Too precious not to post

This short blurb about a recursive search for a missing tourist. Has a Total Recall-like quality.

Pros versus Age Groupers

Everybody in the Ironman intelligentsia is in an uproar about Kendra Lee, an age grouper who won the women's race outright at Ironman Canada last weekend. Lee beat the nearest woman pro by 90" or so. This is rare but not unheard of. Recently, Dave Scott's son raced as an amateur and won a half-Ironman outright by seconds over the second place finisher (a pro male). (Dave Scott is the father of Ironman -- the original great and still, to my lights, the best ever.)

A few underappreciated facts about Ironman racing:
1. Ironman races are two races run at the same time. The pros start at 6:45, the amateurs at 7:00.
2. Amateurs are not eligible for prize money.
3. The amateur race is huge (2000+) and usually has a mass start. The pro race is small (~50) and, of course, has a mass start.
4. The pros get special bike racking and special nutritional support.
5. The difference between the normal pro and the normal amateur is huge. Think Kobe Bryant versus your law school basketball league.

How much credit does Lee get for beating the top female pro? There's the simple answer, which says fastest over the course wins, and the other things are variables that are easily washed out by the infinite variables over a nearly 10-hour race. The fuller answer has to account for the possible advantages of taking the pro start versus the amateur start.

Some contend the pros can't be asked to compete against top-level amateurs who aren't starting next to them. I argue that it does not matter that the second place (pro) woman believed she was winning when in fact she was losing to an amateur she couldn't see. First, Lee suffered the same infirmity -- she had no better idea where the second place athlete was relative to her. (You can't see the runners 15 minutes -- 2 miles, at their pace -- ahead.) Realistically, amateurs don't have people providing intelligence on their competitors, and I assume Lee did not. Second, 90" is a major differential at that speed. If you figure the strategic race does not begin until the second half of the run leg, the pro would need to run 7-8" per mile faster than she did at the end of a grueling day. I say not likely.

I also argue that pros have a huge advantage over amateurs. The special treatment is real: dealing with a crowded bike rack, rolling a bike in and out of a crowded transition (which Lee dealt with -- as a top woman, she's still behind hundreds of men), and fighting for scraps at overwhelmed aid stations slows you down. The starting crush in the swim, which doesn't spread out for at least 1000 meters, and re-occurs at every turn, is not just stressful enough to kill a couple of fit athletes every year but it definitely slows you down. A possible countervailing benefit is drafting in the water. Done right that is very effective. It's hard -- impossible? -- to do it right in an amateur pack. By contrast, the pros -- with their small start waves -- are able to latch on to a faster swimmer and gain a huge advantage in the water. It's no accident that the pro field is tightly compacted emerging from the swim.

Amateurs have similar crowd problems on the bike. Until the field spreads out 30 or more miles in, passing one competitor can mean passing a line of 15 competitors, because drafting rules make it impossible to fold into a line if two cyclists are separated by less than 25 feet or so (as I learned in Louisville in 2010). The pros are far ahead of that madding crowd. One might respond that nearly all Ironman bike courses are loop courses (tough to find 112 miles of good road without taking over an Interstate), so pros have to deal with lapping the amateurs. While that is so, the age groupers getting lapped are easy for the pros to pass -- and they've spread out by then as well.

I join the "fastest wins" crowd in my view of Lee's success. She's not eligible for prize money, but it's pretty cool that you can come from nowhere with plenty of hard work and get your name in lights.

Treadmill

I run on the treadmill under three different circumstances. First is winter, when it may be unsafe to run outside (though that's a rare phenomenon); second is summer, when the air gets so thick I can't breathe and am soaked through just checking the mail; and third is when I have a particular paced interval-style workout and it's easier to head to the gym than to the track. My biggest worry in treadmill running is grossing out the other gym patrons with my habit of extreme sweating. Yesterday, with reasons two and three both in play, I ran 4 x 1 mile watching an old John Wayne movie without any sound.

New Entry?

Delta pulled its non-stop from Indianapolis to Washington National. That was predictable; it acquired the route when it bought Northwest, and Indianapolis was never integral to Delta's route system. My first few tickets this year on now-monopolist U.S. Airways exceeded $400, 33% higher than what I had been accustomed to in a duopoly market.

Then I saw some non-stops advertised by United. They weren't price competitive; United wanted $381, my US Airways flight was back down to a not-too-far-from-normal $333.

Today the United flights are not listed (I'm looking on Orbitz), but U.S. Airways is charging well less than $300.

Perhaps bolstering my view that this is a negotiation between United and U.S. Airways, there was a United Airlines 747 on the ground in Indianapolis yesterday when I flew out. That might be (slight exaggeration here) the first passenger 747 ever to taxi to a gate in Indianapolis. More likely, of course, a plane from Chicago to Paris needed hydraulic fluid.

A New runing buddy

J, the husband of one of my childhood friends, has moved with his wife back from the burbs to a house about 1 1/2 miles for me.  He is at least one step above me as a runner and at least a couple of steps ahead of me as a biker.  But we are already planning some weekend and early morning runs so I can show him my favorite routes and he can begin his new urban routines.  Saturday morning is 8-10 going north along the lake.  Should be fun.  The real question is whether he will talk me into one of his 200 mile group relay races.

a nice run

Had a nice run yesterday morning from my Mass Ave condo in Indy, north along the Monon Trail and back. Goal was just to run, and I did in fact run.

Today the goal is miles on the track. Heat is returning, temporarily I hope. I expect this will be less nice.

Forgot about that half marathon coming up

Kind of forgot that I have the Chicago Half Marathon coming up on September 8th.  Its a good race through Jackson Park, Hyde Park, the University of Chicago and Lake Shore Drive on the South Side.  Its also my only sub 2 hour marathon (followed by a 7 miler back downtown so I could complete my 20 mile training run for the real marathon that year). 

But this year, I am focusing on Rome in March and not concentrating on my long runs.  So yesterday I took the old adage seriously that if you can run 10, you can run a half marathon.

So I ran a gentle 10 miles plus in mid 60 degree weather at slow marathon pace through the streets of the northwest side ending at Wilson and the Chicago river and meandered my way home.  On the way back discovered a beautiful little trail I had never seen before on the east side of the Chicago river between Montrose and Irving Park.  It runs just outside the lot line and backyard fences of some homes and is a mini prairie that grows a little too wild and dense for easy running.  But a great discovery and a short stretch where you would have idea you were in the middle of a city and just a block from commercial streets.