26 miles for my 26th birthday

I run my age on my birthday. This has been happening ever since I graduated, and while I haven’t raced…

SF Marathon: A failure to learn from

I ran the San Francisco marathon today with a swiss-army knife of cramp-prevention mechanisms. I took salt pills, high sodium gus, extra electrolyte drink, and pickle juice. All of them failed, as did I.

Run Commuting

Maintaining high weekly mileage is hard in the same way that the middle miles of a marathon is hard. It doesn’t require a lot of effort or pain — just focus.

I float between 50 and 70 miles per week. While this is nothing compared to the pros looking 120 mile weeks, it can be…

Conquering a Pace

Running is a simple sport. A race is measured by one criteria: Time. It does not matter what you wear to a race, the thoughts that pass through your mind when running, or how your running form looks. These things may be inputs to your performance, but ultimately what matters is how fast you run.

SF Marathon Course Change

We’re now just 10 days out from the San Francisco Marathon! If you’re running the full, heads up that the course has become quite a bit more challenging this year. Because of security concerns, runners must use the sidewalks on the bridge. We’ll be taking the northbound sidewalk to…

SF Marathon: Goals & Race Plan

Before a race, every runner has goals. For my first marathon, the goal was to finish. Later, the goals were specific paces, then a Boston qualifying time. Whatever your goal is, it’s important to write it down.

The biggest obstacle: Muscle Cramps

Race time predictors extrapolate from previous races to predict future times. Plugging in my half marathon time, the resulting race predictions are accurate — the mile time is exactly my personal best, in fact. The predicted marathon time is 2:39:30, or a pace of…