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e-XTRA
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Marathon & Beyond
Click here for May/June issue of Marathon & Beyond
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  Follow us on Twitter@MarathonBeyond Do you know a Marathon & Beyond subscriber who should be featured in e-Xtra? Send us an email. We love to hear what our friends are doing! |
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Jenny with Ryan O'Dell, RD
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Mohican Ultra Trail Races
In its 23rd year, the Mohican Trail 100 in Loudonville, Ohio, is one of the country's oldest trail ultras. Mohican is run on 95% trail along a challenging course through the 5000-acre Mohican Memorial State Forest. M&B staffer Jenny Stinson was in Loudonville running the 50-mile race.
Meanwhile, in Duluth, Minnesota, M&B publisher Jan Seeley hosted the 13th Annual Dinner at Grandma's with Dick Beardsley and our M&B subscriber friends. Thanks to all who came by the booth and joined us in the festivities after the marathon!
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 Between the Lines:
Errol "Rocket" Jones
In our 2012 May/June issue, Clint Cherpa wrote an article about Errol "Rocket" Jones entitled "A Rocket Out of the Gate." If you've ever been at a race where The Rocket was running, you knew it. He may have a slight runner's frame, but he has a big presence, and his positive attitude is contagious to all those around him. If you do see him at a race, chances are you'll recognize him by his signature smile.
You've run dozens of ultras, but you have done your share of pacing others as well. What are the qualities of a good pacer? First, if you are the one looking for a pacer, you should choose someone you know well, an accomplished ultra person, and someone who knows you as a runner. Your pacer should have some idea about your capabilities, your competitive nature, and your ability/willingness to suffer to accomplish your goal.
If you are the pacer, you should:
- have a good idea of what your runner's best and worst times have been at that distance,
- be knowledgeable about your runner's level of fitness going into the event,
- always know the distances between aid stations,
- know the general pace that you and your runner are traveling at between aid stations,
- keep your runner on the right course (which means you should study the course and/or the course profile),
- be the monitor of your runner's mental and physical condition,
- be the voice of reason when it's clear that your runner is off his game,
- be decisive when a command decision has to be made.
In the end, what we do is just recreation, and you don't want to allow your runner to run himself into the ground just for the sake of a finish. Runner safety is always first. As a good pacer, sometimes you may have to resort to a few lies to get or keep your runner going, but that should only be for motivational purposes. Telling your runner he looks good or telling him that things are going well (when you know that clearly isn't the case) is something that's done to keep his spirits bolstered and to keep him moving forward. You may also need to lie about the distance between aid stations just to keep his head in the game and to get him past whatever discomfort he's feeling that may have him questioning if he can continue. Again, here's where it's important to know your runner and his capacity for suffering on both mental and physical levels. You were a competitive marathon runner before you switched to trail ultrarunning. What has kept you in the trail ultra "scene" for all these years? There are two things that have kept me deeply entrenched in ultrarunning. First and foremost is my love of the act of running. Running for me is primordial and freeing in nature while making me feel connected to the wonders of the world. Ultrarunning takes me to places that I wouldn't ordinarily be running and puts me in touch, on a very personal level, with both the environs and people where I'm running.
Second - in a word - camaraderie. I was in the army during Viet Nam, and the sense of family that I had then is very similar to that felt and experienced in the trail ultrarunning community. Everything is stripped bare, and no one cares about the other aspects of a person's being besides what they're feeling at the time. We're out there together going up against the same obstacles of self-doubt, mental and physical discomfort (if not outright pain), mountain and stream crossings, heat and cold, and the constant ticking of the clock as we try to go from mile 0 to 100. I love the friendly competition, whom I get to play with, and most of all, where I get to play. Nothing more satisfying comes to mind.
What is the most valuable lesson you have learned from ultrarunning?
One of the most important things that ultrarunning has taught me (or reaffirmed for me) is the importance of being in the moment. I've developed a level of tolerance for a lot of things that I previously thought I wouldn't, for example, stereotypical ideas about fat people, gay people, rich people, Harvard-educated people, or people from Appalachia. What I've learned in ultrarunning is that when you strip away all the extraneous stuff, we're all alike and are all seeking the same things - a sense of self and tranquility in the world that we find ourselves in.
What's on your schedule for this year?
As for where I'll be this year, I'm not completely sure. I know for certain I'll be at Western States because I'm pacing Lisa Henson, the wife of my best friend John Medinger, publisher of Ultrarunning magazine. I'm the co-RD of the Bear 100 in Logan, Utah, the last week in September where I'll be helping my partner in crime, Leland Barker, pull things together, as well as probably running it myself. This will be our 14th year, and I've never missed starting a Bear even though I haven't fared as well when it comes to finishes. The year is young yet. I've been known to enter events the week of - if not the day of. What can I say? I'm an ultrarunner.
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 Word on the Street Dallas Marathon
December 9, 2012
Dallas, Texas
Lace up those running shoes for the MetroPCS Dallas Marathon, formerly the Dallas White Rock Marathon, on Sunday, December 9. Texas's oldest running marathon will feature a field of 25,000 participants in 2012 and a new start and finish in downtown Dallas near the JFK Memorial and Old Red Courthouse.
The flat and fast course will lead runners across the new Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge, designed by Santiago Calatrava, with views of the downtown skyline at sunrise. Runners will then pass through the nation's largest urban arts district and Dallas's newest urban greenspace, Klyde Warren Park. The course winds through the Uptown, Turtle Creek, and Highland Park neighborhoods before leading marathoners to the scenic White Rock Lake and heading back downtown for the finish.
Race activities occur the second weekend of December and include the southwest's largest Health & Fitness Expo, the Mayor's Race 5K, the MetroPCS Dallas Marathon, Half Marathon, 5-Person Relay, and SMU Cox Corporate Relay Challenge presented by Behringer Harvard. The Dallas Marathon benefits Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children, with proceeds from the race going to support general hospital care. To date, the marathon has contributed more than $2.8 million to the hospital.
Guarantee your spot in the 2012 Dallas Marathon by registering today! For more information, click here to visit our website.
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 Talk on the TrailStone Steps 50KOctober 28, 2012Cincinnati, OhioStarted by ultramarathon legends Tom Possert and Andy Jones as a low-key race on their favorite trails in Mt. Airy Forest, the Stone Steps 50K is celebrating its tenth year in 2012. These 1,459 acres of beautiful forest and arboretum, part of the Cincinnati Parks, are just minutes from downtown Cincinnati, Ohio. David Corfman now shares RD duties with Andy, and the race has grown in both size and reputation. It is recognized as one of the toughest 50Ks in the Midwest, with 10,726 feet of total elevation change. The course is a multi-loop, technical trail with runners scaling the infamous 250 "stone steps" four times. Even the champions walk this section. The course is very well-marked, and although it is run at the height of the autumn colors, the course gets blown clear of leaves for the runners. The aid station volunteers continue pampering the runners after each large and small loop. The unique ceramic overall and age group awards are coveted by the runners. Net proceeds from the race support the outstanding city park system of Cincinnati. Recently, the funds helped pay for a new suspension footbridge on the race course, enjoyed by hikers and runners. Two years ago, the race collaborated with The Running Spot, a local running store, to add a 27K option - just the right challenge as an introduction to ultrarunning. The Cincinnati ultra community takes pride in its local runners and its local race, and the camaraderie among its runners is always extended to our trail running guests. Go to the Stone Steps 50K website for more information. |
 Subscriber of the Month:
Michael Lebowitz
Michael Lebowitz has been an M&B subscriber and member of the M&B "family" for a long time. When I asked Michael to be our "Subscriber of the Month," I sent him the following note: "The story of your entrance into the world of ultrarunning - through your photos - is very inspiring. Although you're not out there running the 100 miles, you are a huge part of the ultrarunning community. You fit in the minute you took your first trail picture.The friends you have made just in the past few years say a lot about you as well as about the people you've met." Here is Michael's story...
I am a recovering addict, an out-of-shape long-distance runner, an expatriate New Yorker, and a writer/photographer with an MA in political philosophy and a Ph.D. in wrong turns and bad choices. I've been running all of my life, one way or another, as often away from as toward the things that matter most to me. And except for the addiction, I wasn't very good at it. Middle of the pack at best. But I have always showed up.
I started writing seriously at 60 because it became clear that I was no longer willing to do things I was not very good at. Since then, I have been published in various magazines including Newsweek and Marathon & Beyond and online at Life as a Human (an award-winning e-zine). I started shooting races as a favor to Joe Henderson, who asked me to photograph his training team as they ran the 2006 Newport Marathon. I used my little Kodak point and shoot, got a couple of images published, and then spent the next two years shooting damn near a million images of runners until I got it close to right most of the time. I know I am a better writer than a runner, a better photographer than a run coach, and a better human when I'm clean.
In the late spring of 2011, I got the following note in response to my offhanded reply to a Facebook post looking for photographers for the 2011 Waldo 100K:
"Thanks for your interest in Waldo, both as a photographer and runner. I would love to have you capture the emotions and challenges of the day. We have been contacted in previous years by other professional photographers, but once they find out how remote the course is and that we are limited to 125 runners, they lose interest. There are some incredible places to photograph runners, but they aren't easy to get to and require driving, hiking, or biking. We do have several amateurs that take pictures during the race and make them available to runners, so you'd have to offer a better or more unique product than what they offer."
I replied that wasn't so sure about the free, but "the difficulty and logistics make my mouth water, the relatively small field makes my 'art antenna' vibrate."
I went to the race with three other photographers who work with me, and we hiked into several remote spots to capture runners in places from which the RD has never had pictures. It worked out. Some of the pictures made it into UltraRunning, others were by various sponsors, and the bonus - or maybe the true value of the whole experience - came out in the beginning of the ongoing interactions I have had with the runners themselves at all of the subsequent races I have attended.
Before I went to Waldo, I went to Wild Idaho Endurance Runs in Crouch, Idaho, this at the suggestion an ultra runner friend of the RD, Ben Blessing. In my mind it seemed like a "practice" run, or more accurately, it was a race. I shoot races - what's the big deal? Well, in a word, everything. Ultras are hard to get to, hard to train for, harder to run. And, because "hard" is the operative adjective, shooting them requires some sense of engagement well beyond simply showing up, looking at the light, and pressing the shutter. The short form is that the 50K took 6 hours, the 50-mile took 9+ hours for the winner and 23 hours for the last finisher, and the 100-mile took between 27 and 38 hours until all the runners finished. This is a very different sequence than a road race 5K, 10K, or marathon which is over in 8 hours.
I slept in the car, ate very little, found myself high in the Boise National Forest overlooking the valleys and peaks, occasionally shooting the runners as they passed by. Here is the heart of it...the silence of the place mixed with my intermittent and momentary interaction of the runners - a wave, a nod, a "thank you for being here" to me, a "you're lookin' strong" to them - was as ancient and human as the greetings passed between itinerant traders on the Silk Road, in the oases of the Sahara, the human quality of community in the struggle over time and distance. It felt to me like I had been coming to this place to do this work ever since I lit out to find the world all those many years ago. It felt like I had found a place that I had only ever dreamt about. It felt like home.
Since then, I have become the "Official" photographer for the Oregon Trail Ultramarathon Series and the Idaho Ultra Trail Series. I shoot races in the Northwest and as far east as Minnesota. I see many of the same runners at various races; we share our stories and our gratitude for the life we have been given access to as long as we are willing to put in the work. My own dormant and injury-riddled dreams of running long have been revived. My long years of recent illness and injury and my memory of bad behavior seem like they happened to another me, someone I left by the side of the road one early morning that I might find my way to this living place.
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Upcoming Marathon & Beyond Events
Pikes Peak Ascent & Marathon Expo: August 17-18, 2012
Dick Beardsley's Marathon Running Camp: September 4-9, 2012
Chicago Marathon Expo: October 5-6, 2012
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Contact Us - We'd love to hear from you!
Marathon & Beyond
206 N. Randolph St., Suite 400
Champaign, IL 61820
877-972-4230 (toll-free)
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