Everyone is Running Downhill Except Me

So, turns out that the men's Olympic marathon was on Sunday and not Saturday...who knew? In the back of my mind, I thought Saturday was not the right day, but I plowed ahead anyway. And within maybe an hour I realized I was wrong, but really didn't feel like logging in to Blogger and changing the post, etc. So, my bad. Somehow I doubt it made much of a difference.

But, for those who didn't blindly follow my post and not visit any other Olympics-related website the entire weekend, Ugandan Stephen Kiprotich won the gold medal, claiming that country's first gold in the marathon in 2:08:01. Silver and bronze were claimed by Kenyans Abel Kirui (2:08:27) and Wilson Kipsang (2:09:37).


However, American Meb Keflezighi came in fourth after being as far back as 19th around the halfway point in the race. That's a fantastic finish for Meb, who is 37 and was the silver medalist in Athens in 2004. He covered 26 miles, 385 yards in 2:11:06. Here's an article on Runner's World about his race. These were his final Olympics, and I'm happy to see he went out on such a positive note.

Anyway, this weekend saw some wonderful weather here (for August, of course), and I completed my 5.5 miler under a cloudless sky in high 70s temperatures and low humidity. The sun was intense and it was definitely toasty in the sunlight versus the shade, but compared to some runs earlier in the summer, it was nice. I ran around the harbor and down into Federal Hill/Locust Point before turning around and coming back up into Mt. Vernon.



As you can see from the elevation chart above, the route has some decent elevation changes and the final mile or so is all uphill as you climb from sea level at the harbor up into Mt. Vernon. But I swear every time I ran uphill, I passed several other runners going downhill. But then when I was running downhill, I never once saw anyone else running uphill in the opposite direction. More than once I was trudging uphill only to be passed by another runner cruising downhill at warp speed. They ran almost effortlessly as I seemed to drag myself up the side of a mountain. Yet I never got the reward of feeling (mistakenly) athletically superior to those poor saps heading uphill as I glided, as if on two little clouds instead of shoes, downhill. "Well, everyone's a freaking Olympic marathoner when running downhill," I kept thinking to myself. Yet that didn't take away the indignity.

OK, maybe that's a bit hyperbolic, but still, when you run up a hill, you want SOME form of instant reward. "This will pay off in October" only does so much to take away the burn of the lactic acid in one's legs, you know. At some point, one needs to see someone else suffering a little to take away that sting. Yet on Sunday, it seemed I was stuck in some sort of runner's punishment where I run uphill and a.) it always feels awful and b.) never run downhill and feel satisfied that someone else is suffering too, which makes the next uphill feel more awful.

But, them's the breaks, I suppose. And really, it will all be worth it come October. Right?

Men's Olympic Marathon Reminder

Almost forgot! Tomorrow morning at 11 AM in London (6 AM here on the East Coast, 12 AM Sunday morning if you're reading this from Tokyo), the men's Olympic marathon gets underway.

I'll be rooting for Ryan Hall, as he has the best chance of the American delegation. However, his best time of 2:06:17 is still the 69th fastest in the world. As this post from Runner's World's Amby Burfoot points out, the top 33 times in the world this year are owned by Kenyans or Ethiopians. So it'll be an uphill battle for Ryan and everyone else in the field tomorrow.

Nonetheless, I'll be TiVO-ing it to watch after I get back from the gym in the morning.

Operation Cannoli Follow Up (also Running Stuff, Too)

Operation Cannoli was a great success, although we ended up going with Italian cookies over cannoli, simply because of the potential mess factor. But the overall plan worked like a charm. We had the cookies in a bag and got no trouble walking in with it. We also bought a large drink and soft pretzel, so the theater company got plenty of our money for the evening anyway. The only problem was that once the movie began, it was impossible to see the cookies to see what kind you were eating. Next time, as a logistical improvement, I'd arrange the cookies in a particular order so we knew what we were blindly eating. However, freshly made Italian cookies beat Twizzlers any day.

I won't bore anyone with a review of The Dark Knight Rises, other than to say I think it was a.) the best of the three Christopher Nolan Batman movies (although they're all great) and b.) the best superhero movie I've seen maybe ever, and that includes Superman II. But, I like Batman darker and grittier like Nolan envisioned him, so that has a lot to do with it. Plus, as I've noted before, I'm not a big Spider-Man fan. I will say that this movie and the first Iron Man movies are close in my book, but my affinity for the Caped Crusader seals the deal for me.

I also had a successful running weekend and managed to get both my intervals and long run done. No major problems, although the weather was very humid, so the long run was a tough slog and it was a challenge to keep my heart rate under control throughout. From here on out, I'm going to be focusing on ramping up my mileage as the half marathon in October approaches. So, this weekend will be a 6 miler, building up to 10-11 miles the week before the race, ideally. To supplement that, I'm going to be much better about cross training, stretching, etc. I need to improve my aerobic fitness, but also my flexibility, as I don't want to pull a hamstring trying to get through a long run.

Cutting out Italian cookies might be helpful too, now that I think about it.

And, in a brief follow up to Saturday's post: Shalane Flanagan and Kara Goucher came in 10th and 11th in Sunday's women's Olympic Marathon, respectively. They were up with the leaders for much of the race and, given the heavy hitters in the field, I think they did great. The winning runner set an Olympic record, so being the 10th and 11th fastest women in the race is nothing to feel bad about at all.

And the Curiosity rover touched down on Mars early this morning (in the east), without any problems, which is really unbelievable. The rover sent a few pictures back from the surface already and it's incredible to think that hundreds of scientists and engineers were able to put a car, basically, on another planet, after shooting it into space and building a computer to navigate the millions of miles from Florida to freaking Mars.

Here's a link (courtesy of The Atlantic and NASA) to the video of the control room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the minutes leading up to the confirmation transmission from Curiosity that it had reached Mars. I think I'd be jumping up and down ecstatically too, if I had spent years working on that project.

Saturday Reminder

What? A post mid-weekend when we're all out and about? That's right. But I forgot to add a few things to my Friday post. Two reminders, really.

First: the women's Olympic marathon is on tomorrow morning at 6:00 AM Eastern time. Yeah, it's crazy early, but that's an 11:00 AM start time in London, so it could be worse. Imagine if they decided to start at 8:00 AM GMT. As it stands, I'm going to set the TiVO to record the whole thing so I can watch it later in the day. I'll be up, but out running myself when they cross the finish line.

The Americans in the field are Desi Davila, Kara Goucher and Shalane Flanagan. Here's an article from Runners World laying out the odds for the Americans in the super stacked Olympic field. Kenyans Mary Keitany and Edna Kiplagat, along with Russia's Liliya Shobukhova Nonetheless, I'm rooting for them and hope at least one of them gets on the podium tomorrow.

Secondly, and not running related, early Monday morning NASA's Curiosity rover vehicle will approach and then land on Mars. The mission kicked off last November with the launch of Curiosity into space for the ~150 million mile journey from Earth to Mars. At around 1:00 AM EST on Monday morning, the craft will begin its descent into the Martian atmosphere. If the landing is successful (fingers crossed!), the 2K pound rover will explore an area of Mars thought to have a good chance of once supporting water, and thus possibly life. The rover will operate for several years, although the small nuclear reactor onboard (!) can power the craft for up to 14 years. The descent will take seven minutes, but it takes communication 14 minutes to travel from Mars to Earth, so NASA will receive confirmation that the craft has started its descent seven minutes AFTER it's already landed. Crazy!

Anyway, here's a story from NPR about the anxieties and challenges of taking a huge multi-billion dollar spacecraft, shooting it into space at another planet and landing it safely on said planet. Amazing stuff.

And with that, I bid you a fond weekend until Monday. Details on Operation Cannoli then as well. Maybe also some running stuff.

Weekend Training Schedule & Friday Links

Just a quick end of week post this time around, as the week was mostly a loss to work time demands and other things that made for a lackluster training week. This weekend we won't be going anywhere, so I'll be able to get in a decent run tomorrow morning and then a proper longer run Sunday morning. My mother-in-law is coming to visit this weekend and to see A in her performance as part of the Capital Fringe Festival down in DC. But, I get along very well with my in-laws, and we haven't seen any of them since the holidays, so I can honestly say it'll be nice to see her this weekend.

I'm also hopeful I'll have some time to work on a cross training regimen that will complement my running. I need to get beyond just running and into exercising on my rest days as well...so that's a project for this weekend.

And now, a few links for this Friday.

With the Olympics beginning this evening in London, I'm including some links to running-related Olympics sites. See? Running. Olympics. Theme. Nice.

Sir Roger Bannister is rumored to be the person who will light the Olympic Torch tonight. That would be awesome.

Here's a preview and predictions for every Track & Field event, courtesy of Runner's World. Includes the marathon, decathlon and everyone's favorite event, steeplechase.

So how do you warm up for running in the freaking Olympics? Now you know. From Runner's World.

Apparently, NBC will produce more than 5500 hours of programming over the next 17 days. That's insane. More insane is that you can see just about all of it through some medium (TV, computer, mobile, psychic link with the Hive Mind, etc). So, here's a TV viewing guide from Sports Illustrated.

And finally, the Hive Mind itself: NBC's Olympics homepage. You can plug in directly and become one with the Olympics. Plus watch events online and do 1.4 million other things that will sap your productivity at work.

I'll be heading to Alliance Comics for my bi-weekly comics run tomorrow. I've got Justice League #11 and Manhattan Projects #5 to pick up.

However, as I've said before, I've never really gotten into any Marvel books. I'm not sure why. I guess it was hard to drop into a book like "Avengers vs. X-Men" or "Invincible Iron Man" after years or sometimes decades of issues. Not being familiar with past crossovers or plots means I'm spending most of my time playing catch up, or just missing things, which is no fun. And really, beyond the headliner series like Avengers, Iron Man, Thor, etc, I've never really been enthused about the rest of the Marvel line up. For example, "Avengers Academy" holds no appeal for me.

All this explains, in a way, why I'm looking forward to the relaunching of several key Marvel titles in December and early 2013. Marvel is rebooting "Avengers" and "Uncanny Avengers" (I think that's the title...please correct me if I get these wrong). I believe they're also going to reboot Thor and Iron Man, as Marvel announced earlier that those books would be coming to an end in the Fall. I'm most interested in checking out the new Avengers book, which will be written by Jonathan Hickman. At the very least, it'll provide a good opportunity to get in on the ground floor of potentially interesting Marvel titles.

Which brings me to my final link. Brian Hibbs, staff writer at CBR and comic book store owner, has a new column out wherein he talks about the economics of the Marvel NOW! reboot, and why it isn't all rainbows and butterflies for store owners. Very interesting meshing of my day job and hobby. Check it out.