You can push hard to get to the top of the hill.  But just run in the moment and the top comes to you.

thought for the day

“I believe that if you set out on an adventure and you’re absolutely convinced you are going to be successful, why bother starting?”  -  Sir Edmund Hillary

Young, fit, gifted ... that's one way you could go ...

cross that bridge when you come to it

I was running on the Main river in Frankfurt and was trying to think of an alternative to running one side or the other, or up one side and back on the other, and discovered a topological problem.  What if I ran down one side of the river, crossed the next bridge I came to, continued down the other side to cross the next bridge, and just continued doing that?  Eventually of course I should cross a bridge and head back, but continue to cross each bridge when I come to it on my way home.  I was thinking it through and discovered that as I crossed a bridge on the 'out' and 'back' part of the run I always crossed any given bridge running the same way each time.  I first thought this depended on whether there were an odd or even number of bridges, but I was jogging along trying to mentally draw these paths out and couldn't find a way to "cross each bridge when you come to it" and cross each bridge both ways.

my Garmins view of this run

I won't bother with you my observations on the first and last bridges crossed ...

p.s.  After getting home, I found these kinds of problems have gotten plenty of attention - see for example Seven Bridges of Königsberg

Scott Jurek - Appalachian Trail day 22

I took a chance on finding Scott Jurek on his AT trail adventure today, and had the best of luck.  I parked in Washington Monument State Park, and after a quick trip to the top of the monument for a look-around I got on the Appalachian trail heading south.  I passed the South Mountain Inn (which marks the top of the Alt-40 hill climb at the start of the JFK 50 Miler) and continued south down the trail.  In less than an hour, I ran into him running down the hill from that antenna farm at the top of the hill.

Scott seems to genuinely enjoy people coming out to run with him - although I have to wonder if he's not losing some real time over the period of his record attempt giving time for selfie photos with fans!  I heard several people ask about what he was missing, and he seemed to be craving Thai food and vegan ice cream (never had that ...).  And any vegan deserts - but nobody had any of that.  There are lots of pictures of Scott running - but here is one of him eating (it is eat and run after all)

Scott has great supporters in his wife and ultra community.  I met Karl Meltzer during his AT attempt last year and saw him momentarily again in Washington Monument Park today,  And I wasted some of his time with a selfie (thank you Speedgoat!).  I didn't get one with Scott - that's  30 seconds saved.

If you bring nice gear out on the trail, it can get a bit trail-worn before you know it.  If it's really good gear though, that's OK.  Scott has taken a couple of weeks of hard wear on the trail.  I think I heard him say this is the hardest thing he'e ever done.  But I was impressed with how well he's moving and how strong he's climbing.

Good luck Scott!

links:
Scott Jurek's Facebook page
Frederick News Post article

Go Hard or Go Home

If you had a chance meeting with Mo Farah while in Portland wouldn't you have done the same thing?  He's a great guy, happy to talk about his training.

Mike and Mo Farah

That's me doing the Mo bot.

fall in (the C&O canal)

Some friends who ran in "Tom's Run Relay" told me that one of their members fell into the C&O canal during the night,  I tried to be sympathetic but a part of me wondered how that could happen ...

Well a few days ago I headed down to try to find the end of the canal in Georgetown (called the watergate it turns out) and see how much of the canal I could cover in a day - more on that some other time.  You may have heard a slow pace described as a 'conversational' pace, a pace at which the level of effort is easy enough to carry on a conversation.  I can tell you I have developed an even easier pace, a 'daydreaming' pace, a pace where sometimes you look around yourself a little bit surprised and wonder how you got there ...

Now let's talk about falling down.  There are different ways you can fall.  Take running down a rocky trail.  Some people call that technical running, You might wonder how fast you should be running downhill - I like to think the answer is in the form of another question "How fast do you want to be going when you fall?"  You sort of expect that a fall is going to happen, and you wear some gloves and try to protect the palms of your hands and just go have fun.  Unexpected falls might be a sudden and a total surprise - bam, you're on the ground trying to figure out how that happened.  Or, you might have a slow motion fall - you trip, then take one or two stagger steps, fully realizing that you're falling, and you're down.

Now about falling in the canal.  I'm moving along the edge of the trail, a pretty smooth dirt path, at 'daydream' speed.  I trip over basically nothing at all, just enough to get my weight too far forward to recover despite a couple of cartoon-fast strides.  I'm looking at where I'm going to fall, and I manage a pancake front slide off the dirt and into some green.  Some kind of green prickly weed.  But it turns out those weeds are growing up the side of canal bank, and my pancake slide takes me just over the edge, And I roll just a bit down the bank and one leg goes into the canal calve deep.  I'm grabbing for anything and there is nothing to really push on ... I got out easy enough so really not a big deal, but I'm glad no one was around to see that.  I ran into the freaking canal!

A while later I realized I lost my hat.  I'm sure it's in the canal.