Thanks, Richard. I had the pleasure, when at Rice, to run one mile of a two mile straights-and-curves workout with Sean Wade and Jon Warren (my coach at the time). We ran 4:40, "running the straights" and "jogging the curves". They went on for another mile, 9:00. The next summer, in Atlanta, Sean led the first 14 miles of the Olympic marathon.

Quote from RunningBEHIND on 2/28/2009 at 8:49 PM:

The 5k article was great.

"Because the 5K race is not just about endurance. And it's not just about speed. Or strength.

It's about all those and more. It's about stride efficiency. And mental focus - resisting the urge to join the mini-mid-race battles that turn a 5K into a Fartlek session. And about confidence, about staying within your own race instead of panicking, instead of running someone else's race, some stranger's race, because yours suddenly doesn't seem good enough.

But it's about one thing more than any other. And until a runner accepts this one thing, every race - and every training session leading up to the race - will be nothing more than a crapshoot.

Listen: the single most important thing to understand about the 5K Race is that it is neither a distance nor a time - it is an effort. "

Nice interview with Greg Meyer, last American male to win the Boston Marathon.

http://petemagill.blogspot.com/2009/03/back-in-day-greg-meyer.html

http://petemagill.blogspot.com/2009/03/morning-read-journey-of-thousand-miles.html

Should I be weirded out by the fact that my new favorite running blog is one for masters running.

Quote from MrH on 3/25/2009 at 1:35 PM:

It's a fine line.

What's that mean, it destroys talent?

I think he's saying that successful marathoners build their career on long distance track, and run the marathon when they have peaked. Using 26.2 miles to express fitness built on the track. Successful "career marathoners" are very rare, very few elite marathon runners improve significantly in the long term.