My Track Record

I think my wife thinks of me as a trophy husband.

Not someone whose main attributes are youthfulness and attractiveness -- although I am younger than she -- but rather someone who can help her win trophies. While neither of us is a national-class runner at sub-ultramarathon distances, we usually place well in local two-person events.

As with the relationship itself, it took her a while to decide that I was a suitable racing partner. Although we met through a running club (Club Northwest), she subsequently entered team races with her friend Sally (for running-only events), Sally's husband Alec (for "Muddy Buddy" ride-and-run events), or MerGeo.com (for adventure racing). It wasn't until 2004 -- six years after we met -- that we joined forces in a competitive context.

Our debut as a running duo came at the Bridle Trails Winter Trail Running Festival. For some reason, the tiny field for the 50K pairs relay was ridiculously competitive that year, and we wound up 4th among the six teams. More recently, though, we won the "Douple Dip" division of the 2008 Resolution Run and were the runner-up mixed-gender team at the same event this year.

Which brings us to the Great Kilted Run tomorrow at Magnuson Park. It wasn't a race that I had planned to do, but there's a team division, and my wife has that gleam in her eye.... So I guess it's time to do a bit of skirt-chasing for the sake of marital harmony.

Posted by crowther at 7:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

When Phil went to sleep last night, the scene looked like this:

An astute observer might notice the three fire trucks in and around Phil's bed and wonder whether his transfer to the police department has made him long for his firefighting days.

Then again, one might also notice the two teddy bears and five blankets and conclude simply that the kid is a hoarder.

Posted by crowther at 4:54 AM | Permalink

As noted in my last running update, my increasing emphasis on enjoying my training has, on several recent occasions, led me to skip ambitious workouts in favor of easy runs. That's not always how it works, though; sometimes the focus on fun causes me to run harder.

This past Saturday I had planned to do 25 or so miles over relatively flat terrain. Then Brian Morrison suggested that I join him on a "Twelve Peaks" run at Tiger Mountain. This would cover about 33 miles with about 9,000 feet of elevation gain -- possibly doing enough damage to hamper my performance at the upcoming Endurance Challenge 50.

Despite the physiological risks, I said yes. It had been almost exactly a year since my last run with Brian -- the same one, actually, except that Susannah Beck joined us last time -- and I couldn't resist the chance to traverse an interesting route with a good friend while catching up on the latest ultrarunning gossip. (Sample topic: what does Adam Lint eat before races?)

My quads did not particularly enjoy the run or its aftermath, but my brain sure did.

Posted by crowther at 9:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

One of Phil's recent discoveries is the presence of "bad guys" in various books and movies. In Phil's mind, the critical distinction between bad guys and nice guys seems to be that bad guys bite, whereas nice guys do not.

Reflecting this newfound interest in bad guys, as well as his improving investigative skills, Phil has requested and received a transfer from the Fire Department to the Police Department (see photo by Ed Sloan below).

I expect that the biters of Beacon Hill will soon be brought to justice.

Posted by crowther at 9:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

In a previous post, I mentioned a few running-related lessons from 2008 that I hoped to act upon in 2009. Lesson #3 was that "my training should be less 'scientific' and more enjoyable."

So far, so good.

Every so often, I have a week or two where I'm stressed out by work-related pressures and not in the mood to do speed workouts. Last year, I would have done the workouts anyway, performed poorly, and wound up discouraged and even more stressed out. This year, I've just been skipping the speedwork, and it's been great!

What I haven't been doing is skipping runs. Slow runs between work and home are not a big deal, so I've kept doing them during high-stress periods, sometimes even adding extra ones on easy days (commuting on foot both ways instead of running one way and biking one way). I figure that if I'm not running fast, I might as well get some miles in. (Recent weeks have included a 100-mile week and a 96-mile week, which for me are quite high-volume.)

Avoiding workouts doesn't necessarily feel great while I'm avoiding them. Upon returning to a track-like venue after a week or two of being away, though, I've often been pleasantly surprised by the spring in my stride. Most recently, I ran the Nordstrom Beat the Bridge 8K on May 17th after a 10-day no-serious-speedwork period and wound up 4th in 24:53 -- not far off of my 3rd-place 24:50 from 2006.

Maybe a couple more weeks of track truancy is all I need to ensure a good finish at the Endurance Challenge 50-miler on June 6th.

Posted by crowther at 11:09 PM | Permalink

The University of Washington is soliciting entries for a "short film festival limited to the new media of pocket video cameras, cell phones, and mobile appliances."

The festival's theme is, "What do U do at the UW?" Since my job mostly entails malaria-related research, I made a 55-second film about that -- sort of. If you want to watch it, here's the URL:
http://zooppa.com/ads/uw-pocket-media-film-festival/videos/a-shot-at-adulthood

Thanks to my friend Do Peterson and his friend Alex Stemm-Wolf for lending me their music, and thanks to several colleagues for lending me their children.

Posted by crowther at 10:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Joel Richardson (joelrichardson@verizon.net), a fellow Williams College alumnus, is collecting information for a book about the history of Williams track and field. Among the questions he's asking is, "Do you think being on a track team (specifically the Williams team) benefited you in ways other than just being on the team (such as values learned, becoming more disciplined, or friendships and memorable meets and performances)?"

Below is my answer.

Being on the Williams track and cross-country teams benefited me in at least four ways.

First, I'm generally slow to make friends, so those daily interactions with fellow runners were important to me, especially during my freshman year, when I hadn't yet bonded with others through shared academic interests or other routes.

Second, races served (and still serve) as a useful outlet for my competitive instincts. When I was injured in the spring of '92, I felt myself becoming more of a grade-grubber trying to beat the test scores of my classmates -- a less appropriate expression of this competitiveness.

Third, my development as a runner in college provided a vivid and dramatic lesson in my (and everyone's?) capacity for self-improvement. A similar revelation is summarized beautifully in an essay by Adam Gopnik on the late Kirk Varnedoe, who before becoming a giant of the art world was a jock at Williams: "He [Varnedoe] gave football all the credit. He had discovered himself playing football, first at his prep school, St. Andrew’s in Delaware, as an overweight and, by all reports, unimpressive adolescent, and then at Williams, where, improbably, he became a starting defensive end. The appeal of football wasn’t that it 'built character' -- he knew just how cruddy a character a football player could have. It was that it allowed you to make a self. You were one kind of person with one kind of body and one set of possibilities, and then you worked at it and you were another. This model was so simple and so powerful that you could apply it to anything. It was ordinary magic: You worked harder than the next guy, and you were better than the next guy. It put your fate in your own hands."

Track may be an even better teacher of this lesson than football, since changes in performance are so easy to quantify. When I arrived at Williams, my personal best time for 3000 meters was 9:35; by the time I left, it was 8:43. It's hard to experience this sort of physical transformation and not be changed psychologically -- not become more hopeful or less fatalistic. I was changed.

Fourth, my coaches and teammates helped foster a lasting enjoyment of the sport. We took ourselves seriously and trained hard, yet were often reminded that there was more to running than trying to win races. I give Pete Farwell a lot of credit for promoting and extending the values of his predecessors: respect for tradition, respect for the environment, concern for one's teammates, the simple joys of gliding through the wilderness....

I still run because, fundamentally, I'm still a competitive person. But I still enjoy it as much as I do in part because of Pete.

Posted by crowther at 8:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

The rules of the Titus Van Rijn One-Hour Distance Classic are straightforward: any interested person can go to a track at any time during the designated period (May 1 to June 1 this year), run as far as possible in one hour, rehydrate with some black cherry soda, and notify event organizers Andy Roth (andyleeroth@gmail.com) and Mike Persick (mpersick@comcast.net) of the distance covered.

The protocol is so straightforward, in fact, that my friends and I decided to spice it up a bit this year. Two kinds of black cherry soda were purchased: an expensive microbrew from Virgil's, and another variety of no particular distinction. Runners who met their pre-race goals would get the bottles of Virgil's; those who didn't would get the other stuff.

Goal-wise, Warren and Will endeavored to beat their respective 2008 tallies of 14,940 and 14,240 meters, while I set a goal of 17,768 meters, wanting to be closer to my 2006 distance (18,115) than my 2008 distance (17,420).

We met at the Roosevelt High School track on Saturday, May 2nd. By happy coincidence, local coach Tom Cotner and several of his runners were also in the area and offered cheers of encouragement amidst their own (non-TVR) workouts. Also in attendance was a 40ish female from Vancouver, seemingly bearing a familial resemblance to Will but identifying herself only as a "talent scout" from the 2010 Olympic Games.

With such robust support on hand, the hour passed quickly for the three of us. Warren and Will ran together for the entire race, with Will finally pulling ahead for good (15,003 to 14,980) in the final minute. I totaled 17,920 meters in a steady solo effort. Virgil's sodas were then hoisted and enjoyed by all on the infield of the track while 1:49 half-miler Bruce Jackson whizzed by in lane 1.

In closing, we bid a reluctant farewell to Warren, who will move to Vermont at the end of the month. No resident of Vermont has ever participated in the TVR; will he become the first next year? Time will tell.

Posted by crowther at 4:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

(Click here for a larger version.)

Posted by crowther at 8:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)