boston

"There's no secret in our training programme", says Deena "...what really makes the athlete stand out from the next -- at an elite level -- is the amount of time you put into the exemplary things, the ancillary work, the stretching, massage therapy, the work in the gym, all the other things to make us a more well-rounded athlete."

Charles River / Cambridge.  7.12m.  1:16:00.  I’ve been in Boston the past few days and it’s been damp and rainy – endlessly damp and endlessly rainy.  I’ve been tired and couldn’t manage to drag my ass out of bed to run so I’ve been using the rain as an excuse since I didn’t really feel like hopping on a treadmill in a health club anytime soon.  I’d stalled enough and just sucked it up and headed out today.  This is the Boston I hate.  Cars, water, stopped up drains, puddles everywhere.  Yuck.  As I w

"What if?" That's the question Trisha Steidl didn't want her husband to be facing aged 70. Seeing him finish 12th in windswept Boston in 2:15.54 running against elite professional runners seems to have been the final straw. So she's encouraged him to take a big step. From now on science teacher Uli Steidl is going full-time: aged 35.
Full inspiring story and details of his training regime is on the Seattle PI website here.

* In November last year the Steidls pulled off a unique double; Uli won the Seattle marathon for the eighth consecutive time, and Trisha won the women's event -- for the first time.

After the Tucson Marathon last year, some friends and I were talking about how little the runners were talking to each other out on the course. We had all had those experiences in previous marathons where we made friends while covering the miles. But it seemed like people in marathons were talking to each other less and less.

We speculated on why that was, and the topic turned to headphones and earbuds.

In April I had the pleasure of running my first Boston Marathon, and was amazed by the crowds braving a Nor'easter to cheer, with incredible enthusiasm and energy, us marathoners.

Recently I ran a leg in the Big Sur Marathon Relay. I've run the full marathon at Big Sur twice, and the Relay four times. It's one of my favorite events.

You know you've taken enough time off after a big race when you're body is just BEGGING your mind to let you go out for a run. I was at that point this past Saturday morning.

While my body wasn't ready for anything more than the quick "once round Lake Merritt" loop I ended up doing (it thought it was, but it really wasn't), it felt fantastic to be moving once again - albeit at a glacially slow pace.

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My wife and I raced Boston in 2000; roughly 8 1/2 months before our son Caden was born. It was a really fun trip and an even better marathon, because we both qualified and ran the entire race together. Boy it would be nice to go back....

Leading up to the marathon, all of the talk for those of us planning to go to Boston was about the weather. The forecasts gradually got worse and worse as the day approached, until flood warnings were out for the eastern seaboard and we were looking at the worst weather in the 110 year history of the Boston Marathon.

Storms. Rain. Freezing rain. 25 mph headwinds with gusts up to 50 mph.

I took a red eye flight to Boston on Friday night, arriving Saturday morning with very little sleep. Then I walked around the marathon expo with friends most of the day Saturday.

By the time I got checked into my hotel and got a shower, it was time for me to go to a dinner held by one of the founders of a company called AgaMatrix. The main product of AgaMatrix is a blood glucose meter. The dinner was a benefit for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Fund, and I was one of several diabetic runners participating in the Boston Marathon who were invited as guests of honor.

When I came to Arizona I didn't know any local runners. I knew that it helped me run more consistently to do scheduled runs with a group, so I started going to a local running store, the Foothills Running Company, for their Wednesday night group run.

Most people there were relative beginners, slower even than I was. However, one runner, Jennifer, was running at my pace or faster. We both entered the Foothills store's training program for the 2005 Rock 'N' Roll Arizona Marathon.

We had a lot in common, a similar pace and things to talk about on long runs. We became and remain training partners and friends. The R'N'R AZ Marathon produced similar results to those Jennifer and I have had at several marathons since. Jennifer stuck very well to the program and ran a better marathon than I did.

Grover Cleveland was president when the first Boston Marathon was run. Utah had just become the 45th state. Women couldn't vote, let alone run in the race.

The Boston Marathon is one of the oldest, most famous, continuously run annual athletic events in the world.

But before 1999, I didn't care about running the Boston marathon.

In 1997, I'd been a distance runner for many years, and probably like most people who have run over a mile, the marathon was something I wondered about. I may have been a little more reluctant than most distance runners to try a marathon because of my diabetes.

It's a lot less than you might think, according to legendary Boston area coach Billy Squires. But you have to do enough to break through to a decent level of fitness.

When that happens, you will find yourself running like "a kite in the wind", he says in his book Speed with Endurance, co-written with Bruce Lehane.

To establish fitness, they say: "You have to work your way up to covering six miles per day on average six days a week." Now this will sound like nothing to some people here, and a lot to others. Whatever: it is do-able, isn't it? Squires and Lehane virtually guarantee that if you do this minimum, you will lift yourself beyond the ranks of "recreational running" and be able to produce "lower" levels of performance.