The first comment from my post yesterday referenced the post-marathon down-cycle.

You can find hundreds of posts at the Runner’s World Forums that talk about people going into serious depression after completing their marathon goals. There really is something wired in us that has a hard time adjusting to the total focus pre-marathon training and goal setting to the wilderness afterward.

After running the NY Marathon and qualifying for Boston, both major lifetime running goals I had a really hard time staying motivated afterwards too. I managed to keep up about 20 miles a week, but that’s down from 70 and when I headed out, I was rarely able to push the pace past a trot.

While the marathon garners the most attention, it is just one style of race. There are probably a hundred other interesting races to run out there. Some interesting races I can think of:

• The Continental Fifth Avenue Mile – one of my favorite races.
• NYC Half Marathon – big city marathon feel at half the distance.
• Cross country races in Van Cortland Park in the Bronx
• Reach the Beach Relay – Long distance relay in NH
• Comrades 89k race in South Africa (they alternate an uphill route and a downhill route year to year)
• Thursday Night at the Races – track event at the Armory uptown

As I mentioned yesterday, training for various distances and surfaces is more similar than it is different. Last year, I ran the mile race and the following day ran an 18M race. Same training, different race pace.

I’m also going to try and recruit some people into joining me in signing up for the Greenbelt 50k in May.

A Twitter person has been posting their run training data regularly. I noticed a particular pattern that I used to follow and felt like I need to contribute some feedback.

He seems to have settled into a pattern of running 4 or 5 miles @ 6:45 min/mile pace. This too, is how I started. The thrill of running faster and faster each week is exhilarating, and it worked for a while, but I hit a plateau. I was gutting it out, working harder and harder, but not racing faster.

Let me pause to say you can easily find run training experts that know more than me, but I have run everything from the mile (00:05:14) to an 50k trail ultramarathon (05:35:14) and almost every distance in between. Plus, I have an obsession with efficiency and have spent considerable time and energy studying training programs and techniques. While there are clearly variations among the hundred+ I’ve looked at from beginner focused to the top elite levels, there is actually remarkably little difference between how these schedules are structured.

The main thing, and you will hear this over and over, is that you must slow down in training in order to race faster. Take this for example:

Cool Running’s 10k Advanced program “All other workouts (including the long runs) should be run at an easy training pace — emphasis on “easy.” Hold yourself back to a pace about 90 seconds or 2 minutes per mile slower than your current 10K pace.”

Also, consider that volume (miles per week) is a better predictor of race performance than training pace is.Elite runners run 140 mile weeks and the vast majority of that is at “easy” paces.

When you step out of the house to run, you should know what you are trying to achieve. Runs should be tailored to either build strength, economy, efficiency, glucose (carb) synthesis, lactate threshold or VO2 max. These are mutually exclusive; you can’t do everything at once.

Here’s a sample week that I’ve used at the peak of training that is an amalgamation of a variety of programs I’ve studied and would work for anything from a 5k to the marathon with some minor adjustments.

• Monday recovery run (since the weekend is when most runners do a long run) : 4 Mi on dirt @ 8:30 pace. Target HR < 140
• Tuesday is a hard interval AM, this can be intervals on a track – anything from 800m to 1600m, or hill repeats or fartlek runs on the road. These are meant to improve strength & economy, and should be run fast. Ex. mile repeats @ 6:00 pace.
• Tuesday PM: recovery run: 4 miles @ 8:30 pace. HR 140
• Wednesday is an easy run day: 7 miles @ 8:00 pace. HR 150
• Thursday is typically tempo (lactate threshold) run day. The goal here is to run in the neighborhood of 45-60 minutes at a comfortably hard pace. 8M @ 6:30 pace. HR 168
• Friday recovery: 4 Mi on dirt @ 8:45 pace. HR < 140
• Saturday easy run: 6 Mi @ 7:50 pace. HR 150
• Sunday long run: 17 Mi long progression run. Start at 8:30 pace and increase very slightly each mile to finish at around 7:15 pace. HR avg 155

This is a template. Some runners replace recovery runs with swims or bike rides. Some runners run their long runs with a faster ending progression pace. Some runners prefer 400m intervals and some like 2400m instead. There is some disagreement about “two a days” benefits. But what you don’t see is any variation in the major building blocks: intervals/hills + tempo + easy days + long run.

Also one quick word on treadmills. Efficient running is heavily dependent on hamstrings and glutes pulling you forward. Treadmill running, especially on 0% grade does not work these muscles properly and you run a risk of a quadriceps/hamstring imbalance.

My friend Ben in Oregon asked me for NYC tourist recommendations.

This was my reply:

1. Ride the Staten Island Ferry back and forth – it is free, easy, good views of the harbor, etc
2. Eat at Shake Shack (the Madison Square location if it is warm enough) or the Burger Joint at Le Parker Meridian.
3. Eat Lombardi’s pizza in NoLita & right across the street, amazing Rice Pudding at “Rice to Riches”
4. Walk up West Broadway (distinct from regular Broadway) from Canal to Houston (pronounced “house-ton”), take detours to the to the right as you please
5. Get an expensive drink and play free pool at the Hudson Hotel Library Bar on W 58^th street. Walk in, go up the escalator, turn left, then right, walk to the back like you know where you are going. 
6. Rent bikes and ride around Central Park – the big loop is 6 miles (rent them at Columbus Circle next to Kinkos or on 96th & Broadway)
7. If you like Thai food, take the 7 train to Queens (an adventure on its own, a bit like a ride at Disneyland) and have the best at this place: Sripraphai
8. I haven’t been in years and years, but either the Top of the Rock or Empire State Building to get a good view is probably worth doing. Go at an off hour.
9. Visit Grand Central Station – good food court downstairs if you need a snack.
10. Walk over the Brooklyn Bridge and back
11. The subway is the best way to move uptown and downtown.
12. Cab drivers have to pick you up no matter what, look for one with the numbers lit up, flag them down, get in and then tell them where you are going. Pay before you get out. Tip $2-$3 or so.

—— Don’ts

1. Don’t go eat anywhere within 4 blocks of Times Square (for Pete’s sake!)
2. Don’t try and walk through Times Square, just witness it.
3. Don’t worry about crime other than keeping a handle on purses/backpacks.
4. Don’t expect much if you go to “ground zero” (we don’t call it that), it is really just a construction site now. Although you do get a sense for how big of a footprint the buildings had.
5. Don’t hesitate to ask me for more, I’m happy to help

Let me get this out of the way right at the top. This post has absolutely nothing to do with racism, i.e. there is no evidence (VO2 max, red blood cell counts, etc) that genetics plays any part in why modern running events are dominated by East Africans.

With that said, here is what it takes:

1. Starting as an infant, run often, e.g. 6 miles to and from school every day, and do it mostly barefoot.
2. Put yourself in an extremely competitive racing environment. Running in Kenya is equivalent to the NFL+MBL+NBA+NHL combined. And winning a major city marathon means more money than the majority of your countrymen will earn in their lifetimes (by far).
3. Work incredibly hard. Run between 125-150 miles per week. One sample workout would include 20 reps of 440 meters with less than 45 seconds jogging breaks.
4. Be very skinny. Carrying extra weight of any kind (including unnecessary muscle) makes you slower, is harder on the joints and requires extra oxygen.
5. Train and live at altitude, with rolling hills, and on dirt. When we think Africa we think hot and flat, but in fact a huge portion of elite runners come from the Rift Valley in Kenya which is actually cool most of the year, and is roughly 7500’ high.

Okay, so what does this mean for the rest of us?

1. Kenyan children have an advantage in that they are building strength and neurological connections to their feet that we are missing. The Western industrial shoe-complex is seriously flawed. Most running shoes are really engineered for a style of running closer to “walking fast” than proper technique and is inefficient and likely to lead to injury. Buy some Vibram Fivefingers to build strength and look to “flats” with low heel-to-forefoot ratios and are less than 10oz.
2. Fortunately, in New York City, in any given month there are 2-3 races offered by the NYRR club that will have a minimum of 4,500 runners including teams that field some serious runners.
3. Run every day, sometimes twice. Run the 20×440 w/ 45 seconds rest and try not to throw up.
4. Eat really well. Ethiopians are particularly fond of Teff, a hearty grain.
5. American elite runners either live in places like Boulder CO, Mammoth Lakes CA or sleep in hypobaric chambers which simulate altitude. Most of us aren’t willing to take those kinds of steps, but we can rotate the surfaces we run on. Central Park has the bridal path, the reservoir loop, the great hill track and the northern hill trails which are all soft surfaces.

Charlie has a Poking the Bear post up where he suggests among other things disbanding the meetup as is.

Rather than comment point for point, I’ll just take a second to write up a couple of my own points.

The meetup as it stands today does do a few things very well and any future events/organizations will need to keep these in mind.

1. Presenting at the meetup, even if it is not egalitarian, is still a significant milestone for a company seeking to gain exposure in the New York tech scene.
2. It puts a diverse set of people in a room. One of the problems with relying on small, nimble groups of people is that it reduces the chances for fortuitous connections that might not occur at “Technical CEO/founders with blue eyes meetup”
3. As mentioned in Charlie’s comments, it serves as the front door to the community.

The dynamic between nimble, flexible events as championed by Charlie/NextNY and the recurring, established meetup seems to indicate, clearly, there is a place for both. This new infrastructure and leadership of the meetup should focus on:

1. Help organizers put on small events that work. Hold workshops for new organizers. Create a library of best practices. Manage the collective intelligence, even if it just means being the stewards of a wiki.
2. Coordinate. Gary’s Guide is the closest thing we have to a comprehensive list of upcoming events, but there should be some dedicated energy to making sure that there is not too much overlap between events. We’ve all seen way too many of the same prolific presenters that go from event to event pitching to anyone that will have them. There also needs to be an easy way to provide better context for the events.
3. Cultivate the conversation. One thing that NextNY does really well is police the threads for spam, self-promotion and non-helpful contributions.
4. Fight the bottom-feeders. There is a fine line between offering “services” to the community versus being a pest. Building a reputation system for these events whereby getting banned is a possibility and is appropriately damaging is needed.

Overall, I feel like many in the community feel like that because the meetup group is going to have more structure and potentially going to get bigger that it is going to suck. It doesn’t have to be so.

If you didn’t see on Twitter or FB, I ran the NYC Marathon a couple weeks ago. Everything went according to plan; my goal was to qualify for the Boston Marathon, which for my age group is a 3:10. I stuck to my game-plan and came in 3:09:46. Pix are here.

The night after the marathon I laid in bed thrashing around with terrible restless legs (technically it was my arms that were bothering me, but the syndrome is called restless legs — same thing). I could not get to sleep even though I was naturally, incredibly tired. I figured that all that sweating meant my electrolytes might have been messed up, so I got up, took two Endurolytes, which are pills I’ve used in the past for the ultra-marathon and for really long runs, and went back to sleep easily.

As I was sending the link to my mom, who also has issues with restless legs, I noticed that Hammer, the company that makes them even includes this on the description:

Taking two or more Endurolytes before bed may help prevent night cramps and nighttime muscle twitching.

Since then, I’ve taken these at the first sign of RLS (restless legs) and it has been 100% effective. Previously, I had to stop drinking red wine because it consistently gave me trouble, but even there, if I pop a couple of these I can sleep fine.

If you haven’t dealt with this, it is hard to appreciate how annoying this issue is and I’m so, so glad to have finally found a cure. My mom is now also successfully using these too.

And the best part, and why I feel so comfortable recommending it to people is that it is not “medicine” it is just minerals, and mainly salt. Just tiny rocks really. 

One of the projects I’m involved with is called The Universal Record Database. The site is rapidly approaching launch and to help make sure the V1 launch and subsequent launches go smoothly we are trying to recruit an intern to join the team. Take a look and if you know anyone that would be a good fit, please do let me know. (Click through to read the whole post)

Emily and I are big fans of Etsy.

• I bought my wedding ring (see picture right) on Etsy
• Emily bought her wedding band on Etsy
• We commissioned a t-shirt quilt to be created using 40+ old t-shirts of ours that had sentimental value, but were not being worn
• Emily is having her dress converted into a wearable top and turning the rest into pillows.

The feature where you commission projects to be made is called Alchemy. The process is straightforward. You post a project and individual crafty type people bid on it.

Between Etsy and Instructables there is some exciting stuff happening in the world of DIY, craftsmanship and local creation.

Here’s another opportunity by way of annecdote:

My dad has a kayak. He asked me to buy him one of those contraptions with wheels that you put on the front of the boat to make it easy to take down to the lake. Campmor, the excellent outfitter sold me a nice model for exactly $166. Now this is two plastic wheels, some metal bars and a piece of foam – $4 in parts for $166. If I lived in the suburbs (which I don’t) I would have bought the pieces and made it myself.

So I guess I’m asking for some kind of Instructables/Etsy/Alchemy mashup where I can ask craftsmen with the tools, space and knowhow to build stuff for me. Sometimes they might be one of a kind constructions like the dining room table + bookcase hybrid I had the unfinished furniture store build for me years ago. I also need a custom pump built for my dishwasher (long story). And other times, frankly, it will be to knock off some piece of equipment that I would otherwise overpay for or am unhappy with for some reason. Throw in a demand that my projects be built using sustainable, eco-conscious methods and we’re really doing something great.

This Michael Phelps “Best Athlete Ever” stuff is getting under my skin. Now, not to take away from his amazing ability, genetics and domination, but there is a lot more to trying to determine who the best ever is beyond just medal counts. Swimming has a ridiculous number of events which serve to boost the egos of young athletes and inflate medal counts. The argument can plausibly be made that M.Phelps is the most dominant Olympian ever, but a) that might not even be true and b) let’s choose the sport to work with first.

I am considering an equation which could be constructed that would attempt to solve this problem. My first step is to determine the various factors involved with picking the right sport.

• Endurance. Endurance athletic events require rigorous training put in over years of build up are factored higher. Longer events should be factored somewhat higher, for instance the Ironman triathlon world record time is 8 hrs 4 mins.
• Strength. Table tennis does not require much physical strength. Muscular development has to be considered to be the “best athlete ever”.
• Mental toughness/strategy. The 100 meter dash is an amazing showcase for the human body, but there is very little gamesmanship involved.
• Body type specificity (less is better) You simply have to be over 6’9″ to be a center in basketball. Sports that any body type can play gain advantage because the pool of contestants is higher.
• Access to sport/equipment cost. Polo is out of reach for 99% of the population. Soccer requires a cheap, durable ball and that’s about it. Cycling is a sport which should be considered highly, but expensive technology is a requirement at the elite levels.
• Injury edge. The description needs work, but in many sports, athletes push their bodies up the point where additional training would result in injuries. Some sports, swimming included (it seems), don’t suffer from this problem.
• Body fat/diet requirements. Many sports require extremely low body fat to be competitive and as we all know, keeping <10% body fat requires incredible dedication. Events which allow you to eat nothing but McDonalds get deductions here.
• Coordination. Both arms/hands and feet need to be considered.
• Reflexes.
• Years in training. Some sports require athletes to begin their training at a very young age and require 7+ years of training in order to become competitive.
• Dominance. In order to be considered the best ever, the athlete should at least be considered the best ever within their respective sports and hopefully by a wide margin.

The next step would be to weight these things against each other and put some scales and numbers to it, but just in talking through this quickly last night two sports emerged as contenders.

Tennis: requires full body coordination, requires years of training, there is some argument over whether the access is egalitarian or not, endurance is needed to sustain five set matches and any body type can play (male champions span 5’7″-6’5″).

Soccer: requires lots of endurance, anyone can play, skills are easy to learn but hard to master, but your arms don’t do anything.

Cross country skiing: these folks get a mention because whenever VO2Max, a measure of blood oxygen capacity is brought up, studies of athletes has shown that these athletes consistent test highest.

Hybrid sports like the modern pentathlon which is shooting+fencing+swimming+horse jumping+3000m run are neat ideas, but just not very many people compete in these things.

It just so happens that my favorite episode of the excellent This American Life is one of the ones Showtime publishes on their website in full.UPDATE: turns out it isn’t the full episode, just most of it. Sorry. Showtime: That’s annoying.

This is saved on our Tivo at home and I don’t expect to ever delete it.

Try this link first but if that doesn’t work, try the Showtime page and click on the right for “This American Life – season 2 episode 1”