I had a really good run in Boston this year, running a 3:01 for my fastest Boston and my 5^th fastest marathon ever, so I felt like I was in good shape in April.  However we took a 8 day boat trip where I was unable to do any running and when I came back I wasn’t feeling in top shape.  Compounding on this, my wife and I attended a Gala event at the New York Public Library where I carbo-loaded with enthusiasm.  These two things did not combine for the best marathon experience.

I was hoping to run a sub 3 hour marathon after missing it in Boston.  However come race day I felt like a 3:05 would be all I would be capable of, but since I had already “called my shot” with our group of friends I left it out there.

The buses for the race left the finish area at 6am.  For a race that started at 8am, this was unacceptable for me.  What am I? Paul Williams?  I convinced Big Jeff to ride with us and we left around 7am and then arrived at the start around 7:20.  So much for any traffic or road problems.  I was wondering what to do with that wasted 40 minutes but we were able to find our friends and hang out.  Although I was slightly irritated, as this was a race you could have shown up 5 minutes before the start and still been fine.

The announcer introduces the starter and then we are off.  No “on your mark, get set, go.”  Just a “Here is Jenny and she is the starter [air horn]”.  Strange.  I know the course is rolling hills for the first half and then a huge drop over the last 13.  The net drop is around 1500 ft.  The Ship of Fools drove the course the day before and said to be careful of the back half.  I decided to try my usual Fly and Die strategy and shoot for a 1:27 first half, which would allow me a 1:32ish second half and still break 3 hours, or a 1:47ish and still make a BQ time.

The first few miles are not too bad.

0-1: 6:47

1-2: 6:45

2-3: 6:38

By the time I am at mile 3, the first place guy is 5 minutes ahead of me.  5 minutes?  Really?  That’s just mean.

This stretch is an out and back and I am able to see Michelle, Jeff, Al, Sandy, and Tonya.  I want to stay under 7 minute miles for the first half and then hope to hold on.

3-4: 6:55

Almost lost it on mile 4, so I pick it up a little bit.

4-5: 6:47

5-6: 6:41

6-7: 6:43

7-8: 6:42

I’m staying right within my desired pace but I am looking for the first big downhill.

8-9: 6:14

Ahh, hello hill.  Any chance you could meet me again for the last 6 miles?

9-10: 6:33

10-11: 6:35

11-12: 6:41

12-13: 6:51

I come thru the half in 1:27 and change and am pretty happy, but Friday night’s debauchery is catching up with me and I begin looking for the blue cabinet of miracles.

13-14: 6:58

That first over 7 minute mile sure feels like it is coming soon.  My legs are getting pretty heavy and I begin to think sub 3 isn’t going to happen.  I console myself with the fact that 8:30 miles should still get me a BQ.

14-15: 6:50

15-16: 6:36

Finally I see the blue cabinet of miracles and dash inside.  Two and a half minutes later I emerge victorious and ready to run again.  I keep a solid pace for the next couple of miles but then my energy runs out.

16-17: 8:58 (2:31)

17-18: 6:51

18-19: 7:06

The first over seven minute (running) mile has happened.  I check my watch and see that I need to run sub 7 minute miles from here on in to break 3 hours.  Knowing that my body (and my mind) aren’t ready to do that, I relax a little bit.

19-20: 7:11

20-21: 7:22

21-22: 7:27

I am now tired of running.  My calves feel like over stuffed sausages and I am glad for my pippy-longstockings.  I am beginning to question the wisdom of running the triple next month.  I’ll be surprised if I can walk normally tomorrow.

22-23: 7:39

23-24: 7:39

24-25: 7:34

25-26: 7:40

Mile 26 sure seemed to take a long time to arrive.  I enter the cinder track and hope that it is 100 meters to go, but alas, we have to run almost the entire way around.  Ugh.  I see my wife in the stands and slap a smile on my face and scamper into the finish.

26.2: 1:28

——–

3:04:27

Running 3:04 is a weird feeling for me now.  It was one of my top 10 fastest times, but it hurt more than it should.  I also felt like I was capable of breaking 3 hours, but just couldn’t deliver.  I once again learn that breaking 3 hours is very hard and I can’t count on it happening.  I am thrilled that I can run a sub 3:05 on the training I do but really want to break 3 hours a couple more times.  I’m setting my sights on St. George in October and plan to put in some real training and not run a marathon for at least 4-6 weeks before it.

This was a great race for all ship members.  Michelle Ryan completed slapped the course in the face and notched an 11 minute PR.  Al and Sandy and POJ qualified for Boston (again), Jeff continues to get faster (and looks good in those white socks), Jack managed to win the 5k duel with Linda and Tonya had a solid performance.

After the race we all headed to a brew pub for some good beer and good friends.  Tanya was super sneaky and we appreciate it.

Marathon #108 is in the book.  Up next the triple.

We fly into Salt Lake City the day before the race and have an uneventful drive to the host hotel. We actually attend a pasta dinner for once so that I could get some much needed information about the race from the race Director (who it turns out has not only run marathons on all seven continents but has logged over 180 marathons as well. Makes me feel like a piker).

We meet some nice guys: Roger, Paul and Brian, all of whom live near the area and are regular snow shoers. After talking up the snow they convince me I need some wool socks or my feet will freeze off. So I figure they must know what they are talking about and they direct me to a running store where I pick up some wool socks. This would prove to be a bad decision an hour or so into the race. I broke the cardinal rule, never do something new in a marathon.

The next morning we wake up and head to Park City for the race and the car thermometer reads 5 degrees. Good Lawd that’s cold.

We find the start area and go inside to get our snow shoes. A super cool thing is the race sponsor provided snow shoes if you, were say from Texas, and didn’t own any shoes. I put them on and go take a 100 meter jog and back. They are loud, it sounds like clap, clap, clap with every step. You hear the crunch of the snow followed by the top of the snow shoe hitting the bottom of your shoe.

I grab a quick photo with Bigfoot before the race.

The gun goes off and we take off. I have no idea how to pace myself for this thing but figure I will go with my usual “fly and die”. It is super cold right now, I have to keep taking the fingers out of my glove and holding them against my palm while I switch hands with my water bottle. After about 5 miles my hands have either gone numb or warmed up, can’t really tell the difference at this point.

The race consists of a 10k and a 5k loop. The 10k loop is groomed snowmobile track and maybe 8 feet wide, the 5k loop I single track trail with about 20 inches of snow on either side. If you come out of the track you tumble. The single track is about 2 inches wider than both my snow shoes next to each other, so there is a little margin for error. The plug side is that the first 2 miles of this loop are straight up hill so you aren’t going fast enough to really worry about getting out of the trail.  Both laps have similar elevation gain, but the 10k gives you twice as long to climb it.

Running on snow shoes isn’t really that much different that running in regular shoes, they are just a lot louder and heavier. The difference is that you never know when the snow will be solid enough to support your weight or when you will drop 18 inches down. I think this is less of a problem for the women as they probably only fall 6-12 inches due to less weight. This is not a good race to be a Clydesdale. A couple miles in my shoes are sliding all around. I stop to try and tighten the strap holding them on, but it has frozen stiff. It takes me about 90 seconds to unhook it and about the same time to get it back synched tight. What a waste of time, but at least I got to catch my breath.

I finish the first lap in 2nd place in the marathon division. The course record was 6:43:30. I seem no possible way that any marathon can take me that long to finish. I did Pikes Peak in 5:50 or so and that has to be harder. So I was hoping for a sub 5:30 finish, a course record and the win. I would get 2 of the 3.

After the first lap I am only about 3 minutes behind the leader as we start going up!

I feel like the Jamaican bobsled team at this point, a fish out of water, a person from Texas running uphill in the snow. Very slow going. It is super beautiful here now. Snow is everywhere, the trees are covered in snow and there are lots of switch backs. I bet this is a gorgeous place to run in the spring. After cresting the hill and finally getting to run downhill I see the leader going the wrong way. He has taken the easy way up the mountain and decides to just run it backwards to get the same difference. I decide at this point I will not let him pass me as I don’t want to lose to him and then feel bitter about him making the course easier. I manage to succeed in this but I would get passed by someone else much later in the race.

I’m starting to blister on both my heels now and it doesn’t feel awesome. Hopefully they will calm down and not get too much worse. I finish lap two in first place, but as I head out I see the second place runner, first female (who her buddy told me is a sub-3 hour marathoner) only 2 minutes behind. Since I outweigh her by a good 80 pounds, I figure I am in trouble. I decide to push it for as long as I can to try and hold her off.

I start the second 10k loop, which has an additional 2k section to get to the full marathon distance, and it is getting rough on my feet. I have to make like the Pope and dart off into the woods and take care of some business. Back on the course I am starting to get tired and am not looking forward to reclimbing that hill. As I come to the start the second 5k loop my feet are raw hamburger. This sucks. I was hoping the snow would make them numb so I could forget about it, but no such luck. I trudge up the 5k loop again in an ungainly shuffle walk both because my feet hurt and this hill is damned steep.

The first 5k loop I finished in 45:31 the second on takes me over 3 minutes longer. 48 minutes for a 5k is pretty ridiculous. Running down the hill I try to stay head of the wayward runner and the first female but they are both closing fast. I am running flat out and fall 3 times coming down the hill. Overall I think I fell 12-15 times, but since it was on snow it didn’t hurt too much, but was kind of embarrassing. I finish the damned 5k loop and am so happy I won’t have to run that again, but I am barely a minute ahead of second place and she is moving. I now know it is only a matter of time and that I am fighting for second place.

She passes me with about 5 miles to go. It is over I know I have no chance. I tell her she is in first place and wish her good luck. We are both pretty beat up and as we start the final climbs both of us are walking, but she is walking faster. I see her pull away and am powerless to keep up. My feet are on fire and even my walking looks pathetic. I just want to make it to the top of the hill and then I know I’ll finish. I crest the hill and can see her off in the distance, I look back and see 3rd place a minute behind me. I decide to push it to make sure he can’t catch me. I go faster hoping not for the win, but just to end the misery.

I cross the finish line having broken the course record by about a hour and 28 minutes.

I feel pretty good about that, but the actual winner broke it 90 minutes. So I wind up winning the first overall male trophy and taking second place. I offer her both trophies since she won but she doesn’t want it. The race director lets me stand in the picture with the actual winner of the race.

Afterwards there is a nice spread of soup and hot chocolate that I guzzle down. I don’t want to look at my feet and so I don’t until an hour later when we are in the car heading home. It is not a pretty sight.

Afterwards Shelley and I have a nice dinner at a little Italian place in Salt Lake City and then go to bed. I am unable to sleep as the drink on the course was 180 degree energy drink. I had 6 or 7 water bottles of the stuff which must equal close to 10 cans of it. I am wired beyond wired. I am a little shaky and even Tylenol PM can’t compete with this energy drink. Somehow a few hours later I actually do fall asleep and then Shelley and I spend 7 hours in the SLC airport trying to catch an earlier flight home which no success.

Overall a fun experience, but it took two weeks for my heels to heal up enough to run again. The Austin Marathon is going to be interesting to say the least.

After cleaning up my feet they looked like this: Yuck

Shelley and I will be hitting the road heading to Salt Lake City. From there it is a short 90 minute drive past Orem to the Kahtoola Big Foot Snowshoe Festival. This will be the first time I have ever worn snow shoes (and to be perfectly honest will be the first time I have ever seen them in person). So I figure why not start out your first time by running a marathon. How hard can it be? Famous last words? Probably. The race starts at 5700 feet and then climbs to 6700 over multiple loops.

I’ve heard running uphill is easy, but downhill is quite hard with the snow shoes.

I’ll report back in a few days if I survive.

This got me thinking about my collection of states, and so I updated my spreadsheet, and of the 101 marathons, I’ve managed to pick up at least a second marathon in 13 states. So I could join the club again, but it shows that I have a high concentration of repeats.

Here are my repeated states:

Now researchers think they have the answer. Neuroscientists at Cambridge University have shown that running stimulates the brain to grow fresh grey matter and it has a big impact on mental ability.

A few days of running led to the growth of hundreds of thousands of new brain cells that improved the ability to recall memories without confusing them, a skill that is crucial for learning and other cognitive tasks, researchers said.

And it allows me to eat lots of candy. Good news, good news.

Our local running store, RunTex, has an annual run on the 1st where you run from RunTex North to RunTex Riverside, which is a little over 13 miles.  It starts at the typically very generous 9am.  However, when I went to bed last night (this morning?) I gave myself a 50/50 chance of waking up and running it.  I decided not to set an alarm and if I woke up in time, then I’d go.  Well I woke up at 8am, and told myself that if I went back to sleep AND woke up again in time then I’d go.

Somehow I woke up again at 8:15 and I resigned myself to running it.  I was very, very slugish getting going, but managed to drag myself to RunTex north.  I got to see lots of friends I don’t see that often and we traded various war stories of who was out the latest and imbibed the most.  Needless to say most everyone had a late night but rang the bell at the start to make the run.

We start out and hit the first mile in about 8:00/M pace which actually felt too slow and too fast at the same time.  I felt like my blood had thickened over night and my heart was struggling to pump it.  I started speeding up and settled into a comfortable rhythm.  And the miles started clicking off, I joined some packs and left others until I needed to make a pit stop.  A quick detour into McDonalds and then I was feeling better and met back up with a different set of friends.  That felt a little too slow and so I picked it back up.  We hit the hilly portion with a lot of downhills and the speed just dropped, I was running in the low to mid 6s and felt pretty good.  By mile 7-8 my hangover was gone and I felt pretty good.  My blood was still too thick, but tolerable.

Finished the last 2 miles with another good friend and then headed to the porta-potty.  I left my gloves and headband on the ground in front of the porta potty so as not to leave it on a nasty floor.  While I was in there some ass-hat stole my headband but left my gloves. I’m hopeful that it was a homeless person who needed it more than I did and not some jackass just stealing for no good reason.

Afterwards Runtex really takes care of you, they had black eyed peas, bread, mimosas, beer and everyone got a commemorative shirt for completing the run. It was a great way to start the new year.  I finished the 13.2 mile run at 7:20/M pace. I’ve got the Houston Marathon coming up in two weeks and am starting to feel like I am rolling in to shape.  See you in two weeks.

A quick check of the Marathon Maniacs stat board had me ranked at number 184 in terms of total marathons with a total of 86, but since I hadn’t updated my stats in a while, I was curious how far I’d jump once updating my stats.   After updating with the 10 missing races for this year, I jumped up to spot #155.

100 marathons is currently good enough for #144, however to crack the top 100 you need 118 marathons.

I’ve got four more on the schedule for this year, so it will actually be a down year for me from last year (16 vs. 20 respectfully).

Not sure what the next goal should be after reaching 100, still pondering.

Here’s where I’ll be next:

10/3 St. George

10/24 Frankenthon (Directing, not running)

11/1 New York City

11/15 Rock and Roll San Antonio

12/13 White Rock (Marathon #100 if all goes well).

Hope to see you there.

We’re planning on taking home a lot of hardware tomorrow morning.

Afterwards we will journey to the Big Jud’s hamburger stand where they sell 1-5 lb hamburgers and a 15 scoop, 5 toping ice cream sundae. If you finish any one of these you get your picture on the wall.

Here is my son holding the dog big-ass mixing bowl:

We’ll let you know how the Ship does and if any big burgers or huge sundaes get taken down

The Frankenthon keeps getting better and better. We’ve signed up two new sponsors this week:

• Rogue Equipment is a local Austin, TX running store specializing in running shoes, technical apparel and accessories. They will be providing a 10% discount to all participants in the Frankenthon as well as $100 gift certificates to the overall male/female winners and male/female masters winners.
• Performance Wellness is a local Austin, TX massage, chiropractor and overall athlete heath group that emphasizes improving your health in an effort to reduce the risk of pain and illness in the first place. They will be providing free massages after the marathon to all participants as well as gift certificates for an hour massage for the overall male/female winners and male/female masters winners

Just a reminder that the Frankenthon takes place this October 24th, 2009 (the Saturday before Halloween) at Brushy Creek Lake Park, which is in Cedar Park, Texas (just north of Austin).

We have a cap of 150 runners, so sign up today and reserve your spot. (Note: entries are transferable, we’d love to have you run, but if you can’t make it you can give/sell your number to another runner)

Finisher’s items include: Frankenthon Monster Tech Socks, Long Sleeve Tech T-shirt, Monster Medals.

It will be a frightfully good time, so come join us in October.

Frank

There is a new marathon coming to town.  I will be making my first attempt to put on a marathon with this years Frankenthon Monster Marathon.  I’ve been directing a 12 race 5k series in the summer, the Sunstroke Summer Stampede, which is about to finish up it’s 6th year.  This has been very enjoyable to me, but I’ve always wanted to put on a marathon as well.  The Summer Stampede has been a more low-frills type of race, but for the Frankenthon we are going to try and put on a top notch marathon with great goodies, certified Boston Qualifying course, chip timing and other exciting things to ensure you have a frightfully good time.
We’re going with a monster themed race and will be running the Saturday before Halloween, which this year falls on October 24, 2009. The course will be mostly flat with a mixed paved/crushed granite trail.  It will cover three 8.75 mile laps.

The overall winners (male/female and masters) will each receive a free pair of Mizuno shoes as well as other goodies.  We’re looking to do something special for the last male/female finishers as well.

We will provide long-sleveed tech shirts and tech-socks for all entrants.

Age groups awards will be 3 deep in 5 year age groups.

Come out and run, or come volunteer, I can for sure use the help.

Hope to see you out there.

Frank

The Mickelson Trail Marathon was going to be a good trip for me. I would finally redeem myself for the previous South Dakota debacle and actually take my son to see Mt. Rushmore, I would get a trophy for finishing the 50 states and have a nice vacation with my family. We got up super early on Saturday morning (4am) to catch our 6am flight to Denver and then onto Rapid City. We picked up our car, at a Subaru dealership, and headed up to Deadwood.

We attended the 50 States Marathon Club reunion meeting, where we got to see Leanhorse Productions (race directors) hand out awards to Roger Biggs (500th Marathon), Darwin Weimer (100th marathon) and Denis McCarthy completing the 50 states. Since Denis wouldn’t officially complete the 50 states until Sunday he was unable to join Jack Brooks, Fifi Wright (sorry Fiona we didn’t get a picture of this), and myself in receiving our 50 States Club awards.

The gun goes off and I bolt out of the gates. For trail runs I like to run the first mile pretty fast to get into the trail before it backs up. I didn’t think this trail had any single track but I figured better not to risk it. The start is downhill which allows for some fast running. I am in the lead for about 1/4 mile when someone comes up to me and says “I don’t plan on winning I just wanted to be in the front for a little while”. He then drops to the back, about 1/2 mile in, two guys pass me and I give up any chance of trying to stay with them. I hit mile one in 5:59 and am about 30 seconds behind. Whoa. I don’t think I’ve ever done a first mile that fast before. Probably not a good idea, but hey, “Fly and Die”.

The next miles seems pretty short and I clock a 6:02 even though I wasn’t running that fast. Mile 3 seems about right, but mile four would be long to get us basically back on track. I think they put the mile markers near bridges so it would be easier to set them out versus where they actually went.

0-1: 5:59
1-2: 6:02
2-3: 7:06
3-4: 7:45

So far the race has had a fairly easy grade but over the next couple miles we’d pick up the climbing. It never really looked like you were going up, but my heart rate was 10-15 beat higher than normal for the same effort, and I wasn’t ever really able to get back into my preferred pace until we start going back down.

4-5: 7:27
5-6: 8:15
6-7: 7:44
7-8: 7:49
8-9: 7:42

The trail is really pretty and the weather was great. The light drizzle kept us cool and the course was very well maintained. I wondered how bad it would be once we caught up to the half marathoners, but so far so good. At one point we went through an old train tunnel and it was pitch black inside and you ran to the light. This was pretty cool.

9-10: 7:39
10-11: 7:26
11-12: 7:37

We are approaching the half and the climbing starts in earnest again.

12-13: 7:58

I hit the half in 1:37:28. So if I can come under a 3:15 I will pick up a rare negative split.

13-14: 7:55

We’ve crested the hill, this is great. Hello sub 7:00/M miles, where have you been, it is good to see you again.

14-15: 6:55
15-16: 6:54

I’m looking in vain for a porta potty, and the realize I am in the woods… I make it one more mile still on the lookout for a rest stop. Finally decide it isn’t worth it and dash into the woods.
16-17: 8:08

I feel great now and start to open it up a little bit.

17-18: 6:52

From 18 to 20 there is the biggest climb of the day and I’ve started catching the half marathoners, so the trail starts to grow crowded, and the footing is getting sloppy in a few places.

18-19: 7:24
19-20: 7:50

After getting my doors blown off in the first mile, I’ve decided that I wanted to finish in the top 10. At this point I figure that I am somewhere between 13-15 or so, and so I decide to start pushing the pace as I can see a guy about 2 minutes in front of me. I decide to do my best Sandy impersonation and just start reeling people in.

20-21: 6:52
21-22: 6:27

I’ve picked off 2 people and a spectator says that I am in 12th place now. Okay, so now I now, I’ve got to catch two more. I see the victims off in the distance and figure that I can nab them over the next four miles.

22-23: 7:09
23-24: 6:58

I’ve moved into 11th place and I start thinking about maybe go under 3:10, but some quick math says it would hurt too much and sub 3:15 still counts for Boston, so no heroics from me, but I am going to catch one more person.

I put on a nice sprint past my final victim quickly open a 30 second gap on him. I think he is demoralized as he would fade to finish 4 minutes behind me over the last 2 miles.

24-25: 7:05
25-26: 6:55

As I approach the finish line I see my family and pull my son out of the crowd and we finish together. We walk through the shoot and I put my medal on his head, he asks “Do you think everyone thinks that I ran the whole marathon since I’ve got the medal?”. I tell him that it’s quite possible.

26.2: 1:24
========
3:11:32

I did get my 4th or 5th negative split ever, a nice sized 4 minute one. This goes against everything I believe in, I clearly didn’t try hard enough in the first half.

It turns out that a couple of the people in front of me were relay runners, and so I wound up in 7th place out of 371. In turns out I actually would be all but 2 of the 38 relay teams, which was good enough for 2nd place in my age group and I got this unique rail spike as the age group award. Vance would pick up 3rd place in his age group in the mini and Scott notched his 2nd sub four hour marathon in a row.

It turned into about an 8.5 mile run and it felt great.  I really enjoy running in New York, especially when it isn’t a million degrees and super humid.   Perhaps I will go again tomorrow.

I highly recommend that anyone who tries P90X does go full out for the 90 days. I was able to see a lot of improvements and got kind of ripped for the first time since college. I’ve backed off a little and given up some of the ‘rippedness’ at the price of staying sane and getting some sleep, but I wouldn’t change anything about the first time through.

Here is my about 80% into P90X the first time:

I don’t really want to get any bigger, but I really enjoy lifting weights and I love the plyometrics workout from P90X. So I’ve start doing P90X again a few weeks ago, but this time I am not anywhere near as hard core about it. If I feel like sleeping in a day, I do and move the workout to the next day. I’ve also dropped the Kenpo workouts as I don’t feel I need any extra cardio, and this gives me an extra rest day.

Last week, after finishing my 50th state, I did a legs and back workout and pushed it fairly hard. I felt completely trashed. My heart was 10-15 beats higher than normal and I just felt weak. I went for a run that morning and just couldn’t seem to get started. I struggled through 4 miles at 8:30/M pace. I don’t mind running at 8:30/M pace, but the effort level required was about what it should be to run 6:30/M. I just couldn’t get my breathing right, and my legs felt like lead. I know some of this was residual marathon soreness and the fact I had done a legs workout 30 minutes before. But I do this all the time, normally I don’t get very sore after a marathon, and when I was hard core on P90X it didn’t really seem to affect my training runs.

The next day I struggled through another 4 miles run around the same pace. It was just brutal. I told my wife perhaps by body gave me enough leeway to finish the 50 states and now was calling in its markers.

On Saturday I decided to run with a good friend and we ran a comfortable pace for 10 miles. I didn’t do P90X Saturday, Sunday, or Monday. In fact I took Sunday totally off and went to watch my son’s triathlon. All three of us took naps that afternoon and went to bed earlier than normal.

On Monday morning’s run it became clear my body just needed some rest. I again skipped my weight workout, and went running. I was able to run 4 miles at 7:20/M pace and it felt comfortable. I was happy. This morning I woke and did plyometrics pretty hard, but I didn’t feel wasted afterwards. Then my run I started out slow and just kept ratcheting up the pace and finished in the low 6:00/Ms and an overall pace of 7:10/M.

I feel like I am coming back. Marathon in Deadwood this weekend, hopefully I can keep the positive momentum going.

The London Telegraph is reporting, what everyone instinctively knows as a child but seems to forget as they get older, that chocolate milk is awesome.

Researchers found that chocolate milkshake’s “natural” muscle recovery benefits match or may even surpass a specially designed carbohydrate sports drink.

They discovered that muscle damage was actually lower in those players that drank the milk after training than those that drank the commercial energy drinks.

Chocolate milk also tastes a lot better than Endurox, Accelerade or any of the recovery products like that. This is good news for all of us. So go for it, have a tall glass of chocolate milk after a workout, even a chocolate milkshake (while this will have many more calories, it will taste sooo yummy, and isn’t that why you run in the first place?).

A final quote for those of you on the fence:

The milk also helped reduce lactic acid levels in the blood, the compound that causes stiffness after exercise.

I know for a fact, the thing that helped me recover after getting destroyed in the Running From an Angel marathon this January was the Mint Oreo Blizzard.  mmmmmmm

I have finally finished my quest to run a marathon in all 50 states and Washington, DC. I still need to write up my official race report, but I started thinking about what my new goals would be and it got me thinking on what I’ve been lucky enough to accomplish over the last few years (since Feb of 2002). I have had a really good streak this year. Starting in January, my last 8 races, I have qualified for Boston 6 times and in the two I didn’t, I won the race (I’ll take missing out on Boston every time to win. Haha), bringing my total number of Boston Qualifiers up to 24. Of course I have benefited by getting older, I only need a 3:15:59 to qualify for the 2010 Boston Marathon, and those 5 minutes have made all the difference.

Some stats for the numerically inclined of you out there:

84 Marathons
8 Ultra Marathons
50 States
5 Countries
3 Continents
24 Boston Qualifying Times
Best time: 2:56:40
Longest marathon streak: 7 marathons in 7 weeks
Longest race: 50 miles

Marathons by Year:
2002: 3
2003: 9
2004: 8
2005: 11
2006: 15
2007: 18
2008: 20
2009: 8

So now I am thinking about what to do next. The obvious next goal is to get to 100 marathon or longer distance finishes. I am at 92 right now, so hitting 100 by the end of the year seems doable. I am also interested in running on all the continents, but that will take me a lot longer since it is sooooo much more expensive to do any of the four remaining continents that I have to do.

I’m looking for the races you all feel you must do at least once. The New Yorks, Bostons, Big Surs, St. Georges, Athens, Londons, Sydneys, Pike’s Peak, etc. I don’t care if they are easy or hard, I am looking for your favorite races.

Help me decide what comes next.