Category: Running
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Two Recent Trail Runs
13 K Copper Crawl Hill Climb, Miami, Arizona Saturday morning April 17 found me toiling up the side of a mountain above the mining town of Miami, Arizona about 40 miles east of here on U. S. 60. The race is part of Miami's annual Boom Town Spree. A great experience start to finish, from…
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Walt Stack Remembered
I find myself these days as enthusiastic about running as I was in the mid-'70s when I first took up the noble sport. It is perhaps the proximity of the Grim Reaper, his sharp scythe glistening in the Arizona sunshine, that has imparted a spring to my step and a glide to my stride. With the ultimate…
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5 K or Marathon: Which is Harder?
Which is harder, to run 3.1 miles or 26.2? They are equally hard for the runner who runs right. The agony and the ecstasy at the end of a race run right is the same whether induced by 42.2 km of LSD or 5 km of POT. Above, I am approaching the final stretch of…
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The First Step to Enjoying Running
Arthur Lydiard, Run to the Top (2nd ed. Auckland: Minerva, 1967, p. 4): The first step to enjoying running — and anyone will enjoy it if he takes that first step — is to achieve perfect fitness. I don't mean just the ability to run half a mile once a week without collapsing. I mean…
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Race and Race
During my 26.2 mile trip from the Peralta trailhead to Apache Junction's Prospector Park, I had ample opportunity to observe the ethnic and social composition of my fellow marathoners. Only two blacks did I spy, an observation in illustration of a general truth: (American) blacks are not proportionally represented at running events. No, I am not…
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Why Run?
If the sky is the daily bread of the eyes (Emerson), then hiking, running, and cycling are the daily bread of the legs and lungs. And what better way to appreciate the sky, and the lambent light of the desert Southwest, than by running over mountain trails at sunrise? Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie.
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The 26.2 Club
I affixed my 26.2 decal to the rear window of my Jeep Liberty this morning. I've earned and have the right to advertise my entry into an elite club. Sunday's Lost Dutchman was my second attempt but my first success. The first attempt was Boston 1979. My training had been overzealous and my knees were…
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Nun Run
Some in the habit of running run in a habit. Might be fun to run with a nun.
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Up With Running Skirts
During my last road race, and as a runner who has long been open to callipygian inspiration, I spied something I had seen but once before: a female runner sporting a short skirt in lieu of the usual shorts. I thought to myself: Is this the beginning of a trend? Apparently it is. Vive la…
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With Whom Would You Rather Run?
No contest, right? And she's faster than me! She claims a sub-4 marathon (26.2 miles in under four hours). On Thanksgiving 2009 it took me over an hour (1:07:37) to crank through a 10 K (6.2 miles). My excuses? It was unseasonably hot and I was 10 lbs overweight. Plus I have no athletic talent. …
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rundangerously
An interesting blog I came across while looking up some Kerouac images. From the masthead: "pain or love or danger makes you real again. … the dharma bums." By a soi-disant obsessive runner with a strong interest in the Beat Generation. May also be a chess player and a conservative as images in his sidebar…
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Jim Fixx Remembered
It was 25 years ago today, during a training run. Running pioneer James F. Fixx, author of the wildly successful The Complete Book of Running, keeled over dead of cardiac arrest. He died with his 'boots' on, and not from running but from a bad heart. It's a good bet that his running added years…
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Kerouac 5K
Jack Kerouac's "Springtime Mary" was Mary Carney, described in the novel Maggie Cassidy and depicted on the left; mine was a lass name of Mary Korzen from Chicago. She didn't get me into running, my old friend Marty Boren did; but she lent my impecunious and sartorially challenged self her shorts in which I stumbled…
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Overheard at the 20 Mile Mark
"Why couldn't Pheidippides have died now?" (An interesting non-temporal use of 'now': tokening it, the speaker is obviously not referring to the time of utterance, but to a distance.)
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Asics
Why are Asics running shoes so called? After purchasing a pair on Saturday I was pleased to discover that Asics is an acronym for anima sana in corpore sano. The standard tag is mens sana in corpore sano (A sound mind in a sound body), but Msics doesn't quite make it acronym-wise. I am not enough of a Latinist…