Thing I learned about myself and running in 2013.

That its good to be relaxed when you run.

One of those things that happened to me this year is that my best running performances (St. Louis Marathon and Schaumberg Turkey Trot), were about being as loose and relaxed as possible, the more relaxed the faster I ran. And I was able to monitor my looseness, and able to maintain it during races.  This help prove my concept of flexibility over strength. And at least for me being more flexible and being in a relaxed mental zone, and not panicking, proved to be a huge breakthrough for my running goals for 2013. I wasn't worried about my result. I set realistic goals for myself for each race. And I promised myself, no matter what, not to beat myself up about the results. With a calm mind, you can run forever.

That marathons don't scare me anymore.

The marathon is so built up as insurmountable myth, most non runners think you're insane, and even many runners think it's truly a trip to Hell.  It reminded me of the old myths of sailors who believed if you traveled too far away from home, you'd fall off the edge of the earth.  So, I decided in 2013 not to be afraid of the marathon, to see how far I could take it. I wanted to pursue past those boundaries. I am here to tell you, there is nothing to fear. 

Nothing happened. 

Didn't die, didn't end in a mass of cramping and a trip to the hospital with kidney failure. What I learned is, the long run is the most important run of the week, it's the most important training of your life. Your running career is based off how well you do your long runs. You cannot cheat it, you can't bullshit it, and you can't make it bend to your will.  It's not to be compromised. You're not supposed to. If you try, bad, bad things will happen. So run it, and dare it to crack you. Test yourself at the long runs. 

Running the Fox Valley Marathon and the St. Louis Marathon within 6 weeks finally got me over my fear of performance and mental blocks that hit me in the last few miles of every marathon I've ran.  Running the Fox Valley Marathon made running St. Louis Marathon almost enjoyable. And that confidence lead to the best marathon results in 2 years. And I'll do it again in 2014. 

That the routine really, really matters

The routine of stretching, eating and getting out the door is as important as the run itself. Keep repeating until it becomes second hand. Set it up, then just do it, only takes a few minutes the night before. Don't think, just react and respond. You'd be amazed how quickly you get out of the door. Make getting out that door for the run the most important part of your day. Everything after becomes so easy.

That the most important accessory this year in the Balaclava

It's already been a harsh winter, and training for the Houston Marathon in January conditions have not been ideal here in Chicago. But there's nothing like Under Armour's Heat Gear Balaclava to protect your head and neck, and makes you think you have a chance of completing your 10 mile run in sub zero temps, as stupid as that may be. Plus you look like a Ninja, and that helps the motivation a bit. 

The Greek dessert is baklava, BTW. Don't slap dessert on your face before a long run. 

Happy Running in 2014!!!!!

23 Things you can do to be a better bike commuter. Ok, it's really 9 things.

Now that the weather is acutally feeling spring like here in Chicago, it's time to bike commute to work. This past week with my CTA line being cut due to a massive reconstruction program, it was time to bust out the old bike and get myself to work. I was reminded how quick and easy it is to ride to work, quicker door to door times than me taking the CTA. 

As I rode this past week I was asked about a dozen times how, in fact, I could get to work during rush hour traffic without dying. I told them that many Chicagoans bike every day, and in fact, do not die either. I've only bee involved in once accident in 8 years, involving a cab door and my bike. I lost that one, clearly. 

So, here are a few things that you can do to make your bike commute safe and quick.

1) Ride in a straight line. Riding in a straight line shows other cyclists and drivers that you know how to control you're bike and you ride confidently, even when avoiding potholes. You should ride slightly slower than what you think should do. Wobbling over the bike lanes scares us all to death, and you look like you don't know what you're doing. 

2) Learn your route. Find a commute route that you like and learn it like the back of you're hand. Learn the timing of the lights, how the traffic flows, and when. The better you learn it, the quicker you'll get to work. Make it routine. And please follow the lights and signals, you really are not saving any time by skipping them and it shows you respect the rules of the road.

3) You are NOT a car. You can't rush it to work. You can't ride the same speed as cars, and you shouldn't, and since bike lanes pass by car traffic anyway.  Then does it prove riding a casual pace, you can get to work just as fast as they can? Make sure you have the time to get where you need to be. Besides, drivers are idiots and you want to rise above that. Show them that you're better.

4) No distractions. Under no circumstances should you have headphones on when riding. It is actually illegal in the city of Chicago to wear them. You can be ticketed for it. You need all of your senses working at peak efficiency, to be aware of all the things the city throws at you, and nothing should be left to chance. Turn off your phone and and only check it when you're at your destination. 

5) Do your bike maintenance:  It takes more than sending you bike to the shop once every year.  Check your tires for glass or cuts, lube your chain, and check your brakes weekly. A few minutes of maintenance, saves you tons of money and stops you having to do a major repair on rainy day on the side of the road. Learn to do basic bike repair yourself, it's really not as hard as you think.

6) Wear a helmet. A gaping head wound does not go with what you're wearing.  Helmets are not about you not being safe, it's about the rest of the world not being safe. And spending your early thirties learning to spell you name again, is never a good thing.

7) Buy really, really, good tires. Drop the cash on the best puncture resistant tires you can get your hands on.   That, or enjoy changing tires, which even if you do well, is still the worst thing in the world.

8) Avoid cabs like the plague. At all times. 100% dangerous. Give them plenty of room. Like hyenas.

9) Forget the weaving bike messenger idiots. Have you seen that movie "Premium Rush" with Joesph Gordon Leavitt? Yeah, that's not you. They are giving us a bad name. They're adrenaline junkies, and they don't have any dependents. Or brains. Stay away.

OK, that's my wisdom. Be safe.

When Marathons attack.

A few years ago I talked myself into going to Lollapalooza.

I hated the experience. The crowds, the heat, being pushed and pulled, and not being able to move. I swore it would be my last live event. Why go live, when you can just listen to the music in your home in air conditioning? 

Lollapalozza works well because it does what it does. It hypes you up weeks and months in advance to see you favorite groups, or performers do their thing every August in Grant Park. Concerts are all about hype, word of mouth, rumors about who is going to appear, and who isn't, and how you're going to get a chance to see it. Who knows when they will return? This might be the last time!!

This concept of hype, however, does not work well with Marathons.

Take this last week the registration debacle with the Chicago Marathon. Last year, 45,000 slots sold in 6 days, broke the previous record by 24 days. And I guess the Chicago marathon, and the Bank of America, the main sponsors, wanted to beat that record. So, 30,000 slot sold in 4 hours, and crashed the website. 15,000 slots will be sold, whenever.  Maybe on February 28th. 

What was the reason? Is this the last Chicago Marathon or something? Probably not. 

Is something special happening this year with the marathon? Nope.

Will there be special T-shirts? Nope.

Is there anything different from last years marathon? Yeah, it's costs 40 bucks more, for some reason.

Because the Chicago Marathon has sold out every year for the last decade. So who were they trying to impress?

Runners don't like hype. We run in bad weather and at night. We want to sign up for races when we want, how we want. And if we miss a deadline, or the race sells out, then that was our fault for not being smarter about it. We want to run the race, get our medal, get our beer, go home, look at our time on the Garmin Website, and eat everything in our freezer, and then waddle around looking for acknowledgement. That's it.

Running is about the runner, running. Nothing more. And we run without fanfare, without a crowd, even without a pat on the back.

Chicago Marathon sold itself like a Lady Gaga concert. Hype. Same race, same town, same course. 40 bucks more. And no Lady Gaga.

Hype.

Will I sign up? I'm not sure, but on the same day in October, there are 19 other marathons going on around the US. And you know what? 

I could sign up for all of them right now. Their registration pages work.

What you leave behind.....

If you're in my apartment, you may notice I don't have a lot of stuff on my walls. It's not for the lack of trying. I'm lazy, and photos are expensive. But I do have one picture up. It's a picture of the Tour de France. The backs of anonymous riders facing another day in the mountains. It's simple, dramatic and majestic all at the same time. It's why I love the Tour.

The Tour.

It's not a perfect relationship, we've had our ups and downs, It can be boring, and frustrating. There have been doping scandals, and the Lance era.  But every Tour de France has a different feel, a taste, because every Tour is different, the route is changed yearly  And every Tour has a moment of pure beauty, not just a visual beauty, but a moment of pure sport perfection. Something so real, a chill runs down your spine. That's why I watch. The complete opposite of whenever I see Lebron, or Kobe play. I'm talking authentic. The news always only tells you when the Tour is over, then they show them riding down the Champs Elysees. That's not the Tour, the race is over, your watching a ceremony. It's like watching the last 5 minutes of the Academy awards.

And that's why I think a lot of people don't get it. The Tour de France, is like a Telenovela. You watch every day, for 21 days. Bad decisions or a crash in stage 3 could have huge effects in Stage 16. The Tour does not have have time outs. It does not wait for your approval. It can't be recapped in 30 seconds on the evening news. You have to watch it to feel it. It's like watching a football game in slow motion. It's takes a moment to see the intensity of what's happening. Might take a day or a week, or the whole race. It's unpredictable.  It's not in a stadium, it's on the roads of France, and it's free for anyone to see. It's a juggernaut.

I started to watch the tour in 1984. CBS sports ran recap shows on the weekends. They would summarize a whole week of racing in one 90 minutes. They added music, and it was edited very well. Phil Liggett commentating.  John Tesh's music. It was exciting. It didn't matter there were any Americans in it, or that it was a European sport. Didn't matter, didn't care. It was exciting as hell.

Excerpt of the CBS 1987 Tour de France coverage

The best days when were Greg Lemond was winning. Lemond was the Anti-Lance. Which makes sense, because they have never got along. Greg Lemond was a unassuming, personal family man who, learned French in order to get along with his teammates. There was no attitude and no doping for Greg. He made that clear from the beginning. He won the Tour in 1986, after wrestling the tour away from his teammate, Five time winner Bernard Hinault. First American to win the tour. In 1987, Lemond was accidentally shot on a hunting trip, he almost bled to death. He came back in 1989 to win the Tour and won it by 8 seconds, and with 50 shotgun pellets in his chest still in his body. Lemond quit at the rise of the doping area with three Tour de France wins, and the rise of Lance Armstrong.

Greg Lemond winning the Tour in 1990

When Armstrong rode the Tour in the early days, results were mixed. He won a couple of stages, but it was clear he was not a rider for wearing the Yellow Jersey. After coming back from cancer, in 1999. His timing was perfect.  The year before, the Tour de France had a devastating drug scandal called "The Festina Affair", an entire team had a followed a fully organized doping program, and was lead by popular French rider Richard Virenque. That year, teams quit due to police raids (and afraid of being caught with doping products).

The Tour almost stopped, almost died on the side of the road.  It barely made it Paris with 99 riders, won by Italian Marco Pantani, a man who's doping and demons ate him alive. He would be dead of a cocaine overdose in less than a decade.

We needed someone to save it, and that's when Lance came back, and he was a totally different rider. He lost a ton of weight, and could climb in the mountains. Lance didn't just ride, he dominated, he controlled it in a way we had never seen in the Tour. We thought we had another Lemond dream story.

We did not. Our worst fears came true:

It was all a fake. A sham. A Fraud. And the Tour de France was a victim, too.

Lance may apologize for his past behavior, his cheating, his win at all costs attitude. But I don't want an apology. I just want my Tour de France back. Lance treated the tour like everything else in his life. He used it and exploited, and threw it away.

We Tour fans now have to have collective amnesia. We have to forget the years between 1999-2005. Like they never happened. I've thrown away my Lance DVD's and books.

But the Tour is gaining it's strength, it has to adapt in order to survive. It will. It's smarter, it knows it can no longer avoid doping or shove it under the rug, there has been too much lost, dignity, and riders themselves. Tom Simpson dying on the road on Mount Ventoux in 1967 of a drug overdose. An entire decade of riders lost to doping. There is no one to give Lance's wins to, they were all doping. But it will come back stronger than before, it will take time, But for now on when I watch it, I know have to think "Is that rider doping?"

Maybe I should. The days of trust are over.

In 1999, during the Court trial of "Festina Scandal", Team Manager Bruno Roussel, said:

"We took every doping product you could think of EPO, Testosterone, steroids. And you know what? We never won the Tour de France."