Welcome to Conejo Joe's Marathon Training and Running Blog. This started in April 2009 when I decided to start training for the inaugural Santa Barbara Marathon. Since then I've run several marathons and a number of other local races, while highlighting and babbling about a variety of things running-related in here, including training specifics, race reports, dealing with injuries (and I've had plenty of them). disappointments, successes, local races and so on.
I've been running since 1993 and have logged well over 60,000 miles since then. With over 30 marathons and a personal best time of 2:35 many years ago at the Los Angeles Marathon, I have a few things to say about running. My hope is that these posts provide you something of benefit, be it useful advice for your own training, a grin or two, or perhaps some motivation.
For an archive of past posts by date, visit THIS LINK.
Today a press release from the Ventura County Sheriff's Office came out and it was kind of a downer for me. It was a reminder that since 1/1/77, California law prohibits pedestrians (e.g. walkers, joggers, runners) from using bike lanes when sidewalks are available. I do a lot of running facing traffic in bike lanes early in the morning. Uh oh...
Jogging and walking in bicycle lanes when sidewalks are available is against California Vehicle Code law.
With the beautiful warmer days ahead, many people will be heading to the roadways and sidewalks throughout the city to enjoy the fresh air and scenery. We want to make sure that everyone enjoys this nice weather safely. It is very important to remember that bicycle lanes are for bicycles and not for jogging or walking.
Violations of this law can result in the violators receiving a citation.
California Vehicle Code---21966. States no pedestrian shall proceed along a bicycle path or lane where there is an adjacent adequate pedestrian facility (Added Ch. 751, Stats. 1976. Effective January 1, 1977.)
Be conscientious of all of those around us enjoying the outdoors and be respectful of the laws designed for our safety so we can all enjoy a great summer.
It was a lot of fun watching the LA Marathon last Sunday. Having run my PR on the LA course "back in the day" and other solid times in the late 1990s, I was kind of curious about how fast the newer "Stadium to the Sea" course was compared to previous courses that started and finished in downtown Los Angeles.
"Stadium to the Sea" saw its first running in 2010, brought about by new owner, Frank McCourt. McCourt, widely villified as Dodgers owner, only to reap a record price for the team last year, was seen after the race with LA Mayor Anthony Villaraigoza having fun congratulating the winners of the race.
I considered signing up for the race as a last minute fun run but it was sold out. Not too many years ago you could sign up last minute for the LA Marathon, but it has gained popularity, as has marathoning in general, leaving last minute signups more of a challenge.
Did about 17 miles back here since they wouldn't sell me a last minute entry to the Los Angeles Marathon. Score a win for me!
So, about this course...is it faster than previous "loop" courses?
For the "average" runner, and by average I mean the average time for all finishers, the aggregate time for the first 3 years of the course (2013 results still not available in a manageable format) was 5:18. This compares to an aggregate average time over the previous 10 years, on various loop courses, of 5:33. (Thanks to MarathonGuide.com, my favorite website for marathon information, for this data.) This would indicate the new course is faster overall, which makes sense as the course now has a net elevation drop of 430 feet.
Something that more "competitive" running types sometimes do is compare how their time on a course would have placed them in other years. While many factors are at play in making year over year comparisons, such as weather, course conditions, the competition, it is just one of those things that we like to do.
My PR marathon time was on the 1997 LA Marathon loop course, where my 2:35 got me 35th place. That same time on average would have garnered an average place of 23 to 24 over the last 14 years, as well as over the last 4 years of Stadium to Sea. I guess when I ran the race, there was simply more competition. Last Sunday, a 2:35 would have garnered 22nd. While I'm nowhere near that kind of time today, it would be fun to go back and give the Stadium to Sea course a try. Bottom line however, is that for whatever reason, the times for non-elite age runner top 100 placer times appear to have slowed over the years.
Let's get back to the aggregate numbers. The average aggregate recent times in the LA Marathon, while 15 minutes faster than on previous LA courses, are still significantly slower than other large races. For example, the previous 5-year average times at New York (excluding the cancelled 2012 race due to the impact of Hurricane Sandy) and Chicago were 4:26 and 4:37, respectively. Those are dramatically faster than the average times in Los Angeles.
Why is this? Well, I'm guessing but I suspect that we have more marathon "walkers" and fundraisers in LA that bring the average up. Also, each year the wonderful Students Run LA charity brings 3,000 at-risk teens to the marathon, including nearly 3,200 in 2013. Nearly 100% of the SRLA high school seniors graduate high school and go on to attend to attend college. I don't know the average time for SRLA runners but I suspect it does bring down overall aggregate times to a degree.
But let's digress again. how about the overall winning times at the LA Marathon? They have definitely dropped. Prior to the Stadium to the Sea route, the average Downtown LA Loop course from 1996 to 2009 was 2:11:48. Stadium to the Sea has run for 4 years now, including the unbelievable 2:06:05 course record first-time marathon performance in 2 inches of torrential rain by Markos Geneti of Ethiopia in 2011 has been 2:09:27. Three of the four Stadium to the Sea events have been sub 2:10.
So definitely, the course has made progress, though we're still not at the level of other major U.S. courses. The average winning time at Chicago over the last six years was 2:06:39. The average winning time in New York over that period (excluding 2012) was 2:08:04. Still solidly ahead of LA...but in this case, I suspect it is because they payday at those races is substantially higher than at LA.
OK, enough of this analysis paralysis. Let's get running!
This is not a politics blog but if someone running for office has run a marathon, my ears perk up. I'm a moderate, in fact, I'm so moderate that I'm thinking of founding a new political party called the Moderate Party. Some issues I side with the Republicans, others with the Democrats. I think the far right and far left are a bunch of ignoramouses. If I highlighted where I stand on fiscal, social and geopolitical issues, I think I would have the silent majority of the U.S. electorate supporting me. Conejo Joe for Emperor!
But I digress.
Even if I think a politician is a complete nincompoop (God I love that word), if they can run a solid marathon time, I give them respect, or at least some respect.
Case in point, Sarah Palin. While the thought of Sarah a heartbeat away from the Presidency scared the living daylights out of me, I was impressed that she was able to run a sub-4 hour marathon in 1995.
Which brings me to Paul Ryan. He recently claimed in an interview that he ran a sub-3 hour marathon. To quote him in his phone interview with Hugh Hewitt: "Under three, high twos. I had a two hour and fifty-something." That would, to my knowledge, handily make him the fastest marathoner to run for high office in this country.
Well Runner's World confirmed that the only marathon Ryan has run was in 4:01:25 at age 20 at Grandma's Marathon in Duluth, Minnesota. That puts him 2 minutes behind Sarah Palin, 17 minutes behind George W. Bush's Houston Marathon at age 47 and 3 minutes Eliot Spitzer's 1983 NY Marathon at age 24.
I get it if someone can't remember their exact times from a marathon, half marathon or 10K. But to actually say 2 hours, 50 something when it was actually 4 hours is almost sacrilegious.
After sucking in some oxygen, I thought, is this too overtly sexualization of sports? But I paced myself, watched the whole video...29 times...and though, heck no. This 19 year old Aussie Michelle Jenneke demolished the competition so if she wants to do a little dance show to warm up, by golly, let her!
While she won't be at the Olympics in London next month, perhaps we will see her smiling face and wiggly, jiggly moves at the 2016 Olympics in Spain.
A good friend of mine recently finished his first full, official marathon, the Taipei Expressway Marathon in Taiwan. If running an entire marathon on a highway ain't bad enough (sounds dreadful to me), it was over 80 degrees and humid. Call me a wimp but I'm not flying over to Taiwan anytime soon to run a marathon (though truth be told, I signed up to run the Singapore Marathon, which I ended up not going to).
In any case, one of the photos my friend shared was the one below. The dude with his arms in the air while reaching the finish line is wearing a shirt that could (theoretically) be the solution to runners' chafing of the nipples. Simply cut out those sections of the shirt and, wallah!! No more chafing issues, no more bleeding, no need for bandaids on the nips or other strategies for addressing this particular issue!
My thinking is, perhaps women should first try it to see if it catches on. I'm sure at least 3 of the 7 people reading this are women. Try it out and let me know. And send pictures :>
Not a lot of excitement to report running-wise these days. Just plugging away, slowly ramping up mileage for a TBD fall marathon at this point. Nothing too serious, though I did run The Oaks Mile 5K on May 5th in a (for me) pedestrian 19:55. Hoping something "clicks" in this ancient body of mine one of these days. I also had a decent 90 minute run into Sycamore Canyon last Sunday; my longest run, roughly 12 miles, in about 4 months (pre-eye surgery).
This morning I got out later than I wanted and chose to run into Hidden Valley from Newbury Park. Running through Hidden Valley can be one of the most peaceful, rewarding runs one can do in the Conejo Valley area. Quiet, serene farmland views, mostly flat (though there are sharp hills on both the Newbury Park and Westlake Village sides of the run).
The only negatives of running through Hidden Valley are that there are no restroom stops, which makes the run dicey if you feel you may have a need for a pit stop, and you may encounter periodic speeding cars. You'll also encounter cyclists on most any day through Hidden Valley...remind me the final "con" - that there are no bike lanes/sidewalks back there, so you absolutely must run facing traffic back here to stay safe and sane.
But her running seems to be doing just fine, with her 1:46:10 half marathon performance in Iowa over Labor Day weekend under her maiden name, Sarah Heath. By my general rule of thumb, take that time and multiply by 2.1 and with some decent training she can run a a 3 hour, 43 minute marathon. Her personal best is a 3:59:36 at Humpy's (odd name) Marathon in Anchorage, Alaska on August 21, 2005.
Palin is 47 years old. Her qualifying time for the 2013 Boston Marathon (2012 registration has passed) will be 3 hours, 55 minutes. Come on Sarah, let's see you go for it! You definitely have it in you.
Andrew Makau won the Berlin Marathon for the 2nd year in a row today in a world record time of 2 hours, 3 minutes, 38 seconds. This is 21 seconds faster than Haile Gebrselassie's previous world record time set 3 years ago on the same course. 2:03:38 is a tad under 4:43 per mile. At this point in my life, I'd love to do ONE mile in that time! That's an incredible time!
Makau's time in last year's race was 2:05:08, so he shaved a minute and a half off of last year's time. A minute and a half represents an improvement of about 1.2%.
Makau's 5K split times were as follows:
1st 5K: 14:37
2nd 5K: 14:40
3rd 5K: 14:35
4th 5K: 14:38
5th 5K: 14:48
6th 5K: 14:20
7th 5K: 14:38
8th 5K: 14:59 (slacker)
Final 2K: 6:23
Talk about consistency!
Looking for a personal best time? The Berlin Marathon appears to be a good bet. The last 4 times the men's world record was set took place in Berlin today, 2008, 2007 and 2003.
For the last 30 years or so, men's and women marathon records have been almost exclusively set in London, Chicago, Rotterdam and Berlin.
I've run the Boston Marathon two times. The 100th Anniversary race on April 15, 1996 was the world's largest marathon ever (at least at the time) with nearly 39,000 entrants. I signed up for that race to be part of the celebration. Then I ran the 2000 Boston Marathon on April 17, 2000.
The 1996 race was supposed to be purely a "fun run" for me to be part of the big celebration. I had run a 2:37 PR Los Angeles Marathon on March 3rd and my body should have been resing for 3 to 4 weeks afterward. But I looked back at my records and boy was I intense back then. I didn't even take a day off, and after a "light" week was ramping my mileage up to 60 to 80 miles per week. Then I raced 2 5Ks in 7 days, with times of 16:18 and 16:23. That was 9 days before Boston.
Boston came and mentally I'm pumped to race it given my recent performances. But it was a biting cold day that I wasn't prepared for physically...yes, I did not bring warm enough clothes and there was snow on the ground. I was miserable before the race.
I knew I should have just stuck with my original "fun run" goal but my ego told me to go for it and see what happens. Well the details are blurry but as I recall the last 6 to 8 miles were a death march, though I managed to pull my lifeless body to the finish line in 2 hours, 45 minutes.
The next Boston was another "milestone" race....the "New Millenium" Year 2000 Y2K race (remember all the stress and concern over Y2K...ah yes, the good ole days). I ran a 2:36 at the Long Beach Marathon in November 1999 and was set for a decent performance at Boston.
In that 2000 race I was doing pretty well up until Mile 15, when I had to make a pit stop. Pit stops are never good for me...completely take me out of my rhythm. I was at 1:18:30 at the halfway point, exactly half of 2:37. But with that pit stop and shivering cold winds (I noted there was a strong headwind and my teeth were chattering loudly at the end of the race), I managed a 2:43:49. The good news is that this was my Boston PR. But my performance was not up to par.
At that point, I had run 2 miserable, cold Boston Marathons and I was done. Put a fork in it. I love Boston but that was it for me. No mas. Finito.
That bring us to today, the 7th day in a row that I have not run, due to my retina surgery last week. I've pretty much written off my Fall Malibu Marathon plans. What to do....
I was checking out one of my fav running websites, MarathonGuide.com, and noticed an article indicating Boston Marathon 2012 has been open for registration since September 12th and ends September 23rd. Today is the 21st.
Last year the race sold out in like 8 hours. This year they changed the process to help ensure the fastest runners have a better chance of getting into the race. So the first 2 days of registration was limited to runners who beat their qualifying standard by 20 minutes or more. I looked back at my Malibu Marathon time of 3:05 last year and saw that it beat my standard by 25 minutes (sometimes it pays getting old).
So I thought, well what the heck. My wife wants to go to Boston, so why not just sign up and see what happens. I qualify for sure but given I signed up 9 days after registration started, I'd say my chances are pretty slim at getting in. I don't see how it would be possible, unless they see I was way under the standard and let me in to the club.
If not, I'll be slightly disappointed but also relieved. I'll keep my $150 and start pondering a West Coast race.
Interesting, I had to "acknowledge that my ($150) entry fee is non-refundable, even if the race is cancelled." That's pretty intense.
Well, I'm trying to work through my stomach problem with my chiropractor. Some days it feels like the problem is gone while others the pain come out of nowhere. I'm happy to be able to run, and I've been doing so for runs of up to 1 hour long. However, I'm not happy that here I am at mid-year 2011 without having run a single race.
On that note, here's an interesting song called "Run Conejo Run" that I'd never heard before prior to fellow local runner Jonathan S making me aware of it tonight. Sung by Dave Alvin.
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Today a press release from the Ventura County Sheriff's Office came out and it was kind of a downer for me. It was a reminder that since 1/1/77, California law prohibits pedestrians (e.g. walkers, joggers, runners) from using bike lanes when sidewalks are available. I do a lot of running facing traffic in bike lanes early in the morning. Uh oh...
