Skippy Records » Running

Born to run

Dr. Skippy — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 17:45:11 +0000

Born to Run was one of my favorite reads last year. Today Nature published some of the science hinted at in McDougall’s entertaining and inspiring book. Nature has gotten onto the part of the story about to toe vs. heel footfalls and running barefooted. This makes a lot of sense to me from the perspective of adaptation and mechanics. $200 running shoes aren’t the answer to the majority of running injuries. This shocking surprise comes after having listened to trained salesmen and running shoe ads for the last 30 years. Silly me.

Nice video showing forces on the foot and talking to researcher (apologies for the jump, doesn’t seem to be embeddable).

Tagged: born to run, fitness, research, Running

Big Sky Duathlon – 2008

Dr. Skippy — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 20:38:12 +0000

The Big Sky Duathlon is a 4K run-25K bike-4K run on Colorado’s eastern plains. My 14-er climbing buddy Joel wanted to do this race and Bennett, CO is only a short drive across greening wheat and alfalfa fields from my home town, Brighton. I decided to try my first dual-sport event in the fat-tire division because it is the only bike I have.

Although I was the 153rd male to cross the line (overall 1:42:05), I appear to have come in 3rd in Fat-tire division. Darn! I should have stayed for the awards cermony. It was very clear that a mountain bike is weakest when the going is easiest. The bike course was an out-and-back course that was slightly down hill and with the wind going out. In the first half of the bike leg, road bikes (with larger chain rings) flew by while I was at maximum cadence. The field was evened a little on the return trip, although the relative upright riding position didn’t help when riding into the wind. I ran the second 4k leg (21m59s) at the same pace as the first(21m41s), indicating I may have saved a little too much for the end. I was slow in the transitions–where spending some money on cool gear can shave entire 10s of seconds.

I couldn’t resist running some statistics on the participants. The plot above shows the age/gender and overall time scatter plot for the race finishers. There seems to be an "age-defying" line running up and to the right with increasing times below which it is difficult to venture as your age increases. Bummer.

The plot below shows the scatter plots of first and second 4K run times vs. overall time. It is clear (as one would guess) that run times correlate strongly with overall time and that on average, participants are slower on the second run. Although I expected the second effect to be larger.

The last plot shows the distribution of over all times. The finish line is not as crowded at 86 minutes as indicated here because start times are staggered.

Crazy Legs 10K – Loveland, CO

Dr. Skippy — Wed, 07 May 2008 18:24:46 +0000

The photo is from a 10K trail run I did last weekend with 60 other runners. Paul’s Crazy Legs 10K course was a lot of fun. The morning was cool and clear–perfect for a trail run. My time was 64:30–not near my best 10K time, but not too disappointing for early in the season, 500+ feet vertical climb and the rocky trails at Devil’s Backbone. It was fun to be out on trails again!

Boulder Half Marathon

Dr. Skippy — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 00:11:40 +0000

I have said many times that I don’t run over 15k. But a group from work somehow talked me into the Boulder Half Marathon this year. The course heads north from Boulder Resevior on a nice mix of dirt and asphalt and the fall season in Colorado is the finest time of the year, so I didn’t suffer much at all. I came in just under 2 hours and had the breath and energy to talk along the way with friends as well as enjoy the views of Longs Peak and the Flatirons. Here I am feeling ready to be done about 250 feet from the finish line.

Official times are here.

Run the Rockies – 5

Dr. Skippy — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 17:16:17 +0000

Alderfer/Three Sisters Medley is #23 in Bragg’s Run the Rockies. Just outside of Evergreen, this is a set of busy trails with walkers, mountain bikers and at least on runner. I enjoyed this run with hills, views and shadey fast descents in the trees. The trails are relatively clean and wide so you can put on some speed here if you like. With stops for bikes, pics and to have a look around, this one took 68 min (5.9 mi). Happy Labor Day!

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Run the Rockies – 4

Dr. Skippy — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 20:50:46 +0000

It was great to get out on a trail again after having run the streets around work for few days. Today, I chose a run just out of Golden–#20 Apex Loop, in Steven Bragg’s Run the Rockies (see previous posts). There are steep parts on the switchbacks on both Grubstake and Sluicebox, but running in the trees is great and the views are fine too. It is a shorter run (for Bragg) at 5.1 miles. I took a leisurely hour with stops for deer, bikers and photos.

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Run the Rockies – 3

Dr. Skippy — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 23:17:13 +0000

I had a good trail run with Hal (from HalsHoP) today. We did a slightly adjusted version of Steven Bragg’s #21 Golden Gate Canyon Loop (from his guidebook Run the Rockies). Because we were coming from Boulder, we approached via Hwy 72 and started from the Buffalo Trail Head. This means we started with a steep descent before the climb up to the pass near Windy Peak. We did the loop in about 90 minutes.

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Run the Rockies – 2

Dr. Skippy — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 18:18:16 +0000

This trail is a lot of fun. I have hiked this trail many times and usually start near the hospital, crossing over the ridge and making a loop up the south west side, then back down the valley trail. The views are great and the trail challenging and fun. There are a lot of birds along the creek in the valley, so take your binoculars if you are interested.

This is trail #11 in Steven Bragg’s Run the Rockies. Today I walked the trail in about 90 minutes.

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Official Bolder Boulder Results In

Dr. Skippy — Thu, 31 May 2007 13:21:39 +0000

The official BB results are up two days after the race. Yesterday, the BB Web team implemented most of my suggestions (not necessarily due to my suggestioning them–they are pretty obvious, I think). And a bit after noon yesterday, they had the results up. I downloaded my offical time and splits to compare.

Mile 1:    00:07:24
Mile 2:    00:07:38
Mile 3:    00:07:59
Mile 4:    00:07:55
Mile 5:    00:07:31
Mile 6:    00:08:01
Total Time:    00:48:07

I knew before the race that I wanted to compare the official times to my own timing, so I was fairly rigorous in my lap-button pushing at each 1-mile station, yet my official time is fully 8 seconds faster than my watch time. A mystery…

Bolder Boulder Time

Dr. Skippy — Tue, 29 May 2007 16:20:00 +0000

My "official" (i.e. Timex) time from the 29th annual Bolder Boulder… It will be interesting to see how these compare to the actual official times produced by the new shoe-tag timing system.

MILE	TIME	SPLIT
1	7:27	7:27
2	15:07	7:41
3	23:05	7:57
4	30:57	7:52
5	38:32	7:35
6	46:30	7:59
Finish	48:15	1:44

This is about 30s off of last year’s time — on schedule to beat my age in 2012.