Run Photo of the Day 12.31.10 : The end of the road

When it snows, you have to shovel it off the sidewalk. That's just how it works. Not everybody understands this tricky process, which can be tough when you're out on a run. Because stuff like this happens.

Happy 2011!

Screw your shoes!

4 Feet Running - Screw Your Shoes from 4 Feet Running on Vimeo.

It's another 4 Feet Running video special! In this instructional tutorial, Nik and Dan make screw-shoes: they drill screws into the bottoms of their running shoes to make cleats for winter running. This is where they got the idea: http://www.skyrunner.com/screwshoe.htm

Enjoy!

Run Photo of the Day 12.24.10: Merry Christmas Eve

Went for a nice little 5-miler today with the dogs in the ice and snow. I thought I'd celebrate the season by wearing my Santa hat.

The route took us by my old high school. Stanley found something very interesting over on the athletic fields.

Hundreds of Canada geese, all hanging around on the icy, snowy fields.

Only a few dozen meters away, we came upon a bunch of broken vinyl records tossed along the side of the road. Good stuff, too: Benny Goodman live at Carnegie Hall and Ray Charles. There were pieces of about five or six records that I saw, on both sides of the fence. Anybody who (a) litters and (b) treats jazz and R&B like this deserves to be on Santa's Naughty List.

Run Photo of the Day 12.23.10 : Hooray, it's official, we're in the Brooks I.D. P.A.C.E. program!

Special episode: Mojo Loco and 2010 review Part 1

It's a very special episode of 4 Feet Running with Nik and Dan! Remember them? This episode:

- Nik and Dan are in St. Augustine, Florida, to run the first ever Mojo Loco 50-mile relay run to Daytona with 11 other friends from the online running community

- Special guest appearances by Adam Tinkoff, Maddy Hubbard, Steve Runner, Steve Chopper, Ed Marathon, Stormin' Norman, Marathon Chris, Susan Stout, Samantha UF, Chris Russell, and the Crazy Runner

- Nik and Dan ain't afraid of no ghosts

- You asked for it, you got it! More of that classic "4 Feet Running ear-splitting traffic noise roar" you love so well

- They talk about a few great developments in their running since their last episode

- Go on a Gallowalk with the Zen Runner, Maddy, and Dan

- What else do 13 runners talk about when they get together? Shoes, shoes, and more shoes

- Everyone nearly freezes to death ... in Florida

- Nik survives almost a whole day entirely on Boost liquid

- A little bit of a short leg at the end due to a calculation error, but after 12 hours of running nobody's complaining

- Stay tuned for Part 2, coming very soon, where Nik and Dan go over their 2010 year in review!

Pictures to come!

Get the episode in iTunes

Team Mojo Loco

Mojo Loco on Facebook

Run Photo of the Day 12.8.10: Bundled up

Run Photo of the Day 12.7.10 : It's getting cold outside

Run Photo of the Day 12.4.10: One week left until Mojo Loco! -- and also here are some pictures of dogs

Did Nik & I ever mention that we're running the famous AND infamous Mojo Loco 50-mile relay in Florida? I don't think we did. Hey, guess what! Nik & I are going to run the Mojo Loco 50-mile relay in Florida! It happens in about one week. 

We're part of a 13-person crew of runners and support that will run from St. Augustine to Daytona Beach. It's a relay, so we'll be running about 3 miles at a time and maybe 10 or so miles total. Not a bad way to spend a day. 

Among the incredible folks who will be there: Adam "Zen Runner" Tinkoff, Steve "Phedippedations and I'm not sure if I spelled that correctly" Runner, Maddy "Gotta Run" Hubba, Ed "Marathon" Marathon, Chris "YTK" Russell, Marathon "Running Adventures" Chris, Samantha "Uff!" UF, "Just Norman" Norman, The Crazy "Not Actually Insane" Runner, Susan "the Stout-hearted" Stout, and fleeing to dark, wet, foggy Florida from the bright and sunny shores of England, Steve Chopper. Learn more about the Mojo Loco relay here. There's also a Facebook page. 

Keep an eye out for it -- I'm pretty sure Steve and Adam will be live-streaming as much of the event as possible with video and audio, so you can participate in the relay as well, without actually having to sit in a car with a dozen smelly runners. Although you could do that if you really wanted to and wrangled up some smelly runners of your own. 

Now here are some cute pictures of the dogs getting ready to go for a run.

Run Photo of the Day 12.2.10 : Puddle sniffing

Only Stanley knows what smells so good.

Philadelphia race weekend

Here we are, folks. Nik and I have been training for Philadelphia race weekend for a while now, and it finally came: on Nov. 20 was the Rothman 8K (for me, Dan) and on Nov. 21 was the Philadelphia Marathon (for Nik).

This was my first 8K race. I've run longer distances, obviously, but since my New Jersey Half-Marathon 3-hour plod in May I've been focusing on doing short runs faster. I've been running since -- what, 2006? I can't remember, so someone tell me. And since then I feel like I hadn't made any really great gains. So I got myself a copy of Pete Pfitzinger and Scott Douglas' "Road Racing for Serious Runners" and did some of Uncle Pfitzy's speedwork-intensive plans. My goal when I registered for the 8K was an 11-minute mile, or 54:40. At the time, I was still running 12-minute miles with rare dips in the 11s and even rarer dips in the low 10s. By the time the race came around a few months later, 11-minute miles were typical, 10s were common, and even 9s were not unheard-of. Uncle Pfitzy can be a harsh master, but he gets results.

The race started in front of the art museum, same place as the marathon the next day. There were about 1,600 people, so it was a decent-sized race, slightly chilly weather -- which I prefer. I fueled up properly the night before and that morning. I settled somewhere in the mid-pack (that's a big step for me, since I usually hang out in the back with the elderly and infirm) and, when the race started, I trotted past the mayor and gave him a high-five. I even met longtime podcast listener Bill Dowis, who was surprised I recognized him. He's a fantastic, friendly guy with a luxurious beard.

Nik recorded some video of me crossing the finish. Check it out above.

The race was great: I took it easy the first mile to get through the crowds of other runners, and, once they got tired (a lot of people seem to flame out after the first mile where I am), I settled into a pace of just around 10:00 and hovered around there the rest of the way. It felt very strange, being at a pace where I pass people who are clearly in better shape (and better-looking) than I am. I'm not used to being in an area of the running crowd where I'm not in danger of the water stops closing and being followed by the police escort. It's weird.

I got an automatic PR, of course, since I've never raced this distance before -- but more importantly I beat my goal time by more than 4 minutes: 50:36. That's even much faster than my 5-mile PR, and 8K is just under that, at 4.97 miles. Read more about it on my Daily Mile post.

The next day, we got up early again to head back toward the art museum for Nik's Philly Marathon. This is her 3rd time running it, and her 7th marathon overall (although I don't think that counts that bad-ass time she ran a marathon all by herself at home, so that would be 8).

Nik has not been too confident in her training lately. She's just felt a little tired of running long distances all the time, so she's been doing Crossfit a few times a week to break it up. And when you're busy with other things in your life, like work and family, it's hard to feel OK carving out 3 hours to go run. Nik's a very schedule-oriented person, so when she misses a few runs she worries that the whole thing has gone down the tubes.

I was confident she'd do great, though. She's fit like you wouldn't believe. Strong like bull! Don't get into an arm-wrestling match with her unless you want to get humbled. Anyway, I was predicting she'd get a little PR, and she was just hoping to get through the race so she wouldn't have the pressure of it hanging over her. She didn't get to high-five the mayor at the start line. But I did, and then later I high-fived Nik, so in a sense she high-fived him second-hand (no pun intended).

After she took off, I got a coffee and tried to spectate on the corner of 16th and Chestnut streets, maybe about 6 miles from the start. If you've run Philly before lately (either the full or the half), you know Chestnut Street is a great stretch of downtown Philly with tons of shops and spectators about 3 or 4 deep on either side. There's hooting and cheering the whole way, and most people hand out high-fives and snacks. I tried looking for Nik here but didn't get to see her. I later checked out the online tracking on the Philly Marathon website and saw that the clock had her running a 1:22 at the 10K mark, over a 13-minute mile. I got worried for a second, like I do at every marathon, hoping she wasn't in trouble. But I quickly realized that the tracking was counting the 20-some minutes it took her to cross the start line, and if you subtracted that then she'd be in the 9:30 minute-mile range, which is just where she should be.

I got some footage of her crossing the finish too -- or, actually, getting near the finish. I couldn't get the whole thing because some guy's head was in the way. That's to be expected when there are 23,000 people just running, never mind spectators.

Her underconfidence be damned -- she got another PR of 4:10:37, about 10 minutes under her previous time. She ran well, with a series of little hills and inclines from 17-22 that bugged her more than stifled her progress. She got a little bit tired at 24, but got her second (or third or fourth) wind at 25 and kicked it in from there to the end. This puts her well within loogie-hawking-distance of a sub-4 marathon. Read more on her Daily Mile post.

Some other little notes and observations:

• The expo? Fun stuff was pretty thin on the ground. Some decent T-shirts and the usual mix of good stuff (bargains on sneakers) and bad stuff (bullshit "Power Balance" bracelets, which be warned, every time you spend good money on one of those things a kitten dies)
• Somebody dressed up the Rocky Balboa statue outside the art museum
• Lots of Philadelphia-themed music played at race time, but again, no "Jungle Love"
• I cooked our meals in the hotel's kitchenette and didn't almost burn the joint down, unlike last year
• The swag bag was pretty lousy, except for a free $500 gift card on Red Star sunglasses. We were flabbergasted about this deal and obsessed with finding some kind of catch, and then we found the fine print and realized you have to pay a "service charge" on the list price of the merch. It might still actually be somewhat of a good deal, not sure yet. We'll keep you updated.
• They must've given out 50 million free packets of Vaseline lotion in and around the marathon and expo. Lots of smooth elbows in Philadelphia that weekend (and other things).
• While Nik was waiting in the corral to start running, I was just outside the barrier and chatting away to her. Some klutz came walking by, bumped the 15-foot metal pole that held a large purple-corral flag on it, and sent the pole toppling down on my head. Nik partially broke the fall by grabbing the pole just as it brained me but it still hurt like a mother. 

Run Photo of the Day 11.18.10: Old factory

Took Stanley and Myrna on a 5-miler through part of downtown Fall River, past an old plastics factory that went belly-up some years ago. They used to make Koosh balls here. I used to know a kid whose uncle worked there, and he'd brought home to his kids armfuls of irregular Kooshes they were just going to throw out. 

Run Photo of the Day 11.16.10 : Getting ready to run

Run Photo of the Day 11.14.10 : Bread & butter

I took the dogs out today for 4, the first part of a multi-part run.
Stanley likes to do this around poles. We've been trying to teach him the "bread and butter" command, which means he should run on the same side of a pole as us -- but he hasn't gotten it yet.

After I dropped the dogs off at home, I went for 3 solo.
I ran in the cemetery by our house, mostly because it's close and quiet.

On the way there, I saw a notebook lying in front of someone's house that I'd noticed yesterday, too. If you click on the pic to enlarge it, you'll see it's someone's geometry homework. Later, in the cemetery itself, I saw some sheets of paper on the ground. I looked more closely and saw they were someone's algebra homework. Conclusion: kids in our city hate math.

When I got home from the 3, I logged my miles and noticed I was just 0.75 miles away from reaching my yearly mileage goal of 600 miles. So I figured since I was already wearing sweaty clothes, I might as well go out and pick up that last mile. I took the dogs again, and this time Stanley didn't get stuck around a pole. Instead he got transfixed by a sheet of plastic being blown in the wind across the street.

Run Photo of the Day 11.13.10 : Sunrise Run

.65 miles later...

Run Photo of the Day 11.12.10 : black and green

Run Photo of the Day 11.11.10 : Run under the bridge

Run Photo of the Day 11.10.10 : Gray day and Golden Pigs

Run Photo of the Day 11.9.10 : Shoe rack

We decided to take the dogs on a 3-miler. Stanley double-checked our shoes to make sure we were serious.

Run Photo of the Day 11.8.10 : Crossfit

This is my second week of boot camp. It been a fun asskicking so far.

Run Photo of the Day 11.7.10 : Ice Cube Massages

All four of us went out for a 6-miler. It's typical November here, which means grayish-white skies, no sun, and temperatures just above freezing. It was 40 degrees.

Even so, Stanley demanded an ice-cube massage afterward. 

Run Photo of the Day 11.5.10 : Errand Run

Run Photo of the Day 11.4.10 : Graffiti

Stanley's obsessive new hobby is staring at leaves floating in water. Myrna's a little bored by it.

Run Photo of the Day 11.2.10 : Nazi pumpkin?

Nik & I aren't kidding when we say we see some weird stuff while running.

I went for an easy 2-miler today & saw several Halloween displays,

including one with a pumpkin decorated to look like ... oh my JEEZ,

is that Hitler? WHAAA? It's got the hair & distinctive mustache drawn in Sharpie.

I don't know what goes through people's heads sometimes.

Run Photo of the Day 10.31.10 : Myrna's first race

Nik and I ran a 10K race in New Bedford, Mass., the Spooky Run. 

It's a Halloween race, hence the wrestling mask I'm wearing.

We brought along Myrna (she's good at races, unlike Stanley,
who stayed home). We got her this adorable butterfly costume,
which she kept on the whole time. There were other dogs, but none as cute.
It was her first race.

It's not as hard to run in a butterfly costume as you'd think.
The wings are aerodynamic.


I registered for the 5K but at the last minute, since Myrna
doesn't like Nik & I to be separated (and because Nik asked me to join her),
I switched my race to the 10K. It turned out to be a good move:
I got a PR of about 1:08. Myrna, of course, got an automatic PR.

Dan's mom (in the background) ran the 5K in 44 minutes or so,
and we met John From The Poi there, who ran the 10K in 1:01.
Those are PRs for both of them! Congrats!

Run Photo of the Day 10.30.10 : Running Partners

20 miles was on my schedule today, I've been having a bad couple of weeks

of aches, pains, colds and general lost of mojoness.

I was not confident about this run, but having some running partners along really helped.

Stanley's a champ and ran 13.7 miles with me.
We stopped at his favorite pond to point at some leaves or
whatever those fluffy seed-pod things are. He ate one.

After running 3 miles with Dan, Myrna joined me for 4.75 miles.

She prefers eating the grass by the pond.

After dropping the pups off,

I persuaded Dan to go out for a second run with me.

We stopped to take pictures and look for a geocache.

Dan was tired and decided to go home, so I ran the last 2 and a half miles alone.

It ended up being fun and strong 20-miler.