Running Festival and Marathon Mag Giveaway

January 26, 2010 at 11:18 pm · Filed under Books, Equipment, Running

Two mile runs seem to be the new black (@JogBlog) and my latest spree of treadmill couplets must make me positively gothic.

I’ve slipped to beginner runner status again but I’m gradually pulling back and feel happy to be putting in some mileage even if its slow and single figured. The ballot results for the Great North Run will be revealed in a couple of weeks and as my name is in there I’m going to have to start a proper program soon enough. I might even start running outside again which will result in an investment in another GPS gadget and blog posts littered with pretty maps.

Still, I’m getting ahead of myself. I’m scheduled for another 3.1km trog on the treadmill tonight and GPS is just a little bit over the top and besides, if I can wait til September I might get to try out this new toy from Timex.

Despite being practically a non-runner at the moment (and therefore a poor blogger), I am still regularly asked to review or promote running related stuffs on the blog. The latest request was to publicise the first UK running festival, which looks really quite exciting.

It’s called “Love Life Love Running” and is a weekend event aimed at runners and their families. It takes place in the grounds of Cannock Chase over the weekend of the 24th/25th of July 2010. There are two main events: a standard 10k held on Saturday and a rather intriguing 6-hour challenge on Sunday.

I’m particularly drawn to the 6-hour challenge event which is a relay based around a 7km course and can be run by teams of 2, 4 or 6. It suggests on the event website that you can make this as challenging as you like but I haven’t seen the rules so can’t imagine what this means, I’m presuming motorised bikes are ruled out.

As a family oriented event there are obviously events aimed at the kids as well, such as the mini zoom – a 60m course where speed is of the essence. Not my cup of tea at all but there’s a certificate available for every finisher so I could be persuaded.

Anyway, if you struggle to find the time to sneak off to running events it’s well worth taking a look. You can sell it as a family getaway!

Also this week I was sent a copy of the Ultimate Guide to Marathon Running to review.

It’s a large format, magazine style book covering everything from goals, nutrition, motivation, training, technique and so much more. I’m really quite impressed with it and for the price I think it’s amazing value.

I recently canceled my subscription to Runners World mag, not because I was disillusioned with it, but I wasn’t running a lot at the time and after a 3 year subscription I was beginning to notice that the same things would come round too regularly. The content of the Ultimate Guide to Marathon Running magbook is such that you can save yourself an annual subscription to A N Other running mag but still get your fix of motivational tidbits and of course it is solely focused on the marathon distance and event itself.

It has a good training section, discussing various aspects such as interval training and the long slow run but the final 12 week recommended schedules are a bit thin on the ground. There are only 3 schedules illustrated, a 4hrs + (or get round), 3hrs 30 mins or a sub 2hrs 55mins. Personally I think there’s a huge difference between a 4hr marathon time and a get me round time but I suppose schedules are very personal things, there are stacks freely available on the web and it doesn’t detract from what is otherwise an incredibly useful guide to the marathon.

CREDIT: The Ultimate Guide to Marathon Running is available now on the magazine newsstand from WH Smith, Sainsbury, magbooks.com and amazon.co.uk for only £7.99

As I don’t have a marathon on the horizon and my planned half is quite some time away I thought it would be the perfect giveaway for one of my real running readers. Just leave me a comment telling me why you deserve the magbook more than me and I’ll post the book off to the one that makes me smile. You can be cruel but if you hurt my feelings you won’t win.

On an unrelated note, I will just take this opportunity to plug my latest obsession – warriorwoman can now be found masquerading as Big Betty, riding and writing about the new Triumph Bonneville.

If I’m not on here writing about running then I’m probably on whatapalaver discussing the trials and tribulations of motorbike commuting.

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Dean Karnazes – Runabout

September 21, 2008 at 8:39 am · Filed under Books, Equipment, Running

I read Dean Karnazes’ new book the other week, “50 50 Secrets I Learned Running 50 Marathons in 50 Days”.

I’ve already flogged it on ebay so you can be sure that I am not going to recommend this as a good running read. It’s full of trite running tips that you all know already, stuff along the lines of never do anything new on race day.
Yawn.

It’s sold as a “fascinating story” and how can it not be? The guy is pretty much a wonder, he ran back to back marathons and covered off most of the US in less than 2 months. He should be shot for producing such a dull account. Out of the almost 50 race reports not a single one could hold a candle to the daily reports coming from the blogs over there on my sidebar ——>

He kept going on about the “feminisation” of the marathon world which made me picture hoards of men with man boobs jiggling around the course, and then sang the praises of the AMAZING women (who were also mothers) that managed to find the time to run a marathon.

I don’t want to be too mean about the book, there were two positive things that I took away with me, the first was not to be such a baby when I get a cold – you can run with a snotty nose and the other was the concept of Runabout.

Runabout is Dean’s take on the Aboriginal Walkabout. It’s the kind of free running that he is famous for and does so well (see Ultramarathon Man which actually is a fascinating read). He’ll open his door, take the decision to head E, N, S or W and then just keep running until he can go no further, at which point he catches the train home. When he goes on runabout he may run for days before deciding he can go no further but he recommends that a similar toned down tactic might work for those in training for marathons.

So the plan is to head out running in any direction and then keep going until you need to walk, then run again and keep the cycle going til the day has gone and its time to head home. The trick is not necessarily to run the whole time but to just stay on your feet and keep moving, so if you stop to pickup drinks and food, you must eat on the go.

I’m off on Runabout today, heading in a north westerly direction. I’m hoping to pick up the Capital Ring a 75m loop of London – lets see how much I can cover before collapsing.

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Worrying Developments

January 26, 2007 at 7:52 am · Filed under Books, Running, Technical stuff

I am slightly concerned about two new obsessions that seem to be gaining a foothold.

Firstly you may have noticed that a whole load of ultrarunners have suddenly gatecrashed my blogroll and therefore my regular reading list. Yesterday my new book arrived, Ultramarathon Man by Dean Karnazes, and I stayed up til 3am to finish it.

Why would this be? A long run for me is 10k.

Can’t help feeling such an admiration for this show of endurance and ridiculous stubborness. When Karnazes finished his first 50-miler he described rather too vividly the terrible spasms and projectile vomiting that ruined his lovely new Lexus. It’s trials like this that help define who you actually are and I’m sure most of us hanker to know just how much we could actually deal with.

The second development is rather more impulsive. Last night I suddenly decided that I was going defect from MovableType and head over to wordpress.org. This is clearly going to cause an immense weekend long headache if I go ahead with it. I had to restrain myself from giving it a go last night when the urge first grabbed me.

This is my explanation in advance for any prolonged outage of the blog, and any pattern baldness that I may concurrently develop.

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