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Running After the Age of Fifty – A blog by Paul Jurasin

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Running with the Bears – Great Race, People, Place and Cause

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Running with the Bears – Mile 7 of the 1/2 Marathon

Many months ago, as I was looking through the list of races in the California Marathon and Half Marathon Series, I noticed a race with an intriguing name –  “Running with the Bears”.  I visited and was impressed by the professionalism of the race website as I reviewed the information about the race course, location, the charity the race supports and the comments from prior runners.  Over the next few weeks I found myself going back to the website over and over to learn more about Mountain Circle Family Services, the beneficiary of the proceeds and fundraising efforts resulting from the Running with the Bears.  I came to appreciate the services that are provided by Mountain Circle to assist in and improve the lives of foster children in this area.  After telling my wife about all the great race reviews and showing her the awesome things Mountain Circle does, I convinced her to register to run the half marathon with me and make the seven and a half hour trek northeast to the little town of Greenville, California for the race.

In the early morning of Friday, August 14th, we began our drive from San Luis Obispo on the central coast of California, out through the agricultural lands of the central valley, up through the state capitol of Sacramento and finally into the foothills of the northern Sierra Nevada mountains. Human population becomes sparse as one heads into the Sierras as the terrain becomes rugged and beautiful with rivers, deep valleys and gorges, and massive pine forests.  At about 4:00 pm, we arrived at the Taylorsville campground, our home base for the next couple of days, and setup our tent among the pine and oak trees.  Many runners and others were already setup in the campground, but still, there was plenty of space for us.  After the long drive, we were hungry so we drove the 10 or so miles over to Greenville (pop. 1100) for the pre-race dinner in the backyard of the new Mountain Circle location.  After a pasta and salad dinner along with desert, we heard from the race directors, Josie and Shauna, about the Mountain Circle mission to support the foster children of the area by providing them with a mom and dad that they were missing in their lives. Hearing the story of a former foster kid, now a young adult, in person made our support of the group through the race feel more real and well worth the cost and effort to get here.

After returning to the campground and getting and a good night’s sleep, we we awoke early to arrive at the start area six miles away for the Running with the Bears half marathon by 6:30 am on Saturday morning.  Without paying too much attention, we were thinking it was a little chilly in the early morning light until we looked at the car thermometer indicating that it was 38 degrees!  Wow, this is still August, right?   The area around the race start was buzzing with activity by the time we arrived.  The marathon had just started and the half marathon and 10k participants were begiwpid-wp-1440634322580.jpegnning to congregate near the start/finish line.  These are not Chicago Marathon size crowds but rather an intimate group of 500 people on the edge of the beautiful, barely populated Indian Valley surrounded by mountains highlighted by the rising sun.  Cattle grazed across the country road from the start line and throughout the thousands of acres of ranch land stretching before us with a “real” cowboy on horseback in the foreground tending the herd.  As race time neared, in true, small town, laid back fashion, the race director announced that the race would start 10 minutes late to allow the restroom line to clear, which made many people happy.  And, why not, we had all day to finish this race.  There are no time limits. In fact, there are refreshingly few rules to follow.  It gave me time to greet Stella, a blue heeler I met on Friday night that looked like a small version of our own Jackson back home.  There were many dogs getting ready to run both the half marathon and 10K all excited and ready to go.

After the National Anthem, a nice rendition sung live at the start line, the shivering mass of runners began their journey.  Becky and I had no time goal so we decided to run at a comfortable pace and enjoy scenery along with food and drinks at the eight aid stations along the course.  Eight aid stations is a lot for a half marathon and these were not ordinary.  There were the 4077th MASH, hillbillys, cheerleaders, belly dancers, fruit, peanut butter balls and a multitude of other snacks and drinks.  The effort put into this race by the aid station volunteers was truly extraordinary.  The course followed the edge of the Indian Valley along a mostly flat route with some rolling but no killer hills through the half marathon.  As we approached the finish line, something that I’ve never experienced in a race happened.  One of the race directors who is also the executive director of Mountain Circle Family Service, Shauna Rossington, ran the last 35 yards of the race with me to the finish line.  She then turned around and did it again and again with other runners as they finished.  A nice personal show of appreciation for the runners!

After the race, most of the finishing runners stayed in finish area to cheer the remaining runners in, play with the dogs, eat snacks, drink a beer and get a massage (all included in the entry fee). wpid-wp-1440634344466.jpegAfter an hour or two of post-race relaxation the temperatures had warmed into 80s so we gathered our fancy Running with the Bears finisher medals and made our way back to the Taylorsville campground for a nap followed by a stroll in the nearby river.  For lunch, we visited the Taylorsville Young’s Market, which offers a surprisingly eclectic selection of meats, cheeses, sandwiches and gourmet coffee.

wpid-wp-1440634284621.jpegAfter all this, most would think they were done activities.  Not at Running with the Bears!  5:00 pm marked the start of the Hoedown.  The Hoedown is the post-race event complete with dinner, live music, dancing and a bar held in the Mountain Circle backyard in Greenville.  At this event, special recognition was given to the volunteers and fundraisers involved in Running with the Bears.  The organizers and volunteers were amazing throughout the weekend.  People that were performing bag check-in at the race in the morning were in formal attire taking drink orders in the evening all with a smile.  This was a nice way to end a great weekend that was much more than just a race – it is truly an event.

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Hair, Training and Racing

With August upon us, there are only 5 months left in the year.  That seems impossible.  After our 40 mile running trek down the Rogue River Trail in May, we have continued a decent level of training throughout the summer knowing that the fall brings several big races.  Overall, it’s been a good training year having only missed 5 days of running in the last 8 months.

This week, I have two exciting running related events coming up.  The first is on Wednesday when, for the first time in my life, I will shave my head!  Why would I do that?  Well, I challenged my community of friends to donate $1500 in a w0704150753beek to the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in support of my Chicago Marathon run in October and if they succeeded I would shave my head.  To my surprise and gratitude, my generous colleagues donated over $2200 to St. Jude and to be true to my word, I will gladly shave my head.  In fact, because I am a big believer in St. Jude and their mission, I would encourage anyone to take a look at what they do and make a donation if you are so inclined.  You can check them out here.  The scary before and after photos of my head to will be added to the Grand Masters Running blog later in the week!

The second event coming up this week is the Running with the Bears 1/2 Marathon on Saturday.  My wife, Becky, and our dogs, Jackson and Scout, are driving north 7 hours to the little town of Greenville, California on the edge of the northern Sierras to participate in a small race dedicated to supporting the foster kids in that part of the state.  We are very impressed by the organization and mission of the organizers of this event as well.  Find out more at:  Running withtheBears.org.

Following Running with the Bears, I will be running the Chicago Marathon in October and the Santa Barbara Red Rocks Trail Marathon in November.  I’m excited to get started!

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Three Weeks to Go – Running the Rogue River Trail

0418150937~2With just 3 weeks to go before my wife Becky and my 3 day, 40 mile run down the Rogue River Trail in Oregon, it’s time to adjust our training strategy.  During the week while we’re working, we’ve been continuing a steady dose of daily short runs with one mid-week, mid length run of about 5 miles.  On weekends, we’ve been doing at least one long, very difficult run of about 14-15 miles on technical terrain and with 1500 – 2500 feet of elevation gain followed by a 9 or 10 mile run on the second weekend day.  This is great training, but we’re finding that the hard run is causing enough strain that the second run on the weekend is lacking in quality because we’re pretty beat up.  This level of training would probably have been OK in our 20s but I have to remind myself that we’re in our 50s.  Starting this weekend an adjustment is in order.

We will begin doing a long but easy run on Saturday of about 3 hours (roughly 15 miles) followed by another 2 hour easy run on Sunday.  The concept behind this change is that the time we spend on our feet during the long run will benefit our endurance without causing the physical damage to our bodies of the technical terrain with lots of climbing and descending.  The 2 hour Sunday will run will also give us a chance to practice running on slightly tired legs which will be likely on the 2nd and 3rd day of the Rogue River Run.  We also need some additional nutritional practice with gels during the run.   At this point Becky tends to use one gel every 45 minutes to keep her energy up while I either have one gel and the start or none at all.  Experimenting with more and less calories will help us to refine to the optimal level.  Everyone responds differently to training and nutrition so it’s not expected that we will both arrive at the same optimal levels.

Updates to come in a week or two!

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Marathon Demographics for the Masters

Since I just ran a marathon a couple of weeks ago, I was interested in reviewing what the recent trends and statistics are looking like for marathoners primarily focusing on the Masters (40+) and Grand Masters (50+) age groups .  The statistics referenced come from Running USA.

In 2012, there were 487,000 marathon finishers in the USA.  This is slightly less than in 2011 but only because the New York City Marathon, usually the largest in the world, was cancelled due to a hurricane.  If the expected number of finishers were added, the overall number of marathon finishers would  have been slightly higher than in 2011.    At least from the marathon point of view, there’s not a growing running boom going on but there is not a reduction either.  Let’s take a look at how the genders and age groups are trending.  In the 40+ age range, the percentage of 2013-12-08 02.56.04women versus men in the marathon is slowly increasing.  In 2006, 60% of marathoners were men while 40% were women.  In 2012, that number changed slightly to 58% men and 42% women.   In 2012, 35% of all men marathoners were over 45 years of age while 23% of all women marathoners were over 45.  Overall, from 2006 – 2012, the percentage of marathoners both men and women over the age of 45 has remained steady at 46%.  When looking at all marathoners in 2012, the median age for men was 40 and 35 for women.  Interestingly, after years of improvement in average marathon finishing times, the times for both men and women have increased year over year from 2010 to 2012.   There is not an obvious answer as to why this may be happening.   A possible explanation may be that an increasing ratio of casual versus serious runners are entering the marathon ranks but that’s just speculation.  I have no data to support that statement.

Other interesting statistics about marathoners are that they run an average of 4.3 days and 28.3 miles per week and they purchased an average 3.5 pairs of running shoes during the year.  That demographic sounds pretty close to the marathoners I know.

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Running Around

As I was running through Ephrata, PA in Lancaster County this morning, I was thinking about all of the different places around the United States and to a lesser extent the world that I’ve run.  I wasn’t thinking about how any of these places have stood out but rather about how much more of a personal experience one can get for a town or region on foot versus in a vehicle.  We’re in Pennsylvania this weekend for a close friend’s wedding and some other friends are here to attend the wedding as well.  We arrived a day early to to spend some time touring the Amish farmland and visiting various attractions in the area by car with them.  It was nice to spend time with our friends and to drive around beautiful Lancaster County.

This morning I spoke to the Inn Keeper at the Historic Smithton Inn where we are staying about a good 4-5 mile running route around town.  She was very knowledgeable and provided directions for a scenic tour of Ephrata.  The thing that became clear to me this morning, and I probably have noticed this before as well, is that seeing a place on foot provides a much better feel for an area than traveling by vehicle.  On foot, I am moving slowly enough to see the details of homes, yards, businesses, vegetation, schools and every part of the region I’m in.  I can even greet people I encounter on the street and get at least a brief view of their attitudes (very friendly here in PA, by the way).  When traveling by vehicle, most of this is a blur and the view we get is much more generalized and high level.

While it is certainly true that we can cover much more ground in a moving car than on foot, the depth of immersion in the local culture is much greater while running.  That’s my short and sweet thought for the day!

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Back to the Roads – Tucson Marathon

ImageFall is well underway and that means the marathon bug has hit me again.  Even though I can’t seem to stop the continuous forward march of aging, it hasn’t yet reduced my desire for long distance running.  Last year at about this time, while Hurricane Sandy was finishing up the devastation she caused on the eastern seaboard, I was packing for what was to be the canceled New York City Marathon.   It took me nearly six months before I considered another long distance race but in August I did, in fact, commit to training for another marathon.  The Tucson Marathon on December 8th is the new goal.  My old Colorado training buddy has recently moved to Tucson so a marathon in the Southwest is a logical choice.  Since we’re planing to run the race together, there’s some built-in competitive incentive to keep the training up.

My intermediate training goal was to complete the City to the Sea Half Marathon in San Luis Obispo, California in early October.  Despite a rapid increase in training distances, the race was a success with a finish 10 minutes ahead of expected.  Even though I had some success in the race, I did nearly everything wrong in preparation.  I went from a six mile long run to a 1Image2 mile long run over a 4 week period.  I bought a new pair of running shoes the day before the race and ran the half marathon in them without ever running in them before.  I didn’t ingest any nutrition, gels or otherwise, during the race.  All bad things – and I knew it.  Fortunately it all worked out well despite myself – but that was a half marathon.  I can’t power my way through a full marathon without much more careful planning and execution.  The distance is too long and the effort is too hard to not be prepared.  It’s been 18 years since I ran the Chicago Marathon in 1995 and I’m a lot older now.  I should have much more experience behind me now and know how my body responds to the stress of training.  One of the things I plan to do is to keep at least half of my long run mileage on trails to reduce the impact of training on pavement.  In theory, this will serve me well.  We’ll see!

Stay tuned – I’ll write about how the training progresses and how the results of the preparation unfold.

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What are you reading? Running or otherwise…

What people read says much about them.  It’s one of those things that’s not significantly influenced by others.  It’s an individual preference that, when looked at as a whole, provides some insight into the thinking of the person.   In general, especially from a periodical point of view, I think people read about topics that are parallel to their own views.  They want to learn more about and see what other people with the same interests have to say.  I know this applies to me.

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California Trail Running

My magazine subscriptions are few but the ones (ok, one) that I  pay for, I’m very loyal to.  I’ve had a subscription to Runners World for many years and have no plan to end it anytime soon.  Runners World is the core magazine for runners.  It contains information about food, special interest, real people, training, shoes and various other topics.  Occasionally, I’ll think it has too much information for beginning runners, but the other information is just too good for me to stop reading.  It’s the one magazine I read from cover to cover every month.

A long time runner friend recently purchased a subscription to Trail Runner magazine for me.  In the past several years, I have been doing predominantly trail running and really enjoy the relative solitude of being off road.  A big positive for Trail Runner is that it focuses less on beginner runners and more on places and trail races.  I can see it becoming another magazine that I will move into my every month reading list.

If you’ve ever been in an airport about to board a several hour flight and are looking for a good read in the newstand, what do you buy?  You’ve already got your “go to” magazines in your bag and are looking for something else…  I know I tend to migrate to the either the business or science sections.   Scientific American is always good to learn something new.  But, I have to be awake to pay attention to this one.  Though I love the magazine and the topics it covers, sometimes I don’t want to think so much on an airplane.  The Economist is another favorite of mine but again – I need to be awake to read this one.  My default if I want general information without needing to put much effort into it is USA Today.  The articles are general and it keeps me up to date on current events.

What does this say about me – Runners World, Trail Runner, Scientific American, Economist and USA Today?  Not sure, but maybe it says something that none of these magazines have anything to do with my what my every day job is.  I wonder if I’m an anomaly or mainstream from that point of view.

 

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Over 50? How often can you run?

Although everyone is different, one of the primary things I’ve noticed as I get older is that I need more recovery time after a run to keep performing at a high level. I could go out and do detailed research on why that is, but for today I’ll just talk about personal experience.2012-04-06 15.31.14

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a 3-5 day per week runner with a long run and maybe a speed or track workout thrown in. This seemed to work well. Then back in November and December I decided to do an experiment and run every day between Thanksgiving and Christmas to see how that felt. I didn’t do any longer than usual runs. In fact, I ran shorter than normal on many days as my goal was only to run at least one mile every day. I extended my everyday run streak to 40 days and noticed progressive changes as the days piled up.  The first thing was that it began to take more time to warm up and feel loose.  The standard 7 or 8 minutes turned into 10 to 15 minutes.   On some days, I only felt loose for the last few minutes.  Also, as I got nearer to the end of my streak, I became continually slower and my legs never felt good.

Finally when the streak ended, I took about a week off from running.  My first run back was amazing!  My legs felt light and I was running minutes per mile faster than at the end of the streak.  The difference was dramatic.  It was obvious that to remain a runner in a sustainable way, a certain amount of rest and recovery time between runs, no matter how short, is needed.  My new experiment is to determine how much recovery time is optimal.  To little will be detrimental to performance and too much won’t provide enough activity to remain fit.  The fine tuning will continue forever, I expect…

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Road Racing in Winter – Why?

In the cold, wet, dark, snowy winter months when most rational people stay inside or get their exercise in a gym, many runners keep running and racing outside.  In this part of the country, Colorado, there are road races to run on nearly every weekend of the year.  In the winter months of December through March, almost all races are on roads versus trail because of the poor trail conditions due to snow, mud and ice.  The roads, for the most part, are clear and dry for a good portion of the winter in the Denver area.  But, there are the occasional snowstorms that dump several inches of snow on the city usually followed by warmer, melting days resulting in clear running within a week after any storm.   These snow and melt days are a problem.  They make the roads and paths slushy and then icy; a bad combination for outdoor running.

There are a multitude of reasons that racing in the winter is less than optimal.  Training is erratic due to uncertain weather and road conditions.  Plans have to be changed because the track becomes snow covered the night before speed work is scheduled.  Roads and sidewalks become icy making running treacherous.  Any form of consistency is non-existent.  Running on the treadmill in the gym is an alternative which I have come to appreciate, but it’s not the same as an outside run.

With that dreary picture of winter running, why do people still do it?  Well, there are some advantages.  This is the time of year to set the bar for the upcoming year.  Scheduling a 5K or 10K in January or February encourages us to keep our fitness level up.  After all, no one wants a dismal race performance even though our training level might be lower than in warmer months.  That motivation carries us through to the time of better weather conditions and when the trails become runnable  for trail runners.  Another positive aspect of winter running is the development of mental toughness that can be used during training and racing later in the year.  The resolve to get out and train when it’s cold and dark makes increasing our pace a bit during warm weather seem much easier.

Give it a try. Train for and run a race in the winter.  You’ll get the feeling that you and the other participants are conquering a great obstacle that others have not.

10 degrees with fog this morning – guess I better get out and run!

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