Run to Win

Daniel Quintanilla got some footage of last weekend’s ultramarathon out on Great Cranberry Island and put together a nice 5 minute video to give you a good sampling of what the island race is all about:

Ever wonder what it takes to run an ultramarathon?

Timmy O’Neill decides to hire Scott Jurek and find out:

(Source: Cedar Wright)

The Great Cranberry Island 50k is a race that you should add to your list of races you need to run at least once.

I really wasn’t sure what to expect going into the race. It starts at 11:30 in the morning on a small island off the coast of Maine, where you run multiple loops along the 2 mile paved road that goes from one end of the island to the other.

Because it is such a small event, you get a lot of personal attention that you just can’t be afforded at a larger race.

Because you run out and back on the same loop 8 times, you get to know all of the other runners and volunteers throughout the race as you pass one another over and over again.
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The Bradbury Scuffle is now in it’s third year, and is probably my favorite trail race. No, let me rephrase that…it is definitely my favorite trail race.

We were running a wee bit late out of the house on the way there, and it took a while to find someplace to stow the car at the race, so my warmup was a little lacking at just under 9 minutes.

That’s all right, though, since the humidity meant that it didn’t take much to warm up my muscles anyway and it did it’s most important job: it cleared my head.

I still felt tired and woozy on the drive over to the race despite resting my eyes most of the way (obviously, Erin was behind the wheel.)

While warming up and standing at the stating line, I saw a few people that are normally much faster than I am on the roads, and one person that I thought looked familiar and who warmed up in a BAA singlet but whom I hadn’t met…maybe I had seen him in New England Runner at one point? Turns out that he was Mike Dowling, a 2:34 marathoner. (That’s another way of saying that he’s a lot faster than I am.)
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My friend and local Maine Track Club membership chair Sandra Walton asked me recently about my Atayne shirts and what I thought about how well they wicked sweat away from you.

Rather than relying on opinions, she decided to get to the truth of the matter…

Okay, I had to prove it to myself. If it was just a matter of high humidity that gave me a super soaked shirt, then I didn’t want to continue to speak negatively about the Atayne shirt’s wicking properties, SO…

I did a little experiment with the help of my bachelors-in-chemical-engineering husband, Casey. Thanks, Brock, for the idea.

The Experiment

I took 5 different brands of shirts, and ran on the treadmill in each one for exactly 5 minutes after a 10 minute warm up. I weighed the shirts in grams before the run, immediately after the 5 minute run, 5 minutes after the run, and 10 minutes after the run.

The Data

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The weather was relatively cool last night at the 10^th Back Cove 5k, hovering in the mid-70s (which is nice compared to the past few weeks), but the humidity was much higher than I was expecting it to be.

I went out right where I wanted to be with a 5:33, after which I passed a few people to run most of the race in third place. My effort was pretty consistent, with 5:43 and 5:39 miles, but then I actually got outsprinted at the very end of the race by Nathan Buck, who just completed his 5^th race of the season and is poised to jump onto the leader board after his next race. I did manage to go under 18 minutes for a 5k for the first time this year, which is nice.

Marc Halverson and Abshir Horor led the entire race and finished together in 16:46. Too bad I couldn’t really see the finish too well from almost a minute behind them. Similarly, Dana Quincy had almost a minute lead in the women’s race, finishing in 18:59.

Dave Manz (01:46:35) managed to maintain his spot atop the leader board this week despite not improving his cumulative time, but Toby Grindal (1:48:13) managed to drop 35 seconds in second place and I have moved back to third place by dropping over 3 minutes from cumulative time when I traded last week’s 20:52 for this week’s 17:41. Lily Childress didn’t run this week but maintains her spot atop the leader board in 02:02:53.

More Info: Full Results – Leader Board – Complete Runner’s List

As a fan and spectator, the Utica BoilerMaker had what you really want to see at the finish line of any race, a 3 way sprint into a new course record:

This year’s Boilermaker had a record field of 11,524, and both men’s and women’s course records fell. Lelisa Desisa won the race in 42:46, with Edna Kiplagat winning the women’s race in 47:56.

My favorite comment in the video has to be: “There is no chance we’ll see a course record set here in Utica ever again.”

(Source: WKTV)

Last week, I reviewed The Barefoot Running Book, and found that it was short, to the point, and was a great primer for somebody that is venturing out into barefoot running for the first time.

Many of the lessons could easily be learned on your own, but knowing what to expect and following a plan from somebody that has helped others learn to run barefoot is certainly easier than muddling through yourself and hoping you don’t get injured.

I also held a contest to give a copy of the book away, where the only criteria to enter was to share your own experience or lack thereof in the comments. If you were one of the people who entered, then you had a 1 in 22 chance of winning.

After a quick visit to Random.org, the winner has been chosen!

Here is the winning comment:
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