Category: Running

Famous Friday: The Final Sprint

I would normally bring you a blog that I have been reading for some time and have some experience with. Today I am bringing to you a site that I have previously not read until today. While looking for the US Olympic Marathon Trials coverage, I came across The Final Sprint. I am familiar with the website since I listen to their podcast, but I have never read any of the content on the site until today.

They did a fairly good job of covering the event. I think they were severely hit hard by traffic. The site was horrifically slow to load during the coverage. They seem to have recovered slightly since then.

Along with the running news related blog, they have a podcast. It is an interview format. They tend to have some great celebrities on the podcast. However, I have considered unsubscribing a few times since I started listening about 2 months ago. The host seems to be in love with his own voice. I think the interviews are about 40% host talking and 60% guest talking. I would like to see that more in the range of 10% (or less) for the host’s part. Also, there seems to be little editing done on the show. The host stumbles over his words and could do a simple edit to correct it. Certainly some editing would help cut down on the host’s dominance in the audio. If he wants to ask leading questions (which almost all of them are) then state the basic question and edit out the “leading” parts of it.

For now, I am going to continue to listen to the podcast. I have subscribed to the RSS feed for the site and will be reading their coverage over the next few weeks to see how they do.

I make them my Famous Friday pick for this week because of their great coverage of the event this morning since NBC left us without coverage.

[Yes, I know it is not Friday, but in all my time of doing this pick, I think only 2 of them have actually been posted on a Friday.]

Olympic Trials Marathon Winners (Men)

Ryan Hall won in 2:09:02. The fact that he won was no great surprise. He was favored as the leader going into this race for good reason. He is quite on top of his game right now. This is an Olympic Trials record by 1 minute and 17 seconds (2:10:19 is the former record).

Second place went to Dathan Ritzenhein with a time of 2:11:07, a personal record by over 3 minutes.

Third is Brian Sell. He beat out a lot of big names in the last 6 miles with a time of 2:11:36.

Thanks for nothing NBC! Not only was I not able to watch it because of living outside the US, but they reportedly did not support Linux or Mac clients being able to view the site. When I did get connected through a proxy (which was rare since the site was often down with server errors) I got no video. I tried it a few times with the one Windows machine in the house, but only got server errors every time I tried there.

NBC won’t let me watch the Olympic trials

You can’t watch! Go away!This afternoon I got very excited to find out that NBC was going to be doing a full coverage webcast of the US Olympic Marathon Trials tomorrow morning. I have already scheduled to get up at 5:30 so I can watch the start. I went to the website to make sure that everything was ready to go. Though there is no current coverage, the site seemed to work just fine at the time.

That was this afternoon. Now, as I get ready to go to bed, I wanted to give everything one more check. When I went to the page from which the video will be streaming, I am met with a message that says:

Content Not Available:
Geo-blocked. This event is only available to viewers within the U.S. … If you are outside of the United States you are not allowed to view this content.

If you would like to view the marathon online from a location outside the United States, please go to wcsn.com

[Emphasis mine]

I am “not allowed to view this content”? Why does your location matter? This is the Internet for crying out loud! Are we limited by imaginary borders?

Their alternate website is only showing the NYC Marathon on Sunday. According to their event schedule they will not have Trials coverage.

I happen to know a way around this. It only takes a couple of minutes to set up going through a proxy server in the US. That will hide the fact that I am outside of US borders.

Putting aside that it is totally idiotic to not allow people outside of the US to view the content, this is another example of where trying to stop people from doing what they want only hurts less knowledgeable people. There is nothing stopping me from using a proxy server. There is nothing illegal about using a proxy server. There is no logical reason they should be keeping me from watching this event. Therefore I am going to thwart their stupid scheme to keep me from seeing my country’s top marathoners compete tomorrow. But what about all the other people out there who don’t have the knowledge to do this? They just get to brood at NBC and have to accept that the network is keeping them from content they want.

If they don’t want people to see their coverage, then they should not be in charge of filming the event. This is where big media has an agenda and has no real interest in the viewers. I know I am not the only person outside the US who wants to see this. My suspicion is that the advertisers were not willing to pay the dollar amount that NBC wanted to show it to a world wide audience. They are more concerned about milking the dollar than giving us content.

Arghh!

More thoughts on the race yesterday

I was beaten by a barefoot runner yesterday. He passed me before we were even half way through the first kilometer and I never saw him again. I have tried some barefoot running. You land much more mid foot or to the balls of the feet. The last thing you want to do is bring your heel down hard on the asphalt. He was also running much more “quiet” in his upper body. Basically his legs and arms moved and everything else was rigid.

I finished 12th in my age group. The man who won first ran it in 17 minutes and some seconds. Our age group is by 10 year increments. I run in the 30-39 group. There were at least 16 registered in my group, the last count I saw was probably 15 minutes before registration was closed.

Before I reached the 2 km mark I was already getting a side stitch. I was able to keep it from getting any worse until my final sprint at the end.

When I passed the 3 km marker I started playing mind games. I tried telling myself that I was much further than 1/2 way through the race. I even started playing with the numbers and thinking that if it were on a track and I only had 2 laps left out of a 5 lap race, then that is not too much. I started running the distances longer to see if that would help me with my focus. I did the math and figured that if it was a 100 mile race, then I only had 40 miles to go. I quickly went back to thinking about the smaller numbers. The thought of running 40 miles at the effort I was putting out was not encouraging.

With about 800 meters left to run I started counting my foot steps. This is a mantra that helps you focus on pace and not the distance left. It got me a good ways towards the end of the race.

In the final 50 meters I was attempting to pass another runner. We were passed by 2 other guys who blew by us so fast, it was obvious that they had not been putting out a strong effort up to that point. In the excitement of knowing I did well, I cannot tell you now whether I beat the guy I was sprinting against at the end or not.

A half hour after the race I was talking to a couple of other runners. I told them I felt like I did very well, but did not feel totally used up at the end of the race. I know I can do better. That was then, after being so excited about my final time. Now, I clearly remember how long it took me to be able to stand up straight and breath right again after I crossed the line. I really was pretty spent. The soreness and tiredness I am experiencing in my legs today tell me that I did put out a significant effort.

Another PR!

Last week I reported about my half marathon time as being a personal record (PR). It was 12+ minutes faster than my previous half marathon best time. That is a significant difference over that distance.

I had planned to take it easy on running over the next two weeks because I remember how I felt after my previous half marathon runs. I really did not feel like running at all for a while. However, I have not really slowed down much this time. I have not put in a lot of miles since Saturday, but I have run a few days just for fun.

Early this week I learned that there was to be a 5K this morning. I invited a couple of friends to run it and I was going to run it with them as their first road race. They backed out on Friday and I really had no reason to run it. I was going to sit it out too. Until yesterday morning.

I started to think that maybe I would take my half marathon training and see if I could push myself for a really good 5K effort. I have never finished a race in which I felt totally used up. I knew that I could push harder than I have been. With my recent training, I might even be able to beat my PR of 26:50 set last December.

My wife and I had a rare opportunity to go out without the kids last night and we had already decided that we were going to hit up an ice cream buffet. I have never heard of such a thing, but there is a restaurant that advertises it here. After getting in and sitting down, we found out it was only Monday through Friday. We left, but we already had a back up plan floating around in our heads. There is another place that has a dessert buffet. We went for that. After consuming way too much sugar, we went and picked up our kids from a Harvest Party at some friends’ house. We stood around and talked and ate a bit more sugar in the form of candy and cookies. My stomach wasn’t feeling so well when I went to bed last night. Nor was it feeling so great this morning.

With the time change happening in Mexico this weekend, I was able to get plenty of rest and could do a casual morning routine before the 8:00 start. I got to the park in plenty of time. I am not sure what the starting temperature for the race was, but 20 minutes after we were done it was 82 degrees. I suspect it was probably 80 or so.

When we started running, there was no 1 Km marker. However there was a marker for all the rest.

To get a PR, I needed to run 5:21 per kilometer, or better. I was shooting for 5:20/Km (that is 8:35 per mile). The actual breakdown went like this.

  • 1 and 2: 10:08 (5:04 per Km?!)
  • 3: 4:39 ?!
  • 4: 5:00
  • 5: 6:21

I don’t rememeber exactly where the 3 Km marker was, but I suspect it was early. I do know that the 4 Km marker was early (according to Google Earth). So if they were both just a bit short of their actual distance then that would explain the final kilometer being so long.

Final time was 26:10 which beats my previous 5K PR by 40 seconds!

This is an average of 5:14/Km, or 8:25/mile.