Run to Win

The 2^nd annual Maine Coach and Athlete Cross Country Clinic was on August 18th, 2008 at the University of Southern Maine. This is the third part of my reporting on the clinic; the first part was about injury prevention and treatment and the second part was about nutrition basics and fueling. This part covers foot and biomechanical structure and the selection of proper footwear.

Selecting Proper Footwear

The third presentation of the night was from the owner of the Maine Running Company, John Rogers. John’s career in the running business started in product development for Nike and Mizuno, but he retired from doing that to start a specialty running store here in Southern Maine about 4 years ago.

“We try to find the right shoe for people.”

John and his employees use a 6 step fitting process to make sure that they are getting fitted with the proper shoes when they come into the store.

The 6 steps consist of determining information about the runner and his or her running habits, as well as some specific tests to help them determine what each athlete needs.

This 6 step process includes:
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In a continuing collaboration with Scott over at Straight to the Bar, we will be writing about great sources of information for the month of November.

Today, I would like to talk about the best sources of running advice. The trick to getting good running advice is to spend time where runners congregate. Here are a few of the best places to find somebody that knows more about running than you do and won’t mind sharing:
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The Back Cove 5k Race Series concluded tonight with some great competition. Mark Goettel led three other runners to sub-17 times in a blazing 16:37.

For the past few weeks, people have been making fun of me for worrying about who might place first in the overall series since I had a pretty comfortable lead. I knew that Scott Gorneau (4^th in 16:57) and Chris Gatchell both had a chance to catch me, and I knew that they were going to go for it. Chris came in right behind Mark to take second place in 16:39, and was only 6 seconds behind me in the overall standings with a cumulative time of 01:42:35.

Carol Fanning and myself took the series wins. Carol had a more comfortable 1 minute lead over second place than I did. We are pictured below with Colin Ingram, the New England Mizuno representative, who came to Portland from New Hampshire to present us with our gift certificates and to watch the race. The final standings are available by clicking on the picture, and the series race leaders are listed below the picture.

2007 Back Cove 5k Winners

I would like to thank everybody for coming out for the series this year. There were almost 900 runners this year who ran at least one race, and 54 runners who ran at least 6 races. There were 3 races with more than 100 people, and other than May 16^th (with 17 people) there were at least 49 people racing every week! Taken as a group, each race averaged over 73 finishers, with 1,315 people crossing the line this year.

A very special thanks needs to be given to Stu Palmer for all of the hard work that he has done making sure that the event went off without a hitch every week, and to all of the sponsors who made the race possible. That includes John Rogers of the Maine Running Company, Portland Trails, and Mizuno running shoes.

(Photo credit goes to Stu Palmer!)

The 1st annual Maine Coach and Athlete Cross Country Clinic was August 16^th, 2007 at Falmouth High School. This is the second of two articles summarizing the clinic. The first article mentioned each person on the panel, and summarized the first hour plus of speakers. You can read part 1 here.

This second article continues with the second half of the panel:
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The 1^st annual Maine Coach and Athlete Cross Country Clinic was on August 16^th, 2007 at Falmouth High School. There were about 75 people in attendance, and the clinic lasted for about 2 and a half hours. I have split up my notes and thoughts on the clinic into two parts, the second of which will appear this afternoon.

The clinic was put together by Falmouth coach Danny Paul, and sponsored by John Rogers of the Maine Running Company. The panel brought together some of the best local (and not so local) coaches and experts to talk on various topics relating to a high school cross country coach and his/her athletes. The topics covered are also relevant to other coaches and to the athletes themselves, of course.

The panel and the (very) general topics covered were:
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