Tag Archives: run

Running 13 Miles for the Homeless

On Saturday, Jan. 25, I’m running a half-marathon.

That’s 13.1 miles.

It’s a little crazy. I’ve never run that far before (12 miles is my record). But this is where my running is taking me and I’m giving it a shot.

I’m a little lacking in motivation, so I decided to use Mark Horvath and his work with InvisiblePeople.tv to help the homeless as inspiration. I’m trying to raise $500 for InvisiblePeople.tv with this half-marathon.

So please, cheer me on by making a donation.

I’m feeling pretty good about it today as I write this, but come Saturday I’ll need all the inspiration I can get. I felt pretty bleh when I ran 12 miles a few weeks ago, and I don’t want to feel that way on Saturday. I’d rather think about Mark Horvath and how running those miles is helping him and the homeless people he serves.

I’d appreciate your support. And InvisiblePeople.tv does incredible work telling the stories of the homeless and being an advocate for a people who have no voice.

You can make a donation here.

Thank you.

Love Runs

Love RunsI love it when things come together. When different concepts merge into a brilliant idea and when overlapping people start working together toward the same goal. That’s good stuff.

That’s what is happening with Love Runs. It’s a remote 5K that’s happening on Saturday to raise money to build a classroom in Uganda. What’s a remote 5K? It means you can do it anywhere. You don’t have to be part of any official run.

I’ve been running lately. Some days it’s horrible and I hate it and (less frequently) it’s awesome and I love it. But every time I feel good. Even when my feet hurt or my knee is acting up or I’m just exhausted, it feels good. So I keep doing it.

Then Allison Vesterfelt comes along and wants to celebrate her 30th birthday by raising $30,000 to build a classroom in Uganda. That’s the kind of crazy thinking I like. Allison has been kind enough to support my recent book by letting me write for her blog and for Prodigal Magazine. I kind of owe her. I wanted to support her effort, but I wasn’t sure how. Then I saw she was doing Love Runs.

Things come together.

Now I can do my run and support a good cause. Plus I can help out a friend. Plus, the school in Uganda that Allison is helping is supported by Bob Goff, the author of Love Does: Discover a Secretly Incredible Life in an Ordinary World, a book that’s been on my reading list for a while. I saw Bob speak last fall and he’s the kind of ridiculous guy who puts his phone number in his book and urges people to call him. (He genuinely wants to talk to you. So of course his phone rang while he was speaking. Awesome.) It should come as no surprise that when Bob saw I was doing the run he thanked me on Twitter. When I responded and mentioned that I needed to read his book before Saturday, he offered to send me a copy. The guy’s got heart. So yesterday I picked up Love Does from the library (yes, I should probably buy it—it’s good stuff) and I’ll probably have it done before the run on Saturday. I get bored with nonfiction books, but this one is captivating. Bob loves people so much that he’s just crazy. I think that’s kind of the point.

Things come together.

So Saturday I’m doing this run for all the reasons I just said. Want to join me?

It’s a remote run, so you’re welcome to take part. Pony up some money to Allison’s cause and let’s do this. Strap on your shoes and go! You can walk if you want. 5K sounds like a lot, but it’s only 3.1 miles. Go 1.55 miles from your house, turn around and go home. Done. Take a picture and let’s celebrate with Allison.

If you don’t want to run (or walk) but still want to support Allison’s birthday project, you can make a donation here.

Things come together.

Boston Bombings: I Want to Run

Yesterday two bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three and injuring more than 150.

It’s always difficult marshaling my thoughts in the wake of these tragedies. Everything is a little scattered and disjointed.

News Coverage
As has become the norm, this is another event I learned about through social media. I saw the first comments about an explosion at the finish line of the Boston Marathon (my first thought: They run the Boston Marathon on a Monday?) on Facebook. I hopped over to CNN for details, found the barest sentence of an update and went back to social media for all kinds of updates. Seems like it took less than 20 minutes for photos and video of the blast to surface. Vague details, misinformation, ridiculous speculation and stories of the triumph of the human spirit were all flowing.

I turned on network TV coverage for only a few minutes, just to watch the president’s address, and was quickly pushed back to the Internet. I can’t stand the unending footage of shaky cam footage of carnage. I much prefer the news online where I can pick and choose what I want to see, decide for myself whether that video is worth watching, get the warning about gruesome photos and decide if I need to see that.

It’s a different experience. Though the need to know something, anything, is pretty much the same.

ContextRight now this attack feels huge. It will be interesting to place this event in context once we have some distance. It’s not Sept. 11 big, but it has that kind of feel to it. While the number of injuries is enormous, so far the deaths are, thankfully, relatively low.

I think the manner of the attack rather than the impact is what makes it feel so large in my mind. It wasn’t just some random bombing, it was targeting a major sporting event that draws half a million people. It’s also the first major attack on U.S. soil since Sept. 11. While we still don’t know much about the attacks, the manner of them—what appears to be IED-type bombs like what our soldiers face in Iraq and Afghanistan—in some ways brings those conflicts home. It’s too early to know if there are any connections, but it’s a similar style of attack.

Finally what makes it feel larger in my mind right now is perhaps the way I’m experiencing it with almost immediate social media updates. The 1996 Atlanta bombing at the Olympics would be pretty comparable—major sporting event, two dead, more than 100 injured. Though my experience of that event was extremely limited. I would have been in high school at the time and would have paid minimal attention to the news. I knew it had happened, but I don’t remember following the updates. While the Olympics was obviously covered pretty heavily, we didn’t have the civilian photos and videos like we do now.

For better or for worse, that allows us to experience these violent events more intimately. It gives us a small taste of what some people around the world experience on an almost daily basis.

I Want to Run
One thing I do feel after the Boston bombings: I want to run. I’m not much of a runner, but I’ve been getting into it, slowly trying to build up my endurance. I don’t know if I could ever run a marathon (I don’t think I’ve even run five miles at once yet), but at times I think about it. I usually run on Tuesdays, so running today isn’t anything special, but it is important that we get up and keep moving. In my own little act of defiance against our attackers and in a show of support for those hurting in Boston, I’m going to run.

Update: I ran five miles this morning (and didn’t collapse).

Born to Run

Last week I finished the book Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen by Chris McDougall. It’s easily in the top five best books I’ve read this year. And that’s not just because I’ve been doing more running this year than any other year. It’s an incredibly interesting book that makes the most mundane things completely fascinating.

The writer starts off the book with a running injury and wants to know how he can run without getting hurt. His doctors tell him to stop running. It launches into an exploration of running shoes, which didn’t come into use until the late 1960s. The author ends up pursuing a lost tribe in Mexico called the Tarahumara who easily run up to a hundred miles a day in ridiculous canyons with little more than sandals for shoes.

Personally it’s engaging because I’m fighting the same battle. I’ve taken up running recently but I’m terrified I’m going to hurt myself. Something like one in three runners get injured every year. I was going to run a 5K this weekend, but I came back from a run on Thursday with my knees hurting. Pushing it didn’t seem wise. The idea of barefoot running that’s explored in Born to Run suddenly seems appealing.

The fact is that for all our fancy cushioned shoes, running injuries have only increased. Running shoes actually increase the power of your footfall, magnifying potential damage to your feet, ankles and knees. But people have run for millenia without such fancy shoes, so why not do it that way (or at least in minimal shoes—I’m too much of a wimp to go completely barefoot). This barefoot or minimalist trend has skyrocketed recently, to the point that Nike has released their own “barefoot” running shoe. Here’s a good summary from the author’s site.

I’m not sure where I’ll land. I know I need to ease into minimalist shoes if they’re going to work for me, and with my iffy knees right now I need to be especially careful. Exercise shouldn’t be this difficult.

And that’s the most compelling part of this book, that perhaps we’re doing something wrong. Virtually every disease that plagues Western nations can be blamed on poor diet and exercise. Many of our health problems could be solved if we simply went running. We need to re-learn how to run, both to get back into the practice but also to learn how to do it right so we can avoid the epidemic of running injuries.

Which brings me to what I thought was the most fascinating portion of the book. McDougall talked to some evolutionary biologists who theorize that the human body was made to run. This flies in the face of conventional wisdom, which holds that our design is for walking. But as they compared human and animal physiology, they found that we have more traits in common with runners than walkers. As they explored further they found that we’re especially designed to run—but not sprints like a jack rabbit or a cheetah, but long distances. More than any other animal, humans have a capacity to go fast over long distances.

At first this stumped the biologists. How could that be helpful? Long distance is no good if a tiger catches you in the first 10 seconds. Likewise dinner would manage to escape in the first 10 seconds as well.

Then they discovered an ancient art of hunting that involves literally running an animal to death. It’s very rare today with fenced in preserves and what not, but they managed to find a tribe in Africa that would hunt this way: Persistence hunting. They would run an animal down over 20 miles, tracking them, herding them to keep from losing the stragglers and eventually the animals would overheat and die. A deer might be able to outrun you, but if you keep after it, the deer has to slow down to rest and you don’t.

That’s incredible. I’m probably summarizing the story poorly, which is why you should go read the book, but that’s just fascinating. I’d like to see how it goes over with my hunting friends. What if instead of grabbing the rifle or bow, they headed out in shorts and a water bottle, ready to run that buck to death? Think you need a hunting license for that?

Here’s a good video that summarizes the book and includes persistence hunting:

Running & Writing: You Have to Be Consistent

I’m not going to be one of those people who blogs or tweets about his incredible athletic achievements. I’m not going to tell you how I’m running a marathon or crushing my 5K time or trying a fancy new workout program. Whatever.

I am getting more exercise lately. But nobody cares about that. Frankly, I’m slow, sad and pokey and no one wants to read updates about my abysmal mile times.

But I have learned one thing from exercising: You have to be consistent.

I started exercising again because it makes me feel good. It’s good stress relief, it feels amazing when I’m done and it’s good for me. But if I slack off for a week and try to get back into it, it sucks. If I don’t run for a week, then go for a run it isn’t fun anymore. Then it sucks. My joints revolt and my legs want to cramp up and my knees hurt. When I finally get home I don’t feel like a million bucks, I feel like I want to die.

Same thing on the bike. If I haven’t been biking then every little rise is a mountain and I have no energy or stamina to make it up. But even a little bit of consistency and I’m cruising up the incline.

It’s about consistency. You have to keep at it. It’s true in exercising, it’s true in writing, it’s true in anything creative, it’s true in much of life.

Keep going. And if you do slack off and get behind, get back up again. That first time will suck. But the second time will feel better. Remember that when you’re tempted to skip a day. Don’t. Save yourself that sucky run and stay consistent.

 

Run Fast for Ethiopia

Another cool adoption story involves a boy adopted from Ethiopia who wanted to raise money for his homeland (there’s no public blogpost on this one, so I’ll leave off the names—though the identity will be obvious to the people who know). He organized a charity run, dubbed “Run Fast for Ethiopia,” and raised at least $170 for the Hossana region in Southern Ethiopia. The money will go to buy cows, chickens and plant a vegetable garden as part of the fundraiser for the Summer Mehaber, an annual picnic celebrating Ethiopian culture here in the Twin Cities.

I didn’t hear about the event until the day after, but I so would have been there.

The boy’s sister also did a fundraiser of her own, hosting a garden tea party for the ladies.