How to Trim Your Tree

You’ve no doubt already trimmed your tree which means this advice is probably too late but that really doesn’t matter because it’s not going to be very good advice anyway so why do you care that it’s too late? You see what I did there? I made it look like you, the reader, were an ass for being picky about my advice being both awful and late; this is how you move to the top of the corporate food chain, kids.

What better way for a runner to decorate their tree than to do it with race medals? Not only are your medals festive and shiny but they come with a handy ribbon already attached. Plus, now you have the perfect opportunity to tell all the guests at your Christmas party the story behind every triumphant race. Spare no detail because people love it when you talk about yourself. It’s joyous and self-aggrandizing all at the same time, just like Christmas is supposed to be!

Merry Christmas to all of you who are still reading my inconsistent drippings here, you’re my favorite readers.

How Bad Do You Want It?

I can’t really explain why I like this video so much, but I thought it was worth sharing. It makes me want to go run hard, and that’s never a bad thing. I’m even considering downloading the mp3 to play on my iPod when I run.
 

 Hat tip: theCHIVE

Pumped Up Kicks

If you’re one of those people who thinks that I don’t post enough to be getting free stuff to review then you might want to go ahead and skip this post.

You see, the kind people at Saucony decided that I’m exactly the kind of person that should be testing and writing about their new Saucony 8mm drop shoes. I was as surprised as you are, probably more so because the last time they sent me shoes I went out of my way to call them ugly (the shoes not the people at Saucony).

When I took my new Saucony Guide 5s out of the box it was love at first sight. Unlike the last pair of Saucony shoes these are not uglier than a batman villain nor do they look like part of Boy Wonder’s costume. How running shoes look is important to me because I’m a very superficial person. I can afford to be superficial about my shoes because I’ve run in so many different types and brands of shoes and have almost never had any problems (*cough*Mizuno sucks!*cough*).

However, since I know that some of you like to pretend that you don’t judge a book by its cover let me tell you about Saucony’s new line of 8mm drop shoes. The line includes the Guide 5, the Triumph 9 and the Hurricane 14, together they form the Justice League; fighting crime wherever it exists. These shoes all have an 8mm heel-to-toe drop as opposed to the more typical 12mm. Basic math eludes me, but my assistant tells me that’s a difference of 4mm or, to put it in perspective, the size of my tiny, banker heart. According to Saucony this difference “puts the runner in a more balanced, comfortable and powerful position without reducing cushioning or stability. Also, runners can more easily adjust their stride to a midfoot strike, aligning the lower body to absorb impact.”

I’ve never been a fan of messing with your stride and foot strike unless you’re seeing frequent overuse injuries, but if you are going to start adjusting your foot strike it’s best to make small, incremental changes. These shoes would be a good starting point for someone who was looking to gradually change their foot strike or make the switch to barefoot running.

The shoes are really comfortable to run in and to sit around and watch football in – they’re a double threat! They’re lighter than my other shoes at 10.2 oz (yes I weighed them). They don’t feel like they’re altering my stride as radically as the Saucony Hattoris did and they’ve made me roughly 25% faster! (Blatant lie!)

Many thanks to Saucony for the free shoes. Your move, Pearl Izumi.

For more on the geometry of these new Saucony shoes check out this video on YouTube.

Running Infographic: Men vs. Women

You know what the problem is with all these infographics? It’s that they’re too easy to consume. They’re put together with lots of pretty pictures to distract you and then lazy bloggers post them because it makes for a fun, easy post with minimal writing involved. We just accept everything we see on these charts as FACT and that’s a dangerous thing to do, which is why I did a lot of research before posting the infographic below. OK, that’s a blatant lie. I just ooooohhed and aaaaahhed at the pretty colors and posted it without a second thought. That’s how I roll here at Half-Fast.

Enjoy.


Brought to you by Running Music 
So, why did they title it Sports Bras vs. Speedos? Who runs in Speedos? I might have to try it, they’ve got to be more comfortable than running in these cargo shorts.

Heart Not Included

A while back I was offered a free heart rate monitor by Caitlin who works for Adidas in the hopes that I would review the product here at Half-Fast. In the interest of full disclosure I should mention that Caitlin also sent me a free iPod Touch and washes my car every other weekend. (Only one of those is true.)

The Adidas miCoach Connect heart rate monitor syncs with the miCoach app which is available for your iPhone, iPod Touch, Android device and even your antiquated Blackberry. Setup is quick and easy and there’s even a 12 minute assessment workout that you go through so that the miCoach can figure out your various heart rate zones and paces. That’s how it works in theory, but when I was done with my assessment it told me that it could not figure out my paces because they all looked like the same slow pace. I tried the assessment again making sure to start out nice and slow and it worked better the second time. Who’d have thought that I don’t put much distinction between a level 5 effort and a level 10 effort? Those are both out of 100, right?

Here’s some pros and cons:

Pros

• The App is free and so is the miCoach account that you create when you sign up.
• Workouts are automatically uploaded to you online account when you finish.
• I can analyze the crap out of my runs even more now.
• Easy to use.
• It provides a real time review of my effort level.
• It tells me when I can slow down.

Cons

• It sometimes tells me to speed up, this does not elicit a positive reaction.
• You have to wear that thing around your chest, though it does allow me to predictably say “I’ve got something I’ve got to get off my chest,” every time I get home. Yes, every time. My wife can vouch for that.

That’s about it. It really is one of my favorite running apps, even when I don’t use the heart rate monitor.

Updates!

I’m getting old. That’s the first update. Lately it seems like something always hurts; my calf, my groin, my back, the list goes on and on. I never realized when I wrote this poem that it would turn out to be prophetic. Not only does everything hurt, but everything gets injured easier and heals slower. Getting older sucks.

My days are numbered. No, not in terms of life, in terms of continuing to be faster than my boys. David and Graham ran the Granby Gutbuster 5k over the summer. Their previous 5k PRs were both in the 37 minute range but they managed to complete it in 30:13 and 33:20. That was good enough to put David (age 8) 3rd in the Under 12 age group and Graham (age 6) 5th. Our families keep telling us that we obviously passed on the running talent to our kids but I’m starting to suspect that these aren’t my children because I don’t have any running talent. I have to work very hard at running to be this mediocre. I’m the 99% of running talent.

Finally, Candis and I ran the Denver Half Marathon last month. Naturally, I managed to roll an ankle right in the middle of my training and couldn’t run for a month (see first paragraph). I finished in 2:08 and Candis in 2:12. Those are hardly the times of ‘talented’ runners. We are middle-of-the-packers for life, not to be confused with the extremely talented Green Bay Packers.

My first DNS

Did Not Start. The Breckenridge Independence Day 10k was held on July 4th as the name would imply. It was only because I was so excited to do this race again this year that I was able to roll myself out of bed at 5:30am on a holiday morning after a night that I’m sure included some drinking but I honestly can’t remember how much. I quickly dressed and arrived at race registration around 6:15am groggy but somehow still energized to race. As I neared the front of the short line of runners I heard the lady at the registration table tell the runner in front of me that registration was closed. I remember laughing at this and I’m not sure now if it was because I thought she was joking or because my sleepy mind couldn’t clearly comprehend this horrendous new development. Either way it wasn’t funny for very long. The temporary registration table was folded up, the line dispersed and the world seemed to go on around me as I stood there in bleary-eyed disbelief. I mingled aimlessly with the other runners all the while feeling like I stood out because I was the only loser without a bib. Finally one of the ladies from the now defunct registration table came over and told me that “the trail’s all marked out if you want to go run it right now.” But I didn’t want to run it right now, I wanted to run it in 45 minutes with all the other runners. I came here for a race, not a time trial.

Without all of the adrenaline and energy that goes along with waiting for a race I became very aware of how tired I felt. I decided that what I needed was some coffee. Coffee soon turned into coffee and donuts and when I decided that I shouldn’t eat any more donuts I bought two dozen donut holes, or as I prefer to call them ‘little balls of heaven’ to take back to the friends with whom we were spending the weekend. Unfortunately not all of the little balls of heaven survived the trip.

When I got back to the place we were staying I found our kind hostess in the kitchen making a hot breakfast and so I traded in 18 donut holes for some eggs, bacon and hashbrowns and there might have been a pancake or two in there as well. I really don’t remember at this point, I just know that it was a good trade.

That’s how my Independence Day started, and it ended with the lamest fireworks display that you’ve ever seen. You can suck me sideways, Breckenridge!

Any plans for the 4th?

That seems to be the popular question for making small talk around the office these last few days. Either that or “Are you doing anything fun for the 4th?” I’m running the Breckenridge Independence Day 10k so I thought I was doing something fun for the 4th, but then I started trying to explain it to people: “I’m getting up stupid early to run with 300 other people up a single file trail that rises from 9,600 feet to 10,400 feet before coming back down again.” It doesn’t sound like something I’d normally describe as fun, but maybe my sales pitch just needs a little work. Those endorphins must be powerful things to make us do the things we do.

Candis and I ran this race last year and I really enjoyed it, Candis not so much. That explains why she’s sleeping in this July 4th and I’m running it by myself. I have no idea how fast I’ll be able to run it since it’s a tough course and last year Candis and I took it pretty easy, even walking through some of the steep climbs. I think I’ll be happy with anything under 60 minutes.

So, what about all of you? Are you doing anything fun for the 4th are you running a race?

These shoes don’t need no alibi!

Somehow someone at Saucony thought it would be a good idea to send me a pair of their Saucony Hattori shoes to review. I guess they thought this would be a good marketing opportunity. They must have missed the fact that I post about as frequently as a bear poops during hibernation and the fact that most of my posts are riddled with sarcasm and scat humor, or maybe they’re just into that kind of thing. Since I’m not one to turn down a free pair of shoes, I agreed.

I missed the part of the e-mail where they told me that these were minimalist shoes and also the part where they told me that the shoes were hideous. I used to have a pair of water shoes that I wore to the beach when I was a kid that looked just like these and every time I see pictures of myself wearing them I cringe. As you can see from the picture the shoes don’t have laces they use Velcro to attach themselves to your feet. That would be really cool if I needed to get them on quickly for an emergency, like if my boat was sinking over a rocky seabed but even then I’d probably still look around to see if I could borrow a pair of my wife’s shoes first. (Full disclosure: I do not own a boat.)

I’m probably not a great test subject for these kind of shoes because I really like my running shoes to correct my over-pronation. I like the motion control, the stability and the heel cushioning that my current shoes provide and I like to feel the reverberations crash up my leg as my heel strikes the pavement first. It just feels right. I guess I’m not much of a minimalist. In fact I’d go so far as to say that I’m a maximalist; it’s the American way! I want a bigger house, a faster car, more money and bigger shoes that do more for me. More is always better! (Notable exceptions: bikinis and cavities.)

Nevertheless, I wanted to give Saucony a fair shake and try the shoes because despite the tone of this post I really do like Saucony. Naturally, before running in minimalist shoes for the first time I wanted to take some precautions so I made sure to go run when I thought the fewest amount of people would be around to see me in these disastrously ugly shoes. I also took my dog with me so that anyone that did see me would look at the cute dog and not notice my ugly, ugly shoes. Initially I felt like I was coming down hard on my heel but that went away after only a quarter mile. I went 4 miles and felt fairly confident that I hadn’t changed my stride too drastically but for the next couple of days my calves were screaming so I had obviously been compensating.

While I’m not a fan of the shoes or of minimalist running in general I am a fan of strengthening my calves so I’ll probably continue to take short sporadic runs in the Saucony Hattori shoes, but mostly after dark when no one’s around to see me.

If you’re looking for a good review of these shoes by someone who is actually a minimalist you should check out http://minimalistrunningshoes.org/saucony-hattori-shoe-review.

Bolder Boulder Race Pictures!

You know what’s a good idea for your blog when you don’t feel like writing? Pictures. Lots and lots of pictures. Pictures take up more space than words so they make the post seem fuller. Also, they are colorful and shiny and they distract readers with short attention spans. Should you be offended that I just suggested you have a short attention span? Probab... Look PICTURES!!

That guy in green is waving goodbye to me because that’s the last he’d ever see of me.

Sprinting, yes SPRINTING to the finish!

Congratulating the guy that SPRINTED with me.

Candis sprinting to the finish. (Lowercase ‘sprinting’ because she’s not as fast as I am… or as boastful.)



That guy in orange is directly behind Candis in so very many of Candis’s race pictures. Why I oughta’…

There’s also video of me finishing at this link here (6 seconds in, right side of the screen). It must have been slowed down so runners could pick themselves out because I know I was running faster than that, especially at the end when I was SPRINTING. I think it’s pretty cool that they’re showing that video in slo mo.