Motivation

Last week The BBC published an article titled "Running 'can slow ageing process' " The article spotlighted research on elderly joggers done by the Stanford University Medical Center. Some interesting findings were:

1. Elderly runners were half as likely to die prematurely from conditions like cancer than non-runners.

2. There was no evidence that runners were more likely to suffer osteoarthritis or need total knee replacements than non-runners.

3. Both the runners and the non-runners became more disabled with age, but for the runners the onset of disability started later - an average of 16 years later.

Fresh motivation to keep up the running after I finish the race.

Comparison with the running plan

Here's a comparison of what I'm running against the prescribed miles of my running plan.

ELEVEN MILES

5 + 5 + 1

6+5

12 - 1

11

21 - 10

9 + 2

2 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 1


ELEVEN MILES!

That's the farthest I've ever run in my life. I'm still behind on my milestone date of 31 July for completion of a half marathon (13.1 m), but I hope to complete it next Saturday.

BTW- my time for the 11 miles was 01:54:00. That works out to be 10 mn 23 sec per mile.

I've been keeping times and distances on my runs. A simple regression analysis in Excel predicts a marathon run time of 4 hr and 40 min so far. I'm guessing that prediction will get longer as I get more data points in the past 10 - 26 mile distance bracket.

Updated Metrics Chart

Maps

Here's a cool website that can make maps of your run: http://www.mapmyrun.com/

The feature I like is the topographical profile. It will give you a strip map elevation profile of your course.

The Under Armour Baltimore Marathon

Registered for The Under Armour Baltimore Marathon yesterday!!!

Here's the race website:

http://www.thebaltimoremarathon.com/site3.aspx

View Larger Map

This is a route map of my 5 mile run. It uses Google's nice new Terrain map feature. You can't find point A (Start) because it is obfuscated by point D (End). Look closely and you can see a hill shortly after point B when moving toward point C. I call this KickYour Rear End Hill. Touch while going out...nice while coming back!