Summer 2005-Spring 2006: Start up training, building up very gently (first few weeks: jog 1 minute, walk 4 minutes, repeat) getting up to 12 mile runs by mid-winter. Started my "Run Around New York" project with goals of "Run around Manhattan" and "Run around Brooklyn", following the waterfront as close as I can get to it in public roads and parks. See a larger version of the Run Around New York Map (thanks to mapMyRun.com) showing what I've done so far. (The green path in upper Manhattan is 2 or 3 years old.)
Summer '95: Training again, with a number this time and dreams of breaking three hours (if all goes well) in the Nov. 12 (Mom's Birthday) New York City Marathon! Oops, another pulled muscle in the hips, and a sore knee. Too much training, too fast, without enough base?
Nov. '94: Despite summer training runs around the Kremlin (Moscow) and the Sultan's Topkapi Palace (Istanbul), a pulled muscle and lack of a number kept me out of the 25th New York City Marathon, but I put more than 52 miles on my bicycle as a messenger for the Achilles Track Club athletes, starting their run of the marathon with them at their early start: 6:30 am. John ran again.
Nov. 14 '93: New York City Marathon (26.2 miles). Ran the first half with my training partners, (John M., Scott B., and Matthew C.), but left them at the 59th street bridge to finish in 3 hours 20 minutes 13 seconds. The whole race was through a canyon of good-will (except for the street person being led, by police, along the course in handcuffs up in the Bronx). Joanne, and Anna (John's wife) managed to meet us at 3 different points of the course to offer encouragement.
Oct. '93: New York City: Saint Ann's School fun run (3.3 miles in 20:20) and Cranberry Street "Bog Jog" (2 miles, 11:30) show that the spring and summer's training is coming along.
Years went by... with little running except a 5:12 or 5:20 mile barefoot on the rubberized track while at Princeton University (resulting in a trip to the infirmary for book-sized blisters), a nude streak through the Montana hills/cactus/sagebrush with my brothers, and a 43-mile bike ride in the "Rush for the Gold" relay in Montana.
Fall '76, '77: Billings Senior High "Harriers" (cross-country). Six mile practices *up* airport hill and in the slipstream/sidewash (whoosh!) of trucks on the highway shoulder. Three-mile races at the golf course and all around the state. (Six-hour bus rides to get to a three-mile course that I'd run in about 18 minutes. Never did really break out of JV.)
Spring '76: Lockwood Jr. High track team, running (with my brothers again) everything from 220 yards to the mile. My attempts at pole-vaulting were officially discouraged.
Fall '75: Lockwood Junior High cross-country team, Billings, Montana. We (my brothers and I, and a few other non-football "wimps") ran in the fields behind the Junior High: races started up a 45 degree hill, and wound around barbed wire fences, yellow grasslands, horses, and the occasional brush-fire. Sometimes we raced in town at Pioneer Park, flapping along in our massively over-sized red and white uniforms.
Summer '75: (age 14) Governor's Cup Marathon (26.2 miles), Helena, Montana, with my Dad. 4 hours 30-something minutes. They took all 15 or 20 of us runners in a yellow school bus up to a campground in the mountains and turned us loose. We jogged down the road, past the reservoir, out into the valley, and once around the high school track. Smashed the 5 hour barrier, even though Dad cut his leg on a barbed-wire fence!
Spring '75: Dunstan Junior High School track team, Denver, Colorado. Mile (nemesis: John G.), Half-Mile, Pole Vaulting (scrabbling at the 6-foot barrier).
Fall '74: (age 13) Sloan's Lake Marathon (26.2 miles), Denver, Colorado, with my Dad. 5 Hours 20-something minutes in the pouring rain. My story of this was included in Gail Kislevitz's book First Marathons.
Revised 2006 Mar 26 Mike Roam