Slap Me With A Splintered Ruler

All I really want...

Is for everyone to remember.  Remember back to this great moment, when TV history was made in re-uniting Lance Armstrong and his estranged father, Neil Armstrong, on national TV.  After the events of this past weekend, this video is even more bittersweet.  I hope they made the most of their last six years together!

Do you remember?




The workout plan:
Group, dynamic, warm-up off the grass on the side of the park.

Then, I believe we are up to two, one-mile, repeats for the interval group that has been coinciding with me the last few weeks.  And, as always, we'll attempt to group others into like-minded packs.

Afterwards, if people want to bring a mat, or a towel, or just know that you might get your running clothes a bit dirty, we are going to start to do some post-run exercises on the same grass where we now warm up.  This week we'll just do some naive strength and core exercises (think push-ups and crunches) and within a couple more weeks we'll come up with some more optimal, modern, exercises once the people that "are into that" chime in with what they have learned and liked from P90x and other current trends.

Here is a good article and some reference material on How to Run Faster With Less Work.

I think this has something for all levels of TRYers - "Stop Chasing Super-High Mileage", "Run Fast When It Counts", but most importantly - "Run Harder and Easier".  With insights such as: 'make your easy days easier and your hard days harder', 'but...most runners...do most of their runs at a moderate effort'.  'The next time you run a hard workout, make it exactly that - hard.'

It finishes with 'You don't always have to train harder - you just have to train smarter to run faster.'

We've had a lot of good examples of TRYers putting in effort, smartly, over the past couple years.  There are a few of you I can think of who have really improved your running right before our eyes.  For you others who haven't bought in, or have let yourselves go the other way (like yours truly) - use them and their success stories to remind yourself that what we are doing works.  :-)

August and Everything After

(You know...it was a popular album once.)

This week: the "newer to intervals group" should shadow me again and we'll do 1/2 mile intervals.  Should do three of them and perhaps do a final 1/4 mile interval "just for the fun of it".  So, about a 4 mile run with 1.5 to 1.75 at speed.  The others, can group up with Duerr or with other like-minded runners for your workout.

It seems like the dynamic warm-up is working well enough to keep it going.  Not everyone likes every exercise but they go by quickly enough that it is easy to pick and choose which ones suit you.  And a reminder to everyone (including myself because I have not been) is that it would be good to start to do a similar routine before all of your runs, so that your body gets used them as a trigger for getting into a running mindset and getting your blood flowing.

Something didn't seem right about the "three-point lunges", so I re-read them.  And it turns out the written description is different than what the video describes and demonstrates.  Shame on them!  I believe the video is correct and that you should return to center between each move.  (Lunge straight out, back to center, lunge to angle, back to center, lunge to the side.)

You can go back to the last couple blog entries to get the videos and the descriptions, but the moves that seem to make sense for us and keep us off the goose-poopie-ground are:

Walking lunges

Leg lifts

Butt kicks

Single leg directional hops

Hacky sack

Three point lunges

Toy soldier

Not necessarily in that order, but something like that to spread out the lunges and different types of stretches throughout.

Finally, after over a month delay, I'm ready to show off some photos from TRYers at the Boilermaker.  These have all been on facebook feeds since facebook takes over everything, but it's nice to add some color to the blog plus give people who do not use facebook a chance to see a sampling.  It turns out that Brightroom finally got smart and ruined their sample photos to the point of almost being unusable.  So, almost all of these shots are from the Team Beef photographer.  Who did a great job getting all but one of us near the finish line.

As a reminder, joining Team Beef was free and it gave access to some goodies and a very generous post-race luncheon.  So, remember that when next year rolls around.

I don't think I've ever seen Kelly playing up to the crowd like this:

Gee, I wonder where she learned it from?

Jake proved that you could actually make the male Team Beef jersey look good:

Where Adam (and me later) gave good examples of it not looking so good.  Hey, but we wore it!

And I chose a more zoomed out view of me.  (For everyone else's sake.)  Those two Erin's distract the eye enough anyway that there is no reason to check me out.  Cheer for Erin(s):

And here is the sad state of what Brightoom has become.  Apparently they got sick of not making money and giving away too high of a quality of sample shots.  Notice Miss Wait buried under the watermarks while she was kind enough to give me and the Erin's a blocker during the busiest part of the race.  Thanks again Sue and Erin T for making the thing I was most worried about very manageable:

The long tenured TRYers know that I usually end a series of race photos with a glamour shot.  But, alas, that tradition is over.  There is no way I'm digging though that mess of brighroom labels to pan for gold.  So, instead, a different kind of glamour shot.  The coxswain that led us to a 10th from last place finish at the Great Race a couple weekends ago:

So, thanks to Tim we had a nice canoe and a great guide.  Kinda strange...such a simple word.  Row.

Running Form - No More Chicken Wings

For tonight's workout I think the runners that are new to speed work (been doing the last 3 weeks with me) should go back to 1/4 mile repeats.  Now that you have some experience though, I want you to aim for doing 6 of them.  Plan your pace and your energy accordingly.  (The "master" plan will have us progress to 1/2 mile intervals next week then your first attempts at 1 mile repeats, two weeks from now.)

Speaking of speed work, I did a 10k on Sunday morning which is a race distance I've only done a couple times.  It certainly wasn't a banner day for me race-timewise, but from about a mile in I was thanking my lucky stars for the speed work nights I do with TRY.  I was using all the tricks in my repertoire and all the tricks I practice on speed work night: thinking about maintaining efficient form.  Thinking about deep, consistent breathing.  And thinking about staying calm while running under duress.  Despite not being in the shape I should be for this time of the summer, I used my experience of running near max exertion level to run a very efficient race and I was able to slightly speed up at points in the race, such as when I knew I "only" had a mile left to go.  It was a great example of why it's ideal to practice what you are going to do on race day...and I remember thinking that I wanted to pass that along to TRY...that the physical and mental reps you are putting in on Tuesday night will help you down the line.  And you'll be a better runner because of it.

A couple things are coming up - free Syracuse Chiefs baseball game this Friday night.  "Tailgate" starts at 6.  Game starts at 7.  A fun fireworks display follows the game.  Let me know if you want free tickets.  Family and friends are welcome to join in as well.  I'll have a pile of tickets with me tonight...or I can also hand out more in the parking lot Friday night.

Since we have a lot of new people, I'm thinking it's time to attempt a social outing after TRY.  So, NEXT Tuesday night, if you can, set aside some time to hang out after the run.  Since it's become the unofficial after TRY hangout this summer, we'll plan on heading over to the Cobblestone, right in Liverpool.  It's convenient, has some fun food and drink choices and is usually empty enough (probably go to the backside of the bar) that having 10+ people show up will not be a problem.  Can even do darts or shuffleboard to liven things up if people want to.  Plan accordingly for next week, please.

Now for this weeks learning point: something for the newer runners in particular, but something we all can use a reminder of.  Good running form.  I like the way this article described things and the colorful terms to help point out when you are doing "zipper lines" or "chicken wings".  The "holding chips" I can take or leave, but the first two I like a lot.  Everyone please read this Good Running Form for Beginners article as I know a few of us could use it.  It specifically addresses arm and upper body running form which is the easiest to notice and the easiest to fix.  Tonight, when doing your speed work, think about your arm form while doing your fast portions.  That way it's only for 2 minutes (for example) as you are doing your 1/4 mile.  Then, relax and don't worry a thing about your form while doing your recovery.  Another thing I do while running at the park is watch the runners coming towards me. I quickly assess their arm form and use their mistakes to remind me what not to do. If you pay attention tonight you'll see plenty of chicken wings and zipper line violations coming towards you.  Work on it so that that's not you with the obvious inefficiency.

Finally, our dynamic warm-up seemed to be enjoyed last week.  But I think the pike stretch did not fit in with the rest of them.  And I'm not sure how much it helped?  (Could have been me not doing a good job on them or not using the proper form, certainly.  But the others clearly showed my lack of flexibility to the world, which I took as a good thing for the exercise.)  I do think we can do extra (say 20 instead of 10) of the leg lifts and the butt kicks as it seemed like they were over before they started because it is such a quick repetition.

And if we have time, I want to add in a couple exercises from this set of Foot Work Exercises that Malinda was kind enough to send along.  The squat jacks may be tough to do on grass and the single-leg mountain climbers look a bit too tiring for before running, but lets at least try the single-leg directional hops and the three point lunges as I think they'll fit right in with the moves we started from last week.

I realized there is no fun pictures this week...hopefully I get off by buttocks and FINALLY get the boilermaker photos published in this space for next week.

The Essence of TRY

This weeks post has a little bit of everything in it.  Just know that when you are a man, sometimes you wear stretchy pants in your room.  It's for fun.  And sometimes you wear stretchy cow outfits outside.  It's for fun too.

For Tuesday's night group run, we are going to...oh, who am I kidding?  We have too many different running needs right now to plan ahead.  We'll discuss what your individual needs are and find some common groupings during the pre-run talk.  Just know that there will be speed-work involved for most of us.

The pre-run gathering is going to be different this week.  As I teased on the Facebook group, a request has been made to add some exercises other than just running/walking.  So, we are starting off with some dynamic warm-up exercises.  We will meet off the side of the parking lot towards the volleyball court and skate-park and will hopefully be visible enough that people looking for our normal spot will still see us.  At 5:30 sharp we will start a lesson on this routine from runners world, for a dynamic warm up routine for runners.  I liked this one because most of them are done while standing which will keep us from worrying about goose poop.  We'll give this a shot for 2 or 3 weeks and then remove and add other exercises as popular opinion warrants.  The intention is to do something from 5:30-5:40, allowing people who are slightly late to join in at any point, and then to hit the park on the run at 5:40 sharp.  Since we'll have warmed up our muscles, I think we can shorten the running warm-up to half a mile and get into our intervals at that point.  Nothing is set in stone and I'll be want to hear what you think of all this as we do it.  It's an attempt to get smarter with our routine.  If people want to do core stuff, we can add some of that too, probably after the cool-down walk.

It's great that our group is growing again and it's always a treat for me to have some new people around that are eager to expand their running horizons and having fun while doing it.  But, with growth, comes growing pains.  And we need to be more cognizant of the other people around us.  Last week, during our cooldown walk of Angela's TRYangle, we totally cut off a biker as the group was making the sharp left-hand turn.  He chose not to say anything, but his glare as he veered off onto the grass to avoid us when we cut off his right-of-way spoke volumes.  He was not happy.  Nor was I.  The park is very good to us and, in return, we need to be very good to it.  Please pay attention to your surroundings!  We need to stay to our right better than we have been.  And as we finish our intervals and stop or turn back, always yield to other people who may not be expecting such "erratic" behavior from runners in the midst of the park.  If we can't play nicer with others, I'll have to make some changes.  (We could split up a little more at the start and end, and if we keep acting like animals, I may have to go all Noah's ark on us, and enforce a two-by-two rule so we can't flood the lanes.)

For people who aren't on Facebook, I recommend for you to see the picture/video video summary of the Iron Girl event on Sunday morning that Syracuse.com put together.  Some TRYers make an appearance but just as importantly to me, TRYers cowbells can be heard throughout most of it.  Those who know the story of the original inspiration behind TRY, know how perfect this is.  Cowbells.  A blind participant.  And spectators making themselves heard...and then some.  The cowbell alley we had set up and the smiles we put on so many random peoples faces really nailed the essence of TRY.  We left our mark on the triathlon.  Well done, everyone!  There can be no doubt that the circle of TRY has now been completed.  (I may retire now.)

Be sure to check out the post "below" that has some information about the current state of Onondaga Lake and it's clean up efforts.

And now for something completely different, who wants to attempt the "Empire State Carrying Championship"?  In places where you can still call things what they should be called, it would be called "wife carrying" or "woman carrying", but who cares what it's called, it's all the same.  You carry a woman though an obstacle course.  And the winning time, wins the woman's weight in wine!  It's come from Finland to CNY, and on, Friday, August 31st, there is this crazy event in Geneva.

Back when I worked on the family farm and had to carry heavy stuff all the time, I think I could have been good at this!  Who wants in?  Any women ready to practice to see if any TRYers would have a knack for the "Estonian Carry"?  (I'll leave the details of that for a homework assignment.)  We can practice a little before warming up this week.  I'm serious.

And lastly, my attempts to stay incowgnito have failed and now that the cow is out of the bag, I have no choice but to admit, that I, on occasion, do dress in a stretchy cow outfit.  I didn't want my photo taken by a reporter.  It's not about recognition.  It's about giving back to the race participants.  And giving them a smile or two and a random memory that they can't get every day.  My RACK (random acts of cow kindness) moments had been anonymous the last couple years...but I did it at too big of an event this time and I didn't have the heart (I had plenty of stomachs!) to not give the reporter permission to use the photos (and apparently video?!) that she spent about 5 minutes taking before talking to us.  Now that the world knows, I can share a cowple photos from that other event that I helped out at this weekend.

The sales table:



This woman (Penny) has been a big fan of mine (and me of her) for the 3 years I've helped out and donated cowbells and cow hats at the Mad Cow 5k in Nelson.  We finally consummated our love of all things milk with a photo:


But that was nothing compared to this next one.  Because this cow took the leap and openly fell for me this year:


What? You weren't expecting a good joke, were you?  Keep in mind that I would not be doing all this and I certainly would not be making all these bad cow puns, if the steaks weren't so high!  ;-)

MOOving For A Cure, lives on.

[The end.]

What's Going On With The Lake?

Depending on how much you pay attention to local news, you may appreciate these two updates on our constant neighbor at TRY, Onondaga Lake.

First, a story from syracuse.com talking about the clean-up activities and what is going on currently on the southwestern shore of the lake.

But this next one is a bit more fun.  A national coverage story from "All Things Considered" on NPR.

A few of us were talking about the lake during our cool downs, last week, so I thought these stories were perfectly timed.