My Track Record

When I was profiled in the March 2007 issue of UltraRunning magazine, I was asked what advice I'd give to other ultra runners. I said:

Don’t overrace! World-class marathoners generally do two or three marathons per year, so why expect to perform your best at seven or more ultras? Identify the events that excite you the most and focus on those.

Sage advice, to be sure. Now let's count my ultramarathons for this year. There was the Bridle Trails 50K in January, the Caumsett Park 50K in March, the Mad City 100K in April, the Miwok 100K in May, the Western States 100-Miler in June, the World Cup 100K in September ... and the JFK 50-Miler in November will bring me to a total of seven for the year.

So how the heck did this happen? Am I just a big fat hypocrite?

No, not exactly.

I began the year not knowing where I'd be working and living as of the summer, so I didn't commit to any races other than Mad City. Then I got a job interview in New Jersey during the first week in March, so I figured that I'd attend Caumsett Park as well and go for the USATF 50K/100K road double. Also around this time, I decided that I wanted to give Western States a shot, but since I hadn't submitted an entry form immediately after my qualifying (top-3) performance at the Sunmart 50-Miler, I was told that I'd have to re-qualify by placing in the top 3 at Miwok.

After my painful Western States experience, I really needed a break. However, out of all the races left on the 2007 calendar, the one I really cared about was the World Cup 100K, so I patched up my shredded muscles and got ready for that. After the World Cup, I still needed a break, but then I determined that we could save money by going east for Thanksgiving rather than Christmas and grabbing some prize money at JFK the weekend beforehand. So here I am again, mostly recovered from the last race and trying to squeeze in a bit of training before tapering for the next one.

Each isolated decision to attend a particular event seemed reasonable to me, but the cumulative effect is that I've been going to the well too often. My performances and enjoyment have suffered accordingly. After November 17th -- even if I'm able to grind out a victory against past JFK winners Dave Mackey (2003) and Pete Breckinridge (2006), 2006 Montrail Ultra Cup champ Eric Grossman, and 1100 other people -- I hope to start heeding my own advice.

Posted by crowther at 11:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

When I get home from work, my wife may ask me how my day went. Often I'll say something like, "It was great; I went 2 for 2," or "Pretty bad; I was 1 for 3."

I'm not actually reporting my number of base hits out of my number of times at bat, as a professional baseball player might do. I'm telling her how many of my experiments "worked" out of the total number I attempted that day. If I'm feeling chatty, I might also give the number of errors I made in performing the experiments.

It remains to be seen whether quantifying my lab performance in this way will be useful to my wife or anyone else. A drop in my batting average might reflect a failure to concentrate, an increase in the complexity of the experiments, or a change in the standards of the official scorer. But I do get some satisfaction out of reporting these numbers, however dubious they may be. And how can you argue with someone who's hitting .810 this month?

Posted by crowther at 5:22 PM | Permalink

Phil had his first birthday on October 20th.

Here is one way to look at the changes that have occurred over the past year:

And here is another:

Posted by crowther at 11:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Why are these people smiling? Hint: the answer begins with a 2.

Our friend Sally Bergesen (at left) ran her first sub-3:00 marathon in Portland on October 7th. Her official gun time was 2:59:27.

One could say that Sally did this the smart way, running nearly even half-marathon splits of 1:28 and 1:31. One could also say that she did it the hard way, racing after two full days on her feet at the pre-marathon expo, where she was selling women's running apparel.

I'm not sure how Sally weathered this extended "warmup" without exhausting herself. Regardless, I was impressed with her positive outlook prior to the race. "I still think I can break 3," she told me. "All right..." I said, conveying something less than total confidence. "Just make sure you have a backup plan, OK?"

You see, that's the sort of priceless wisdom she can count on from me, her unofficial, extremely part-time quasi-coach. What I do, basically, is make up workouts for her and my wife about once or twice a week. I don't do an especially good job of this; I just try to give them some variety and get them to run fast without forcing them to work much harder than they want to.

I think of this as the "First, do no harm" approach. Avoid turning an enjoyable activity into a miserable one, and let the athletes' own interests and motivation take them where they want to go.

I'll take a bit of credit for not making Sally miserable. Beyond that, the credit should go to her and her trusty training partners.

Congratulations, Sally.

Posted by crowther at 11:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Even residents of enviro-friendly Seattle buy large gas-guzzling cars; they just feel more defensive about it than they would if they lived elsewhere.

Yesterday I saw a minivan-like vehicle (I don't know exactly what it was because I know nothing -- I mean NOTHING -- about automobiles) with a license plate that read, "4R4SONS."

Oh, OK. All right. Since you have four sons, I'll grant that you have a legitimate need for a minivan.

But why have four sons? Given the rate at which the world's population is depleting its resources, wouldn't three have been more than enough?

Posted by crowther at 7:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

I first became aware of Scott Jurek at about the same time that I became aware of 100-mile races in general. My initial reaction to the existence of such races was a mixture of incredulity and defensiveness: "Why would anyone want to run 100 miles? Maybe some people are just too slow to run a decent marathon, so that's the only way they can feel like a champion."

As for Jurek himself, it was easy enough to put him in a box. He was "that Western States guy." He captured a few other titles here and there, but the main thing he did to distinguish himself was win the Western States 100 year after year. A notable achievement, and yet I wondered whether he had any special aptitude for anything beyond this one particular race.

These days, it's getting a lot harder for me to dismiss Scott's abilities and accomplishments. This is partly due to my own firsthand exploration of ultramarathons; like many others before me, I've discovered that having more road speed than someone else does not necessarily allow me to keep up with him (or her) on a rugged trail. But it's also because Scott has recently displayed much more versatility than I originally gave him credit for.

In the summer of 2005, a couple of weeks after his seventh consecutive Western States victory (ho, hum), Scott made his Badwater debut. This 135-mile road race through Death Valley and up the side of Mount Whitney bears little resemblance to Western States, aside from the heat, yet Scott won handily and set a course record (24:36). The following year, he defended his Badwater title and also triumphed at the Spartathlon, an even longer road race (153 miles), against an international field including four former victors.

This past July, he took on the Hardrock 100. This absurd competition includes 33,000 feet of total elevation gain, almost twice as much as Western States, and takes place entirely at high altitude (average elevation: 11,186 feet). Another win, another course record (26:08).

Then, two weeks ago, he won the Spartathlon again over another stellar field.

Since it no longer seems reasonable to minimize such feats, I guess I've started to envy them instead. Questions such as "How come he won his European road race, and I was only 11th in mine?" come to mind.

The answer to that question may be extremely complicated and not fully known to me. But one component of it is simply the fact that Jurek has paid his dues. He's been an ultramarathoner for over a decade. Upon a foundation of hard training and healthy living, he's done the necessary experiments to figure out what he can do and how he can do it.

In comparison, I've been doing ultras for about three years.

Maybe I'll eventually enjoy success that, in my mind, is comparable to Scott's. Maybe I won't. Whatever my own potential is, I won't achieve it unless I do a better job of controlling the impatience that I've displayed this year.

Patience can take many forms. One form is to train more and race less, which I hope to do next year. Another is to pause to reflect on what's already happened and to seek out good examples to follow.

Congratulations, Scott, on another fine summer of racing. And thanks for continuing to be an example worth following.

Posted by crowther at 5:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

You need to refill your water bottle, so you go to a nearby pair of drinking fountains, one of which is closer to the ground to permit easier access by children, people in wheelchairs, et al. To fill your bottle as completely as possible, you should use...
A. the higher fountain
B. the lower fountain
C. whichever one has a better stream, which you can't know until you've tried both

Until recently, I had never thought carefully about this question. That must be why I've gotten it wrong hundreds of times over the past 15 years or so. Almost invariably, I'd activate the higher fountain, be disappointed by its sad little trickle of water, try the lower fountain, and receive a stronger, higher-arching stream that could be more easily directed into the bottle. I never learned anything from this experience because I always attributed the better flow of the lower fountain to "luck." Such a scientific mind, eh?

Then last week it occurred to me that pressure is needed to drive water through the fountains, and that the higher the water climbs against gravity, the more the pressure will dissipate. The water is under higher pressure when it exits the lower fountain, so it's ejected more forcefully.

I don't know why it took me so long to realize such a simple truth, but the reason probably relates to the fact that I'm a biologist rather than a physicist.

Posted by crowther at 11:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)