Sacramento Running News

Dan Weintraub chases Marie Sample to the finish line.

It’s been a week since the marathon and it seems like a good time to  finally wrap up the news on the event. Hopefully it was worth the wait as we’ve got a bucket-full of fun facts for you!

The weather was close to perfect for this time of year. Although the streets were wet from the previous night’s deluge, the rain quit before the start and waited to resume until later in the afternoon.

Dylan Wykes, a Canadian, led wire-to-wire for the win in 2:12:39. Ethiopian Buzunesh Deba, the defending women’s champion, was first woman in 2:32:13.  Read what the Bee’s John Schumacher has to say about it.

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Hopefully it won't be too rainy for us!

Looks like it might rain.

The Sacramento Bee promises “start to finish” coverage of the event. Evidently, they are tired of getting scooped by the Sacramento Running News.

This year, the California International Marathon is offering “Live Results” and athlete tracking. If you are spectating or supporting  a loved one, you can use this feature to minimize the amount of time you’ll be spending in the rain.

The CIM has posted the list of runners, relay teams and race numbers here. If you are spectating, be sure print out the list so you can shout out the names of random runners as they come up the street. It confuses them. This is good. It can take their minds off the pain and get them wondering about something other than “What was I thinking?”

Also, be sure to check out CIM’s spectator information.

Whether you are running or not, be sure to check out the CIM Expo. They usually have some deals and fun merchandise to check out. As an added bonus, you can meet me at the Buffalo Chips booth this afternoon, where I’ll be weighing in the Clydesdale and Athena runners.

Good luck if you are running tomorrow! I look forward to seeing all of you on the starting line.

What can Plato do for American running?

There was much hope and expectation riding on Dathan Ritzenhein‘s run at the New York Marathon this past weekend.

While Ritz ran faster than anyone I know personally, after his American Record 5K last summer the expectation was something closer to the win, maybe something under 2:10.

Immediately after the race, armchair critics, of course, piled-on and ridiculed Ritz, Salazar, Nike, and anyone who was a) associated with the Nike Oregon Project, and b) not themselves.

Much of the hype was built around Nike’s investment in Ritz’s training and the famed Alberto Salazar’s remaking of Ritz’s running form. The New Yorker has a marathon-length article on Salazar, running form, and Ritz.

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Dubuque, Iowa writer Amy Gilligan asks:

What’s the deal with all these people running marathons all of a sudden? These are just regular people. Now they’re hopping up and running marathons.

Indeed! What is it with all you people? Like me, Gilligan notes:

Half the people I know on Facebook are posting about marathons these days. And I’m fairly sure they aren’t talking about drinking benders.

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Ben Rapoport figures it all out.

NPR has a story today about rocket scientist, secret agent, neurosurgeon, and rock star Ben Rapoport figuring out exactly how to calculate your carbohydrate needs and how crazy-fast a marathon you should be able to run if only you had enough “grits.” Or something.

There is a calculator, if you are into that sort of thing.

Each fall, I make an enjoyable visit to the Humboldt Redwoods for another go at one of my all time favorite half marathons.

This past Sunday’s aptly named Humboldt Redwoods Marathon and Half Marathon is the nearly identical twin (the stereoisomer really) of the Avenue of the Giants Marathon (AKA “The Ave”) with one major difference. The Humboldt Redwoods Half Marathon is part of the PAUSATF Grand Prix and therefore draws a very fast crowd. (Also, The Ave is run in April.)

This is how a small race that starts in a little turn-off of Highway 101 has 33 finishers under 1:20 and a woman running 1:18:19 comes in 2^nd.

The weather was perfect. The race was well organized. And this year, they replaced the usual terrible cotton shirts with pretty nice technical ones.

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Registration for the Boston Marathon opens today. As with last year, it is likely that all the slots will be taken and registration closed long before this year’s CIM takes place, effectively making the Boston qualifying time you expect to earn this December to be moot.

Some of the demand for marathon entries is clearly “industry-wide.”  For example, our own CIM will sell out very soon. (The website says 325 slots remain as of today.)

The Wall Street Journal has an article on this excess demand for the Boston Marathon, which dares to ask the question of whether the qualifying times for women are too soft.

The Boston Athletic Association pegs the women’s qualifying times at 30-minutes slower than the men’s times, something they established in 1977. More that 30-years have passed. Do women still need this kind of advantage?

What do you think?

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Planning to get married during your next marathon? Check this out!

Jaymee Marty last month on her way to winning the Buffalo Stampede.

After years of very publicly training for it, and a couple near misses, Sacramento’s Jaymee Marty knocks out a Olympic Trials qualifier at the Chicago Marathon yesterday.

Under unusually warm conditions, Marty qualified with almost a minute to spare in 2:45:09, improving on her prior personal best of 2:46:26 from last year’s Twin Cities Marathon.

Marty is the third local woman to meet the Olympic B standard of sub-2:46. At 43, Marty also builds on a trend of local masters women superstars–Midori Sperandeo and Mary Coordt–who have already qualified for the 2012 trials. Will any “open women” runners (i.e., women under 40) qualify in this cycle? And what about the guys?

Jaymee Marty writes all about her race experience in her blog. Read it. It’ll bring tears to your eyes.

John Blue finishing up his pacing of the 2008 Cowtown Marathon

If you are planning to run the Urban Cow Half Marathon this year, you should know the fees go up on September 27th.

In case you’ve been living under a rock or somewhere far outside the Sacramento Metroplex, Urban Cow is the new name for the race that had been known as the Cowtown Half.

The owners of the other Cowtown Marathon got pissy with our race just being generally better, if for no other reason than our race is in Sacramento and not Fort Worth.

Lawyers, or the threat of lawyers, got involved and suddenly it is the Urban Cow Half Marathon. You can read the story behind all the name changes right here on the event’s history page.

If you were maybe sitting on the fence, and were trying to decide whether or not you had the fortitude to run this thing somewhere in the neighborhood of 1:40, you can join me, John Blue, as I lead this epic pace group.

There will be other pacers there, and maybe their pace is more what you were looking for, but I guarantee you that I will make many dumb jokes and do my best to get you in by 1:40.