August 3, 1987
Fitness
MEDICAL TEAM: AN OVERLOOKED SUPPORT SYSTEM
High visibility works two ways in the case of a major running even such as the recent San Francisco Marathon: The 5,000 runners, of course, were very visible, but the city itself also had a great deal of visibility to the millions watching on television.
That’s all well and good. Any city worth its City Hall should take strides to generate as much wholesome publicity as possible. And the marathon is about as wholesome an event as anyone can imagine.
And as with any such event, there is plenty of low-visibility work going on behind the scenes. The better organized the event, the less you see the strings that move the arms and legs. One of the most frequently overlooked but most important low-visibility support systems in place for a grueling event like the marathon is the medical team.
During the 1986 edition of the marathon, when the second half of the course had the runners heading inland while the fog burned off and the temperature climbed, the medical team had its hands full. This year, with a revised course that kept the runners near the water for the second half, things were not quite so frantic.
The medical team for 1987 was headed by Dr. Linda Staiger, director of the Institute for Sports Medicine at the Davies Medical Center. Staiger is an orthopedic surgeon by way of psychiatry, a combination that seems perfect for dealing with the bones and brains of the typical marathoner.
Some years ago Staiger volunteered to be on the medical staff ministering to the midsummer marathoners. Gradually, she moved up the organization until it was her turn to be medical director. As such she headed a team of 250 medical volunteers, most of whom were waiting at the finish area to minister to the hordes who had just completed the foot-sore tour of the city.
From her previous work on the medical team and from her years of work as an orthopedic specialist dealing with sports injuries, Staiger (herself a triathlete) has three pieces of advice for would-be marathoners:
# Evaluate why you are taking on the challenge of running 26 miles, 385 yards. Is it to impress others? Is it to compete with a neighbor or a friend? Then it’s probably the wrong reason, and you should consider re-evaluating your motivations.
The goal of a first marathon should be to cover the distance safely and to pace yourself so that the experience leaves a positive taste in your mouth.
# Eat well, concentrating on a high carbohydrate diet—not merely during the 1-2 weeks leading up to the marathon, but all during training, which, for most people, should be 16-20 weeks of gradually building endurance. Drink plenty of fluids.
# Do not emphasize mileage merely for the sake of mileage. Quality training miles are more important than gross, “junk” miles run merely for the sake of putting a big number in the training log at the end of the week.
If a starting field were armed with those three pieces of advice, Staiger’s medical team would continue to be one of the low-visibility aspects of the S.F. Marathon.
August 10, 1987
Marathoning
SLOW STARTED, FAST FINISHER
There is a theory that every good runner learns something useful from every race run.
At the recent Big Sur Marathon, Oakland’s Brad Hawthorne, running the ninth marathon of his career, learned that starting slow can translate into faster finishes.
And at the awards ceremony, 1972 Olympic gold-medal marathoner Frank Shorter further cautioned Hawthorne to slow down for best results. Shorter’s admonition to back off came in the wake of rather extravagant praise for Hawthorne’s abilities.
“He’s on an upward curve,” Shorter said. “But now he should back off. He should allow his body to rebuild. He shouldn’t run another marathon until the Olympic Trials next spring.”
The performance that had garnered Shorter’s praise was a scorching time of 2 hours, 16 minutes, 38 seconds on a very challenging course that runs from one kilometer south of Pfeiffer State Pak northward along Route 1 to the Crossroads Shopping Center at Rio Road. To put it kindly, the course is rolling. Well, to be honest, it’s just plain hilly.
Last year’s winning time was 2:35:37, a full 19 minutes slower.
But Hawthorne feels his time could have been much faster. He spent the first 16 miles of the race tucked-in about 30 yards behind race leader Leonard Hill, winner of the Portland Marathon. “When he moved, I moved,” Hawthorne said. “But I didn’t want to push him. At 16 I caught him, but he didn’t let me pass. But by 18 he didn’t have anything left to hold me off. When I moved at 18, he didn’t come with me.”
Hawthorne covered the final 10 kilometers in 31:30, still feeling strong. Hill finished third. Second place finisher Jay Johnson could only close to within seven minutes of Hawthorne.
MARATHON in SEOUL
Two weeks before, Hawthorne had raced a marathon in Seoul, South Korea. He was part of the USA World Cup Team. The race was his first international competition, and a good learning experience. He finished 28th in 2:15:57. He felt he was overtrained, which caused him to struggle through the final eight miles. The experience, however, was positive for the 31-year-old Hawthorne, who makes his living as a systems analyst.
“I learned some good lessons in Seoul,” he said. “Besides learning that I may have tended to overtrain, it offered me the opportunity to race on the 1988 Olympic course and it gave me a good introduction to international racing, which is quite a bit different than racing back home.”
A pack of 150 runners raced through the first half of the race ticking off five-minute miles, trading elbows, and attempting to out-maneuver each other coming up to the aid tables. “There were oaths and curses in a dozen different languages,” Hawthorne said. “But when I next face international competition, I won’t be taken by surprise.”
Hawthorne’s performance at Seoul was adversely affected by inadequate sleep, unfamiliar food, overtraining, and going out too fast. He was one of three runners who led that ultimately turned into a 150-man lead pack out of the stadium.
Big Sur was different.
Hawthorne went into Big Sur as a lark. His legs were still a little sore from the race in Seoul, but he’d gotten a great deal of rest during the intervening two weeks, had run only 40 miles a week, and went out conservatively, figuring to see how his legs warmed up over the initial miles, before making a move. Ultimately, he did Big Sur with a pronounced negative split: he was more than two minutes faster in the second half of the race than the first.
“From now on, you aren’t going to see Brad Hawthorne taking the pack out in the opening miles of a marathon,” he said.
What makes the Big Sur performance even more impressive is that Hawthorne ran a person-record marathon two months earlier, on February 7, in winning the Las Vegan Marathon in 2:14:04.
“IT WAS TOO LATE”
“I had something of a psychological advantage there [in Vegas],” he said. “Nobody paid much attention to me. I wasn’t even invited to the pre-race conference. We had a headwind early on and everyone was tunning pretty conservatively, so I began moving away. By eight miles I had a 45-second lead.
“Midway through the race I was a minute and a half ahead; but they still thought I was going to be coming back to them. By the time some bicyclists who were riding back and forth told them I was running 4:55s while they were doing 5s, it was too late.”
Hawthorne’s win in Las Vegas was worth $4,000. His Big Sur win was worth $1,000 and $6,000 in airline tickets. Although he doesn’t need the race winnings to survive, Hawthorne said that it’s nice to be paid for all the miles he’s been putting in since high school.
During high school in a suburb of Kansas City, Mo., Hawthorne felt he was cut out to be a miler. He ran a 4:14 in 1974, which was good enough for the state championship. He was also state champ (1973) in cross-country.
MORE TO HIS LIKING
He went to college at the University of Missouri and was captain of both the cross-country and track teams, but became somewhat disillusioned with running. It was primarily due to the win-at-any-cost attitude. Running just wasn’t fun anymore, despite the fact that he’d gotten his mile time down to 4:06.
For nearly three years after college, Hawthorne didn’t run.
And when he restarted, he quickly realized that his forte was not the mile. He moved up to the 10K, and later found that the marathon was more to his liking.
Since moving to the Bay Area, he has been a constant threat in local races. In 1986 he won the seven-mile San Francisco Zoo Run, the Indian Ridge 10K Run, and the Primos to Primos Half Marathon. In 1987, besides his marathons (where he won two of three), he has won the 10K Run to the Far Side and the Martin Luther King Birthday Run 10K.
“I enjoy my job, I enjoy my running, and my racing is improving all the time,” Hawthorne said. “At 31, I’m entering what is considered to be the prime age for a marathoner. If I can continue to build my strength and my self-confidence, 1988 may be the best year of my life.”
August 17, 1987
Fitness
IS BACKPACKING AN OVERLOOKED AEROBIC SPORT?
Aerobic activities, with their rhythmic, repetitive use of large muscle groups, are limited.
Everyone knows about running, swimming, bicycling, brisk walking, aerobic dance, and cross-country skiing. There are also snow-shoeing and jump-rope. But that’s pretty much it.
Evenly paced circuit training could also be added to the list, but this often dips into a combination of aerobic and anaerobic, and is probably practiced by fewer people than is serious aerobic jump-rope.
Any aerobic exercise done fast enough can push you over the anaerobic threshold; conversely, some anaerobic exercises can become aerobic if they are slowed down.
On a recent backpacking trip up the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada range, it occurred to me that backpacking, done with attention to pace and perceived exertion, can be a tremendously effective aerobic exercise. It may be the most overlooked of all aerobic sports.
For backpacking to be effective, of course, the heart rate must rise to a point where the old pump is pushing oxygen-bearing blood to all parts of the body at an ambitious but not ridiculous rate. This process must be continuous for at least 20 minutes. Of course, the longer the exercise can be maintained at an in-control level, the greater the benefit.
The exercise serves to strengthen the heart while also building muscle endurance. This process becomes apparent as a backpacking trip gets into its fifth or sixth days: what seemed extremely strenuous on Day 1 seems almost pedestrian on Day 5.
A backpacker who weights 160 pounds and carries a 40-pound pack up a path that gains 1,000 feet altitude in an hour is registering a considerable amount of work. If the breathing is kept steady and under control, and if adjustments in pace are made to accommodate the severity of the incline, it is possible to receive a very good, very safe workout.
If the backpacker is able to keep this level of exercise up for three or four hours, the benefits become staggering.
What comes as a surprise to aerobic athletes who backpack only occasionally is the strange places in the body where the muscle soreness develops.
Certainly, there is some soreness around the hips initially due to the unfamiliar weight of the backpack. But most surprising is the muscle fatigue in the thighs, and the soreness and stiffness in the hamstrings.
The average long-distance runner, for example, seldom encounters hamstring aches. Those are more in the realm of the sprinter. Long-distance runners don’t normally stride out far enough to vex the hamstrings.
A good, steady climb up a mountainside while carrying 40 pounds on your back is likely to re-introduce the aerobic athlete to parts of the body that are never considered under normal conditions.
The fact that underused muscles are being stressed can be felt after removing the backpack following a three-hour uphill trek. The first three or four steps without the pack are awkward, unbalanced, and strangely uplifting.
A week’s backpacking trip can be a refreshing change for the average aerobic athlete. Besides making use of different muscles, there is little if any diminishing of aerobic capacity. In fact, for some people, the backpacking may serve as a way to increase aerobic capacity.
Fortunately, the exercise is primarily low-impact, so although there are new and unusual aches and pains, there are seldom injuries—short of a twisted ankle.
Perhaps more startling than the feeling you get when you walk around immediately after removing your backpack, is the strange resistance your body feeds back to you once you have the backpacking trip behind you and you attempt to resume your usual aerobic pursuit.
That first run after a week of backpacking is likely to cause a bout of panic. The muscles are still and unyielding, the gait somewhat like a newborn colt, and the perceived level of exertion is unusually high.
But after a few days, everything tends to smooth out and the workouts are infused with a fresh sense of power and purpose.
And then there’s the realization that after backpacking through 13,000-foot passes, the hills on the running course become mere molehills.
August 24, 1987
Running Roundup
TRIATHLONING FOR BIG KIDS—AND LITTLE ONES
The extremes of triathloning have been well represented this month.
Recently, more than 160 youngsters descended on Sonoma State University to compete in the third annual Kilpatrick’s Ironkids competition. There were junior and senior divisions, with the senior distances (swim 200 meters, bike 10 kilometers, run 2 kilometers) twice the length of the juniors.
Two brothers from British Columbia, Sean, 14, and Jason Steinman, 10, won the boys’ divisions. Among the girls, the seniors ‘winner was Nicole Cornwall, 14, of Turlock, and the juniors winner was Meghan Kane, 8, of Portola Valley. They’ll head for the national championships in Phoenix on September 27.
For adults, the fifth annual Alcatraz Challenge on August 16 required participants to swim from Alcatraz Island to Aquatic Park, run one mile out around the end of the Muni Pier, bike 25 miles to Mill Valley, and then run the Double Dipsea (15 miles of hills, poison oak, and quad-wrenching descents).
This year’s field of 155 was the largest ever. It didn’t hurt that the date was moved from October to a more agreeable month. The August water conditions helped, as did changing the rules to allow wetsuits. The swim leg was double safe, between three Navy whaleboats keeping other craft away from the swimmers and the Sea Trek kayakers from Sausalito accompanying the competitors.
Peter Lewandowski of San Francisco, 31, won in 3:20:43. It was his first attempt to the course. The women’s winner was Cynthia Nesvig, 32, of San Mateo; her time was 4:15:29 (44th place overall). Cynthia had tried the course two years ago but had to be pulled from the water. Age group winners in the 39 and younger group were Les Waddel of Seaside (3:26:45) and Rhonda Provost of St. Helena (4:40:12); in the 40 and older group, they were Paul Ainslie of Mill Valley (3:25:21) and Joan Jeter of Huntington Beach (4:24:05).
We’re still trying to track down results from an August 2 race called the Dipsea Till You Drop. We’ve got the entry form, which claims the race was last run in 1927, following a five-year stint, after which it was supposedly cancelled because of complaints that it was inhuman.
A quote from the rules says it all: “Runners will attempt as many trips on the Dipsea Trail as possible, between sunrise and sunset. Contestants who collapse should, if possible, fall with their heads pointed in the direction in which they were running so that the course monitor can determine their place.”
The race reportedly was presented by the Society for Organ Donation (the entry blank authorizes use of undamaged organs in the event of death) and the California Mortuary Association. However, I cannot find a Woodacre number for race director Mark Desaad. Stay tuned.
The annual corporate confrontation in the streets, the Manufacturers Hanover Corporate Challenge, was held in the financial district last Wednesday. It took place on a 3.5-mile course, with the top teams in three categories winning trip to New York for the national championships.
In the men’s division, Lockheed Missiles & Space of Sunnyvale won handily with a combined time of 1:26:12 for its five-man team. The women’s category required only three runners and was won by the Hewlett-Packard team in 1:03:27, with a two-minute margin over the nearest competitors. The coed team competition had four runners on each team, and was taken by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories with 1:16:52.
The fastest male runner of the night was Casey Reinking with a 16:34; fastest female was Barbara Meyers-Acosta, whose 18:55 broke the course record by 11 seconds. Both runners are from Lockheed.
For those looking for a fast, scenic race before the month is out, the sixth (sort of) annual Bodega Bay to Breakers will be run at 9 a.m. on August 30. The race was not held last year (to the consternation of local racers) because of Sonoma County’s requirement of $1,000,000 in insurance coverage. But the race is back this year, with an 8K course that is flat and fast. Entry fee is $12 if you want a T-shirt and $6 if you don’t. The contact is Eleanor Uhlinger, 707-875-2211, and the race benefits the Bodega Marine Sciences Association, financing graduate and undergraduate trips.
Finally, has Los Altos overtaken Los Altos Hills in throwing away money? Recently two members of the Los Altos-based chapter of the worldwide Hash House Harriers were out running, spreading flour along a course the club was going to be running. Don’t want any of the club members coming up with an excuse to head off-course to a bar before the race is over, right?
Well, it seems someone observed the antics and called the cops, whereupon a squad car rolled up behind the Harriers. They were stopped in their tracks and acquainted with the fact that the neighbors were suspicious about the white powder they were spreading. One of the malefactors promptly put a handful of flour to his nose and blew the case wide open.
August 31, 1987
Fitness
DEATH VALLEY-WHITNEY RUN—LAST CHANCE TO PROVE INSANITY
Today the window closes for another year. Under a “gentleman’s agreement”—the closest thing to an official rules book at this point—today’s the last chance for an official 1987 run on the Death Valley-to-Mt. Whitney course.
The course winds from Badwater in Death Valley (at 282 feet below sea level, the lowest point in the Western Hemisphere) to the summit of Mt. Whitney (at 14,494 feet, the highest point in the contiguous U.S.). The course covers 146 inhospitable miles. The temperatures range from more than 124 degrees in Death Valley to below freezing on Mt. Whitney.
The window for official runs extends from July 1 to August 31, the hottest period in Death Valley. Between 1975 and 1985, only four men successfully ran the course. There were some 80 failed attempts. During 1986, four more men successfully ran the course, but two of them did it well after the window had closed and temperatures had dropped. Among aficionados, they didn’t count.
Thus, by July 1, 1987, just six men had conquered the heat, the distance, the altitude, and the cold: Al Arnold, Jay Birmingham, Max Telford, Greg Morris, Mike Witwer, and Tom Crawford. While this year’s window was open, however, a virtual army marched through.
Adrian Crane, 31, and Linda Elam, 41, of Modesto followed in the format established in 1986 by Witwer and Crawford, and ran together. They set off at 8 p.m. on July 1 and arrived at the summit 69 hours, 12 minutes later. Elam became the first woman to succeed on the course. They broke the Witwer/Crawford mark of 70 hours, 27 minutes, but came nowhere close to New Zealander Max Telford’s world record of 56:33 (1982).
A course challenge had been thrown down in January by English expatriate Kenneth Crutchlow of Santa Rosa. He challenged Witwer and Crawford (also of Santa Rosa) to an American vs. English race. Teams were created that pitted an American male and female against a British male and female.
The four left Badwater at 6:31 a.m. July 31. Accompanying Crutchlow on the run was Santa Rosa journalist David Bolling.
The final results of the race saw the American team win rather decisively. The following individual results were Eleanor Adams, 39, of Nottingham, England (the world’s foremost female ultrarunner) covered the course in what she thought was a world-record pace, 53:03 (more about that in a moment); Tom Crawford, 41, became the only human being in history brave or foolish enough to cover the course twice, clocking 58:57; his American teammate, Jean Ennis, 40, also of Santa Rosa, posted an identical time and took the American women’s make away from Elam.
As the racers learned once they were underway, however, Gil Cornell, 37, of Ridgecrest, had set out the night before. Gil ultimately smashed Max Telford’s record, covering the course in 45:15, handily depriving Adams of the record.
What about Crutchlow, 45, and Bolling, 43? Bolling was committed to running with Crutchlow, who was taking numerous breaks, even going so far as to partake of sit-down meals. Their time of 126:30 set a new standard for slowest successful assault of the course.
Their tactic almost was their undoing, because unbeknownst to them, 68-year-old Richard Kegley of College Place, Washington, had set off on the course 26 hours and 10 minutes after them, and he was closing steadily. It took Richard 113 hours and 9 minutes to do it, the oldest person, by more than two decades, ever to complete the course.