Hares and Hounds Kick-off

Note: No animals were harmed in the running of this event...mostly because treadmill runner Brad wasn't there ... We'll let you bring your hamster ball next time if you want Brad..

The idea for this (may or may not be original i have no idea, but it was original to me) came out of an email from Craiky. He wanted me to run from the Headwaters to Deep Cove with him ... with "no messing about" in his words. "What? Me mess about?" I wondered incredulously. "When do i ever mess about. I'm not the messing about kind am i ....?" ;-p

...Moving right along.... I knew he meant "run hard with no breaks, no shootin' the proverbial waste products." This is hard for many of us to do, and I wondered if there might be a way to make it a bit more interesting than just going out there, putting your head down and trying to hang on 'til the misery is over.Basically we're trying to re-create the racing effect without the $50 entry fee.

I have no idea how the electrical path was suddenly forged between my contemplation of that current problem, to an experience that occurred 29 years earlier on a snowy country lane on the Yorkshire moors in England. Crouched behind a dry stone wall, my friend and I waited for the sound of a car... any car ... it didn't matter. Darkness was settling across the moors with just a rose coloured strip across the far horizon and the white snowy fields for light. As the car came around the blind corner we stood up and hammered it with dense, heavy snowballs that thudded into the driver's windows. The brake lights lit up and the car came to an abrupt halt. An instant shot of adrenaline had us on our feet, stumbling into a sprint as the angry driver peeled out of his car and raged across the soft, silent fields in pursuit of us. Fear from the chase kept us moving long past the point where we would normally have given in to the protestation of aching legs and lungs. We kept going until we realized we had far out-distanced our pursuer, then collapsed against a wooden gate laughing and gasping for air. It was exhilarating.

"That's what we need to create," I thought! The exhilaration of pursuit by a monster or something. Ok.. maybe not a monster... we don't want people dying of fright. What about those greyhounds that chase the rabbit around the track to try and catch it? (It's a fake rabbit folks .. or at least it is these days). The feeling of being chased would keep people honest .. it would keep them pushing from start to finish.

A little more brain ache and the idea was formed for the Hare and Hounds run. We managed to gather six people for the first test run. The idea is you give an honest appraisal of the time you think you are able to cover the course in. Others can vet your time and harangue you if they think you aren't being realistic. Then you order yourself in reverse order. The slowest time goes first and then the next and so on. The last person to go is the hound ... the chaser. If you are passed by the hound you're "dead" ... or buying coffee or whatever punishment you choose ... UNLESS you can beat your own forecasted time by at least 30 seconds. This part is important because it prevents the "dead" hare from giving up. He/she still has a second chance at "life" but it requires him/her to keep pushing hard to the end.

That's basically it. Our first one seemed to go well and we all enjoyed it. We all experienced a nervousness waiting inside the End of the Line store for our start time. Once on the trail you know when the hound will start, and when you look at your watch and realize he is now coming out of the door and you're only across the bridge, the exhilaration is there... you really feel it! Tom and I ran pretty much the same pace and we were constantly looking back to see if the hound was coming. But we were also looking forward and trying to catch those ahead of us .. not because we could "kill" them but just because it feels good to see people ahead of you and chase them down; and also to put a buffer between you and the hound.

Stefan .. the hound... had given a time estimate 2 minutes faster than mine and tom's so he was the hound. In the end we were 6 or so minutes ahead of the hound and within 1 minute of our time estimate.

Kevin and Linda were also within a minute or two of theirs and the Pink Princess..? ..... well..... let's just say there was some "hare loss" happening that day ... ;)

But the whole thing was a lot of fun. It was fun to feel you were being chased and also to be trying to chase down those in front. Everyone pushed themselves from start to finish and got in a great speed workout. Perhaps just as important was the exercise in getting to know your own pace and estimating how quickly you can cover certain distances.

Thank you to the other 5 runners who agreed to submit themselves to this experiment (Tom, Linda, Kevin, Stefan and the Pink Princess).

Design Modifications:

The first iteration of anything is rarely perfect and this was no exception. It can get better and Craiky and I were already coming up with ideas for round two as we sped through the forest.

1) Money -- people could start off with 5 loonies or something and if you are passed then you hand over one loonie to the person passing you. If you re-pass them you get it back. The idea is to come out with more money than you went in with ... or at least to break even.

2) If you are 10% or more faster than your time estimate then you have to take your original time estimate and figure out if you would have been passed if you had run that time. If so then you hand over the appropriate amount of loonies, coffee, donuts or whatever currency you have decided on for your hare and hounds run. You can modify the percentage to whatever you think is fair for your group. Doing this forces people to (A) be honest with their estimates and/or (B) really start to begin thinking about their pace.

If everyone is quite accurate with their time estimates then all of the passing should only occur in the last kilometre or so of your run course. This keeps it exciting ... keeps everyone pushing to the end.

A group of ten or twenty would make for a lot of fun. So stay tuned for Hare and Hounds #2 and come and join us! Feel free to make any other suggestions for modifications. Happy hunting .... (no guns please).

November Snow

Beautiful run on the trails this morning with the Pink Princess and three of her friends.

It's an odd feeling being the only guy on a group run. What would we talk about I wondered as I waited awkwardly in the parking lot for our start.....? Shopping? Spa treatments? Tea parties? Colours I have never heard of? Oh god.... feminine health topics?! Ew!

Just when real worry began to set in, someone mentioned yak trax. Yes! Thank you! I know something about those! And we were off...

Luckily, the girls kept to safe topics and ones I could participate in (at least when I was around). So thanks for that.

Run was really nice. Love running when there is a dusting of snow but the trails aren't covered and you get that mix of colours ... green, brown, white, gray (...see.. i can talk about colours after all).

Anyway.. thanks for the invite Princess. Fun morning. Nice diversion from report cards..

Don't Go into the Light!

...or is it "Do not go gentle into that good night" ?

Whichever it is we did not lose Kevin today and managed to coax him back with a trail of harvest crunch crumbs. Although i swear i heard a voice, not unlike my own, screaming hysterically "go! go! i'll look after Linda!" followed by a mysterious figure, again, not unlike my own, scrabbling around in the dirt with a straw (insert sucking noises) in the vicinity of the harvest crumbs....

Our two hour jaunt up and down a large hill on a certain quiet trail captured the beauty of fall with its vibrant colour, soft light, cool temperatures and earthy smells from the decay of summer. A ghost or goblin would not have been out of place in this silent forest.

Anyway... it was a perfect morning with perfect friends followed by perfect coffee. I'll leave it at that and let the pictures tell the rest..




Happy Halloween...

Rocky Mountain High

Well ... we're off to see the Wizard folks! Driving down the yellow brick road to Colorado this morning and taking our sweet time about it so we can enjoy the scenery, get some runs in and because we can!

Trans Rockies starts Aug 22nd and you can follow it through the website and through their tweety bird thingie @TransRockiesRun ...and.... through Craiky's tweety bird thingie on his blog site...

chowder!

"Miracle Mile"

Sort of in keeping with my previous post, the "Miracle Mile" was used to describe the race between John Landy and Roger Bannister, at the Empire Commonwealth Games, back in 1954. They were held here in Vancouver, at Empire Stadium, and it was quite a race with both milers going under 4 minutes, and both battling it out til the final straightaway.




Every year the Lions Gate Road Runners club host their own Miracle Mile race. It takes place on a cinder track at Balaclava Park where Bannister used to go, in the days leading up to his race, to train and escape the spotlight. So last night was the day for this year's event ... a beautiful sunny evening.

I had an invite from Linda Wong, a member of the club featured here in fine form during heat 1 of the race, where she turned in something like a 6:30 mile. Then it was my turn. Although a low-key event it was a little "eek" with all these fast roadies and club singlet wearers, some shaved legs and spikes and a big digital clock timer!

I stepped up to the line with about 10 others (maybe 20 total between 2 heats) and we were off. I think the "miracle" here is that i made it around the track 4 times at the zippy pace set by everyone. I kept forgetting to look at the clock to see my splits for each lap so I had to run by "feel" and it felt wheezerish for sure. I think I paced pretty well though and ended up with the best time I could get out of myself at this juncture. My 5:27 mile got me 4th overall and I'm happy with that.

(Pretty similar lookin' huh?! No? ... shut up.. close enough..)

We finished off with a 4x400 relay so I got to sprint another lap and earn a few more cream puffs from the pot luck table ... remember what i said waaaay back in one of my posts about motivation?!


Thanks again to Linda and LGRR for hosting and welcoming the "outsider." Back to the couch...

Chubby Chook

There were also impromptu lessons after their meals, like the time when Cerutty
lectured them on warming up. A cat was sitting on a ledge outside one of the
huts when their coach snuck over and emptied a bucket of water over it. The cat
leapt away and disappeared in a flash. Cerutty then expounded: "There. Did the
cat do stretches? Did the cat jog around? Did the cat do knee bends? Did the cat
have a track suit on before racing? No, the cat just got up and went. No more
warming up. Forget it!" (Excerpt from Neil Bascomb's The Perfect Mile)

Don't believe him? Get a bucket, find a cat and see for yourself!

Cerutty was an unofficial coach for the Australian olympic team for the 1952 Helsinki olympics. He trained John Landy ... one of the contenders at that time, along with Roger Bannister, for being the first to break the 4 minute mile barrier. Cerutty was big on training mental fortitude by putting athletes through grueling bootcamp style regimens. Daily long runs up and down hills and over sand dunes, through rivers etc were standard fare. The idea was to basically train people to push themselves to their limits. It certainly worked to build endurance and mentally strong athletes but, unfortunately, he neglected speed training and Landy failed to break the mile barrier that year.

Too bad because Cerutty would probably like some newer ideas about training like the 30 second workout where you sprint as hard as you can for 30 seconds, rest then do it again 6 or 7 times. This is supposed to have a better training effect than running for an hour at a steady, easy pace. I haven't tried it yet but I like the idea of being able to get that same benefit in about 5 minutes! But here's the catch: to do that workout you need some fairly serious mental fortitude to push yourself as hard as you can for 30 seconds, several times over ... until you taste blood and/or bile in the back of your throat in other words. Most of us, I think, would rather do an easy hour than a painful 5 minutes. Physical and mental discomfort is ...well... discomforting to us.

For we have become a nation of softies looking for the easy way out. Look at me ... the lazy trail runner. A perfect example. I want to do the least amount possible to get a decent result (or at least beat monsewer Craik). But to do that I have had to become less lazy, eat less chips and push myself. And doing that has yielded some decent results.

Mental fortitude is necessary to improving at, I would say, just about anything in life. If we want to get better at something we have to put in the effort and sometimes do things that we don't like or that aren't pleasant or don't make us feel good. It reminds me of something I read in Malcolm Gladwell's book "Outliers" where a direct correlation was made between student successes in math and the willingness of students to persevere and not give up on math problems. Students who didn't give up or tried for a long time before asking for help were generally more successful than students who gave up quickly and easily.

I'm a teacher, and the empirical evidence is right there in the classroom for me. A lot of our youth lack mental stamina. "Why do we have to run? It's hard! I'm just going to walk and talk" "It's raining, we'll get wet!" "I can't do this work .. it's too hard. Help me!" ... and so on. The slacker culture. How did we get here? Whose fault is it? How the hell do I know. Are kids inherently lazy? Do we have low expectations of them? I dunno .. those are hard questions. I think I'll give up. Ok ... anyway ... a lot of "pushing" these days seems to be external (parents). That's fine .. there's certainly some place for it. But what of the internal drive to overcome problems... to test one's own limits (be they mental, physical or both) for the purpose of self discovery, self esteem and the feeling of accomplishment you get from not giving up? Do I have what it takes to finish that second bag of chips..etc? Have we overcompensated on the external whips at the expense of the internal ones?

I'm not talking very young kids. They haven't developed that yet. But certainly by the time they're 12/13 some interest in pushing one's limits/abilities should be present at least some of the time. And it certainly is .. mostly in girls which may support the premise of an article in Atlantic monthly magazine called "The End of Men" which talks about how women are now far more successful in school, university and work than men and how they are beginning to take up more of the workforce than men, especially in so called information age industries. It's pretty interesting and a bit of a wake up but I think the title is a little sensational. There's no doubt women are really kicking our collective male behind these days but, speaking from my experience in a female dominated profession, I can say that there is a point of diminishing return when a work force is either all or mostly women. It has its issues. So I'm not quite ready to write off men just yet ... but let's not be complacent! Anyway ... I digress... that's a discussion for another time..

Get out there and drive yourself into the ground sometimes folks. It'll do you good! Look at Gary Robbins. He's uglier than a mule! Hell if I looked like him I'd wanna lay down and die too! (..wait a minute... I...) .. Never mind. The point is he's out there whippin' himself and doing some mental fortituding and whatnot and he's had some pretty stellar successes for it all! So don't be a chubby chook. Get out there and give life a good rootin'!

That's two postings in as many days. What the hell is wrong with me?! Ok ... i'm tired and no one's helping me with this so i'm going to bed. Lazy's working for me right now. Night. ... (did someone say chips ..? .. )

Haze - The latest quarterly installment from the lazy blogger

The word describes my return to the Kneeknacker 5 years on.

I woke up in one at 4:59 followed by the sound of a distant but somehow familiar voice "crap!" ... my own. I've been known to oversleep on the odd occassion but have an uncanny knack of waking up just when Tom arrives to pick me up. Surprising myself with my mental agility at this moment, I implemented a diversionary tactic and sent him off to get two other people on his delivery route. That bought me a precious 8 minutes or so ... enough to awkwardly put running gear on a body that still hadn't woken up fully; put contacts in without getting an eyelash with them; stuff pack with gear i had laid out; drink a glass of orange juice (trying not to let the misery set in from not having time to make coffee) and head out the door hoping i had most things i needed.

The start was a press of people anxiously sizing each other up and jitterbugging around with nervous energy. Me? Nothing. Quite comforting really. I didn't care who was there or what was ahead of me ... I just wanted to get under way .. get my legs moving and get to the end.

The memory of the 5hrs:47mins it took to do that is ..you guessed it... a bit of a haze. It was rather surreal and I will just recount it with the random thoughts/images that stick out ... which should help keep it shortish.

1st half - Humid, heavy air. Not a whisper of a breeze in the trees. Thinned out racers. I hiked/ran dripping sweat onto the parched Black Mountain trail. John Foy sighted ahead and Rob Doyle. Slowly gaining and then catching them where we reach the open bluffs and still no damned breeze! Fun and a few laughs as the three of us run together to Cypress.

Cypress - A little faster than I wanted. Foy takes off into the Hollyburn section bitter and cursing ... at what i don't know. It seems pleasant enough out here. The air by the streams is cooling. Foy disappears - i run stride for stride with doyle for a while and talk about the world cup. Hollyburn .. a larabar ... holy those things are dry. I can barely get it down without choking. Down, down to the dam. Sun's heat is coming through now. Feel a little weak but nice to see familiar faces.

Nancy Green - with Mr Green .... walk/run .... walk/run .... chocolate gel all over my hands... bottles... frustrating little inventions. Back into the forest. Energy returns slowly. St George's bench - recovered and running alone.... pretty much from here to the end - kind of like it. I accelerate and it feels good and sustainable. Unlike Black mtn the forest here seems cool and fragrant, holding the light like wine in a glass.

Mountain hwy .. two blue shirts ... Mr Green and Tom .. dependable and efficient as always. He made it easy for me to run on auto pilot while i noodled with a different kind of race ... the kind where you don't know where the finish is! Bummer..

Lynn Canyon, tourist slalom .... girl hill ... john foy .. yes! gotcha. Hyannis, Seymour grind and it's down to the finish... relief, satisfaction, cherubs in the grass and hot water on the legs...

Good night from Seattle..