Bonk Free Boston

Around Christmas 2005 I found myself looking for a challenge. Not sure why, but I was. During a conversation with my friend Randy, he said “Why don’t we pick out a spring marathon? It would be a good excuse to workout and keep off the winter flab.” There are a fair number of spring marathons (including two of the megas: London and Boston) which I guess is a reaction to this common insanity of setting a spring time end goal for an intense winter training project. I cannot imagine how many foolhardy marathon attempts begin with such a conversation, but I suspect there are many. Our objective? The Colorado Marathon.

Training began. Most of the time, we trained independently because of day-to-day work schedule conflicts and training regimen preferences (Randy liked to cross-train, I preferred good old fashion mileage). As the weather grew warmer, we did some trail runs together. The miles piled up and so did my training pains. Plantar fasciitis, shin splints and tight hamstrings. I’ve been a runner since junior high and I have NEVER experienced a training season plagued by as many aggravations. At one point, I had to shut down to heal and missed a full week of training including a planned 20 mile run (not good). I began questioning the wisdom of my high mileage training plan as well as the whole marathon idea in general. But I battled on to May 7, 2006 and made it to race day.

Before the start, Randy and I wandered around to connect with some others we knew that were also running the race. Then we were off. All went well for the first couple hours: I was ahead of plan at the halfway point, zoomed past the classic bonk point at 18 miles, hydrated plenty, ate CLIF SHOT Bloks like they were going out of style and enjoyed the race route scenery. At 21 miles, I hit the wall. Sheer will, and some encouragement from another friend named Jeff, pushed me to the finish in 3:50, well off my planned 3:15 target (which was the Boston qualifying time for my age group that year… more on that later). Randy finished 6 minutes ahead of me. I was so wasted that I couldn’t even drink the FREE beer at the finish. Pathetic and uncharacteristic of me, but at least I completed the race.

The next day, I could barely walk. Post-race recovery was not going to be a pretty thing. For months afterwards I struggled to regain elasticity in my right hamstring: the muscle was so tight that even 6 months later it hurt to drive a car for more than about 15 minutes. I had decided that race was to be my one and only marathon and began thinking about other endurance racing challenges like Olympic Tris and Half Ironman Tris where the race durations and fitness levels were similar to marathons, but with less running (and abuse) during training.

Randy, meanwhile, was thinking about doing the race again in spring 2007. I’ve known Randy for a long time and for years I tried to get him to do a race with me. Even something relatively easy like Bolder Boulder was of no interest to him. “Why should I pay someone to run in a crowd?” was his standard response whenever I pressed. Yet here’s this same guy chasing marathons. Killing me. About the same time in fall 2006, I left Level 3 to start NaviGo Global. The unpredictability of starting the business meant I was still running, but didn’t really have any race objectives in mind since I didn’t know from day-to-day where I might need to be to make a living. Picking a race wasn’t possible. Randy, on the other hand, proceeded to train for and finish the Colorado Marathon a second time, shaving off 30 minutes to finish in an 3:14. And he qualified for Boston which, as I mentioned early, was the time goal I had set a year early. I was impressed and somewhat jealous.

Fast forward another year. This coming Monday, April 21st, Patriots’ Day 2008, Randy will compete in the 112th running of the Boston Marathon after another long winter training program. I’d like to think that in some small way I had an influence on Randy reaching this race, but alas, it’s 100% Randy’s doing. His effort and his motivation got him there. Plus some tolerance on the part of his family since training for marathons is time consuming. I wish Randy the very best of luck and a no bonk race: enjoy the fruits of your labor as they’ve been well earned. It is a great achievement.

BTW… My next race will be Bolder Boulder 2008 this Memorial Day, but I’m already looking past that event. Any suggestions?

Facelift

Picked out a new pre-canned WordPress theme (Connections out, MistyLook in). I was ready for a change after nearly a year and a half. One of these days perhaps I’ll build my own theme.

Image adapted from Alice in Chains "Facelift” album cover art ©1990

Rugby: Undoubtedly the Greatest Game

Recently I received an e-mail from a friend containing a copy of a popular joke regarding repossession of the United States by the United Kingdom. It’s rather old (c. 2000), but still pretty funny. The manifesto describes a range of things American’s will need to stop doing / start doing once the UK is again in charge such as: spelling things properly, replacing traffic lights with roundabouts and paying back taxes from 1776 until now. In this 16 point version of the joke (supposedly penned by John Cleese), one of the stipulations was:

12. You will cease playing American football. There is only one kind of proper football; you call it soccer. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which has some similarities to American football, but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like a bunch of nancies). Don’t try Rugby – the South Africans and Kiwis will thrash you, like they regularly thrash us.

Most of the other requirements are quite silly and in-line with the joke. This one, however, is one I tend to agree with.

Now, I enjoy football as much as the next guy (especially college football), but I believe Americans have greatly overlooked soccer. Football isn’t even close when it comes to the global following soccer enjoys. More importantly, we have under appreciated rugby. I suspect 4 out of 5 Americans might not even know what rugby is. Rugby, to my way of thinking, should be America’s game and one we dominate on a global stage. Here’s why:

• American’s love contact sports, but they love impact sports even more. Rugby, like football, is a game of hard hits with minimal pads, dirty uniforms, busted fingers, bloody lips (no helmets) and testoterone driven aggression. Trust me… as a former college club rugby player, this is a physical game.
• The scoring is more varied, much like football. Scores are often in the 20s and 30s and a nil-nil draw is very rare (unlike soccer). You can score on a try (like a touchdown), a goal (like a field goal) and kick after try (etc). To score a try, you actually have to touch the ball to the ground (a touch down… get it?), not simply “break the plane”, then go up to the replay booth for confirmation (boring). Unlike in football, kicks after try are not gimmes because the ball isn’t placed in the same spot every time. Rather, the ball is kicked off a tee, but from a location based on where the ball was touched down in the goal area (tricky).
• Game play is fast and furious and game length is predictable. There are two 40 minute halves with a 10 minute halftime. There are no time-outs. If a player runs out of bounds, the clock continues. If there’s an injury, the clock continues (but the referee keeps an estimate of the time that play was stopped and tacks on a bit at the end of each half to make up for that). While this means it’s hard to find time to hit the fridge for a beer or visit the restroom, it also means no commercials and that you can normally guess within about 10-15 minutes when a match will end.
• Everybody plays “both ways”. There aren’t unlimited substitutions and there isn’t an offense and defense. There is the pack and the backs. The pack is comprised of the big guys and the backs are the quick guys. I won’t go into scrums, line outs, kicking to touch, second phase attacks and so forth, but the bottom line is players need to be durable, extremely fit and have an ability to quickly change mindset.
• There are a fair number of rules (or “laws” in the parlance of many International sports). Americans seem to love games with lots of arcane requirements about what’s right / wrong and we love even more to argue about whether or not a rule was broken while watching a game. What makes rugby even better is that there are only three officials on the field: a referee and two touch judges (on the sidelines). There are ample opportunities to second guess when only six eyes are on the players.
• As to why America should dominate, we have the genetics. Take a look at your average professional football tight end, defensive end or line backer. Most of these guys are 250+ lbs and 6′2″ to 6′5″. Big boys and easily on par with the biggest players from the power countries like South Africa and New Zealand. Throw in a few of the fitter 325 lbs offensive line types that have the endurance and now you’ve got a pack stacked with players that can match up with anyone. After the pack, well go get a few typical 225 lbs tailbacks that run 4.2 40s, have good hands and like to block as well as run, sprinkle in a couple speedy cornerback types with moves and you’ve got a world class group of backs. Our weak point would be the kicking game, but with some good coaching, that could be overcome.

What’s really stopping America from becoming a force in rugby is the competition from other sports. We simply have too many other games vying for our attention and investment (both financial and emotional). And football is so deeply entrenched I simply can’t see how it could ever be displaced such that the top players playing football could be enticed to go down the rugby path instead. Look at how long it’s take soccer to get a toehold in the US.

I love football, but I never miss the rare rugby game that comes along on cable, even if it means choosing rugby over football. In that scenario, there is no competition.