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The Baltimore Marathon - Crunching My Numbers

Yesterday I ran the Baltimore Marathon. It was my second Marathon, and won't be my last as I'm already signed up to run the Surf City Marathon in my hometown of Huntington Beach, California next February. Not quite a year ago in Richmond, my friend Jay and I accomplished our goal of running a marathon and we completed a 16-week training program to reach the goal of just finishing the race. During long runs in those weeks of training, Jay and I would frequently comment that if we reached our goal of completing our first marathon, it would certainly also be our last. And yet, within hours of completing that goal (we finished in 5:56:57), Jay was saying, "We could do better", and the thought of doing another was planted.

Among the things that I really enjoyed about running Richmond was that it was a great way to see a city. How often can you tour a city, with police stopping traffic so that you can run down the middle of major roads, and with cheering fans lining the course offering high-fives, snacks, and beer? It is truly a unique experience, and the thought of taking such a running tour of other cities holds great appeal to me. Some marathoners pursue the goal of running a marathon in all 50 states. I don't know that I'll go that far, but I've learned to not rule anything out either.

My Runner's World magazine, a Christmas gift from my wife following last year's marathon, brings a monthly dose of motivation, and advertisements for marathons across the country. And from those ads, Baltimore stood out, mostly for being relatively nearby, and in July I made the commitment and registered for the race, along with friends and family who were going to run the Half-Marathon and the 5k.

I set my goal for Baltimore at 5 hours, an hour faster than Richmond, where just finishing had been the only goal. In a previous half-marathon and a 10-miler, I had found success at reaching my goal times by creating a Pace Tag which I pinned to my shirt to keep me on track. Having goal splits handy makes every single mile a race of it's own. Make those mile splits, and you'll reach the goal time for the whole race. To reach my 5 hour goal time in Baltimore required a pace of 11:27 per mile. That's a very easy pace when doing shorter training runs, but I had no idea if I could maintain it for all 26.2 marathon miles.

Happily, I found that I could. And my day-after geek came out today wanting to compare my actual performance with the goal pace I had established. The below table shows my goal pace, goal time, actual splits, pace difference, actual time, and actual difference. Where I am ahead of my goal pace, the number is in green, and where I am behind my goal pace, the number is in red.

Mile	Pace	Goal Time	Actual Split	Pace Diff	Actual Time	Difference
1	0:11:27	0:11:27	0:11:04	0:00:23	0:11:04	0:00:23
2	0:11:27	0:22:54	0:10:50	0:00:37	0:21:54	0:01:00
3	0:11:27	0:34:21	0:10:40	0:00:47	0:32:34	0:01:47
4	0:11:27	0:45:48	0:10:34	0:00:53	0:43:08	0:02:40
5	0:11:27	0:57:15	0:10:24	0:01:03	0:53:32	0:03:43
6	0:11:27	1:08:42	0:10:30	0:00:57	1:04:02	0:04:40
7	0:11:27	1:20:09	0:09:53	0:01:34	1:13:55	0:06:14
8	0:11:27	1:31:36	0:09:50	0:01:37	1:23:45	0:07:51
9	0:11:27	1:43:03	0:10:04	0:01:23	1:33:49	0:09:14
10	0:11:27	1:54:30	0:09:58	0:01:29	1:43:47	0:10:43
11	0:11:27	2:05:57	0:10:04	0:01:23	1:53:51	0:12:06
12	0:11:27	2:17:24	0:10:31	0:00:56	2:04:22	0:13:02
13	0:11:27	2:28:51	0:10:26	0:01:01	2:14:48	0:14:03
14	0:11:27	2:40:18	0:10:34	0:00:53	2:25:22	0:14:56
15	0:11:27	2:51:45	0:10:57	0:00:30	2:36:19	0:15:26
16	0:11:27	3:03:12	0:10:59	0:00:28	2:47:18	0:15:54
17	0:11:27	3:14:39	0:12:36	-0:01:09	2:59:54	0:14:45
18	0:11:27	3:26:06	0:11:33	-0:00:06	3:11:27	0:14:39
19	0:11:27	3:37:33	0:11:33	-0:00:06	3:23:00	0:14:33
20	0:11:27	3:49:00	0:12:13	-0:00:46	3:35:13	0:13:47
21	0:11:27	4:00:27	0:11:47	-0:00:20	3:47:00	0:13:27
22	0:11:27	4:11:54	0:11:49	-0:00:22	3:58:49	0:13:05
23	0:11:27	4:23:21	0:11:42	-0:00:15	4:10:31	0:12:50
24	0:11:27	4:34:48	0:11:57	-0:00:30	4:22:28	0:12:20
25	0:11:27	4:46:15	0:11:46	-0:00:19	4:34:14	0:12:01
26	0:11:27	4:57:42	0:11:09	0:00:18	4:45:23	0:12:19
26.2	0:02:18	5:00:00	0:05:03	-0:02:45	4:50:26	0:09:34

The race started uphill for the first 3.5 miles (see the elevation chart) As you can see I started steady and just ahead of pace and from miles 3 - 14 was enjoying the long downhill and running almost a minute ahead of my pace. By the time I had completed 16 miles, I was a almost 16 minutes ahead of my goal pace. There was a really great street party going on at mile 16, and at mile 17 I ran past the home of friends Phi and Sean, who lived up to their promise of having a mimosa waiting for me. By this point in the race I had eaten bananas, an orange, potato chips, pretzels, gold fish, vanilla power gel (gross), Skittles, and of course lots of water and Gatorade. But that mimosa went down better than any of it. Sean warned me that I was about to head into a not so great neighborhood, and suggested this knowledge may encourage me to pick up my pace (The Baltimore Sun had likewise been thoughtful enough to share information about where the marathon route intersected the worse areas of crime in the city). So I lost a minute enjoying that mimosa, and headed into the second hilly portion of the course, and as you can see, I began falling behind my goal pace, happily not by much, and not by enough to get behind the time I had banked in the first 16 miles. Miles 20 - 23 were the hardest, running around Lake Montebello, but then the course leveled and the long downhill to the finish line at the Inner Harbor began. The crowd grows, the cheers get louder, someone always seems to be offering a beer by this point, and the knowledge that the finish line is within reach provides a finishing surge. Jennifer, Colleen, and the neighborhood gals who had completed their 5k hours earlier were there at the end to see me finish, and I ended up right behind Jay who was finishing his half-marathon (he'll join me again for his second marathon in February).

An explanation for the 5 minutes that this chart says it took me to run the final two-tenths of a mile, I promise I did not drop off that much. As I ran, I found an increasing gap between the point at which my Garmin was telling me I had hit a mile point, and the actual mile-marker for the race. First it was a tenth of a mile, eventually a quarter mile, and by the end my watch fully three tenths of a mile ahead of the actual mile markers. My only explanation is that the accumulated drifting from side to side along the race course added this extra distance. So the splits in this chart reflect my Garmin time, while the final result of 4:50:26 was my official race chip time. I forgot to stop the timer on my Garmin until I was in the chute after finishing, collecting my medal and a drink, but when I did it had my time at 4:51:20 for a distance of 26.56 miles.

Thanks Baltimore for the great running weather (overcast with some light rain, felt great), great fan support, and mostly to my family and friends who have turned running into an activity at which we motivate, participate, and celebrate together.

The Changing of the Shoes

With 15 days to go until the Baltimore Marathon, it is clearly time for me to get some new running shoes. I've read that prior to a marathon you should replace your current shoes with an identical pair three weeks prior to the race, and also that you should run a Marathon in shoes that haveless than 100 miles on them.

I bought my current running shoes almost a year ago, in advance of running the Richmond Marathon last November. I have logged 83 runs while wearing them, for a total of 516.96 miles. If you Google the question, "How many miles should a pair of running shoes last?", you'll find a general consensus among the answers you'll find that they should last between 300 - 500 miles. So I have to feel good about the mileage that I got out of these shoes, and confident that it is in fact time for a new pair.

I was the easiest sale of the day on my fast lunch hour jaunt to The Virginia Runner, and I was in and out in no time with a shiny new pair of Adidas Supernova Classic running shoes. The only difference from my two previous pairs was that the color scheme is now yellow/black/white instead of blue/grey/white. They feel great.

And as happy as I am with my new shoes, and looking forward to running two marathons and many miscellaneous miles in the in the months ahead, I've recently read a number of articles that point to our fancy running shoes as the root of all running evil!

And today I began reading the book, Born To Run by Christopher McDougall, for which I had ready a very good review in The Washington Post, and caught the author's August visit to The Daily Show. I have yet to complete the book, but I've gathered enough already to know that it will make a case that running shoes do our feet more harm than good. I'm interested to learn more.

But I'm not ready to go running in naked feet just yet. Besides, if running shoes are bad for us, surely so must running shorts and shirts be. So look for me to take up naked running, maybe next year. For now, I have this song stuck in my head. Hopefully I can outrun it.

for further reading...

You Walk Wrong
New York Magazine, 4/21/08

Foot Loose (review of Vibram Five Fingers Shoes)
Runner's World, 8/15/08

To Run Better, Start by Ditching Your Nikes
Wired Magazine, 7/10/2009

Barefoot running gains toehold on respectability
The Baltimore Sun, 9/22/09

Long Running Family Art Exhibit Closes

A exhibit of artworks by Colleen Casey on the back of the basement door in the Casey family kitchen came to an end today. The exhibit consisted primarily of works from her pre-school and kindergarten period, some of which are believed to date back to 2000 or earlier. When asked if she was surprised at the record-setting length of her exhibition, Colleen made it clear that she was not. "It's because you love me best", she stated confidently. Of course we do dear. But the lack of competition from any younger sibling artists should also be noted.

CyberTed's Legacy Lives On

Among the flood of news coverage that immediately followed the death of Sen. Edward Kennedy last Tuesday night was an article in the Washington Post which mentioned that The Senator’s web site included, with the news of his passing, his famous closing words from his 1980 Democratic Convention speech, “For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die”. Much repeated in the days of tribute that followed, they are a fitting label for his legacy. The Senator’s web site itself wasn’t the news; it was simply a conduit, a routine and expected place from which to learn information about Senator Kennedy and his work. Because of course, every Member of Congress has a web site.

That wasn’t the always the case.

In 1993, any Senate office that was attempting to explore and utilize this recently heard about ‘Internet’ thing generally had to find their own way, without any institutional help from the famously slow-to-change Senate. At the time, I was working as Senator Kennedy’s Systems Administrator, a poli-sci type with no real technical background, hired on to support Kennedy’s network of Macs. When our office began to post his press releases and to solicit public comment via a network of dial-up computer Bulletin Board Systems (BBS), we found the effort was regarded as both newsworthy, and praiseworthy. While not everyone who found Sen. Kennedy online necessarily agreed with him on every issue, his effort to use new technologies to share his positions was widely reported and universally applauded.

A happy coincidence helped to boost Kennedy’s online reach beyond the BBS’. After reaching out to the White House staff who were likewise breaking new ground for President Clinton, I was put in touch with two of the students at MIT who were helping that effort, John Mallery and Eric Loeb. They were enthusiastic and eager to extend the work of MIT’s ‘Intelligent Information Infrastructure Project’ to include our nation’s Legislative branch. In short order they had setup the means for Kennedy’s press releases to be posted to an FTP archive at MIT and into two Usenet newsgroups. And eight months later, in the spring of 1994, they worked with our office to launch Kennedy’s web site, the first for a member of Congress. The site was located at MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Lab, as senate.gov provided only FTP and Gopher services by that time. And at the same time we announced Kennedy’s web site, we followed the example set by Senator Robb by establishing a public email address for The Senator and facing up to what remains today as a challenge to Congressional offices, managing and responding to torrents of inbound email.

In 1994 Kennedy had more than his Senate work to occupy him. He faced a strong challenge for his Senate seat by Republican Mitt Romney. Polls showed Kennedy was in a very tight race, with some even predicting his defeat. In the fall, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) had contracted with Issue Dynamics Inc. to help develop a basic web site for each of their Senate candidates. Aware of Kennedy’s efforts to bring his Senate office online, the DSCC gave his campaign staff direct access to manage their campaign site and to make it their own. Senate rules designed to prevent incumbent Senators from using franked mail in support of their campaign were now interpreted to require shutting down their official online presence for 60-days prior to any election in which they were a candidate. The campaign’s web site kept Kennedy online, while his Senate site was shuttered.

Launched only a few weeks prior to Election Day, the campaign site contained issue papers, press releases and endorsements (the notion of actually raising money online was still little more that a geeky politico’s daydream). For his part, Romney was missing online, and was chided in the media for it. Kennedy ended up beating Romney handily. A Newsweek article reporting on the growth of online politics dubbed him ‘CyberTed’ and reported of his online campaign, “It helped counter his image as an out-of-touch baron who reeked of Old Politics. And it impressed the world of computer jocks, thousands of whom work in the important Boston branch of the industry.” The Internet had played some small part in keeping Kennedy in office.

I left Kennedy’s office in the spring of 1995 to join a new ‘Technology and Communications Committee’ created by the new Senate Democratic Leader, Senator Tom Daschle, to help other Senate Democrats follow in the path Kennedy had blazed online. But continuing to lead and to innovate online remained a high priority in Kennedy’s office. My successors there saw to the continued development of his Senate web site, as well as bringing the Senator online by other means such as into Q&A sessions with constituents in online chat rooms. By June of ’96, Senator Kohl became the 50th Senator with a web site, and it took four more years until all 100 Senators had one, when Illinois freshman Peter Fitzgerald launched his site early in 2000.

His online experience did more than just generate good press for Senator Kennedy; it informed his positions on important votes for which many of his less net-savvy colleagues were ill equipped to fully understand. One early example came when the Senate voted in 1995 on Senator Exon’s ‘Communication’s Decency Act’, a far-overreaching effort to censor adult content on the Internet, the bill passed by a vote of 84-16. Kennedy was on the right, but losing side of this vote, and it was left to the Supreme Court to overturn the act as unconstitutional two years later by a unanimous vote.

Outside groups have also played an important role in pushing Congress to do more than just ‘be’ online. The Congressional Management Foundation’s periodic ‘Golden Mouse Awards’ recognize the best of Congressional web sites and provide all offices with needed assistance and best practices for use in developing their online presence. Newer organizations such as The Sunlight Foundation support efforts to make Congress ‘more meaningfully accessible to citizens’, with the Internet at the core of their efforts. And early online guides to Congress such as CapWeb, which helped net surfers find Congress online, have passed the torch to newer resources such as Tweet Congress, which helps all to find members who are on Twitter.

On Saturday I joined hundreds of other current and former Kennedy staff on the steps of the U.S. Senate, waiting on The Senator’s funeral motorcade to make a scheduled stop, en route from Andrews Air Force Base to Arlington Cemetery, for a brief and final farewell from the institution he served for forty-seven years. With the motorcade more than an hour behind schedule, I wasn’t alone in following the tweets from ‘kennedynews’, which kept us informed of their progress. Kennedy’s current team has done him proud this last week by their use of the Internet to share news and information about his funeral arrangements as well as the legacy of his life in public service.

It’s easy to take for granted that the Internet has become an expected means of communication for public officials and for the candidates who aspire to become one. And the time has long passed when anybody was impressed by a politician just for being aware that the Internet existed, and for attempting to use it. Senator Kennedy benefitted from such early praise, and might have left it at that. But he ‘got it’ and instead chose not to let up after those earliest steps. He chose to value innovation, and to make the use of new technology a high priority in conducting his very public life.

The Senator’s legacy will live on in the legislation he passed and the causes that he championed.

Teddy’s legacy will live with his family, friends and loved ones.

And CyberTed’s legacy will live on… online.