Former GRTC President Bill Quinlisk has been kind enough to let me borrow his collection of Rochester Track Club and Greater Rochester Track Club newsletters.  Starting with the oldest material, I am scanning and posting them to the Newsletter Archive on the GRTC website.  Following are some interesting bits that illustrate the growth of our sport and club from modest beginnings some fifty years ago.

Concluding Remarks

 running-bio-1974-2010-race-summary

Looking back over 37 years of training and 195 races (including 60 ultras and 42 marathons) listed in the PDF above, I want to close out this series by sharing some key observations and lessons learned:

Every coach and self-coached runner works with a model of running performance.  Whether you are aware of it at the time or not, you use some model of your performance in deciding how slow to do a long run, how fast to run repeats or tempo in training or how fast to start a race at an unfamiliar distance.  Often, for old school runners and coaches, the model is experience based and the decisions just feel right.  In the old days, if you could carry on a conversation with companions, you were running an easy pace.  If you were huffing and puffing (i.e., exhaling on every other foot plant), you were running hard.  A 10K was paced about right if you got past half way before you started huffing and puffing.  A marathon was about right if you got to 18-20 miles before huffing and puffing in a sustained effort to the finish. 

Over the last three years or so the hottest topic in the running world has been "barefoot running" and we've seen the prominent addition of "minimalist shoes" to the footwear available at your local running store.  Evangelists for barefoot running have proposed that conventional athletic shoes are the cause of many injuries that plague runners.  The answer, they say, is to take off those clunky shoes and relearn how to run.  Skeptics of barefoot running have claimed the "fad" will guarantee full-time employment for the nation's podiatrists and orthopedists.

Empire State Marathon

The inaugural Empire State Marathon (http://www.empirestatemarathon.com/) will take place October 16^th.  The marathon course features Onondaga Lake Park, Onondaga County, Syracuse, Liverpool, and Baldwinsville.  The event will also include a half marathon, and a four-person relay.

There will be a Bridge

It looks like the long anticipated bridge connecting the Erie Canalway and the Perinton Hikeway-Bikeway will finally become a reality in 2012.  The project has been in the works since November 2008 when the project was first presented at a Public Information Meeting.  The bridge is part of an on-going project to separate the Canalway Trail and Cobb's Lane.  In 2009 approximately a half mile of Cobb's Lane was relocated, separating vehicular traffic from a newly repaved trail along the canal.  The completed work left only about a one-eighth mile gap near the Turk Hill Road Bridge east of Fairport Village where trail users are forced onto Cobb's Lane.  Work to complete the project was postponed to 2011 due to extensive delays in acquiring the necessary land from the New York Canal Corporation.

The Future Will Not Be Paved!

The most heavily used section of the Erie Canalway in Monroe County will not be paved.  In 2013 contractors for the New York Canal Corporation will renovate the canal path from Monroe Avenue in Pittsford to Cobb's Lane in Fairport.  The $2.3 million provided for the project by the Thruway Authority is just enough to pay for rehabilitating the existing surfaces and for some safety improvements discussed below.

Don't Forget Your Sun Screen

It is well know that many, perhaps most, running injuries are problems of overuse... doing too much too fast or for too long without adequate recovery.  While not conventionally described as an overuse injury, the many hours we spend running in the sunshine exposes us to a significantly increased risk of skin damage and skin cancer. 

Runners and other outdoor sports participants face a higher risk of nonmelanoma skin cancers, like basal and squamous cell carcinoma, the two most common skin cancers.  Marathoners also show more signs of risk factors for melanoma, such as numerous small moles or any large, atypical moles.  Melanoma is the deadliest form of skin cancer, and will cause an estimated 8,650 deaths this year in the US alone.  Perhaps like me, you know at least one runner who has died of skin cancer. 

Garmin Introduces Touch Interface

Garmin has announced the Forerunner 610, the first Garmin touch screen running watch.   The Forerunner 610 builds on the touch technology introduced in the Garmin Edge 800 cycling computer.  Early reviews of the touch interface are quite favorable with videos demonstrating successful touch navigation in the shower (simulating a heavy rain) and while wearing thick gloves.  You can see them yourself at:  www.dcrainmaker.com/2011/04/garmin-forerunner-610-in-depth-review.html

Use your BQ at the Gansett Marathon

While on the subject of the Boston Marathon... remember how the 2011 race filled in only eight hours?  In response to all the complaints, the Boston Athletic Association is changing the registration procedures for the 2012 race to favor runners significantly faster than the minimum qualifying standards and reducing the qualifying times by five minutes for 2013 (see the marathon website at http://www.baa.org/ for details).

If you still don't get into Boston next year, you might consider the Gansett Marathon, the only marathon in the USA, outside of the Olympic marathon trials, where qualification is the ONLY means of entry (http://www.gansettmarathon.com/).  Run on the Saturday before Boston, the race is set in the beautiful resort town of Narragansett, Rhode Island.    

When a Record is Not a Record

The world record for the men's marathon is 2:03:59, set in 2008 by Ethiopian Haile Gebrselassie in Berlin.  On April 18^th, two Kenyans ran much faster times at the Boston Marathon:  Geoffrey Mutai winning in 2:03:02 with Moses Mosop second in his marathon debut only four seconds back.  Two more men also finished under the 2:05:52 Boston course record set by Kenyan Robert Kiprono Cheruiyot last year:  Ethiopian Gebre Gebremariam finished third in 2:04:53, while American Ryan Hall ran 2:04:58 to finish fourth.  Hall's time was 40 seconds faster than Khalid Khannouchi's American record set at London in 2002.

Growth of the Flower City Challenge
This was only the second year for the Unity Health System Rochester Flower City Challenge Half Marathon and already, the race shows real potential to be a significant regional destination race.  The table below shows the year over year growth and just as interesting, where that growth is coming from.

Yet Another Comeback

Rochester, NY:  2006-2010

Looking over my training log data from 1974 through 2005, I found the last time I took off more than a week without running or cycling was two weeks in 1986.  Some years I trained hard and was a contender in the races I ran.  Other years I ran less, primarily for pleasure and stress relief.  Injuries and illnesses were no more than a minor blip in the data... a few days off now and then while the dominant pattern was to run through every injury or illness.  That all changed at the close of my 60^th year.  Cancer surgery in January 2006 and a series of other medical problems in the last five years changed my running life to a series of successive comebacks from extended layoffs.  In this final chronological segment of my running autobiography, I will share the things I've learned about comebacks.

Highlights of Part 5 include:

•·         Coming back from cancer surgery to complete two ultras in 2006

•·         Finishing one ultra in 2007 before Morton's Neuroma forced a long layoff

•·         Sneaking in a spring ultra on minimal running mileage and completing two hundred-mile rides before having foot surgery in October 2008

•·         Coming back to my best fitness in five years, finishing two ultras and placing 6^th in 60-64 age group in the 2009 RROY Series before being hobbled by knee injury

•·         Coming back from a two month layoff to run a Boston Qualifier at the Rochester Marathon and finish 4^th in the 65-69 age group in the 2010 RROY Series

Rochester, NY:  2002-2005

Part 4a ended with an unexpected career year at age 56:  being outsprinted by an elite woman for 2^nd overall at the BPAC 6 Hour, a top 20 finish in the Ontario Shore Marathon, a 100K win on a brutally hot day at the Niagara Ultras, a sub-5 hour age group record at the Mendon Trail Runs 50K and finishing 2^nd in my RROY age group. Highlights of Part 4b include:

•·         Age-group gold and silver medals in USATF National Championship races and an Oven Door road trip to the "Boston" of ultramarathoning

•·         Joining GRTC Board of Directors and writing the first Eclectic Runner columns

•·         With Rick Cronise and Charlie Sabatine, reviving the Canandaigua Mini Ultra as a full 50 miles race around the lake

•·         Bringing together the directors of the other ultramarathons in the region to create the Western New York Ultra Series

•·         Relaying 310 miles across the state with Rick Cronise

•·         And still finding time to run a few ultras myself.