Addicted to Running

It has been three weeks to the day since I last raced competitively at the Baron Stiegel mile run in Manheim. I am very anxious to run this Saturday in York for the five mile White Rose run. Months ago I was very concerned about my ability to finish a five mile run without having to resorting to walking for portions of the race. Now I am trying to eclipse eight minutes per mile for five consecutive miles this weekend.

Having raced at about twenty races this year, two runners who race in my age group have surfaced repeatedly this year. Their names are Ray Ricke and Scott Ott. I would regard both runners as midstate elite runners based on their performances in the races I have run with them this year and some of their times posted on the internet. I do not know either runner personally, but will look for them this Saturday as they each have run this race in the past. Both of them will average a six minute and some change mile pace for this race, finishing in about 31 minutes.

I have to make a fair amount of progress before I will be seeing any of them near a finish line at a race soon. However, they do provide a tangible goal marker for where I could be if I were in excellent condition.

I read an article about the York White Rose race where the event has fallen on hard times recently. At one time, the race was drawing entrants numbering in excess of five hundred. Now they are drawing about 250 runners per year. This will be the first year where elite runners from other countries are not going to appear in any substantial numbers. Personally, I am not a fan of having Ethiopians and Kenyans running at our smaller races. I imagine if I were an American elite runner I might welcome the challenge.

I stumbled upon a website named http://www.runningahead.com which logs your training runs. A feature of the website I am attracted to is the automated uploading of training data from my Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS watch. I was impressed by the sites ability to map and save routes, complete with an elevation change diagram. The map and elevation change for any route can be saved and printed for future reference. One more impressive feature is to search for routes in your area saved by other runners. The site does not reveal the runner who saved the route, just the route map.