Eleven runners. Two vans. Two hundred and three miles. This is just one of eleven stories to tell about the Texas Independence Relay.
Get Ready to Relay
This weekend –yes, the whole weekend– is the Texas Independence Relay. Eleven of us will be driving from Austin to Bastrop to begin our journey. We’ll traverse the badlands of Texas on two legs from Bastrop to Houston along local roads for a total of 201 miles. The route is broken up into 40 legs, divided among the team. When we’re not running, we’ll be in one of the two team vans. I’ll be in van #2 with four others cheering runners, eating, and notably not showering. Our team gets things started at 1:30pm on Saturday March 31st.
In terms of actual running, I’ll be tackling three
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of the more difficult sections. If all remains as planned, my first run is 6.09 miles starting at 7:30pm Saturday. Next will be 6.6 miles, starting at 2:30am Sunday. … … … And my third run is 6.7 miles at 9:20am Sunday. The actual starting time for each depends on how everyone else has been doing. Barring any mishaps, the team should be crossing the finish line around 2:15pm on Sunday April 1st (27 hours after the start).
It’s going to be a lot of fun and I’ll try to give some live updates as well as the obvious post-run “race” report. Keep an eye out for Team Austinia (#292)!
Why The Face? – Sheltered
This past weekend a froworker had some in-law relatives
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in town from Chicago. As the resident food person on the team, I sent him a list of must-eat restaurants to take visitors. I chose places that would give a well-rounded picture of what Austin has to offer. I was given real-time updates where they decided to dine:
McDonalds. Buffalo Wild Wings. Cheddars. McDonalds. Chick Fil A. McDonalds.
WTF! Enjoy the pink slime.
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2012 Cap10K Race Report
Sunday was the 35th running of the Statesman Capitol 10,000. As you no doubt remember, this year I was a member of my company’s Corporate Challenge team. We’ll get to how that went in a moment. First, anyone who has been around me for more than 5 seconds knows I like running marathons*. Half marathons are cool too. 10Ks are not really in my bag of tricks. Not one to disappoint I set a pretty aggressive conservative who knows goal of sub 40 minutes.
Cap10K Preview
Well, the Cap10K is finally upon us. On Sunday I’ll be representing the National Instruments corporate challenge team. We’re the 7-time reigning champions and number 8 is in our sights. As a refresher, the top 5 times for each team get added together, and the fastest team time wins. I’m likely going to have the ninth fastest time on our team and therefore inconsequential (per usual).
In preparation for the race, I ran 20 miles yesterday (Thursday). “Not ideal”, you say? Well it sounds a lot better than running 20 miles the day before the race. Who’s the smart one now? All that snarkiness stems from my focus on marathon training without any real concern or attention paid to the Cap10K. Shifting my long run from Saturday to Thursday was truly the extent of my 10K prep.
Ok, that should sufficiently lower expectations. Last year I ran this race in 40:55. My goal this year is to go sub-40. Cheer me on to make sure I hit my goal. If nothing else, cheer for my friend Travis who is running on his company’s team too, and his first 10K.
Go Travis!
Why the Face? – Milky Way
Some major bad news just got dropped up in here. After this morning’s 20 mile run to work (badass!), I had a post-lunch craving for a candy bar. My go-to is a Twix, but knowing it has cookies in it (and therefore not gluten free), I opted for my second favorite: a Milky Way. It was delicious.
The bad news that Colin busted out is that a Milky Way is not gluten free either. Most candy bars are, including Snickers and Reese’s, but apparently the chocolate-malt nouget comes from malted barley (i.e., wheat).
WTF, Mars Inc? WTF.
Gluten Free Update
We’re just about three weeks into this gluten free experiment and so far I’m no worse for the wear. I’ll say that if I were severely intolerant or had Celiac disease, I’d have gone through a Costco size box of EpiPens (and/or Depends) already. It has proven to be pretty challenging at times (like when I had a salad, side of broccoli, mashed potatoes, and roasted vegetables for lunch one day), but it’s also been very educating.
For the most part I’ve done a good job resisting temptation. A few lapses in resolve have cropped up, but nothing too major. SXSW was brutal, but there’s a silver lining to it. However, it also meant I couldn’t go to town on a burger, ice cream sandwich, and burrito over the course of an hour. I made my way through the mayhem on corn tortilla tacos (thanks Coreanos and Chi’Lantro!).
When starting the gluten free journey the first thought was to maybe just cut back on gluten. So far it’s proven much more worthwhile to cut it out completely. The primary validation is my heightened awareness by checking every ingredient list, asking every vendor, and keeping a leery eye to anything I eat. There have been a few things I definitely would have eaten mainly out of habit or because they were sitting in front of me. Instead, I took the time to think (which is highly underrated).
The big takeaway so far is that going gluten free requires a lot of planning. Ev and I have started planning weekly dinner menus in a Google calendar. And because lunch is such a toss up now, we’re going to be cooking for four so that we have leftovers for the next day’s lunch. There will certainly be sacrifices, but Austin is extremely GF-friendly. Some fellow Austin food bloggers have listed out dozens of places that will accommodate and cater gluten freemen and freewomen of the world Texas.
I’m aiming for two months of strict(-ish) gluten free living. After that point I’ll likely reintroduce gluten in moderation. As I mentioned, it’s been educational thus far. I’m hoping that after two months I’ll be more aware and deliberate in what I’m eating. The ultimate motivation that kicked things off was to see if a gluten free diet would help my general well-being. Time will tell.
Why The Face? – Colin in DC
In a new series called Why The Face? I’m putting together right now with no promised regularity I will point out things that are so ridiculous and out of the realm of normal that they deserve their own category.
Today’s issue of Why The Face? we visit Colin’s performance at the Rock ‘n Roll DC half marathon yesterday.
His time: 1:25:27. WTF!
Dock and Roll Diner
Don’t mess with Texas. Land of Cattle, The Longhorns, and BBQ. Beef is king, be it on a sandwich, bone-in, or straight up. So who has the gall to bring something so New England like a lobster roll to the Lone Star State? One brave trailer is testing the waters in drought-riddled Austin with their menu full of creative sandwiches, headlined by The Maine Event. Meet Dock and Roll Diner.
Save Me A Spot!
Talk about the second marathon boom. Back in the 1970s, running was taking off and becoming the thing to do. Well we’re well into the second boom, and I think even approaching a tipping point. In recent months, several enormous races have sold out in mere hours. Not months, weeks, or days, like they used to. HOURS. On March 7th, the Marine Corps Marathon opened up for registration at 3pm. The race isn’t until October 28th. By 5:41pm it was sold out. That’s 30,000 spots. Thirty. Thousand. For the uninitiated, that’s insane.
The Marine Corps Marathon isn’t alone. Recently the trend has been to sell out faster and faster. Boston has additional limitations, namely qualifying times, which reduces the number of people who are even eligible to try to register. The New York Marathon has a lottery in place to fill its non-charity, non-elite spots. In recent years, the number of spots in the race has been constant but the number of people applying has grown like crazy. Here’s how Marine Corps compares to the Chicago and Boston Marathons (and the NYC lottery numbers):
| Race (runners) | Year | Time to sell out | People per Hour |
| Chicago (45000) | 2012 2011 2003 |
6 days 31 days 35 weeks |
312 /hr 60 /hr 7.6 /hr |
| Marine Corps (30000) | 2012 2011 2008 |
2.6 hours 28 hours 17 days |
11538 /hr 1071 /hr 73 /hr |
| Boston (20000) | 2012 2011 |
8 hours 66 days |
2500 /hr 12 /hr |
| New York | 2011 2010 2009 |
140000 applicants 125000 applicants 102500 applicants |
Not all hope is lost. The Austin Marathon, for example, has only started seeing sell out registration since 2009, and they were selling out the week of the race itself (for only 6000 spots). They even had some people registering the day before at the expo. So this isn’t indicative of ALL marathons. It just seems to be the mega races, for now. Runners may need to reevaluate their race preferences and focus on smaller races. Or hone their online registration skills.
More registrations means more dollars so I don’t really see this trend slowing down. What are the alternatives? Well, with the current systems in place, you need to be ready to go the moment registration opens on the very first day. But long term I think races are going to need to address this problem (and yes, it is a problem). Lottery and qualifying are two options. A lottery, like the NYC Marathon, puts everyone on an equal playing field for random selection. The problem there is the uncertainty if you’ll be chosen, and thus makes training and travel logistics difficult for tens of thousands of people.
My preference would be to have qualifying standards, either based on time or race history. For example, to register for, say, the Chicago Marathon, you would either need proof of X number of other marathons. This could promote smaller marathon registrations en route to a larger race. Otherwise, it could require people show proof of running one (or two, etc) half marathons prior, more from a safety perspective. Like, first show you can safely run a half marathon, and then you can register for this marathon. As a last qualifying option, which isn’t really ideal either, would be to mirror the Boston Marathon: set certain time qualifications to be met in another race before registering for the race you want.
No matter what the changes are, it remains that changes need to be made. Again, ultimately this is a good problem to have. More people running means better health, more notoriety, and hopefully better-managed events. It’ll be interesting to see what happens. Until then, let’s keep training for the Vermont Marathon (which, as it goes, still has an open registration).