Marathon running at 40

Today I turn 40 years old. With that comes a new age group and a new Boston qualifying time, which serves as a great benchmark for goal-setting.

But really, what changes at 40? How different will Sunday's race be from the one I ran six months ago?

The aging process can not be stopped, so at some point we all have to live with PRs as a thing of the past. Runner Dave Griffin wrote a book called 'After the Last PR' which I would like to read in the future.

And yet, in the short distances, I have defied the usual expectations of running into my late 30s. Who else gets personal records in short races at age 39? Short races are young men's games, yet I managed to get PRs in the 5K, four mile, five mile and 15K distances, and even place high above many of my younger competitors.

Even if you take into consideration, that I started running at 30, I still can't imagine there are too many people who are hitting short-race  PRsat the end of their first decade in the sport.

With the marathon, I have defied expectations in very much the wrong way. Most marathon men I know hit their PR at or around 40. Yet I can not seem to top my 3:04:42 from the Eisenhower Marathon in Abilene, KS., in 2009 at age 34. Not for lack of trying, of course. 

While my 3:06 finishes in the Missoula and Central Park marathons were at least close, the excrutiating wall-hitting, stomach-turning nightmares of Gansett (though with a surprising 3:13), Fortitude for First Descents (the nadir at 3:54) and Park City (a close second-worst at 3:53) are experiences I do not want to re-live. Because of those crash-and-burn experiences, I do not think it wise to use the occasion of my 40th birthday to try again for a PR. 

Perhaps then, marathon running at 40 means running smarter, if not always faster. In that sense, I already began my journey into Masters running in March, when I learned at my previous race that sacrificing a little bit of time and getting a 3:10 ends up being better than gunning for a record and ending up with a 3:54. It is a weird notion - trying a little less in order to gain a little more.

If that sounds like an excuse for playing it safe, so be it. But I can not take another marathon in the 3:50s. I would rather inch my way back toward the PR, even if I never get there.

Therefore, the idealistic goal is 3:07, enough to move my average up by one minute to 3:17.  That would put this race as my fourth best out of 12. Realistically, I can still be thrilled if I beat my new Boston qualifier time of 3:15. And even if I do not make that, beating my average time of 3:18 will make me happy.

What I want more than anything, though, is to not hit the wall, to finish strong and to feel good knowing that this is exactly the right way to spend my 40th birthday.

Three days until the Clarence De Mar Marathon

Preparing to run a marathon never seems to get easier. In fact, the training has been harder and the taper as nerve-racking as ever.

I do feel better about the taper this time around though. Perhaps that is a result of having trained harder - following Hal Higdon's Advanced plan exactly as prescribed, rather than with the earlier modification of substituting a walk day for an easy run day.

I ran the tempo runs with gusto (the middle thirds in the low 6 pace), pushed hard in the speed work (2:56 in the 800s), and tried to nail my goal in the pace runs (7:08s) without going to fast or slow. Between those quality workouts, I took my easy runs extra easy, doing even the short ones at around an 8:00 pace. Some of the long run paces were well over 8, in fact.

With the training behind me, I feel really good about resting for the next two days. The work is done. All that is left is to run the race.

21 miles along the Jersey shore

I live in New Jersey yet I rarely visit its renowned shoreline. Not that I have much of a reason to do so. I'm not much of a beach guy and, well, you know the type of people associated with the Jersey Shore.

But the idea of running along the famous boardwalks through several shore towns is appealing because it is a consistent flat stretch and the ocean breeze feels good on a warm day. So the Sunday after Labor Day, I headed down to Sea Girt for a 21-mile run through 10 Monmouth County shore towns.

Starting north along First Avenue through Sea Girt's Crescent Park, there was not much beach to see until crossing into Spring Lake, home of one of the shore's biggest five-mile races. The town has a beautiful boardwalk through its entire shoreline. Then it was a quick couple of blocks on the road over the town line, and back on a boardwalk through Belmar. I had to chuckle when I passed a frozen treats truck on the corner of 10th Avenue called 10th Avenue Freeze Out. Again, it was all boardwalk the whole way, and though I had to do some people-dodging on this beautiful sunny day with temps in the 70s, it was nothing but smooth sailing.

There is a drawbridge over the Shark River Inlet between Belmar and Avon by the Sea and it started going up just as I got to it. Using that downtime to check my Garmin GPS watch, I calculated that I had gone about four miles and was keeping a steady pace in the low 8:00s. It was exactly where I wanted to be for this last long run before the taper leading to my 12th marathon. This day was about covering the distance - no hill work, no speed work, only straight, flat running.

Back on the boardwalk through Avon by the Sea, Bradley Beach and the Ocean Grove section of Neptune, I could not get over what a perfect day it was - listening to a Phish show (7/5/94), running along these beautiful stretches of boardwalks with ease, and doing some people watching.

Asbury Park's boardwalk proved to be the busiest of the bunch that afternoon, but slowing down to maneuver through the people was no bother. I was not working against the clock. The only time goal was a negative split, so the slower I went in the first half, the easier that goal would be to achieve.

The boardwalk ends at the North Asbury Park border, so Ocean Avenue is the closest way to continue north through the two tiny municipalities of Loch Arbour (.141 square miles, population 193) and Allenhurst (.283 square miles, population 493), and into Deal and the Elberon section of Long Branch, the latter two with ridiculous, ostentatious mansions along the coastline. You know, the kind with gates to the driveway.

In Elberon, I hit the 10.5 mile mark, so I turned around and made my way back, pushing the pace a little bit to ensure that negative split. I built a small cushion of time through the next few miles, but lagged a bit through Bradley Beach and had to push harder than I should have needed to once over the drawbridge and back into Belmar.

In the end, I had to race the clock after all - exactly what I did not want to do, but I wanted the negative split. Pushing even harder just to get sub-8 miles, I chugged through Spring Lake. In the last two miles I expended every last bit of energy in the last two miles and wondered how I would run a marathon - at a faster pace for a longer distance - in only three weeks when I was struggling to merely achieve a eight-minute miles.

It was a close call, but I hit that negative split, finishing the second half a little less than a minute faster than the first, for a total of 21 miles in 2:49:55 (8:05 average pace).

Afterward, I drove back up to Asbury Park, cooled off by taking a dip in the ocean, took pictures of the old house in which my parents lived 43 years ago, and spent the evening experiencing the little joys of the town - eating ice cream, strolling the boardwalk, watching the sunset, and playing old pinball machines at the awesome Silverball Museum.

Running the Patriot's Path (or, at least, trying)

Where the Lenape Trail ends in Roseland, Essex County, the Patriots Path in East Hanover, Morris County, begins.  So I continued on...

Unfortunately, after the first mile or two, the trail is extremely overgrown with wild vegetation.  It seems to have been completely ignored for maintenance and path-clearing. At first, I tried to power through it, but as my legs got bloodied from thorn bushes, I could not take it anymore and turned back to the nearest road crossing (through the same bushes).  

Having lived in Morris County in the past, I have a general knowledge of the main roads, so I worked my way through some of the familiar streets and managed to keep meeting up with the path entrances off of the streets.  Each time I ventured back onto the trail, I was faced with the same problem.  Finally, somewhere in Hanover (or perhaps Parsippany-Troy Hills), I turned around and took the main roads back to my starting point, completing my 19-mile run, but not thrilled about the Patriots Path.

Today, I happened to speak with someone who told me that the western parts are much better maintained and easier to navigate.  With that knowledge, I hope to explore more of the trails the Patriots Path in the near future.

Running the Lenape Trail

After five years of running the short West Essex Trail (2.5 miles of former railroad from Little Falls through Cedar Grove and Verona), I finally began wondering about the yellow blazes on the trees in its southwestern portion. Some online research led me to find that the section is part of a larger entity called the Lenape Trail.

Named after a Native American tribe that once lived in the area, the Lenape Trail is not always, in fact, a trail. Rather, it starts in Newark and winds through Essex County, passing through several parks - sometimes on the roads, sometimes on paths, and sometimes through the woods.

Breaking it up into four separate runs, I tackled the first 13 miles by parking at Brookdale Park in Bloomfield/Montclair and taking a bus to Newark. Starting at Riverfront Park, I worked my way through city streets to beautiful Branch Brook Park. It was there I started following the yellow blazes.

Once out of the north end of the park, the blazes followed some more streets and a few small strips of land between properties in Belleville and Glen Ridge. It was not always easy to navigate - when you run, you can miss the blazes. But eventually, I worked my way into Bloomfield and to Brookdale Park. 

The second leg was from Brookdale Park to Fairview Avenue in Verona. This run took me straight up the little mountain in Montclair, through lots of steep, wooded areas with rough footing, and down around the reservoir in Cedar Grove before hooking up with the West Essex Trail into Verona. At that point, I took a more direct route back to Brookdale via the roads. If you follow one of the online maps of the trail, you can see that this section makes a lot of turns, so following a straight line back to Brookdale made the most sense in order to maximize the forward movement on the trail.
For the third leg, I did an out-and-back from Verona to West Orange, including another difficult stretch. After winding through several Verona side streets, I was faced with another heavily wooded, steep incline with difficult footing through Eagle Rock Reservation. Coming down from the mountain and into West Orange, the trail follows along power lines off of 280 along unkempt terrain - tall, weedy grass with lots of bugs - before landing back on the road in Roseland.

The final stretch is tricky right now because the trail continues to follow the power lines, but the sections are closed due to work by the power company. So I had to find the nearest roads and follow as best as I could until finally meeting up with the official trail again through Becker Park and crossing Eisenhower Parkway, finally ending along Eagle Rock Avenue at the Essex County Environmental Center and the Morris County line (where the Patriots Path begins). Then, of course, I had to turn around and get back, too.

Supposedly, there is a section of the trail that breaks off near Route 280. I was going to cover that in a separate run, but I couldn't find it.

If you run the trail, keep your eyes well peeled for the yellow blazes, but also have a good general idea of where the route is supposed to take you, just in case you miss a turn. Also, be prepared to run around the closed-off section - keep the power lines in sight and know where you need to end up. It is a fun adventure and well worth it the multiple trips if you live in northern New Jersey.

Marathon XII

After nailing four PRs in a row in as many short distance races (5K, four-mile, five-mile and 15K), I had grown weary of speed. It was time to switch gears and get back to longer, slower distance running. That means I needed to select a marathon. 

Looking for a late September race to coincide with my 40th birthday, I found the Clarence DeMar Marathon in Keene, N.H. It is a relatively small race, capped at 600, but it seems well known. When I mentioned it to a fellow runner, he recognized it immediately.

With a race date of Sept. 28, two days after I become a "Masters" runner (the only qualification for which, it seems, is to turn 40), it put me in week five of the 18-week Hal Higdon Advanced training program. I have jumped into training in the middle before, so it should not be too bad, but the past two long runs (19 and 20 miles) were pretty rough.

Nonetheless, I am determined to rock this race in my new age group. A PR is not necessary, a Boston qualifier would be preferred (especially since my qualifying time is pushed back to 3:15), but a solid race like the one I ran in March is all I truly want.

Spring 1994, 2004, and 2014

This year, I am determined to listen to every Phish show from the years ending in "4". Having completed all of the spring shows, I have found that the contrast between each of these three eras could not be greater.

1994 was a huge year for Phish and it started with a bang in the spring. First, they released a new album, 'Hoist', that featured big production and soundscapes inside compact songs. The tour kicked off accentuating those sounds by including a horn section in the first show. "Julius" became an instant classic as a result.

Throughout the tour, they hammered the new songs hard - "Sample in a Jar" was played at least once every two shows, "Down With Disease" only took days to become a scorcher, stretching out more through the weeks. Though "Wolfman's Brother" still had yet to find its footing (and its key change to "B"), the rest of the 'Hoist' songs easily slid into the repertoire as the band crossed the country, starting in their home state of Vermont, working its way through New York and New England, down the Atlantic Coast, swinging through the South, and barn-burning its way westward with a notable stop in Dallas on May 7 for what is widely considered to be one of the best sets ever.

This was a band on fire, tearing its way through the Southwest, then up the Pacific Coast, ending its massive run of 45 shows in 56 days with two nights at a multi-band festival in Monterey.

The benefits were incredible. The musicianship got sharper and more refined, the band members eventually seeming to be able to read each others' minds. Yet, as the playing got tighter, the players got looser, trying new things and challenging the audience to play along. What other band could play a major mid-sized concert hall and get the audience quiet enough to hear them play with zero amplification?

Speaking of the audience, we were really starting to get in tune with the program, too, becoming a bigger part of this thing that was itself becoming bigger than the four guys onstage. Want to hear the evolution of the clapping in "Stash" and the "Wilson" chant? They both started right there. (Little known fact - before the clapping took hold, some audiences tried to fill the spaces with a "woo!", almost two decades before the Tahoe "Tweezer"!)

If Spring 1994 showed a band breaking out, conquering the country while still continuing to discover its powers, Spring 2004 - which consisted of three shows - showed a band seemingly past its creative peak, drunk on itself, and showing up shitfaced to its own party. Though the improvisations were wilder and more adventurous than ever, the precision required to play the heavily composed parts had gone, especially in the case of Trey Anastasio. One month after those three fateful April shows in Las Vegas, Anastasio sent shockwaves through the community by announcing that at the end of the upcoming summer tour, Phish was done. Listen to those shows and try not to cringe.

A decade later, Phish played one single spring show. The 2009 reunion had run its course by the fall of 2013. After five years re-establishing its members as rock music's preeminent musicians, one thing was missing - new music. After the initial burst of songs from 2009's 'Joy', audiences were treated to myriad new cover songs (many of them only once each), but only a handful of new songs, and only a precious few of them had any staying power.

That all changed on Halloween, with its complete set of new songs. Good songs. The concept was pushed further for the four nights leading to New Year's - not one cover song was played. With that as the lead-in, the single spring show, at Jazz Fest in New Orleans, held a lot of weight. They played one cover that night, but more importantly, played with a renewed focus. And though nothing in particular stands out from that show, we now know they were merely winding up, getting ready to sock us hard. 20 years after taking the country by storm, they were getting ready to do it all over again as a more mature band that knows exactly what to do and how to do it.