I ran to the YMCA and hopped on a treadmill.

There are positives to running on treadmills; shoes last longer; the rubber running surface is easier on the legs; you can readily monitor your effort and pace; among other things. One aspect of my running psyche that keeps me going is that I am very flexible in the ways I enjoy running be it; fast or slow, with or without company and indoors or outdoors.

Running on the treadmill means less stopping, no worries about pit stops and a chance to catch up on TV news. Sometimes I focus on devoting a chunk of treadmill time to work out practical issues and make chore lists while running, with pen and paper close at hand.  I ran 8 x 1 minute hard and the run totaled 8 miles.

On the nutrition side, I’ve had a couple of good weeks of healthy lunches. Last week, and so far this week, I’ve taken my lunches, bean salad and quinoa pilaf from Thanksgiving dinner (augmented with chick peas). It’s time to be more thoughtful about fueling up.

Here’s a recipe for quinoa patties from the Whole Foods website.  Click here for the RECIPE My husband has been a quinoa devotee for many years, having discovered a recipe in the New Basics Cookbook 15 or 16 years ago. The nifty thing about Whole Foods is that you can find the recipe for most items sampled in their cafe on their website.

We passed through Las Vegas earlier this year, while en route to Utah and he had a delicious quinoa burger at the Whole Foods. You can make a batch and freeze them as well for a thrifty and healthy meal.

Quinoa patties from Whole Foods


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Travel with Running Gear in One Carry-on Bag

Monday, September 13, 6:45 a.m. Lake Ontario

I woke at 4:30 a.m. today as I’ve decided to try and move my sleep pattern towards the upcoming time zone change. My run started in the dark with a fairly steady downpour.  When I reached the lake the sun was beginning to break through the cloud cover, as seen in the photo.  On arriving home, the day fully emerged as one of those quintessentially lovely, late-summer days.

Also in preparation for my trip to Germany, I have become obsessed with the goal of traveling with one carry-on bag. I have been scouring the internet for tips in order to achieve this.  Marathoners know, that every extra pound carried over the 26.2 mile trek requires extra energy. As travelers we runners are at a slight disadvantage (although not to the extent as golfers or pole vaulters) to traveling light, as we must pack our space consuming running shoes.  If you are traveling to a race, add to that a pair of racing flats.  And, if you are racing a marathon in transitional weather, then racing gear for 3-4 seasons might be required.

I confess that while I am an experienced marathoner, I am a beginner at the one-bag-carry-on challenge.  In fact I am trying to kick my over-packing habit.  My desire to be organized and ready for anything works against me when it comes to packing.  The name of the game for the one-bagger is multi-tasking clothing items.  An additional challenge is finding multi-tasking clothing for a trip to the opera in Frankfurt.  I am someone who likes to be dressed appropriately for every occasion.  I hope to compile these tips to once I successfully enter the realm of the one-bag-carry on living.

For starters:

Tip #1 – Take along an old pair of running shoes for your runs and leave them behind at the end of your trip to make room for any purchases.

Tip #2 – A stylish pair of sweatpants can do triple duty as PJs, casual wear for a plane trip and exercise gear

Tip #3 – Wear the running top for the next day as your PJ top

Tip #4 – Don’t take more than 2 versions of a running outfit suited to one particular type of weather

Tip # 5 – If you wake early to run and your traveling mates sleep in.  Make sure all your gear is assembled before you go.  In IPod can be used as a flashlight if you have to navigate in the dark.

Please feel free to comment and add your own tips.  Thank you!


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First stop Sacramento

For someone who is used to running high-mileage in marathon training.  Running 50 miles a week hardly takes a thought.  I run about an hour a day with a 2 hour plus run on the weekend – this is the default.   However, with 15 weeks until my pre-Boston, marathon outing in Sacramento, the moment has come to either train seriously, forget about it or suffer in the final miles of the race.

2007, Sacramento 30K

So, I’m formulating my plan and the mileage build will go like this 57 miles this week, 61 miles next week and 57 miles the following week (including a rare day off for travel).  I like to do 2-3 solid weeks of building miles and then take an easier week.  Fortunately, this easy week will coincide with a trip to Germany.  My long run will increase from 12-15 miles to 17, 18 and up to 22 miles.

In addition to the increased mileage I have to start speedwork.  I’ve committed to hitting the track with a group.  For the past two years I’ve been taking evening courses, this year I will go to track school.  I’m excited about running on the new Varsity stadium track.  The very scene of my first marathon finish.  The coach, Paul Osland is a former Olympian who is now whipping a group of motivated masters into tip top shape.  I’m apprehensive about the return to the intensity of speed work.  My fast running for the past two years has gone something like this . . . run fast when I feel like it for 30 – 120 seconds.  Take as much rest as I need.

From what I can tell, the plan for Thursday is to run 150 meters at a very fast pace, 18 times and the do it again for a total of 36 fast repeats.  Then we are to bound up stairs, 2 steps at a time, 5 times and then repeat.  I’ve never done circuit training, of which we are to do 4 laps.  Hmm . . .

This could be painful.  Given that most of these runners will be peaking in the early fall, and my timing of a December marathon is unusual, I hope to get some sort of just-starting-out dispensation. I’m reminded of how once, when in top form I remarked to another runner as we readied ourselves for a grueling session a la Zeba Crook that his workouts were effective because they helped us to increase our pain threshold.  The runner turned to me and said, “but that is not what I signed up for”. No doubt . . . I’ll soon have a tale to tell.

Gulp . . .


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Last day of work

Moving Day

I set out for my pre-work run later than usual as I only had to log a few hours today, my last day of work at my place of employment for the past two years.  While running I listened to my Dave Allen, “Making It All Work ” book and then some quiet music, Keith Jarrett’s “The Melody at Night With You”, in order to meditate a little on the upcoming changes.  My husband and I saw Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette perform at the Four Seasons Centre for the Jazz Festival earlier this summer.  The performance was superb, consumately emotional and priceless!  It had been 25 years since I had seen this same trio perform and seeing them again, has enlivened my enjoyment of their music.

I start my new job on September 7th.  This is the same day that my son starts his internship at Research in Motion.  He is a software engineering specialist in U of T’s Computer Science program.  His salary as a student intern will exceed what I was earning at my former workplace.

Earlier in the week my husband helped me cart home the enormous amount of stuff, that I had let accumulate at work.  Included in this was a lot of running gear, my foot masager, oodles of personal care products, lots of framed photos, numerous hand-crafted ceramic gifts given to all staff from our creative and generous information resources coordinator and a few books including a copy of “Japanese Death Poems”, “Jack Daniels Running Formula”, “Beloved, Henri Nouwen in conversation” and a Microsoft Access reference book.    The death poems were written by Zen monks  and Haiku poets on the verge of death.  Ive posted a sample in the WORDS section of my blog.

I’ve used Jack Daniel’s book extensively to guide my training and as far as training books go, it is in a league all its own.  I gave my copy to Nelson Njeru, a 2:10 Kenyan marathoner who gave a boost to the  George Brown College cross-country team when he began some studies there and signed up to run for them! Nelson, I should mention is now in his forties.

Questions about what my new workplace will be like percolate.  Will I be able to muster up a team for the Bay Street Rat Race or Corporate Challenge ?  Will the golf course across the street have a driving range I can go to at lunch?  I am an ultra- novice golfer but I do find it fun.

As for farewells, I was given a gorgeous floral arrangement and taken out for a delicious lunch by two colleagues.  We called it the tri-level lunch (inside work joke) and caucused a little on big picture work issues.  I made a lot of friends at my workplace and while I look forward to a wonderful new career opportunity I will miss them.  Maybe I’ll be invited back for the holiday party given my status as two-time holiday party committee member.

Many of the “good-byes” involved resolutions by my co-workers to start or stick to a fitness routine.  I seem to have that effect on people  🙂

Adieu, adieu!


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Spend your energy wisely!

The title of this blog was originally the title of an article I wrote on heart-rate monitor training. One of these days I will retrieve this article which resides on the hard drive of an old computer; but for now a few thoughts. A runner wishing to gain fitness, is well-advised to train with a heart rate monitor and arm themselves with their personal heart-rate-training-zone statistics. Just as you would not want to spend more dollars on a item than necessary, so too, most would not want to expend more energy than necessary to get fitter and faster. The cost of this over-training or hyper-training is most often injury.

Detroit marathon

Detroit Marathon 3:11 finish on Ford Field

I had lactate threshold testing done at the Endurance Lab in Toronto as something of a guinea pig. Training zones for individuals are quite variable and tables for training zones express an average only, which can can vary up to 20 beats or more from one person to another. With your personal data you can incorporate threshold running or tempo runs, along with speedwork (near maximum effort) in quantities that will help you to run faster at the minimum energy expenditure. Running at the minimum, means less stress to the musculo-skeletal system, which is most often a runner’s weak link. Find out more about the test itself by clicking on Endurance Lab.

Having run for a decade or so with a heart rate monitor, I had developed a sense of what my training zones might be. Prior to getting the results I made some guesses as to my zones and Adam Johnson who administered the test conceded, when reviewing the results, that he probably was telling me what I already knew. That may have been so, however in addition to the decade of training with the monitor, I had an additional 15 years of marathon training experience and an intuitive sense of how to use a hard-easy training regime.

Back in the day, the early-eighties, specialized running gear was hard to come by. Some frugal runners, like me, took pride in the low cost of the sport and thought it frivolous to designate a regular pair of mitts to running, and wore socks instead of mittens. While today’s gear might make training more comfortable, affordable heart-rate monitors and lactate threshold testing are at the top of my list of how to maximize fitness dollars and improve your understanding of how the body works.

Recommended: Polar heart-rate monitors, a starter version can be had for about $100. The New Balance store will handle any repairs or battery changes for Polar products in (roughly) 10-14 days. Invented in Finland in 1977, the first wireless Heart rate monitor was used as a training aid for the Finnish National Cross Country Ski team.


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Celebrating 30 Years

This is my 30th year of running.  My first goal was to run a marathon when I turned 30 but I ended up running a marathon a few months later at age 26.  It was my first long-distance race ever!  There were no run clinics back then so I used the 3 month marathon training program published in Runner’s World.

Sunday September 12th is the 30th anniversary of the Terry Fox Run. The Terry Fox Run was the first measured route that I had ever run.  Years later I organized Terry Fox run sites at my son’s school and at our neighbourhood YMCA.

Behemoth

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Tiny

30 years ago the Sony Walkman which played cassette tapes, first began to appear in North America at high-end electronics stores like Brack Electronics.  One of my brothers worked at Brack Electronics and I was the first kid on the block to own one.

I wonder sometimes if I was the first runner in Toronto to run with a Walkman.  This thing was huge, about 10 times as thick as an IPod, 5 times as wide and 5 times as long.  Imagine the ingenuity required to strap this thing on without the help of special belts and carrying cases.   Now I run with a camera and IPod that together are barely 10% that size.


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Blogging towards Boston

It has been over two years since I have run a marathon. The last, was Boston 2008 and my time of 3:22 fell a bit short of my hopes.  The year before I placed 3rd in my age group with a 3:17.

My claim to fame is having qualified for Boston at the age of 50, in 3:10, the qualifying time for Open Men (under 35).  As far as I know, 3:10 remains an Ontario age-group record for the marathon.  The qualifying time in my age-category is 4:05.  I’m planning to run Boston 2011 so it is time to start building mileage and inject more intensity into those miles.

Boston marathon 2008

Here I am in 2008, alongside some of those “Open Category”  men.

Currently, I’m running 45-50 miles a week with little high-intensity stuff.  Where am I going to find the time to run another 20-50 miles a week?  And, the motivation to run many of those miles at a very fast pace?

The key elements of marathon training are a long run, a tempo run and interval workouts.  I don’t mind the long run.  Strangely, there is nothing I find more satisfying than the depletion following a run of 18 miles or more.  You can get hooked on that feeling.

Intervals are another story.  It seems unlikely that I will find it in me, to do the 6 x 1 mile workouts at 6 minute pace with a 2 1/2 minute break, that I did a few years back under the tutelage of my coach, former elite steeplechaser and now professor of religion, Zeba Crook. And the tempo runs of 4 x 20 minutes at half-marathon race pace?  Who was that crazy woman?