Follow up to the survey where I asked questions and (some of) you answered
Follow up to the survey where I asked questions and (some of) you answered
Plus my experience at the Boston Marathon 20 years ago
Welcome new readers. It is always interesting to see new subscriptions and follows, considering my topics are definitely niche. A hearty thank you to all of you readers, new and prior (versus “old”1). If you don’t know me, then instead of forcing a mini bio on your now, visit my bio. As always, I welcome your comments and share as you see fit.
It seems like just a couple of weeks ago that I posted a survey about the future of my twenty-year-old – and now dormant – blog, MountainRunner.us. But March 26 was some time ago. The blog costs money to keep up and secure, but since it’s a community, I didn’t want to shutter it or move it somewhere else willy-nilly. I’m honored and humbled that since the first citation in print, sometime around 2007, the blog or specific posts can be found in the main text and/or footnotes in numerous books, government reports, think tank reports, and articles.
The voting window was short at 7 days. An overwhelming number of respondents (79%) read the blog before I launched this substack in February 2022. A slightly smaller percentage said I should keep the blog rather than shutter it or archive it. If I were to archive it, slightly more respondents suggested migrating it to substack rather than making it an ebook. For now, I’m going to keep it as is. I don’t have the time to figure out migrating it to substack.2
I also asked about audio. Earlier this year, I recorded versions of several posts, either as voiceovers or as separate podcasts, as an experiment. In both cases, though not in each instance, I expanded on the script in the recording to add detail, color, and opinion. Should I continue with the audio recordings? Most respondents were undecided. Some commuters expressed support. The number who asked that I record posts as podcasts equaled those who selected the option, “No, just don’t.” Well, rest assured, I don’t plan on doing a “proper” podcast. For the foreseeable future, any podcast from this substack will be a voiceover with bonus material, though I make no promise (or threat) of when I’ll do another voiceover.
I’ve meant to post this for so long that the picture meant to accompany this post seems out of place now. I took it walking Paisley, my dog, the morning of the recent Boston Marathon. I did the Boston Marathon back in 2004, the year I launched the blog, after “accidentally” qualifying for it at the Las Vegas Marathon the first weekend of February 2024.
Back then, you qualify, you’re in. Vegas was one of the last two races in the country to qualify for the upcoming Boston. But I wasn’t doing Vegas to qualify. It was a fun race I’d done several times before. It was also a very different course than now, starting out near State Line with 20 miles of net downhill, mostly on the small road that parallels the 15 (no, not the “Eye-15”) toward Vegas. This is followed by “10km of brutally flat,” as it was memorably described to me before my first time there as the ground seemed to rise up and hit your feet after running 20 miles of a subtle yet net descent. A the time, I was burned out after doing my 5th Ironman the previous August3 and was only running trails with my dog Luna, the MountainRunner namesake, for fun and based on trail routes that were fun with her. We ran 3-4 times a week for 30-35 total miles, all hilly trail. The night before the marathon, I was feeling good so I checked what I needed to do for Boston. 3:15. Hmm. Well, I ended up doing 3:15:52, which was good enough. The next month, I ran a tough and hot 50k trail race (I think this was my third time doing that race) that I had previously planned on and PR’d. Then came Boston in mid-April. There was also heat. About 85F. About 5-6 miles in, I realized I was in for a world of hurt with the absence of salt pills and because I don’t think I recovered from that 50k. On the plus side, running (for fun at that point, with no plan) exclusively on mountain trails had me so prepared for Heartbreak Hill that when I asked a runner where it was, they replied that we had already passed it. Ha! I struggled as the heat took its toll when normally it was a condition I savored and excelled in. I struggled to finish and finished in 3:40. I should’ve gone to the med tent, but I didn’t. I was solo in Boston and staying at a friend’s apartment that was either in Back Bay or the adjacent Beacon Hill (I swear it was the latter, my wife says it was the former, and since she doesn’t read this, I’ll stick with it being the latter). They were away on a trip and the wife wasn’t able to join me in Boston. After resting a bit in the finish area, I started the “walk” to the apartment and soon sat down in a doorway and apparently passed out as passers-by woke me and asked if I was ok. Living here now, I think I now walk the dog past that doorway based on my vague memory of what it looked like. I ended up hailing a cab because I didn’t know how much farther I needed to walk to get to the apartment, but I was sure it was far. It wasn’t, and the cabbie wasn’t happy that he took me less than a half-mile. This reinforces my argument the apartment was in Beacon Hill, plus I remember going to a store downstairs for Sprite and Gatorade for post-run hydration – there were several indicators of extreme – which reinforces the BH over BB hypothesis. Good times all wrapped up in those cheerful, shiny ducks.
Not all of you readers are old, or at least I don’t want to be the one to reality-check you. Avoiding “old” reminds me of guidance I overheard back at the turn of the century given to volunteers at one of the first Ironman triathlons I did. “Don’t say ‘last hill’ because any bump can feel like a hill,” to the mentally-addled athlete passing by. More importantly, “Don’t say ‘it’s all downhill from here.’” The athlete may take it figuratively rather than literally!
There are several reasons to leave it be, which is what I expected to do. I don’t have the time is one, because time is required to make sure the URLs remain intact and to figure out if and how I can continue to use redirect instructions to point requests to updated URLs. There are a lot of these on the current blog as a result of major platform changes from upgrades to a poorly executed move to and from Squarespace (which is why a lot of graphics and linked documents disappeared, because my move back to WordPress wasn’t as smooth as advertised).
This Ironman was not ideal. Ironman Canada was nicknamed Fireman Canada because of the massive forest fires at the time. Sucking in smoke from the fires for days before the event wasn’t awesome. At one point, a day before the race, I counted 13 firefighting aircraft. The swim course was altered because many of the lifeguards were to be off-duty firemen, but they were now on duty. The run course was altered to keep evacuation routes open. A part of the bike course was not ideal: parts with incredibly low visibility due to smoke, pavement stained with fire retardant, I got dripped on by a helicopter’s bucket as it moved from the lake on my right and dumped on the smoldering hillside on my left. During the run, I caught up with a pro and we started to walk about mile 13. We picked up a second pro as we did pathetic fartleks with intervals resembling a walk followed by a weak jog. Walking most of the last half of the marathon, we still wanted to finish under 12. We debated if that was possible because it would require 20min miles. In the end, we did, in 11:52. My body continued to eat itself after the event and fell below my high school weight even as I thought I was stuffing my face (I wasn’t). Good times.
I am one of your “old” readers. 😁