Save yourself $10 or more

To all fellow procrastinators out there, all you folks who intend to run the NC Marathon or half but haven't actually gotten around to registering: April 2 is the first date that the entry fee jumps up. So jump from here to http://www.ncmarathon.org or http://www.active.com and sign up. You'll save yourself the higher fee and make friends for yourself here at race headquarters, where we'll be able to plan better for food, amenities and other good stuff because we'll have a good idea of numbers.

Then, when you're feeling good about taking care of a task and saving a little money, you can go finish up those tax forms you've been avoiding. The clock keeps ticking.

You going my pace?

This week's poll asks about which goal time you'd like help reaching if we can offer pacers on the NC Marathon course. And if you choose "other," be sure to write in that pace as a comment here.

Your vote matters, you know. Last week's poll about post-race food received the most responses of any poll yet. Go figure: runners and food. The winner was pizza, followed closely by subs, then NC barbecue. We'll see what we can cook up. Pun totally intended.

Junk miles, city miles, and hills

Those of us who have been running for a while (OK for twenty-five years in my case) know exactly what those articles about being in a runner's rut are talking about. There's comfort in the familiar, so we establish weekly routines and keep to them -- our mileage, our routes, even the direction we run the route.

But all that comfortable time on the road isn't doing us as much good as it should be. I just read a great description of the condition by a trainer in Runner's World: Those familiar miles at our same old pace are like highway driving. Our body gets efficient at doing them and then it doesn't require so much fuel. What we need is some in-town driving, some stopping and starting, to rev up the engine and shake up the muscles.

Dena just led me on some city mileage today. She's training for the NC Marathon and doing it right. She's run lots of her longer runs on forgiving trails, she goes to yoga classes to stay flexible, even started some resistance work with a trainer. And on Mondays she runs hills. I joined her because, well, I'm just a sucker for a good time.

Actually, I enjoyed the workout. We ran an easy mile or so, then sprinted (in my case, approximated a sprint) a hill, maybe 100 yards long that starts out easy but churns your gut as you reach the top. Then we turned right around, jogged back, and repeated ourselves, six times total before jogging the mile back to our cars.

It was like speed work but without that hamster in a cage feeling you can get circling a track. We could see the top, then enjoy the slow jog back. And I'm pretty sure my engine had to restart itself a time or two. Inefficiency never felt so good.

Your vote counts

The newest poll is very important as our race committee makes  a decision about food to serve after the race. Vote on the options you see, or add another preference as a comment to this post. We need your feedback.

Results are in, Part 3

In honor of our respondents' choices from the last poll, I think I should go get a massage this week.... Four out of five of you say a masseuse is your first choice as a health practitioner.

NC Marathon People #1: Slade Lewis

Slade Lewis was an occasional runner, doing a few miles here and there, when he worked on the sidelines last year at the first NC Marathon. He'd been helping to organize the event for six months as a member of the race committee, but he'd never considered running a marathon himself.   "I didn't see myself as marathon material," says Lewis, a Greensboro resident.

   That notion changed as he watched the runners go by. All kinds of people run 26.2 m

iles, he realized, not just lightweight, super-fit people. I could do this, he thought.

   Lewis and two close friends -- Frieda Menzer and her husband, Rob MacArthur -- agreed to train for the Marine Corps marathon in Washington, DC, in October. They ra

n long runs together on the weekends and did their own runs during the week. "I ran on the treadmill, ran Hamilton Lakes, the greenway, places around Greensboro I'd never seen before," Lewis says. 

   The marathon itself? "We stayed in Pentagon City and made a weekend out of it," he says. "I was surprised how emotional it all was, running through the capital, and lots of people were running in memory of someone [who'd been killed 

in the war]."

   Lewis, 42, finished in 4:45:02, slower than his goal of 4:30 but emotionally, mentally, and physically satisfying.

   "I like knowing you can train your body to do something like that without blowing an artery or something. The whole race I kept waiting for something to blow."

   MacArthur, Menzer and Lewis (in photo, from left to right, at the Iwo Jima Memorial) plan to repeat the Marine Corps again this fall.  That's after Lewis helps pull off the second annual NC Marathon. As chair of promotions and marketing for the event, he's done everything from gather corporate sponsors to order t-shirts and medals and place advertising. That work, on top of his full-time job as a health insurance consultant and his family, including his wife and young daughter Anna, doesn't leave a lot of time for running. But in some ways, his busy schedule makes the runs more important. 

   "My typical run now is five to seven miles, where it used to be one to three," he says. "I like the solitude, the alone time.

   "Running is definitely part of my exercise regime now. I can't say that I love it, but I can find enjoyment. And it's opened up my eyes to a new culture."

    

Good time for a little yoga

If you are training for the full marathon and getting into longer runs now AND you haven't tried yoga, get yourself to a studio.

   Whether or not you've tried yoga, you've certainly heard the buzz lately. As a former teacher of mine -- hey Cheryl at Family Yoga, I miss you -- used to tell me, yoga is the perfect antidote to distance running. Cheryl used to look for me in class ("where's my runner? this is for you") whenever we did positions that worked the hips, hamstrings, and glutes. Running, as she put it, makes you strong but tightens and shortens your muscles. Yoga stretches them, lengthens them.

    One great warm-up: Cheryl would bring a bag of tennis balls so we could sit first on one cheek, then the other, and roll around on the little ball. It got right to the spot where your overworked hamstring connects to the glute, or butt, muscles. My left one chronically tightens up on any run longer than six miles, and sitting on that ball gets right to the trouble and massages the knotted up stuff.

    Iliotibial band trouble, anyone? Cheryl nursed me through my worst bout of ITB. The pain is in the knee, but the trouble starts in tight hip flexors, which runners desperately need to stretch.

   Yoga rookies may be intimidated to walk into a class where everyone -- typically a bunch of way-too flexible women -- seems to know what they're doing. Try to catch the teacher before the class starts, let her or him know that you're a runner and new to yoga, and then he or she will fully expect you to struggle a bit and suspect your hamstrings are tight. The teacher can often suggest modifications as you start out. The great part, as I can attest, is that with some regular practice, maybe even just once a week, those "damn dog" stretches will start to feel like good "down dogs." Happy training.

If at first you don't succeed...

It's been fun to hear from middle-aged peers who are almost as new to blogging as I am. Mostly what I've heard is along the lines of, "I tried to leave a comment but I couldn't."

     For reasons I can't fathom, I usually have to hit "post comment" twice before my comments are accepted; sometimes the same thing for posting on this blog. I think of it as a safety mechanism -- "are you SURE you want to put this out there for anyone to read?"

    So if you're trying to leave your own insights here and you get a fail message the first time, please try, try again.

Stalling, Part 2

Let's see. It's 15 degrees out there this morning. I just walked my older dog, who slid like crazy on the patches where yesterday's melting snow is now slippery ice. Like the county school system, my Tuesday running partner called off on account of the cold and ice. But I haven't run since Saturday, the sun is up, and I've been in this house for days it seems.

    It's scary how quickly I've lost my tough Ohio blood. A day like this would have been routine in Wooster with Pam, Patrice, and Beverly. We'd be grateful there was sun instead of gray skies, grateful that the wind isn't howling. I'd still be scared of the ice patches, but I'd force myself to be brave and try to keep up with them so I wouldn't miss any of the conversation.

   OK, here I go. Dena just inspired me -- if she can venture out, all the way up there in Madison (I think that's where she lives -- a far piece from Greensboro), I can go. I'll dig around to find my winter-weight tights that haven't seen much action in North Carolina, pull on my heavier mittens.

   It's weird to think that in two short months, the NC Marathon will be here, and it could be a hot day. There, that's a thought to ponder as I head out the door. Be careful out there!