Marathon Me

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

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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.

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We are ramping down the training this week, in so much as there was any training.  My sister had to be restrained from running twice a day leading up the Sunday’s marathon.  It is a hard thing to grok that you can’t do anything good this close to your race, but she is handling it well.

I’ve been taking it easy with some 4-5 mile runs, enjoying the cooler weather last week in California and now in Texas of all places.  I sure hope we get a cool weekend since whatever heat acclimation I had, is surely gone after this spell of pleasant weather.

So this weekend, we will be in Vermont, for my 50th state, my brother in law’s 50th marathon, my sister’s first marathon and my father in law’s 3rd marathon.  Going to be a great weekend.

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Hmmmmmm. I was recently in the store when I came across this new product, and was like … wtf? Now soda has antioxidants; who knew? It reminds me of the movie Idoiocracy where everyone and everything craved electrolytes (even plants). It cracks me up to see all this junk food getting vitamins and other silly things.

So I bought a 12 pack of the healthy? diet 7UP and brought it to my office. So far the reaction has been positive (it tastes like a Shirley Temple) and everyone is excited about getting their antioxidants. But now it is healthy, since it doesn’t have super sugary grenadine and is enhanced with antioxidants.

I’m hoping the antioxidants are able to counter act the cancer causing, brain-matter dissolving nastiness of the aspartame, also contained in this nice friendly diet soda.

Now if they would switch out to sucralose I’d be a much happier camper.

Cheers.

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Yesterday marked the successful completion of marathon #91 and state #49 for me.  The long journey through the states is almost at an end.

The family and I flew into Boston, then drove up to Providence.  A very laid back Saturday finished up at a brew pub for some proper carbo loading.

The next morning we woke up and ran the race, more details to come, but the short report is: 3:15:14.

We spent the rest of the day trying to get home, many delays and one broken plane later we finally got home around 11pm and fell into bed as three tired tomatoes.

More details to come soon

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