The Thinking Runner

Surprise, surprise!

2006-11-05T20:03:00.000-08:00

Not many would have put their money on a non-African winning a marathon major, especially not in New York, with all the focus on a possible repeat of the thrilling finish between last year's winner (Tergat) and runner-up (Ramaala). However, it was the unheralded Brazilian, Marilson Gomez dos Santos, who made a decisive move in the latter stages and held off a late challenge by Kiogora ("Baba") and Tergat, the latter finishing a few steps behind Kiogora to take third place. Kiogora's podium place was some consolation for the failure of several KIMbia athletes in Chicago two weeks ago, and they are no doubt celebrating tonight. Last year's runner up, Ramaala, faded bady to finish ninth.

Lance Armstrong, who had garnered a disproportionate amount of media coverage leading up to the event, was paced to a sub-3 effort (2:59:36) by an all-star crew composed of Salazar, Samuelson, and none other than the great Hicham El Guerrouj, who reportedly handed him water and gels along the way (El G must've gone crazy running 7 minute miles, though I suppose Nike made it well worth his while.)

Boston update: I'm two weeks into the program, still in the base phase; I ran 52 miles this week, most of it at an easy 7:30 min/mile pace. This is the highest mileage I've hit since September 2005 (56 miles at the peak of my training for Chicago). This time, I intend to max out at 75 miles/week with some workouts and see where that gets me. Hopefully into the 2:40s.

Update: Steve Cram, former mile world record holder (3:46), was also part of today's race and finished in a somewhat sedate 3:27:26. Read his column here.

Bittersweet victory

2006-10-22T18:45:00.000-07:00

Robert Cheruiyot ran a perfect race in inclement weather to win the 2006 Chicago Marathon earlier today in a time of 2:07:35, but was denied his chance to fully celebrate it when he slipped at the finish line, slamming his head on the road and suffering a severe head injury in the process - reports point to a brain haemorrhage, but he is supposedly in a stable condition. Luckily for him, his momentum carried him across the finish line - imagine the agony of a DNF if he'd slipped a couple of feet before the line.

Cheruiyot, also winner of the Boston Marathon earlier this year, slipped on the textureless sponsor logo just before the finishing mat, which had been made more slick by the rain. Click on the image to see the video of his fall. CNN has another good angle where you can even see the officials removing the offending sponsor logo before more runners could succumb to the same fate. The incident generated quite a buzz on the Letsrun message boards, which you can read about here, here and here.

Boston bound

2006-10-17T22:54:00.000-07:00

I'm back! And hitting Boston this coming April. I've maintained a decent level of fitness through this period of silence, running about 30-35 mile weeks for the most part, but motivating myself to get out there without a race goal was quite difficult. Now I have a race pinned, and with almost exactly 6 months to train, I'm shooting for something in the range of 2:45. Along the way, I plan to run a 10K and a half-marathon and improve on those times as well. Ambitious, perhaps, but dreams are often the precursor to reality!

Travelogue: Amsterdam

2006-08-12T17:39:00.000-07:00

As all good things must come to an end, so too must my memorable trip to Europe. Two weeks seemed like a really short time to visit four cities steeped in history and culture, but in the end it turned out to be a very good balance between expense and enjoyment (I'm just a grad student on a slightly-better-than-shoestring budget!). I managed just 19 miles of running on the entire trip, but compensated a bit by walking more than 50 miles in the same period. Since many have asked about my trip, I thought it might be a good idea to post my itinerary in some detail on this blog. I intended for it to be just one entry, but it started ballooning up a bit, so I decided to split it in four sections, one for each city I visited. Move your mouse over each photo for a one-line description. Enjoy!

Friday, 28 July

Having woken up at the unearthly hour of 2am in order to make a 6am flight, I was pretty bleary-eyed when I landed in Amsterdam Schiphol 16 hours later at 7 a.m. local time. I nonetheless took a train to Amsterdam Centraal, where I dropped my bags off in a locker and met N. Amsterdam is a very pretty city with narrow streets and is crisscrossed by a number of canals. We first visited the Anne Frank house, which is a few minutes walk from Centraal Station in the historic district known as the Centrum. This is the building in which Anne Frank hid from the Nazis during WWII from 1942 up until her discovery and deportation to Auschwitz in 1944. We then proceeded to aimlessly wander the city, discovering street after street teeming with bicyclists and trams, nearly getting run over more than once. There are plenty of tourists in Amsterdam, and we saw many on numerous boats cruising the vast network of canals that cuts across the city. We met P in the afternoon and visited the Van Gogh museum, which houses many of his paintings. At this point, I was a little woozy from having slept just 3 of the past 48 hours and decided it was time to call it a day. We took a train to Utrecht (a half hour south of Amsterdam), where we were to stay with E and P. I think I went to bed at 7pm and woke up at 11am the next morning.

Saturday, 29 July

We started pretty late the next day thanks to my marathon sleeping session and reached Amsterdam around 2pm. We swung by the shipping museum, which details the maritime history of the Netherlands, followed by some more street roaming, a DIY backpacker-style lunch on the street beside a canal, and explored the Dam Square. At this point, I decided to go for my first run in the Vondelpark, which is in the southwestern corner of the city. Running with a map in hand, I proceeded to lose myself a few times before finally finding the park. The day's walking had taken its toll on my feet, but I still managed a good 55 minutes - a bit over 7 miles. I returned to Centraal Station, ate "dinner" on the platform and off we went to - ahem - the famed Red Light District. Although I didn't actually "do" anything here, just the sights and sounds of the place were completely different from anything I've ever seen or heard. Stay away from this place if you're orthodox and conservative. I think we returned to Utrecht at about 2am that night.

Sunday, 30 July

The next day, E was kind enough to take us out in his car to some very picturesque towns north of Amsterdam. These included Markem, which used to be a fishing village and still has a harbour for small boats and yachts, and Edam, famous for its Dutch cheeses. We spent most of the day walking around these towns and tasted some excellent cheeses. E and P treated us to a very nice dinner that night, as we were to leave for Paris the following morning.

Stay tuned for the next part - Travelogue: Paris

Wanderlust

2006-07-14T20:00:00.000-07:00

It has become something of a standing joke in my circles that I rarely venture past the half-mile radius of my school campus. However, I will be setting that score right in two weeks' time, when I leave on a fifteen-day backpacking trip across four European countries. I will be visiting the areas in and around Amsterdam, Paris, Berlin, and Krakow in Poland. Since this is an independent trip not attached to any tour group, it has involved a fair amount of paperwork and planning, most of which has been done. I'm currently working out the finer details, such as the exact places to see within each area, the best way to carry money, and so on. Obviously, I'm also concerned about how this trip is going to affect my training schedule - I hope to get atleast about 6-7 days of running done so I don't land up too far back at the end of the trip. So people who've been to these places, hit me with your suggestions - local attractions as well as good spots to run!

Living without limits

2006-07-09T00:22:00.000-07:00

Living in the comfort of 24-hour hot and cold water, high-speed Internet access and plush, air-conditioned offices, it is easy to conjure up what we perceive to be limits on human ability, toughness, endurance and determination. Those who are able to break out of this mould often achieve great things. One such man was the Swedish adventurer/climber, Göran Kropp, whose ascent of Everest without the aid of bottled oxygen made him one of only two men to have achieved the incredible feat (the other is Reinhold Messner).

Quoting this entry from the Wikipedia, "... Kropp left Jönköping on October 16, 1995, on a specially-designed bicycle with 108 kg (240 lb) of gear. He traveled 8,000 miles on the bicycle and arrived at Everest Base Camp in April 1996. In a big powwow, all of the Everest expeditions currently on the mountain agreed that Kropp would attempt to summit first. On May 3, Kropp blazed a trail through thigh-deep snow and reached 300 feet of the summit. However, Kropp decided to turn around, believing that he would be too tired to descend safely if he went up further. Three weeks later, on May 23, Kropp again tackled the mountain, this time successfully summitting. He then triumphantly cycled home."

People like Kropp have shown that humans are capable of feats many would consider unimaginable. All we have to do is break the shackles that hold us back.

Setbacks

2006-06-25T13:09:00.000-07:00

Just when everything seemed, if you will excuse the term, hunky-dory, with the mileage getting into the mid-forties, bam! I strained my foot through some very indiscreet bounding exercises without warming up. As a result, I ran a grand total of 10 miles last week, setting my training back about 10 days. To add insult to injury, my computer's hard disk is beginning to fail as well, prompting frantic backup and reinstallation efforts that have kept me busy for the past few days. It looks like I'm going to have to replace the drive, but thanks to Knoppix, I've been able to stay online throughout this mess. This time, I'm getting rid of Windows once and for all - gotta love Debian GNU/Linux running KDE! And I should be back running this week.

Anbessa

2006-06-03T00:50:00.000-07:00

Track and music videos make for an unlikely combination, but here is your chance to check out a music video with a track theme. Anbessa tells of the passing of the baton from the Emperor (Haile Gebrselassie) to the new lion (Kenenisa Bekele) and is based on the 10,000m Olympic final in Athens. With a catchy tune and meaningful lyrics (there's a partial translation), this is an eminently viewable video. What I find particularly amazing is how Bekele and Sihine keep looking back for Gebrselassie, who is unable to keep up with them, even slowing down the pace so he can catch up to them, in spite of the fact that they're playing at the biggest stage of competition.

Track gems

2006-06-01T21:41:00.000-07:00

Joffroi has been kind enough to host Kenenisa Bekele's fabulous 10,000m world record race (26:17.54) in Brussels last year and also El Guerrouj's mind-boggling mile world record (3:43.13), both very much in the "must-have" category for any track fan.

IAAF Grand Prix, Hengelo - Video Feed

2006-05-28T18:19:00.000-07:00

Free streaming video feed from the IAAF Grand Prix in Hengelo, Netherlands, is available here. Commentary is in Dutch, but hey, it's free. You can also check this out, it's pretty good, if you follow a bit of French.

Farewell, Hicham

2006-05-22T20:09:00.000-07:00

Lagat, Baala, Estevez and Heshko are among those who will be heaving a collective sigh of relief at Hicham El-Guerrouj's decision, announced today at a press conference in Casablanca, to retire from competitive athletics. For he was a tremendous athlete - possibly the greatest middle-distance runner of all time - who dominated the 1,500m for nearly ten years as no one else has done. Having picked up two Olympic golds in addition to four consecutive world championship medals and innumerable Golden League / Grand Prix titles (not to mention the four world records that still bear his name), he had a very believable reason for choosing to step down - that he had nothing left to prove, nothing to motivate him to go further.

He will be remembered as a legend, and it will be a long, long time before someone can lay claim to his shoes. Thank you, Hicham, you have been a tremendous source of inspiration for me.

Update: This is fantastic news, if it's true. Sub-2:25, I think he's being a bit modest there - 5:30 min/mile should be a stroll in the park for someone who's run 3:43 for the mile and 12:50 for 5K.

Traffic

2006-05-06T20:24:00.000-07:00

This page has been getting a ton of hits ever since the big search engines (Google, Yahoo, and their like) began indexing links to videos - many, of course, from Morocco and Ethiopia - so welcome aboard, people of al-Maghreb and the horn of Africa. I'm as big a fan of couscous and injera as I am of Guerrouj and Bekele.

In passing, I should add that today is the 52^nd anniversary of Bannister's sub-4 minute mile.

Laziness

2006-04-25T22:19:00.000-07:00

"no comment on boston/london? what's going on?"

That was the first thing in my email inbox this morning, and I admit - with due apologies to those of you who take the time to check this space regularly - that I have been kind of slacking off. I'll go so far as to admit that I haven't yet reset my desk clock to daylight time, which we switched to about three weeks ago. But running I have been - now up to 50 minutes almost everyday - which places me at about 35 mpw, a good starting point from which to launch into some serious mileage. I suppose it's getting close to the point where I should be looking at possible races to target this fall.

Thanks for the birthday wishes, everyone. I feel quite old, so I gifted myself a pair of these to help make me feel younger :)

Older and, um ... faster?

2006-04-06T00:00:00.000-07:00

I guess I just have to accept the fact that the clock ticked over another year today - and I am indeed 26. The past year has seen me work into the best shape of my life thus far, a sub-40 10K, and a sub-3:00 marathon. And despite the injury that set me back a few months, I haven't lost sight of the goals I set myself immediately after last year's Chicago marathon. Twenty-six -- will this be the year of the marathon?

IAAF X-C Championships - 2006

2006-03-30T20:02:00.000-08:00

The 34th IAAF World Cross Country Championships will take place in Fukuoka, Japan, on April 1-2. In recent years, this event has all but become a one-man show - the brilliant Kenenisa Bekele has taken both the short (4km) and long (12km) races for the past four years. Will he accomplish an extraordinary fifth? He certainly seems in ominous shape, having won 3,000m gold at the recently concluded World Indoor Championships. Will the talented Saif Shaheen of Qatar (formerly Stephen Cherono of Kenya, double steeplechase world champion), who ran him close in that race, mount a successful challenge? Or will we be surprised by the 19-year old Kenyan sensation, Augustine Choge, who burst into the news last week with a superb 12:56 5,000m victory at the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne?

The cross-country championships are being webcast live on WCSN.

Happy anniversary

2006-03-27T19:59:00.000-08:00

Just a note to remind readers that The Thinking Runner has been online exactly one year to the day, and to thank them for their continued interest in and support of my athletic pursuits, notwithstanding my insipid prose and erratic posting schedule.

Picture this

2006-03-19T16:13:00.000-08:00

Today being a Sunday, I was afraid I'd sleep over, but I managed to drag myself out of bed at 7:30am to go check out the 21^st edition of the Los Angeles Marathon. I ran a couple of blocks to the four-mile mark, and was just in time to catch the men's lead pack. The elite women had a 15-minute headstart on the men and had apparently already crossed that mark before I arrived (the idea is that, if the men catch up to the women before the finish, they receive a substantial "challenge bonus" in addition to their prize money, but if the women hold on, they get the bonus instead.)

At this point, I was fortunate enough to run into R, whom I was acquainted with from the university track where I used to run sometimes. As he was planning to catch the runners at various points along the course, I hopped along with him and caught the lead women and men at the 16-mile mark. We then tried to catch them again at the 25-mile mark, but road closures and excessive traffic on the side streets ensured that we arrived about 10 minutes too late. Benson Cherono won the men's division with a fantastic time of 2:08:40, while Lidiya Grigoryeva of Russia clinched the women's race in 2:25:10. Ethiopian Gete Wami, the 10,000m bronze medallist at the Atlanta Olympics, finished just a few seconds behind in 2:25:26.

My camera has an unbelievable lag time between depressing the shoot button and registering the picture, and is hardly suited for sports photography (well, golf, maybe ...), but I did click a few and they are up on Flickr for anyone that's interested.

Fast-forward

2006-03-17T23:02:00.000-08:00

I didn't quite realize it'd been over a year since I ran my first marathon, here in Los Angeles, until I spotted street closure notices for this year's edition, to be held on Sunday. I will, for reasons obvious to those who have been patient enough to follow this journal, not be participating as a runner, but I'm going to be around as a spectator, taking pictures and cheering those who will be running. It's a nice little loop course that cuts across my neighbourhood multiple times, leaving me with a good chance of getting a few shots of the elite athletes as well as those of my friends (though I'm not sure if my camera's shutter speed will permit me to snap the elites before they move out of its FOV).

I'm sure there's plenty of jittery folks closely monitoring the weather forecast, which, at least for now, promises cool and overcast conditions for race day. This should be a fun Sunday - what's more, I don't even need to do my laundry this weekend!

Us and them

2006-03-11T18:21:00.000-08:00

I was at the bus stop a few days ago, returning home from school. As a bus approached the stop, the obese woman standing beside me enquired whether the bus would take her to the next stop, which was just about a hundred yards away. I replied in the affirmative, but could not resist adding that she'd probably have got there quicker if she'd just walked (she waited at the stop for well over five minutes). She mentioned something about the cold; I simply smiled back.

Since my runs are usually conducted at a good clip in comparison to the average jogger, I usually have to endure shouts of "Faster!" and the occasional derogatory remark about the length of my shorts. Today, I finally collected my first "Run, Forrest!" from an obese couple whose idea of a date is probably sharing a whopper at the local Burger King. I usually pay no attention to any of this; after all, I'm not the one with 50% body fat and arteries dangerously clogged with cholesterol.

I just find it surprising that in spite of all the awareness there is today about the ill-effects of sedentary lives and poor diets, people can be so lazy and negligent about taking care of themselves. As if that's not enough, some of them even take it upon themselves to poke fun at others who do care. What gives?

Getting back in shape

2006-03-05T11:26:00.000-08:00

It's almost exactly three months since I started back up running after a two-month injury layoff, and it's taken me that long to work up to 30 minutes a day. No doubt I've been extremely conservative, but I promised myself I wouldn't take any chances with this comeback effort. I'm surprised, however, that I was able to ramp up my fitness level within this period so that 7:10-7:20 min/mile now seems easy, whereas it took me about a year and a half to reach that level in the first place. I suppose this is what Daniels calls his "ease-of-maintenance" principle. To quote him,

"Once you break the barrier of the five-minute mile, or any other personal goal, the training effort required to repeat the task is usually well short of what it took to reach the goal in the first place."

Thirty-five minutes a day for the next two weeks. I don't think I've ever been so disciplined about anything else.

Reorganization

2006-02-18T11:40:00.000-08:00

I've been making significant changes to my lifestyle over the past month, trying to streamline my schedule in the interests of increased productivity. This follows from a realization that this is my fourth year in grad school, and I cannot stay here forever. As a result, I've become much more of a morning person, getting my daily runs over by 8:30am, which leaves the rest of the day open for work without interruption (with the exception of the mandatory coffee break every three hours or so). I've also drastically cut the time I used to spend idly surfing the Internet, in particular the Letsrun message boards, which sucked up a lot of my time in the latter part of last year.

As for the running, it's going pretty well so far. I run most days, 25 minutes everyday now (~ 22 mpw), going up to 30 minutes next week. The pace is a moderate 7:15-7:30 min / mile at this point. My plan is to increase the duration by 5 minutes every two weeks. I guess I'll have a solid platform to launch into some good races once I get the daily runs up to an hour (around 55-60 mpw).

Hope everyone else has been having a good winter, especially those who are targeting spring marathons over the next couple of months.

The complete athlete

2006-01-29T23:22:00.000-08:00

As fans and practitioners of distance running, we typically think of Geb, Tergat, El Guerrouj, Bekele, and their like. Yet, as I was watching the legendary Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon just yesterday, I could not help but wonder at his amazing athleticism, and more specifically, at its completeness.
In the first hour of the movie (after the opening credits), he barely raises a fist, delighting us instead with his feline agility in jumping over obstacles, scaling ropes and walls. When he does decide to demonstrate his skill in martial arts, we express wonderment at his amazing muscle development (it was reported that he had a body-fat measurement of about 1.5%) and deployment, rubber-like flexibility and lightning reflexes, not to mention his remarkable skill with the bo (quarterstaff) and the nunchaku.

Yes, there is no doubt in my mind that he was the complete athlete.

Back in the saddle

2006-01-15T05:51:00.000-08:00

Well, that didn't seem like a month at all, but I had a nice, slow, relaxing time of it, which was exactly what the doctor ordered. This is the perfect time to settle into a more disciplined schedule, and as you can see by the timestamp on this entry, I'm already taking necessary measures. I just need to make sure it is a sustained effort.

I'm also well on the road to recovery from my shin problems. I worked out almost every day of my vacation, and am at the point where I can run about 20 minutes everyday at easy pace with no discomfort. I'm doing most of (all?) my running in very comfortable lightweight flats, the Puma H-Streets. This has greatly improved my running form and lower leg strength. I've been very careful with this comeback, and depending on my progress, I will hopefully be able to target some fast races later this year, maybe even a good fall marathon. We'll see.

Ahh ...

2005-12-24T07:05:00.000-08:00

It feels great to have the coffee handed to me every morning, instead of having to get up and make it myself. Ditto for every other meal. Clothes magically laundered with no effort on my part. Pleasant, balmy weather with clear skies, highs in the low 80s, lows in the mid-60s, with a pleasant sea-breeze to boot (I'll post a picture when I get a chance.) Chaotic traffic, making every outing a death-defying expedition (pedestrians do not have right of way!)

Yeah, I'm back home and enjoying every bit of it.

Tagged

2005-12-16T03:01:00.000-08:00

I never expected for this journal to be well-known or popular, and generally this has been a pretty quiet place, but as it stands, I've been tagged by Donald with instructions to reveal five random facts about myself. So here goes.

1) When I was younger, I wanted to be a paleontologist, an astronomer, and a computer programmer in that order.

2) I grew up in the tropics and saw snow for the first time last winter at the age of twenty-four.

3) I thoroughly detest noise and crowds. I (silently) curse gas-powered leafblowers and those who operate them, and do my best to stay away from the throngs. The silent guy in that group of three or more is probably me.

4) I am a conservationist and a strong proponent of minimal living. I believe in living with the smallest possible footprint. I don't have an automobile (by choice); I walk or take the metro.

5) My full name consists of no less than 31 alphabets, a fact that has inconvenienced me more than once.

Whew, that was tough! I can't imagine how some guys come up with lists of one hundred. Anyway, I'm not sure who else really reads this stuff, so if you are reading this, consider yourself tagged.