GREAT RACE NEWSWe are still looking for volunteers for the 7:30 - 10:00 am shift and the 10:00 am to 12 noon shift. If you are not racing or will be done early, please consider stopping by the Inside Track booth at the Great Race expo on Saturday, March 28th and help out if you can.
If you are racing, look for the Inside Track banner in the team gathering area. The gathering area is close to the registration table and the main entrance. This is a good place to meet up with your fellow Inside Trackers before racing!
Remember that there is no organized run at the beach this Saturday. We'll see you all in Ventura next Saturday, April 4th.
Good luck to everyone! Happy running!
If you are racing, look for the Inside Track banner in the team gathering area. The gathering area is close to the registration table and the main entrance. This is a good place to meet up with your fellow Inside Trackers before racing!
Remember that there is no organized run at the beach this Saturday. We'll see you all in Ventura next Saturday, April 4th.
Good luck to everyone! Happy running!
TRAINING CORNER
By George Arita, Advisor of Training
Georgerunvta@aol.com
LSD
The calendar-stated LSD for Saturday is 20 miles. However, because of the Great Race of Agoura on the same day, to which many club members will be attending either as race-participants or ITRC booth attendants, we called off the official club training run. So if you intend to run our course, there will be no refreshment or other friendly support. Also because of the Great Race, the 20-mile LSD was run last Saturday instead. Therefore, those who ran 20 miles last Saturday and intend to run LSD on your own this Saturday, the recommended distance is 12 miles, slow and easy. Next Saturday (April 4, 2009), be prepared for our second 20-miler (Note: since I’m running Big Sur on April 26, my LSD next Saturday will be 18 miles instead. Others running Big Sur might consider limiting yourselves to that distance also).
VOLUNTEERS NEEDED
Seriously consider our needs for volunteers to help out on Saturdays (hear and see Naomi’s spoken and written messages). Volunteers are also needed to man our booth for this Saturday’s Great Race event (see Mira’s message).
ESSAY: HELP FOR THE LAST FEW MILES
In previous essays, I wrote about “Mental Toughness,” “Keep Your Form,” “Breathing Rhythm,” and “Final Kick,” with each essay providing training strategies to help you finish your LSD run and marathon race. To these, I add other techniques that I often use to help me finish the last few miles when I am not feeling especially great. I use various techniques to help keep my tired legs moving toward the finish line, but basically each technique is to focus my mind away from the total distance remaining by breaking the miles into shorter segments. However, no matter which technique I use, I always concentrate on keeping my form and breathing rhythm at all times.
If the feeling of tiredness is not too severe but bad enough to make me aware of it, I break the remaining distance into individual miles (or half-miles if these are marked), and I remind myself that I am that much closer to the finish as I run by each marker.
On the other hand, when I’m feeling really spent and my legs are super-heavy, I break the distances into even shorter segments. While always trying to maintain my form, I concentrate on my breathing and use every exhalation to count from one to twenty. Since I inhale and exhale on every other left foot plant, by the time I reach “twenty” in my count, I had taken at least forty left-foot plants without really noticing the number of foot plants and the pain as much as I would have, had I not concentrated on counting. I tried counting to fifty or one hundred but I found those counts are too long. You can try other numbers but twenty works good for me. Also I found reciting these higher numbers (i.e. “twenty-one,” “twenty-two,” etc) requires too many syllables.
I also tried reciting the alphabets with each left-foot plant, and that works too.
Another recitation I perform is my reminder to keep my form as I tire. I say the words, “Keep – Your – Form” with each three successive exhalations (three alternating left-foot plants). This technique helps me concentrate on keeping my form while taking my mind off my tiredness.
Try some of these techniques to help you get to the finish line the next time you feel spent before getting there. Or think of others that might be helpful to keep you moving.
HAVE A GOOD WEEK EVERYONE.
BEEN THERE, DONE THAT
By Rafael Gonzalez (a.k.a. first-time marathoner & Napa Valley Marathon finisher)
rafaelrgonzalez@gmail.com
AHHH NAPA!
Napa Valley...The very name brings up images of magnificent meals, magical Merlots, and a memorable Marathon. Marathon?!
That's right, on Sunday March 1st, 2009, the 31st annual running of the Napa Valley Marathon took place. Over 1,700 brave women and men ignored the cold, scoffed at the rain and started on a 26.2 mile journey that started in Calistoga at 7:00 am and ended at a high school in Napa several hours later.
On Saturday morning the day before the race, I joined up with another couple to start the six-hour drive from Ventura County to Napa. The drive went off without a hitch. However, later on that evening an improbable series of events were to transpire that caused much grief and aggravation to the aforementioned couple. In what is now officially known in our running club as "The Incident", it involves a rental car, a toilet, inexperienced tow truck drivers and a misplaced cell phone. But more on that later on.
Saturday afternoon at the pre-race expo we got our "goody bags", bibs, and this being Napa, some complimentary wine tasting. Race day started out at 4:30 am to get ready to catch one of the buses provided by the sponsoring hotel. For some strange reason the ride out to Calistoga seemed very long. Once we got there, most of us stayed on the bus for a while to stay warm and dry. Once we left the bus we got to the starting line with just a few minutes to spare because of the long lines at the port-a-pottys.
A few minutes after 7:00 am, the race finally started and we were off! A sea of humanity going in the same direction, with the same goal in mind..to make it to the finish line. Although there was a light rain during most of the race, the spectacular scenery, dozens of volunteers and enthusiastic crowds at almost every mile marker more than made up for it.
After the race, hot soup and a massage awaited shivering, wet, road-weary runners. The only major issue that I encountered was in trying to get back to the hotel. There were only two big vans taking people back. We had to wait in line --- cold and wet-for about 20 minutes before the vans made it back and it was finally our turn to board.
All in all, it was an awesome experience! Definitely a race I will do again. How did I end up doing? Not bad for a guy that just started running 6 months ago. Although the last five miles were pure torture, I still managed to finish in 3:48. (Editor's note: "Managed???" If only the rest of us could "manage" our finish times as well.)
Oh, getting back to "The Incident". To get all of the juicy details..you'll just have to join our running club to find out!
CLUB NEWS
*Birthday greetings
March 8 - Josh Spiker, Lisa Anderson
March 14 - Christopher Means
March 15 - Tom McKiernan
March 17 - Erin Keesch
March 20 - Marianne Owczarski
March 21 - Yinyin Goh
March 29 - Laura Diamond
The calendar-stated LSD for Saturday is 20 miles. However, because of the Great Race of Agoura on the same day, to which many club members will be attending either as race-participants or ITRC booth attendants, we called off the official club training run. So if you intend to run our course, there will be no refreshment or other friendly support. Also because of the Great Race, the 20-mile LSD was run last Saturday instead. Therefore, those who ran 20 miles last Saturday and intend to run LSD on your own this Saturday, the recommended distance is 12 miles, slow and easy. Next Saturday (April 4, 2009), be prepared for our second 20-miler (Note: since I’m running Big Sur on April 26, my LSD next Saturday will be 18 miles instead. Others running Big Sur might consider limiting yourselves to that distance also).
VOLUNTEERS NEEDED
Seriously consider our needs for volunteers to help out on Saturdays (hear and see Naomi’s spoken and written messages). Volunteers are also needed to man our booth for this Saturday’s Great Race event (see Mira’s message).
ESSAY: HELP FOR THE LAST FEW MILES
In previous essays, I wrote about “Mental Toughness,” “Keep Your Form,” “Breathing Rhythm,” and “Final Kick,” with each essay providing training strategies to help you finish your LSD run and marathon race. To these, I add other techniques that I often use to help me finish the last few miles when I am not feeling especially great. I use various techniques to help keep my tired legs moving toward the finish line, but basically each technique is to focus my mind away from the total distance remaining by breaking the miles into shorter segments. However, no matter which technique I use, I always concentrate on keeping my form and breathing rhythm at all times.
If the feeling of tiredness is not too severe but bad enough to make me aware of it, I break the remaining distance into individual miles (or half-miles if these are marked), and I remind myself that I am that much closer to the finish as I run by each marker.
On the other hand, when I’m feeling really spent and my legs are super-heavy, I break the distances into even shorter segments. While always trying to maintain my form, I concentrate on my breathing and use every exhalation to count from one to twenty. Since I inhale and exhale on every other left foot plant, by the time I reach “twenty” in my count, I had taken at least forty left-foot plants without really noticing the number of foot plants and the pain as much as I would have, had I not concentrated on counting. I tried counting to fifty or one hundred but I found those counts are too long. You can try other numbers but twenty works good for me. Also I found reciting these higher numbers (i.e. “twenty-one,” “twenty-two,” etc) requires too many syllables.
I also tried reciting the alphabets with each left-foot plant, and that works too.
Another recitation I perform is my reminder to keep my form as I tire. I say the words, “Keep – Your – Form” with each three successive exhalations (three alternating left-foot plants). This technique helps me concentrate on keeping my form while taking my mind off my tiredness.
Try some of these techniques to help you get to the finish line the next time you feel spent before getting there. Or think of others that might be helpful to keep you moving.
HAVE A GOOD WEEK EVERYONE.
BEEN THERE, DONE THAT
By Rafael Gonzalez (a.k.a. first-time marathoner & Napa Valley Marathon finisher)
rafaelrgonzalez@gmail.com
AHHH NAPA!
Napa Valley...The very name brings up images of magnificent meals, magical Merlots, and a memorable Marathon. Marathon?!
For me, the journey actually started six months earlier when, for reasons that I still can't figure out, I joined a running club (Editor's note: You mean Inside Track, right?). The original goal was to train for the 2009 L.A. Marathon, which would be my first. But when the date for the marathon kept getting re-scheduled, my friends (who have already ran numerous marathons) mentioned that Napa would be a fun alternative. Having been to Napa once before, I was all for it.
A few minutes after 7:00 am, the race finally started and we were off! A sea of humanity going in the same direction, with the same goal in mind..to make it to the finish line. Although there was a light rain during most of the race, the spectacular scenery, dozens of volunteers and enthusiastic crowds at almost every mile marker more than made up for it.
Oh, getting back to "The Incident". To get all of the juicy details..you'll just have to join our running club to find out!
CLUB NEWS
*Birthday greetings
March 8 - Josh Spiker, Lisa Anderson
March 14 - Christopher Means
March 15 - Tom McKiernan
March 17 - Erin Keesch
March 20 - Marianne Owczarski
March 21 - Yinyin Goh
March 29 - Laura Diamond
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