Road ID discount!

(I know this is a shameless plug. . . . I've been meaning to get one of these for a long time, and maybe you should, too!)

Now I can be like Karno!

Hey Everyone,

I just ordered one of the best products ever. It's called a Road ID - perhaps you've heard of it. If you haven't, go to their website and check it out. Road ID is a great product that could save your life someday.

When I ordered, they gave me a coupon that I could pass along to my friends. Here's the coupon number:

Coupon Number: ThanksPaul18923790

The coupon is good for $1 off any Road ID order placed by 11/25/2012. To order, simply go to RoadID.com or click the link below:

http://www.RoadID.com/?CID=ThanksPaul18923790

If you prefer, you can call them at 800-345-6336.

You can thank me later,

Paul Mastin

Oh by the way, their website is awesome, the customer service is outstanding, and the owners are very smart and good looking. 

Now I've gone and done it.

I finally got around to registering for a race!  In the 4 1/2 years or so that I've been running, I've said all along that having a race on the calendar is often the only thing that gets me out the door to run, at least with any consistency.  So now I have a target race: The Isle du Bois 50K on December 8.  This is the race I ran last December 6 days after having run White Rock.  It's only 6 weeks out, which doesn't give me a lot of time, but I figure I can get some good miles in, with a couple of long runs, and maybe run a decent race.

Last year I ran that race on tired legs and finished in 7:17.  Earlier this year I ran another 50K without much training and finished in 7:41.  A few weeks before White Rock last year, I ran Rockledge Rumble in 6:50.  Granted, IDB is actually 54K, so it's hard to compare with other races.  Maybe on fresher legs, I can beat last year's 7:17.  Break 7 hours?  Maybe.

So now it's out there for all the world to know.  Or at least the three of you who will read this post.  I'm officially in training mode, now!  Isle du Bois, here I come!

I hate trail litter

I almost said I hate trail litterers, but I don't.  By the grace of God, I love my fellow man.

GU packs and the like on the trail irritate me, but I'm willing to give people the benefit of the doubt.  I understand that even a conscientious runner, who pockets his empties, might inadvertently leave one behind if it works its way out of his pocket as he runs.  It can happen.

Beer cans and cups on the trail make me angry.  When you pick up your 24 pack of Busch at the Chevron, why not pick up a trash bag, too?  Is it really that hard to put your beer cans in a trash bag and haul them out at the end of your little redneck soiree?

But the attitude behind this hypothetical conversation really boils my blood:

Turd face: Hey, I got me this couple a bags a trash, and my curb-side trash can is full.  Trash pick up ain't for 3 more days.  I dunno what I'm goin' ta do.
Butt wipe: Don't worry, throw it in the back a mah truck an' we'll haul it off.
Turd face: Where we goin' ta haul it to?
Butt wipe: Thar's some trails right over there behind our neighborhood.  We kin jes drive up the trail a ways, then toss all this trash out tha truck.
Turd face: Thanks, pal, yer a genius!

I wish I had a way to track these bozos down.  My preferred punishment would be a hefty fine, preferably payable as a donation to a trail conservation group, then several Saturdays of community service cleaning up the trails, to be served on days of major NASCAR races.  I will permit them to TiVo the race, but I'll be sure and tell them who won before they get home.

Random picture of trash.  Not my trails, but could be.

The Longest Race, by Ed Ayres

One of the great joys of running, especially an all-day event like an ultramarathon, is falling into step with someone and spending the time running together to learn about each other, hear about their racing experiences, and share a bit of life together.  I have found that you can learn more about someone and forge deeper friendships by running on a trial for a couple of hours than you can by sitting next to someone at work every day for a year.

Ayres, running strong.

Ed Ayers has run a few races (quite a few, actually, more than half a century's worth), and reading his new book, The Longest Race: A Lifelong Runner, an Iconic Ultramarathon, and the Case for Human Endurance, must be a bit like the experience of sharing the trail with him for a few hours.  The framework of the book is a race report of his 2001 JFK 50 Mile endurance run, at which he set the course record for his age group.  He offers details of the course, the race itself, and his experiences that day, but The Longest Race is much more than a race report.

Woven among the mile markers and aid stations of the race are Ayres's reflections on running, the environment, and the human condition.  Ayers has been running longer than most of us have been alive.  He's run some of the great races, road marathons, trail runs, and ultras, and run with some of the great runners.  He was a co-founder of Running Times magazine, shaping opinions and publishing pioneering articles at the dawning of the modern running movement.  Here you'll find some of his distilled wisdom about running, born not of trendiness or the latest thing, but from his accumulated knowledge and experience.  He's also worked in the environmentalist movement, and offers his insights on the future of life on earth.  "Maybe the whole premise of modern society--build a great industrial civilization so that people can live better lives--was backward.  Maybe the only way it could work was by building great fitness as individual people, so we can have a more livable civilization."

To Ayres, running is an allegory for life, and life is an allegory for running.  I like his broader application of the running adage, "Listen to your body."  Ayres writes, "If you pay close attention to what your internal signals are telling you, they heighten your chances of actually doing what you dream of doing."  We learn more about ourselves when we run, and by paying attention to what we learn, especially what we learn training for and running in an ultramarathon, we can learn more about civilization and its sustainability.  Pick up this thoughtful, reflective book and you will be inspired to run and rewarded with insights on life.

You can also keep up with Ayres at his blog, http://enduranceandsustainability.blogspot.com/, from which the above picture was shamelessly swiped.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy.

Not running

You may have noticed that over the last three months or so, almost all of my posts have been for running related books or movies, not about any running I'm doing.  And if you have paid attention to my DailyMile posts, you may have noticed that there haven't been many.  So I haven't been running much at all.  My goals for 2012 have pretty much fallen by the wayside.  I have been drinking copious amounts of Dr Pepper, taking lots of vitamin C3 (chocolate chip cookies), and watching my weight head back up to my 2008 pre-running level.  Something's got to change. . . . Lately I feel like this race is the only race I would be in shape for:

Sunset Run at Tandy Hills

The following is an actual conversation (although it may be remembered differently by other parties involved).  It took place yesterday evening after the conclusion of Chloe's Person-Centered Planning meeting.

Me: Is Cathy keeping the kids tonight?
Kelly: Yes.  What are you going to do?
Me: I don't know.  What are your plans?
Kelly: Jennifer and I are going to dinner.
Me: You and Jennifer?
Kelly: Yeah. . . .
Me: . . . .
Kelly: Why don't you go for a run?

So, excluded from dinner, I did decide to go for a run.  I hadn't run at Tandy Hills for a while.  I hadn't run at all for a while.  I was reminded of a few things.

1. When you've been running an average of 0 miles a day for a few weeks or months, you can't just pick up where you left off.
2. Even when you're hopelessly out of shape, it can be fun to pound out some miles on the trail.
3. If you go for a "sunset run" the implication is that at some point, it's going to get dark.  That's fine when you're running in the neighborhood, with plentiful street lights and other ambient light.  But in a park like Tandy Hills, where some trails are narrow, rocky, rutted, and/or tree covered, running in the dark is potentially hazardous.  Thankfully, I came home unscathed.
4. Tandy Hills isn't very big, but it's easy to get turned around in, especially in the dark.  I was never lost: there's the downtown skyline the west, the tall transmission towers to the east, and I-30 to the south, so you can't really get lost.  But sometimes I still don't know where I'm going there.

(The above image shamelessly lifted from the Durango Texas blog.  I hope he doesn't mind. . . .)

Running the Sahara

It takes a special kind of person to decide that he wants to run across the Sahara.  Special as in crazy.  But ultrarunners are used to hearing about these kinds of challenges, and Ray Zahab and Charlie Engle are just the guys to take on the challenge of running across the continent of Africa through the Sahara Desert.  The two of them, joined by Taiwanese runner Kevin Lin, ran for 111 days, over 4,300 miles, through six countries.

Summarized in one sentence like that, the run doesn't seem like that big a deal.  Or maybe it does.  That's the dilemma of the movie.  How can a one and a half hour movie capture the scope of that kind of run?  It really doesn't, but the movie does give some hints as to what these men went through.  Imagine the issues of fatigue, injury, hydration and nutrition, that you go through in an ultramarathon.  Then multiply that times 111. I don't know about you, but that doesn't sound like fun to me.  The opportunity to see a big part of the world, including some exotic and beautiful places in six countries?  Awesome!  Doing it on foot over three and a half months?  I'm not so sure. . . .

That said, these guys are impressive.  You may remember Charlie Engle, who went on to participate with Marshall Ulrich in his run across America.  (See my review of Running America.)  Ray Zahab continues his ultrarunning, having run across the Atacama Desert in Chile and preparing for a run across the Gobi Desert in  March of next year.  (Follow his exploits at http://rayzahab.com/rz.)

Next time you're feeling awesome that you finished that 10K or marathon, check out these guys.  They'll challenge you to do more than you ever thought you could do.