Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Random Running Thoughts

Nothing interesting enough going on to justify a whole post, so here's a bunch of random stuff that will hopefully add up to something worth the price of admission...

-I've figured out that running w/ tights on in the winter is essentially the same thing as swinging a weighted baseball bat in the warm-up circle. I was able to run a couple 20 milers wearing just shorts last weekend after who-knows-how-many weeks of running in tights, and I was shocked at how stupidly fast I was able to go. I guess when you train with that slight resistance of tights long enough, your legs really fly when they're set free!

-I'm driving 10+ hours (each way) to run the Iron Horse 100 in an couple weeks. Assuming the race goes to plan, I'll finish somewhere in the neighborhood of 16 hours. That's 20+ hours of driving for 16 hours of running.  I'm not sure if this is good or bad, but it's definitely not "normal", right?

-The loop course at the 24 hour World Championships will be 1200 meters (.745 miles) long. This means 187 laps for 140 miles, and just over 200 laps for 150 miles. Something about the roundness of those last  figures looks pretty good to me.

-I read somewhere on the ultralist this week that a guy training on the C&O Canal along the Potomac river here in DC ran out of water on a long run. Apparently he knew this was going to happen, but instead of planting water or planning on looping around back to a water source, he carried with him a small bottle of bleach w/ an eye dropper.  When his bottles ran out, he scooped up some water from the positively disgusting Potomac (that even he admitted was the color of "weak coffee") and proceeded to mix it with 10 drops of bleach to make it "drinkable".  My only comment: "Dude, What the %^#* ??!!!!". Sure, all ultra runners are a little crazy in their own ways, but drinking bleach and Potomac water?! That's just so very wrong on so many levels...

-Camelbak now has a Flow Meter that digitally gauges how much fluid you have left in your bladder. Has anyone had any experience with this yet (or similar product)? If it actually works, it seems like a pretty great way to keep fluid/fuel consumption dialed in during long runs/races. Let me know!

2 comments:

Chris Roman said...

Crazy is so relative, all sounds good to me, see you in a few weeks :)

Amelia said...

Did you mean spending more hours driving than you will running is crazy, or did you mean that being able to run 100 miles in 16+ hours is crazy? Because, yes and YES, though maybe it's a little crazy like a fox, too.