Running in America

I think it's fair to say that America can be credited with the surge in popular running (and jogging) so I've been surprised by how few runners I've actually come across. On the other hand, judging by how incredibly civic people are towards runners - walking in single file to let them pass, for example - they seem very used to them and, what is more, to respect them. The other thing I find surprising is, unlike in Spain and the UK where virtually every newsagents or equivalent carries a copy of Runner's World (if not several other competing publications too), here I have not seen a single running or triathlon magazine; the only "sports" oriented magazines seem to be about bodybuilding (or fishing, if you count that as a sport).

Chia Running

The other day I was browsing Amazon (which, by the way, started up around here, in Seattle) and I was recommended some Chia seeds. These are used by the Tarahumara Indians who feature in the bestselling book "Born to Run". Apparently these seeds were considered by the Aztecs to be a food of the gods. They reportedly have excellent antioxidant properties as well as containing omega 3 and omega 6 in a favorable ratio.

I managed to find some in a trendy pharmacy in the public market in Seattle. I haven't noticed the energizing properties that some say they have but it is still early days. The seeds are not unpleasant to break open with your teeth and they have a strange gelatinous quality, especially if you dissolve them in water. The seeds absorb a lot of water and it is just possible that they help you hyperhydrate rather like taking glycerol (which I recently read was added to the banned substance list last year for it's use as a masking agent).

Good news...

It turned out that my Garmin is in fact working. I'd come to the conclusion that the battery was dead because, after charging it fully two days in a row, I found it with no charge on both occasions. I think it must have turned itself on in my bag both times, unlikely as it sounds.

So I was able to do my series today and now I should be able to go on "random runs" where I make up the route on the fly and use the GPS to get me back.

Sleeping in Seattle

I spent much of the 9 hour flight looking forward to putting on my running shoes (metaphorically speaking, as I was already wearing them in fact) and exploring Seattle. Yesterday it had transpired that each of the four adults had thought that one of the other three had booked the hotel and so it seemed a miracle to have found a decent hotel right down town. A miracle it would have been - it turned out that our booking had been successful but for the month of September. For some reason that no-one seems to know, the whole of Seattle is fully booked. We managed to get a couple of dingy smoking rooms in one of those iconic motels, even further out of town than the airport. Add to that the sad demise of my Garmin watch - just like it's younger brother a year ago, the battery no longer retains any charge; it may have something to do with me having dropped it. The upshot is that, unless I take my iPhone (which has GPS) with me, I can't afford to get lost.




I ended up running alongside the motorway that runs from the town center out to the airport; it was only at the end of my second run that I realized that there was actually a nice lake I could have run around right next to the hotel.

It was interesting if not a little depressing. At the other end of the spectrum from the middle class granola eating Seattle town, one in every two restaurants was out of business succumbing, presumably, to the overwhelming pressure from the plethora of Denny's, Taco Bell and, of course, MacDonald's. What I found depressing was the quality of food that the locals had - somehow I doubted that their home cooking was any better.

At one point I passed a homeless person who was asleep, sitting on a wall with a blanket draped over his head. As I ran by a tool shouted "Boo!!" from the open window of a car.

I'll have to do the rest of my training without any heart rate reference. I particularly hate doing series like this because I don't know when to ease back a little nor can I have the satisfaction of knowing that I did them hard enough. It could have been worse, I suppose: there's never a good time for your Garmin to break but during a race would have been far worse.

Holidays... Wahey!

One more day at work and then I'm off to the States for a couple of weeks (Seattle and San Francisco). My training plan says that I should aim to do a race around the end of the month and after consulting the excellent Running in the USA website (it's amazing just how many races there are and how well organized everything seems to be) I found a race in San Francisco around Lake Merced on the 25th of August - perfect! I think it will be fun to rock up as an "international" (mind you, I have no illusions about how well I will do - there are some seriously fast runners who have taken part in the past, including some quite well known ones from the ultra circuit).

I really enjoy running in other countries. It probably sounds unbelievably sad, but some of the most lasting memories I have of a holiday abroad are the runs I have gone on. There is something so exhilarating about just setting off in a random direction, seeing slices of life and discovering places along the way that are perhaps worth visiting later with the family. In Kyoto, I remember it being so humid that I would run with ice cubes wrapped in a towel around my neck and have to stop every kilometer or so to buy a drink from the ubiquitous vending machines. In Khajuraho (India), people would cycle alongside me and ask me (in a very friendly way) whether they could have my trainers when I had finished with them. I still remember a very picturesque run along the Danube in Budapest that I did several years ago, as if it were yesterday. Or running in Central Park (New York) at night and seeing a couple of raccoons. I have also run in Florianópolis (Brazil), Lisbon, Mexico DF, Cambridge, London, Brighton, Odense (Denmark), Rome and Paris, not to mention various other cities in Spain. Not a bad tally for less than 4 years.

No bike son, you gotta work late

So, as you know if you've been reading this blog, it is currently prohibited to move around my work campus on a bicycle. In fact, it has always been the case but, until very recently, it was one of that type of rule which is quite common in Spain, one that you can basically ignore. The current state of affairs is that they will allow me in to the campus on the bike, provided I go straight to the gym and do not attempt to reach the office bikewise. You have to fight these rules like-for-like: just as there is no name behind the decision, I am contesting it by pulling some strings behind the scenes. So far I have been told on good authority that there will be a "solution" in September. This rather begs the question, what kind of solution can there be other than the obvious, immediate one of just simply letting us ride our bikes on campus again?

Today my heart skipped a beat as it occurred to me that the reason they are resurfacing the road might just be that they are going to put a bike lane! Could it really be? That would be quite simply awesome. It would also have the result of forcing the cars to go in slightly narrower lanes which would give the added benefit of reducing their speed and it being more likely that they stuck to the 40kph speed limit. The punishment for speeding on campus is very severe, much worse than a fine or points on your license: they may banish you to the outside world by taking away your parking space, thus adding a lot of hassle (to the tune of about an hour a day) to your life.

2:59:59

I borrowed this photo from here. The guy on the right must have felt very pleased with himself aftterwards

I'm the first to admit that it is a very silly goal to try to beat 3 hours in the Marathon. Why? Firstly, because every Marathon is different be it due to weather conditions or hills and, secondly, because being able to say that you ran a Marathon in "2 hours something" shouldn't really apply to being just one second faster than someone who took 3 hours to complete it. But, as I have said many times before on this blog, running a Marathon or an Ironman is hardly what would be classified as "sensible behaviour" in the first place, so who is to criticize the setting of a somewhat arbitrary goal.

The three hour mark in the Marathon happens to be a bit of a Holy Grail for many amateur runners. It's quite fast but by no means elite level. I have one friend who has been oh-so-close to breaking it - for example, in Seville he stopped to argue with a police car that crossed in front of him (later the policeman paid him a visit at his house after looking up his race number!) and ended up finishing in 3:00:12.

Yesterday I read an interesting article in Lava magazine, which was based on interviews with the male and female Ironman World record holders (although, if you include Challenge Roth, this record was beaten a week later): Marino Vanhoenacker and Chrissie Wellington. In it, they both say that "age groupers" (the commonly accepted euphemism for non-professional triathlete) shouldn't obsess with results and should remember to enjoy it. Chrissie put it like this: "I see people cross the finish line and the first thing they do is look down at their watch. Stop it! Get an awesome finish line photo and bank that memory. The timing chip can sort the rest out later.” On the one hand it's tempting to say, "It's alright for you to say that - you are the fastest in the World, ever!" but it's also true that she has a good point. I've said before that one of the things I like about the Ironman distance is that you really can't compare one race to another, not even from one year to another over the same course.

I think that there is something to be said for trying to get a personal best time. In Spanish there is a word which is hard to translate into English - "superación"  - it means the act of trying to better oneself. That I think is a very laudable goal - the mistake is to convert it into numbers. Just to know that you have done your best and that you have experienced or learned something new is "superación" enough.