Running with the Pack Podcast

Jeff and Allan talk about having dead legs, our last few runs, tapering in preparation for the Flying Pig Marathon, and what we’ll be doing before and after the race. We also talk about several of the people who have been listening to this podcast. Best of luck in your own races everyone!

If you want to get in touch with me, send an e-mail to allan@parkedthoughts.com

Sites relevant to this episode:
Flying Pig Marathon
Mike’s blog (Westy’s Running)
Marty’s blog (42 @ 42)
Kris’s blog (Web Goddess)
Brandon’s blog and podcast (Brandon’s Marathon)

It’s been nearly two weeks since our last podcast, so I wanted to update everyone and let you all know that we didn’t fall off a cliff or anything. Jeff and I have started tapering our runs in preparation for the Flying Pig Marathon, which is less than two weeks away. I ran a couple of local fund raising 5K’s in the past couple of weeks (after running 18 miles and 10 miles before the races so I get in my distance). This coming week, Jeff and I are going to do a 10-miler and then podcast to get caught up on how our training has been going. That may be the last podcast before the Flying Pig — or we might be able to get another one out on May 3rd, when we’re in Cincinnati. I’d actually like to get a comment or two from Andrew and Sue, but I’m not sure they’ll go for it.

Miesha Marzell, who is going to the Olympic Trials for the 800M and 1500M, joins us to talk about her life-long love of running, the Olympics, running track versus road races, and how her identity is going to change soon since this is her last attempt at the Olympics. She is looking forward to new challenges, including a marathon, triathlon, and just having fun with her runs. I’m looking forward to having Miesha join me and Jeff on some local races and possibly future marathons (although there is no doubt that she will kick our asses).

This week, I talk with Mike Westermeier, a fellow runner and running blogger, about how he got started running, his goal of running 50 marathons in each of the 50 states, training for his first ultramarathon, the movie Spirit of the Marathon, and many other topics.

Thanks for being on the podcast Mike! Good luck next week. Let us know how it goes.

Andrew and I just came back from seeing Run Fatboy Run. It wasn’t as laugh-out-loud funny as I thought it would be, but overall, it was a sweet and sentimental romantic comedy. The movie does a good job capturing the feeling of being out of shape and setting your goals on something as seemingly-overwhelming as a marathon. It also makes some good points about the parallels between being dedicated enough to be a long distance runner and having the same kind of commitment in other aspects of your life. The main character could have just as easily been trying to swim the English Channel or climb a mountain or something, but running is a good choice because it’s so accessible.

So as a whole, it was a good way to spend a Saturday night. Now off to bed. Tomorrow, I’ll be doing an afternoon run and then podcasting.

I was thinking about my pace today and what I could expect during the Flying Pig, so I did a search for a pace calculator. Most pace calculators just ask for a time per mile and then multiply that by 26.2, which is fine if you always run at the same pace, but the fact is people tend to slow down the longer they run. In any case, I just found a pace calculator on McMillanrunning.com that takes the slowing effect into account AND calculates a projected time for a wide variety of distances (from 100 meters to a marathon). To test it, I typed in what I would estimate for a 30K run (close to my latest 18-miler) and looked at what it generated. According to the calculations, I should be able to run a 5K in about 22:54 and a marathon in 3:43:16. Based on the times that I’ve been getting while training, those seem very accurate.

In any case, I’m mostly posting the link here so I can find it again later, but I thought others would like to try it out as well. I’m interested to hearing your opinions about its estimates.