In For The Long Run

Yesterday was the 20th Valley Harvest Marathon (hereafter VHM). It was to be my 4th time at the event, one half, two fulls, a 50K Ultramarathon and the slowest winning times on both the Kentville and Wolfville courses. It was an event with a few significant milestones.  It was Dave Nevitt's 100th "career" marathon (a story covered with greater eloquence elsewhere), Mark "The Original Cookie Monster" Campbell's 40th marathon (caveat, inc. Ironman and other associated madness) and my 20th "long run with a dossard".  

As an interesting side-note, Marathon Maniacs recently had this dicussion: how to best tally up your career statistics.  I think we can all be happy not including our Sprint Triathlons in our career 5K count but somehow, intuitively, I'm sure many of us feel a marathon or longer takes a certain degree of commitment and investment above and beyond that required of a 5K. Not to denigrate our 5K-running cousins. The overall feeling was that you should keep three totals; marathons, ultras and total. So I guess I'm 19 + 1 and marathon #20 will be this weekend as the 3:30 pace-bunny at PEI.

VHM was an early start, I mean Ironman early.  The plan was up at 04:00, in the car by 04:45, Wolfville by 06:00, race-start at 07:00,  Anything after race-start was up to the running Gods. To be honest, I think I was more stressed by not getting up on time than the race.

Mike Kennedy entered the ultra on a whim and I agreed to pick him up at 04:50. Even more stress now to make sure I woke up on time.  I set two, independent alarms and la belle graciously agreed to set hers. As it was, I woke up at 01:00, 02:00 and 03:00 and then 03:50. At the latter, I figured I'd be worse off if I tried to squeeze an extra ten minutes of snooze so I just got up and pre-empted all the alarms.

It was nice to have some company on the drive up and we managed to chat about anything but the impending event.  It rained on us as we drove up and it seemed as though the race was going to be a bit damp and miserable, but we piled into Acadia under clearing skies.  The whole ultra-marathon thing only sank in when we go to the sports centre to sign in.

 It was a bit empty at 06:00, in fact there were more volunteers than runners!

Still, we managed to find someone to take a photo before we headed off to the start

Yes, I know. Arm-warmers and a singlet. Again.  I'm running out of excuses, non?

Of course, getting there at 06:00 also had it's advantages: rock-start parking, rock-star bathrooms (two stalls for five guys, compare-and-contrast to two stalls and 900 guys an hour later), and unobstructed  rock-star access to the coffee-pot. 

There was a bit of gallows humour at the start, I don't think anyone there had done an Ultra before! Still, we had a nice personalised chat with the race director and the timing guys at the start. They say that ultrarunning is a different beast and with a whole one event under my belt, I think I would agree. I've never seen so much of a relaxed atmosphere on a start-line. Counter-intuititivily, given that it was likely further than any of us had ever run in a single go, it was chatty and relaxed and very un-intimidating.

When we were given the go, it seemed there was a 500ms pause as everyone looked at each other as if to say "What? Now?  Shall we go". Certainly it would have been bad form to scorch off the start-line to score an early 10m lead.  I think we ran the first few hundred metres together before differences in gait and cadence started to pull us apart,  

As for my own race, I ran the first 10K with Ron "Cookie MacKilt" MacDougal. After that I did about 10K on my own before Denis Choquette caught me. Initially I thought I was caught and dropped as

he went through at about 4:45/km whereas I was trying to keep a lid on it and stay at around 5:00/km. Instead Denis came back to me on a hill and we ran together for the next ten miles.  It was great to have some company and, to be honest, to be in the lead with the lead bicycle was a boon as we were able to follow the correct course, as the ultra's extra 8K loop was not well marked.

 The first twenty miles were possibly one of the best runs I've had in my life, ever. And that's quite a statement.  It was dark when we left and as we wound our way through the dikes we were treated to the sun rising over the Bay of Fundy. The skies were blue, the wind was light, the temperature was moderate: it can't have been more than 15C and there were no man-made sounds whatsoever.

Of course, you have to pay for something like that. At around 35K Denis pulled way from me. At first I thought it would be more plus ca change, plus ca la meme chose and I'd catch him on the next hill, but no; at the top I'd still be a few tens of metres away, and so on and so forth until I was truly gapped. So I settled down to run the last ten miles on my own as the distance started to bite.

It was getting warmer and I didn't peel down my arm-warmers until the 20 mile mark, so all you haters out there, it was the right fashion choice. In terms of thermoregulation at least, if not in absolute sartorial terms.

It is said that long, long running is as much a mental as a physical game. I think I lost the plot a little around the 37K mark. I still had the legs, but I didn't have the mind.  Oh well.  I wasn't thinking in absolute terms but, as we were back on the full marathon course, I was keying off the marathon signs instead; 36km, 37km and so-on, instead of 44km, 45km; one way not to think about the distance.  I think mile-marker watching is a sign it's going horribly wrong and I spent six miles waiting for signs to come up.  Natch. It came together again with three kms to go, but not after walking the aid-stations and half of the hill up off the causeway to the main road. My Garmin clearly shows four dips in pace. I don't think it made to much of a difference in the end.  In absolute terms, my kilometer splits in that six or seven kms slowed down to a 5:20 average from even 5s, so call it two minutes lost, in a 240 minute race; that's 1%.

It didn't help that I felt let down my my Mizunos, for the first time ever. Not that I'm making excuses because of my equipment, but my feet felt very numb after 25 miles.  Physiologically and anatomically I know why my feet were numb, but I don't know why-why. Was it the distance i.e. will this always happen to me, or was it the increasing heat of the day i.e. I do get this feeling on long, hot bike-ride, or was it relatively new shoes and insoles i,e, I didn't put the insoles from the old Mizunos in the new ones but then on the other hand I've never had this problem before with this make of shoes. Idea and counter-idea. One could drive oneself insane trying to analyse this, and there may not even be anything there to analyse.

My goal for the day was 5 minute pace for a 4:10 finish. Officially, I'm 5:03 for 4:11. 0.2% off my goal-time: I think that scores as a hit.  Given that there were only 13 people. placings are a bit ridiculous but I was 3rd overall, and third age-group: yup, 40-49 is the age-group of death for endurance stuff. With another 50 entrants, I doubt I would have placed but there's no doubt the top 20 would have been the almost exclusive territory of Masters, Senior Masters and above.  Denis and I were both between by John DeWolfe, who didn't read the website and turned up for the 08:30 start. His gun time was nearly 5 1/2 hours but his chip-time was an astounding 3:55 for 50 kms.  

In fact I was relegated twice; Mark Sein introduced me as the winner when I entered the stadium:  somehow he missed Denis coming in six minutes earlier. I was really confused when I heard Mark as I did my Paris-Roubaix-esque lap of the track, and had to assume Denis had DNF'd; lots of funny things happen in marathons - you can easily go from lead to stretcher-case in two miles. Then to third an hour later when John came in.  Denis and I were a bit confused at first being introduced as second and third respectively when we were pretty clear that I had been the lead then he was the lead and there was no way we could have been Rosie Ruiz-ed, but we worked it out. Technically, plenty of room for an appeal, but why?  It was the VHM Ultra, not worlds.  The best guy won and with a killer time. The dude crushed it good and proper.

In terms of winning and losing, the event was also pretty low key. Everyone was treated as a winner, but, just like the start, there were no egos here and that feeling of camaraderie from the start lasted until the end.  All the finishers in the ultra got a framed print and a bottle of wine, the same prize as the overall and age-group winners in the other events of the day. The only difference was the top three got two prints; this years print and last years print as well.  I got last years print last year, but I got it in a nicer frame this year.

Thanks Susan!  

That wine didn't last long at home!

Today, one day post-Ultra my legs hurt more than after any marathon I've done for a while.  I think 800mg ibuprofen and some Vitamin P will do it!

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Two down, four to go.

So here we are again, descending slowly into basket-case-ry, as the three-for-three, which morphed into a four-for-four, approaches rapidly.

In fact, it's six for six; six events in six weeks.  Two weeks ago it was the Joseph Howe 160 km recreational ride. Not a race but a long club-run a la the Crest CC, with coffee and snacks or even lunch every 40 km.  Nice.  Last weekend, a complete change for the Rum Runners Relay, more in a moment.  This weekend, currently sitting twenty hours to the start of the Valley ultra.

Rum Runners wasn't quite the way I wanted it. Instead of being with the team for the whole 12 hours, events conspired in a way that I was able to make my leg, leg #7, and only my leg. As I say, not the way I like to do either of the relays, but as the choice was to do this or not do it at all, this was the best alternative.

It was weird, waking up at 8 and knowing the relay had been on for 90 minutes already.  I left town early to arrive at the start of my leg early. I think part of the early departure was that I was just so antsy, although I told myself it was because I didn't want to get caught up in relay traffic, be late for my leg and get a team penalty for bad parking.  As it was, I was the first one there by about twenty miutes.

It felt pretty cold, with the rain and the wind. For the race it was going to be a tailwind, but for the warm-up it felt pretty miserable. I was glad not to be on the tech crew this year and deal with that for 12 hours straight.

As it was, I slowly stripped off, going from multiple layers to the racing order of shorts-and-singlet over the course of an hour; acclimatising after each layer came off before removing the next one.  Still, I went for arm-warmers and a singlet at the start. I wasn't convinced i'd really need the arm-warmers when racing, but they gave the illusion of warmth, at least, at the start and they could come off easily if needed. Besides, we all know the one about being able to take it off if you have it but you can't put it on if you don't.

There's a picture of me at the start. La belle thinks I look mad.  Come to think of it, la belle often thinks I look mad, often at her, when I'm really doing something else.  I thought I had a greater range of facial expressions than Kristen Stewart, but apparently not.  In this case I like to think it was focus.  I remember shaking hands with a few of the runners before the start (Charles? Laura? Help me out here), which I don't think I'd do if was mad, so I'm pretty sure it was focus.

Our teams main rival in the drive for six consecutive relay wins was Oxford At Eight, OAE, and they brought their strongest team yet. The OAE guy is there in the blue on my right. I like to think he's looking a bit apprehensive while I look mad.  Or focused. Or whatever.

I was on the front from the gun, with the OAE guy on my heels.  I led the first kilometer at a good pace to get some room and see if he'd stay. He did.  I pulled over after the first hill to let him come through and do his share of the pace-setting.  Which he didn't.

So I dragged him over the hills.

With about two kilomters to go I was getting a bit annoyed with my passenger. In fact, I still don't know what he looks like because I never actually saw him on the leg. I could tell you what his foot-falls sound like but I don't know his face.  So, I gave a little surge.  Not enough to break away but enough to gap him briefly and see if he'd come back.  Normally it takes three or four surges before the elastic snaps, but here all it took was one little jump and he was gone. 

The Garmin says I did the last kilometer in 3:30, with an average of 3:42 for te whole thing. I think that comes into a 38 minute 10K if the course had been 700m longer. Cookie MacKily too this interesting shot of me just outside Chester, where my Gamin has me clocked at 3:30.

Note the excessive shoulder and hip rotation. Here's one in the eye for those who dispute the humans-evolved-as-distance-runners theory. The theory says that the ability to decouple the rotation of our shoulders (which themselves rotate to counterbalance the motion of the contralateral leg) from our heads allows us to run looking straight ahead without getting dizzy or unbalanced: a crucial trait for bipedal, running scavengers.  Whereas there are many tasks in my life that a trained monkey could literally do, interestingly this most elemental of things - running in a straight line - is not one of them.

Next up, the Valley Ultra, This will be my 20th marathon, or should I say run-over-26-miles-with-a-dossard, and I'm not counting any other type of event.  I don't include all the Sprint triathlons in my all-time 5K race count.  One entry fee, one prize, one entry in the "done" column I say.

I'm all packed.  Treating this more as a long training run; taking my Camelbak for ad libitum drinking, some salt tabs and a whole ton of Vega gels. Oh, and my iPod, I think it's going to be lonely out there.

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Let's Talk About This Wetsuit Business.

I submitted this to the Triathlon Nova Scotia (TNS) newsletter a month or so back but I don't think it made the cut.  Still, I think (IMHO) it has an important message.  Feel free to repost etc etc.

This esrtwhile part of the TA has been lucky enough to take a bit of a cross-country triathlon trip recently and work events in three provinces, two languages and interact with both Olympic-bound athletes and officials as well as with the sport's grass-roots. None of these races has been wet-suit legal. What was of interest to us was the response to these wetsuit calls (in three provinces and two languages).

The title is, verbatim, a direct question asked to us by an age-grouper, together with “why don't you guys just follow the rules?”. Let's look at these statements.

“Let's Talk About This Wetsuit Business”. We weren't sure here if the competitor was trying to negotiate the no wet-suit ruling or cut us a deal. There is no room to negotiate. We (the officials) don't make this up you know. Instead, the wetsuit calls are regulated by the International Triathlon Union (ITU) Competition Rules,which TNS has adopted. These rules are here for your safety. If the water is too cold, you may get hypothermic, if it is too warm, you may overheat. Just try using your wetsuit in a swimming pool! In between these extremes lies the “wetsuits optional” butter-zone we're mostly familiar with. Outside of these comfort zones, there be monsters for some people. These rules are not kept secret by some triple-headed guardian and available only to the initiated after repeating some shibboleth. Rather they are available to download by all at the ITU or Triathlon Canada websites.

As for cut a deal, sure, we'll cut you a deal. Fifty bucks gets you into the Competition Jury. To protest a wetsuit ruling is going to cost you 30 minutes of form-filling as well as the aforementioned $50, both of which you will likely loose, with the $50 going to enrich the Junior Development Team.

“why don't you guys just follow the rules?” This made us laugh. We do follow the rules, those same rules we just talked about. Those rules govern all triathlons from the highest to the lowest. For example. the same rookie transition helmet mistake penalty Paula Findlay made in London was the same rookie transition helmet mistake penalty one of our own got in Guysborough and the penalty was was managed in the same way. Here's the thing though. There are two governing bodies for triathlon. The ITU and the World Triathlon Corporation, or WTC, aka the Ironman people. They, WTC, have their own rules. Mostly they are the same rules but with some differences. These differences are mainly of the “you say to-may-to, I say to-mah-to” variety. But some are more significant. Such as the wetsuit rules. Confusingly, many WTC events in North America are sanctioned by TriCan or USAT and so follow the ITU rules. So, on race-morning before you start harassing some poor, be-vested dude with a radio in their ear in the language of your choice, check the logo on their vest. They are following the rules, but they may not be the rules you think they're following.

A quick word about those temperature maxima and minima. There are tables and tables in the rules; a far cry from the days of the Race Director just sticking his finger in the lake and thinking about it. These max and min are different for long course and short course, for able-bodied and and parathletes, for age-groupers and elites. So just because you get to race-site for the Sprint and see long-course or parathletes in 'suits doesn't mean you can wear one.

As an athlete you should always be prepared for the eventuality of a non-wetsuit swim. Check the history of the event. Historically, are there wetsuits? As well as the obvious, no wetsuits, there are other considerations. Can you swim in that T-shirt? What about your dossard? Don't be in a panic twenty minutes before the start because you just realized not only can you not wear your wetsuit but you can't swim with your number safety-pinned to your cycling-jersey. Invest in a number belt, bring a piece of string. Both will work! Just like disc-wheels, which the TD can rule on depending on the prevailing environmental conditions, the TD will make the wetsuit call an hour before the event when you're pumping your wheels, not when you're packing the car the day before. So be ready. You wouldn't go to the Hypothermic Half with only shorts and a singlet and be surprised to find it too cold to use either, so don't come to a triathlon with a rear-disc and a wetsuit and be totally unprepared to not be able to use neither.

The British Army has a saying called the Seven P's; Proper Planning and Preparation Prevents Painfully Poor Performance. Except Painfully is usually replaced with something earthier. Same thing in triathlon. You train long enough for it, don't let your day be upset by a legitimate ruling that none-the-less puts a spanner in your works. Plan ahead. Your training wheels and a piece of string should do it, and the right mental attitude to make the switch and get your mind back in the game.

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The one where I look at lots of bikes

Just trying to have a quiet thirty minutes before leaving on another trip.  This one is bicycle-related but not triathlon related. Perhaps this is what is contributing to my general feeling of unease.  You see, practically every trip that has taken me out of HRM this year has been to officiate at a triathlon, or occasionally a running race.  

Not this time.  My rule-book, whistle and accreditation still sit on the shelf. My personal officiating kit sits in the storage-room where I chucked it after the Cobequid half and 10K.  Hell, I haven't even packed a pen.  OK, I'll go and pack a pen.

Feels weird.  Kinda naked.

Instead, I'm off to the centre of the universe, aka Torona (I understand there's a 't' in there, but it's never used) to the Bicycle Trade Association of Canada's (BTAC) annual show, Expocycle.  At the behest of the shop indeed too!  To spend two days with the owners and managers looking at bike stuff.  It's hog heaven.  A bit like Ulf giving me bike-check at the World Cup.  Who? Me? Touch all this stuff?  Sure thing boss....

I'm not sure what to expect.  I feel like a newbie undergrad or post-grad going to their first conference. Of course, at scientific conferences you spend most of your time in the talks and maybe half an hour at the expo, talking to reps and trying to score some free Eppendorfs or maybe a fridge-magnet.  This, I think, will be the other way around; spend all our time at the expo and maybe take in a talk.

So basically, just like at your first conference where you feel a bit out of water ands literally follow your supervisor around everywhere but the bathroom, I will dp the same.  Just follow the owners around, everywhere but the bathroom, and try not to break anything.  BEsides,. when Mark asked me if I wanted to go the convo went like this

Mark (pouring coffee) "What are you doing the 8th, 9th and 10th September""

"Nothing yet"

"Want to go to BTAC?"

"Wow, cool, I mean, sure"

"Great, you'll learn a lot.  Just keep your mouth shut"

So there you have it,  I have my instructions from the top: watch, listen, learn.  Wish me luck.

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Cowadonga II

It was especially nice to watch the Vuelta a Espana this weekend as it took place in the Asturias, where la belle and I had been last year for World Duathlon champs and spent a week afterwards bumming around the Asturias, some of it on our bikes and some of it by car.

Yesterday's stage, stage 17, which saw Contador in red and Valverde move up to second (what this says about modern cycling I do not know) finished on Fuente De,  We drove up there last year and took the cable car to the top.  I'm pretty sure the stage finished at the bottom of the cable car run!  Here's Moo at the top of the plateau;

and having a coffee waiting for the cable car on the way back.  It felt a bit On Her Majesty's Secret Service being up there!

and another one of one of Monster Factory's monsters, Bradley, at the top of the cable car station.

The day before we'd stayed overnight at Potes, which is where Stage 17's  last intermediate sprint was.

I'm pretty sure we inadvertently drove the last 50km of stage 17 last year; here is Velonews' picture of the break

and here is a picture of the Renault Sprinter we drove around the Asturias.

Looks like the same place.  Pretty impressive place to hold a bike race.

I was a bit scared driving the Sprinter down that canyon, Unipublic took a whole race down there!

Stage 16 , the one that ended on the 24% pitches of Cuito Negro started in Gijon , the host town of the 2011 World Dus.  I really liked Gijon as a city;

La belle liked the ice-cream

and Moo developed a taste for cervesa y limon after a long bike-ride!

and more ice-cream!

Stage 15 finished on Covadonga, which we rode last year also, with our friend Raul.  It was interesting to hear the cycling press talk about the climb.  The Alpe d'Huez of the Vuelta!  Maybe not in pitch but in grandeur! Nevertheless, they made it sound pretty scary.  I was glad to see La Huesera labeled not as a 10% pitch but a 15% pitch.  Made me feel less bad about stopping, although la belle hasn't stopped mentioning it all week!

Ahh, Spain.  Makes me want a holiday.

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Marathon Deceit

A couple of things to address today, given a couple of eyebrow raising (to me) responses to recent news articles surrounding our sports.

L'affaire Armstrong.

The obvious one.  Wow, what a couple of days in the cycling media, with Lance Armstrong playing the martyr to the evil dragon of the USADA and losing the greater part of his cycling and triathlon palmares to essentially prove a point.  Not that anyone in their right mind really believes this of course.  The prevailing opinion seems to be it was either lose his titles or his credibility.  

While I've yet to see a Phil n' Paul response I have seen fanboys playing a gallant rearguard action, usually deploying the cancer shield in short order.  Let me say this about the cancer shield.  I really don't see how one's philanthropic actions somehow cancel out one's misdeeds.  In this instance or any other.  There are plenty of ex-Catholic priests out there who I am sure were wonderful individuals, bringing spiritual succour to those in need.  Unfortunately, there is the small matter of another type of homonymic succour to be dealt with.  Regardless of the good these men played in their communities, their misdeeds were not in any way mitigated by these assorted good works.  The same applies here. 

While we're on the subject of the cancer shield, I'm pretty sure that HWMNBN never "trained competed while undergoing chemo".  And Livestrong/LAF doesn't, hasn't and won't fund actual cancer research, Sure, be a fan boy, but try and get your facts straight.  If you don't, it makes it too easy.

What I'm most glad about is the meaning behind the lifetime ban.  Remember, Ulrich, Basso, Millar, all the rest, all got two year band for using performance enhancing drugs (PEDS).  Why not Armstrong? The anti-doping code allows a penalty of four years to life for the trafficking and administration of PEDS. In other words, the days of prosecuting some poor jobbing Euro-schmuck who was given the stuff then left, allowed and encouraged to take the fall on his own ("I did it on my own", "my team was unaware", "I'm sorry for the shame it brought on my team/sponsors/family") are over.  Now it's the big guns, the facilitators, who are being prosecuted.  Maybe it is this that will finally clean up cycling.

In the meantime. lets just asterisk all results from the late 90s to early 00s.

L'affaire Heggie.

Tyler Heggie was the 10 year old who ran the PEI Marathon last year.  When faced with the same situation this year at Bluenose, with a ten year old girl entered, I suggested to the organisers that they not try to appeal to the girls parents reason (where does the apostrophe go there?) as the parents would likely think that instead of running a marathon being an unwise course of action for a ten year old, it would be the best thing since sliced bread.  This general attitude is, unfortunately, correct. When informed that now 11 year old Tyler would not be allowed to run PEI this year the father's response was "poppycock".  Although one suspects it was a bit earthier in the original.

When I posted this link on Facebook with the tag "some kids need to be protected from their parents"  I was surprised at one response.  This response suggested that I look up William (Bill) O. Roberts thoughts on the matter.  So I did.  Being a somewhat educated guy, my first stop was not Google, but PubMed.  PubMed is an on-line library with all, and I mean all, the scientific abstracts you ever need (and some you don't) all searchable to all and for free.  There is one study from Roberts, WO on children running marathons and it relied on his experiences as Race Medical Director for the Twin Cities MArathon. His outcome measure was did the child end up in the Medical tent?  No follow-up. This study appears to the basis for his Running Times article,  Roberts WO (2008)"Children and Marathoning".

This Running Times article is balanced out by Rice, S (2008) "Children and Marathoning: How Young Is Too Young? which itself seems to be based on Rice & Waniewski (2003). Instead of an retrospective cohort study observation from the RMD's chair, Rice & Waniewski is a well rounded evaluation of the literature. Round one to Rice I think.

I would be remiss to avoid quoting the American Academy of Pediatrics, where Overuse Injuries, Overtraining and Burnout In Child and Adolescent Athletes by Brenner et al  (Pediatrics 2007,  119(6); 1242-1245) states that "Ultimately, there is no reason to disallow participation of a young athlete in a properly run marathon as long as the athlete enjoys the activity and is asymptomatic". However, this is given in the context of "the Risks of distance running for children  (Pediatrics 1990,  86; 799-800) which is a doom-laden account of the medical perils of distance running, and they define distance as anything over 30 minutes. Round two to Roberts, but on a technicality.

I also fall back on normative ethics, principally, if we have reason to believe that something is harmful, but  have no evidence to support it because that evidence cannot be obtained, then we should not allow that something.  I have dealt with this branch of ethics before: in my case it was to do with pain in animals.  Pain, as a conscious construct, cannot be reported in animals because they cannot tell us they are in pan.  This absence of self-reporting notwithstanding if we think something might be painful to an animal, even if we do not have the ability to say that animal can even feel what we would call pain, then we take measures to mitigate that pain.

The same here.  There are many theoretical reasons why a child should not run a marathon. To conduct a study showing this would be unethical, at the very least.  Can you imagine the abstract? "In order to test the hypothesis that marathon running is deleterious for children under the age of fourteen, we recruited twenty untrained children.  We trained ten to run a marathon and measured physiological and psychological parameters in response to training stress. A control group of ten age- and gender-matched children were left untrained.". In laymans terms, we ran ten grade fives into the ground and compared them to ten grade fives playing Wii Sports Resorts. The Ethics Commitee is going to allow that, no questions. Apart from the obvious ones!

So, unfortunately, like Lance Armstrong's EPO levels, the answer will likely remain unknown.  In the absence of conclusive, scholarly, peer-reviewed data, moral  philosophy tells us that we must err on the side of caution.  This is best summed up by Rice and Waniewski's conclusion that "Although it is conceivable that given proper biomechanics and anatomy, a quality progressive training program, and appropriate maturity and cognitive level, a long distance runner can have a positive experience from participating in marathons before 18 years of age, this special individual would be the exception and not the rule. Examples of such individuals do exist but serve to demonstrate that decisions rendered regarding participation are not designed with the “exception to the rule” as the critical parameter".

If we do not, where does this end?  Ironman? Leadville (either the MTB race or the Ultrarun)? I suspect none of us would encourage our own children to do such a thing, so why should we encourage the children of others to do the same?

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Full Circle

After a couple of hectic weeks; the Edmonton Triathlon Festical (World Cup/PATCO Paratri/National AG Sprint + Olympic) and Trimemphre (PATCO/CG Test Event/National LD Champs), neither of which are remotely close to home. and doing a commensurate amount of laundry I can finally sit down and write something.  One thing comes to mind being at the Elite races.  It doesn't matter how fit you are as an age-grouper (and I like to think I can hold my own), being in an Elite TZ or briefing makes you feel old, fat, slow and short!  As much as I'd like to write about the races, and I'm sure I will, something else comes to mind tonight.

I had a pleasant ride along the Rails-To-Trails yesterday afternoon in the rain, which felt nice and refreshing after a couple of weeks baking in 30C sunshine in three timezones.  Part of the trail reminded me a little of Hawksworth Woods in Horsforth, where I grew up (Horsforth, not the woods), and more specifically hanging out there on a Friday night after school with Peter and Ben and Helen and Vickie.  Peter and Ben and I hung out there because the Woods were at the end of Ben's street.  They were of course, also at the end of Vickie's street.  Which was convenient,  Vickie was, of course, my first girlfriend, something which may or may not have something to do with hanging out in Hawksworth Woods after school on a Friday night.  

Such an 80s flashback might not have gone farther than a couple of kilometres worth of reminisces but it was reinforced by my iPod throwing up Crazy For You on my run tonight.




80s doomed.

This, of course, has me watching 80s teen movie Pretty In Pink tonight, but only because in some astonishing oversight (and absence from the two-for-$10 rack at HMV) I don't have Breakfast Club. Ah, Molly Ringwald.  She's only a year older than me and as the line in the movie goes "You know what an older women does for me?" "Yeah, changes your diapers", which may be a kink too far.  Victoria Pendleton, on the other hand, is ten years younger than me and whilst I wouldn't kick her out of bed for having a squeaky bottom bracket I suspect she may be a bit high maintenance.  And not high maintenance in the sense of changing the chain every 1000 kilometers.

Plus Pretty In Pink has one of my favorite scenes ever, the Duckie/Otis/Trax Records scene

Surely the only song/lip-synch scene to even come close would be Scarlett Johanssen doing The Pretenders Brass In Pocket in Lost In Translation.

But one digresses,

Pretty In Pink was what, 1986?  About two years after hanging out in Hawksworth Woods with Peter and Ben and hoping to see Vickie and Helen.  Co-incidently, Son#1is now 14.  If the Elites made me consider my advancing senescence, then the memories of being 14 and the summer holidays and the realization that my son is now 14 and it's the summer holidays have done me in for sure.  

I realise that after fourteen years of controlling his life, that by stealth now I (and by extension we) do not any longer. If I was doing things my parents were unaware of at 14, I'm sure he is.  Life has come full circle for me.  If the goal of parenting, in a strictly Darwinian sense, is to raise your brood to a point of self-sufficiency, then I think it's mission accomplished. Sure, so Son#2 can microwave a mean curry but he still struggles with the real world.  Son #1 is practically there already.  So he struggles with math but when was the last time your life depending on a derivative?   Maybe it's a tad too early to bring me my ice-floe but I think you should get some cables on it and start the tow, I'll be needing it soon enough.   

In Pretty In Pink Iona wishes that we started old and got younger.  I'm not sure that I would like to relive some of the experiences of the past 28 years between Hawksworth Woods and Halifax.   Still, I wish him well as he embarks on his own journey and I hope that he will look back as fondly on the summer of 2012 as I do on the summer of 1984.

On that note, and sticking with the Pretty In Pink theme, depending on how you're feeling (fondly  remembering prom or mawkishly contemplating your mortality) you may go out with OMD's If You Leave or The Association's Cherish.  It's your choice.....

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