Thanks go to Dr Tarveen Ahluwalia DC for providing me with this wonderful video. Tarveen was a pacer in a recent running clinic I taught and is also a running clinic instructor, as well as a personal trainer.

Other videos – ca.youtube.com/kinetichealthoneline

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The Western States Endurance Run from Squaw Valley to Auburn is not just any 100-mile race. It is the 100-mile race. It is the first foot race of that distance to have been held, and it has been going strong for 35 years. Even though plenty of people have difficulties believing that you could find more than 3 people willing to sign up for this kind of race, the truth is that this particular race is vastly oversubscribed. Runners have to go through a lottery process in order to be accepted for the entry list. For this year’s race, the chances of being accepted were no higher than 16 percent, and the just under 400 runners chosen counted themselves as the lucky ones.

It goes without saying that 100-mile races are gruelling. It takes months to prepare your body and mind for that kind of challenge, and it will take over your life.

So, when the announcement came on Wednesday, just 3 days before the start, that the race had been cancelled, it sent shockwaves through the ultra running community.

The decision had not been taken lightly. The race committee consists of experienced and passionate ultra runners, and if they felt there was a realistic option of staging the race, they would have gone ahead with it. However, the fires in California have made this impossible. The current air quality near the course is so bad that people are discouraged from even mowing their own lawns, never mind running 100 miles. At one place, the fires are so close to the course that the possibility of trapping runners could not be entirely ruled out and of course, the roads are needed for the fire crews—having hundreds of vehicles for the race on those narrow roads would have massively hindered their efforts.

I know several people who were signed up for the race, have trained for months, have spent a lot of money on air fares and accommodation, and are now faced with the fact that the race will not take place. I can only imagine how incredibly frustrating this must be, though I wholeheartedly support the decision of the race committee to cancel the race when they cannot guarantee the safety of runners or their support crews. Nobody wants to be responsible for the loss of life.

The ultra running scene will recover from the knock, I have no doubts about it.

August 31, 490 BC:

Sunny, with a little bit of wind. Did my final long run today. Was a bit of a struggle. These new Nike sandals don’t have much arch support. To add to my misery, I got an olive pit stuck in them at about mile 13. On the plus side, these FigShots are just the boost I need during my run.

It’s pretty hard to nail down my pace because my sundial doesn’t have a minute or second hand. But I’m pretty sure I can finish sub-noon.

Still can’t figure out what “BC” means and why we’re counting years backwards.

September 18, 490 BC:

Thank Zeus the tapering is almost over. I’ve got a lot of, uh, excess energy and Penelope says she won’t sleep with me unless I wear a Trojan. But it ruins the mood for me. Those guys are pretty heavy and the armor chafes.

September 22, 490 BC:

Race Day! Big crowd at the start ñ about 10,000 local dudes and boatloads of guys in long white singlets with names like Datis and Artaphernes. There was a lot of confusion, particularly since all the bibs had Greek numerals on them. This seemed to be a big problem for the boat people and they started to act up. There was a lot of jostling going on and it was getting ugly when everyone started running in all different directions, screaming at the top of their lungs. I figured the race had started and headed out.

The course was poorly marked and it didn’t look like they blocked off traffic on the E75. I almost got nailed by one of those chariots with the blades on the wheel hubs. And the aid stations were pathetic. Whose idea was it to hand out fennel juice?

As we got to the hills I noticed I had a pretty big lead on the rest of the field. In fact, I couldn’t see them at all. The coeds from Nea Ionia Women’s College were out in force, but they weren’t nearly as pretty as I had heard they were.

Anyway, my quads were burning pretty bad as I headed down the home stretch into Athens. I was starting to wish I had entered the Persian 200 Meter Dash for the Boats instead. I thought the finish line was at the Parthenon, but then I realized it hadn’t been built yet! (Damn backwards calendar again.) I saw a group of old guys in togas so I sprinted toward them. Running my last tired strides I yelled, “Victory, victory!”

I collapsed from a stomach cramp right at the end (fennel juice and FigShots, not a good combination), but I’m pretty happy with the finish line painting. Those thieves want five tetradrachma for a copy!

Maybe I should pay up. Who else will remember this race after today?

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Dear Complete Running Team,

I am emailing to see if you can post a reminder about “Spirit of the Marathon” premiering in Canada tonight!

The film will be showing in 52 Cineplex theaters across Canada at 7:00 PM local time. Tickets and theater information can be found at www.cineplex.com. I’ve attached a press release as well and image of the poster.

So you’ve run the Marine Corps Marathon, the Chicago Marathon, the New York Marathon and even the Flying Pig Marathon, but now you’re looking for something a little different. Although running a marathon anywhere is a unique experience in the scope of life’s experiences, some marathons add to the interest by virtue of their location and courses. Take, for example, the Marathon du Medoc. It features a show before the departure, events during the race with over 90% of runners in disguise, some 52 other events alongside the race, 22 refreshment stands, 21 food stands and special gourmet stands (oysters, ham, steak, cheese, ice cream, Medoc attic, etc.). With so many unique races around, I thought I’d help you with this list:

March 1, 2008
Baikal International Ice Running Marathon - Baikal Lake, Russia
Run a marathon on a frozen lake

March 27, 2008
Marathon des Sables – Sahara Desert, Morocco
Hottest Ultra-Marathon

March 30, 2008
Around The Bay 30K – Hamilton, ON, Canada
Oldest Race in North America (and right in my backyard – I’ve done this race 2 times and had a blast!)

Apr 11, 2008
Dead Sea Marathon – Amman, Jordan
Lowest Marathon – Finish Line is 400 m below sea level

May 17, 2008
Great Wall Marathon – Tianjin Province, China
Run along one of the seven wonders of the medieval world – they can even see ya from outer space!

June 21, 2008
Mayor’s Midnight Sun Marathon – Anchorage, Alaska
Run in the daylight at night – race starts at 11 pm

June 28, 2008
Safaricom Marathon – Lewa Wildlife Conservancy, Kenya
Run in a game conservancy

Sep 6, 2008
Jungfrau Marathon – Jungfrau, Switzerland
Slowest Marathon – an all uphill course

Marathon du Medoc - France
A marathon where they serve wine at the aid stations (now that’s my kind of marathon!)

Oct 26, 2008
Niagara Falls International Marathon – Niagara Falls, NY, USA, and Niagara Falls, ON, Canada
The only marathon that starts in one country and ends in another (my hubby proposed to me at this race, so it’s a personal favourite).

Nov 9, 2008
Athens Marathon – Athens, Greece
Run the original course that Phidippides ran

Dec 7, 2008
Tucson Marathon – Tucson, Arizona, USA
Fastest marathon – the course is mostly downhill! 

Nov 1, 2009
Everest Marathon – Everest Base Camp, Nepal
Highest Marathon – race starts at 17,000 ft above sea level

No matter which race you run, it is sure to be a unique experience. Run on, my friends!

Photo credit: Kai Mengel

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Once again the Versus network will be broadcasting the Boston Marathon live on Patriots’ Day, April 21, from 9:30 to 12:30 Eastern time, with a rebroadcast at 4 p.m. Eastern.

I’m a latecomer to watching marathons and other track and field events on TV. I have a recollection of watching Jim Ryun and Marty Liquori battle it out in the mile when I was a kid. Maybe it was on the Wide World of Sports.

Even with the explosion of sports on television, it’s a lot easier to find horse racing and car racing than human racing. ESPN runs coverage of poker, dominoes and spelling bees, but I don’t remember the last time I saw a track clip on Sportscenter.

With coverage so sporadic, you’re happy anytime any major running event shows up on TV, even if you have to listen to Al Trautwig’s banalities for three hours.

To be fair, it’s difficult to do a decent job of broadcasting a marathon without a major outlay of cash. You’ll always get to see the front-runners, but you’ll rarely see anyone making a move from behind. There simply aren’t enough mobile cameras and announcers to keep an eye on everything.

Sometimes you get a break. NBC Sports had ideal conditions for the men’s Olympic trials in the marathon last November—a small field and a multiple-loop course. It streamed the race live on the Web, covered the leaders and pack-trailers with a split-screen, and ran a graphic with mile splits along the bottom of the screen. You can get a taste of the coverage from this YouTube clip:

However, the half-hour highlight show it ran later in the day was very unsatisfying.

And sometimes, the race itself overcomes the limitations of the broadcast. Remember Joan Benoit Samuelson running alone on that Los Angeles freeway? How about Berhane Adere sprinting past a celebrating Adriana Pirtea in the last 50 yards to capture the Chicago Marathon?

Every year a local station here in Sacramento runs about four hours of live coverage of the California International Marathon and it’s usually pretty amateurish. However, in 2006, we had a tremendous battle to the finish between Jonathan Ndambuki and Kassohad Kabiso. Click the video link under the photo for the last couple of minutes of the race. And yes, that’s Dick Beardsley lending commentary.

Watching the Boston Marathon on TV is fun, but I’m hoping that next year I’ll have to tape it. You can’t run it and watch it at the same time.

I do not come to this judgment in a hasty fashion. I love running. I love reading about running. I love writing about running. I have a high tolerance for the minutiae of the sport which make for less-than-scintillating stories.

Nevertheless, I suspect the story of how 33-year-old bank employee (or is it banker?) Brian Jones became the subject of a Reuters profile would be a lot more interesting than the profile itself.

Let’s dissect this marvel, shall we?

It begins innocently enough: “Choking pollution and sapping heat will be the major concerns for the world’s elite marathon runners at this year’s Beijing Olympics.”

OK, Himmer’s covering the Tokyo Marathon, but let’s follow him.

“But for millions of other marathon men and women, concerns are of an altogether more painful nature.” And what could they be?

“After his first assault at a marathon last year banker Brian Jones was shocked to discover the sharp pain in his chest was not cardiovascular, but bleeding nipples.”

After just having written a column about peeing, I’m in no position to throw stones on account of frivolity. But the story goes nowhere from here.

Apparently this was Brian’s second Tokyo Marathon. He had chafed nipples last year, but used Vaseline this year. He ran a 4:37:46, an improvement of 11 minutes over last year. He walked for two kilometers. It was windy and cold.

The crowd of spectators helped, but he was demoralized because he was running slower than an old lady, and there was a guy in front of him running backwards.

He was in a lot of pain when he finished, but he might run another marathon. Maybe.

That’s all, folks. Reuters is “the leading global provider of news, financial information and technology solutions to the world’s media, financial institutions, businesses and individuals” but it couldn’t find a better or funnier story among 32,000 runners and 12,000 volunteers.

They could have saved a few bucks by contacting bloggers runmotozo or Miami Runner for a race report.

We can even use a new tagline for the Running Blog Family: “Better writing than Reuters!”

Spirit of the Marathon had a nationwide, one-night showing in some 460 theaters. It was an event and film worthy of its subject matter.

Many of us have been waiting a long time to see this film—long enough to remember when it was called Land of the Gods: The Legend of the Marathon and the producers were looking for marathoners Kim Alexis or Anthony Edwards to narrate—not to mention marathon-hubby Tom Cruise.

There’s no sign of Tom, but you won’t miss him because the stories of six marathoners are compelling enough on their own.

Director/cinematographer Jon Dunham headed a team of experienced, award-winning documentary film-makers who created a work of both intimacy and grandeur. Dunham is a marathoner himself, and assembled all the veterans of marathon achievement, lore and training. You’ll find such luminaries as Bill Rodgers, Frank Shorter, Grete Waitz, Dick Beardsley, Kathrine Switzer, Amby Burfoot, Hal Higdon and on and on and on…

You get history, you get philosophy, but most of all you get the personal stories of six runners: two elites (Deena Kastor and Daniel Njenga), two experienced amateurs (Ryan Bradley and Jerry Meyers) and two first-timers (Leah Caille and Lori O’Connor). Cameras followed them throughout their training for the 2005 Chicago Marathon.

It can’t be easy to make a visually unique film about running, but Dunham’s camera work carries a lot of the story-telling, particularly the early morning long runs. During the shots of the starting line in Chicago I could actually feel my heart rate increase. But the scenes that got the biggest reactions from the audience were the ones that captured the small moments:

* Lori’s husband saying that any distance over five miles “is why we have public transportation.”

* Each of the runners carbo-loading and laying out their gear the night before the race.

* Daniel Njenga grinding out the last half-mile.

* Someone in the crowd with a sign that reads, “You’re all crazy.”

* Leah struggling as she crosses the finish line, then pausing to hit her stopwatch before bursting into tears.

* The final credits that include a list of the cast and crew’s marathon PRs.

The film’s flaws don’t detract from the overall experience. It could have been edited a little tighter—with the “bonus footage” it comes in at about two hours, which might be a bit much even for running enthusiasts. And while all the runners are interesting characters, you’ll leave the theater wishing you had learned more about Daniel Njenga, his village in Kenya, his working life in Japan, and his ongoing quest to win the Chicago Marathon.

Make sure you stick around for the “DVD extras,” mainly for the weirdness factor. Watch Njenga antagonize hippos! See Kastor spill too much balsamic vinegar in her avocado enchiladas! And does that tiny woman really eat 5,000 calories a day?

The one-night event was popular enough to prompt a second, encore showing on Thursday, February 21. If you don’t get to see it in a theater, not to worry. There is no question that it will eventually be available on DVD.

“Spirit of the Marathon” is a movie for runners, their families and for anyone who has ever thought about lacing them up and laying it all on the line for 26.2 miles. Highly recommended.
—–
Click here to read what others in the blogosphere are saying about Spirit of the Marathon.

Preliminary reports from the December 9, 2007, Honolulu Marathon indicated as many as 3,500 were missing from the results due to problems with a new disposable timing tag system designed by SAI Timing & Tracking.

But race officials announced late last week that all the times were suspect. “The data is a little off,” said Honolulu Marathon Association president Dr. Jim Barahal. “Not dramatically, but from a few seconds to as much as 70 seconds.”

Organizers are in the process of examining each frame of the race’s finish line video in an effort to provide each runner with an accurate gun time. There is no way to compute an official chip time. Additionally, there are no official split times, leaving open a hypothetical “Rosie Ruiz” problem. Without intermediate splits, it’s virtually impossible to tell if a finisher ran the entire 26.2 miles.

As you might expect, marathon officials promised to return to standard chip timing next year, and the Honolulu fiasco prompted organizers of next month’s Houston Marathon to drop plans to use the SAI tags.

SAI has its defenders. “It wasn’t good; it was outstanding,” said Terry Collier, executive race director of the Las Vegas Marathon, who added, “I have not had one negative response about the new technology.”

But Collier couldn’t have been looking very hard. In fact, there’s a whole Internet forum of Las Vegas marathon finishers with timing tag complaints, and even bigger complaints about the lack of response from Collier and his colleagues. And there were at least a few complaints from Philadelphia Marathon finishers as well.

Most runners will be patient with new technology, particularly one that promises splits each mile, but one has to wonder if this was oversold before it was ready. SAI beta-tested the timing tags at the Falmouth Road Race, Chicago Half Marathon, Pittsburgh Great Race and Free Press Marathon. If any readers ran one of these and were involved with the testing, e-mail me here at mike@completerunning.com.