November 1, 2007

Hit the street
How to keep running through the approaching winter
PLUS Manchester’s first (recent) marathon
By Brian Early bearly@hippopress.com

On Sunday, Nov. 4, 1,500 runners will try their luck at the inaugural Manchester City Marathon.

It’s an international event, as runners from Canada will run, as well as a national event, with participants from as far away as Washington, Texas, California and South Dakota.

The Manchester City Marathon coincides with the conclusion of daylight savings time, which ends in the early hours of Sunday morning. More light in the morning, but less in the evening. But for hard core runners, the lack of light and warm air are not a deterrent to running in the winter. In fact, winter is as good a time as any to strap on some sneakers and start hitting the street.

Running in winter
“Run into the cold to run in the cold. That’s our mantra,” said Cleaver. “You get used to it, and it’s not a big deal.”

There are precautions, though. You’ll need to watch out for darkness, snow and slipperiness. But there are products for the runner that make this easier.

Perhaps the most important part of running outside in the elements is making sure you’re visible to those pesky fast-moving vehicles that seem to be everywhere.

“You have start thinking about being visible,” said Jeanine Sylvester, proprietor of Runner’s Alley in Manchester and Portsmouth. “There are all sorts of things to keep you visible in traffic.” These include reflective tape and blinking lights.

The other important part is dressing for the cool weather.

“You want to dress [as if it’s] 15 to 20 degrees cooler than it’s actually out,” she said. “It should feel cool running for the first half mile to a mile, then you should be at your optimum temperature.

Layering is key, as it allows you too peel one layer at a time to affect your temperature. But avoid cotton. “Cotton kills” is the popular saying. Cotton holds moisture, so your sweat stays with you, which after a time could make you cold.

The basic layering is three levels. One is the base layer that is fairly thin and wicks away moisture from your body. The second is the warm layer of fleece or wool, which traps in body heat, and the third layer is a shell that protects you from the wind, rain and snow.

And while snow and ice can affect your running, there are ways to mitigate those factors as well. Just because there’s snow or ice on the ground doesn’t mean you can’t go out running. YakTrax is a product that attaches to the bottom of the sneakers that has little spikes on the bottom for traction on snow and ice.

In winter, inside
While most aspiring runners start their running program in spring and summer, one can start in fall or winter. While running outside has its benefits, said Sylvester, starting inside on a treadmill can be helpful too.

“Running on a treadmill is certainly less taxing on your knees,” she said. “For a lot of people it’s a great place to start. It’s a nice controlled environment.”

For those starting out, Sylvester recommends a walk/run program instead of running. It gets the trainee slowly ready for more active activity and it’s good psychologically. The more you train, the more you’ll probably run, and that will make you feel better, she said.

“Most people who fail quickly do too much too fast,” she said.

Chris Pierce is a physical therapist and owns Balance Physical Therapy in Windham. He recommends against going from the couch to a marathon without properly training. Two of his clients now have stress injuries from running too much at once.

“A lot of people aren’t prepared to run that long of a distance from a flexibility and muscular strength standpoint,” he said. “Get into running slowly. Do go out too far too fast.”

Stress factors are the most common injuries, so stretching is important — and even more important in the winter, as muscle strains are more common in the cold. Pierce recommends doing a small warm-up and stretch with active stretches, like lunges. After exercising, static stretches are helpful to improve flexibility.

A proper diet is just as important as proper exercising, Pierce said. Carbohydrate loading, like eating a spaghetti dinner two nights before a run, is important. And after a run, Pierce said, the science points to a 45-minute window to put nutrients back in the body to help it recover faster.

“Energy drinks are quite effective,” he said. “It allows you to recover more quickly and be ready for the next training run.”

It already appears that there will be a marathon next year. So if you’re not running this year, now’s a good time to start putting a program together, so next year you’ll be ready for the challenge.

As big as Boston
It’s the first marathon in the Queen City since 1939. Back then, the race, the New England Championship Marathon, was organized by the Knights of Columbus and it was always on the observed Columbus Day.

The race this weekend starts on Elm Street and ends on Elm Street, which is different than the old race, said Skip Cleaver, president of Gate City Striders in Nashua, who also works for coolrunning.com.

Back then, most marathons were from point to point. The old marathon started in Boscawen near the train station, went through Concord to Manchester, following the now DW Highway, and finishing along Elm Street, though Cleaver is unable to find any reference on exactly where it ended.

“It was really a big marathon,” Cleaver said. In fact, it was comparable to the Boston Marathon — but back then, a big marathon had about 100 runners; the Boston Marathon now has about 20,000 runners. “There wasn’t that many people capable of running marathons.”

At the time, marathons were still rare, as the first modern one started only 35 years before the Manchester one. It wasn’t until Frank Shorter won the 1972 Olympic marathon that marathon running became much more popular, said Cleaver.

Many popular distance runners at the time participated in the New England Championship, including Clarence De Mar of Keene, who won the Boston race seven times. There’s now a marathon in Keene named after him. Ellison “Tarzan” Brown won the Boston Marathon twice. In 1934 he won two races in two days. He won the New York Marathon, then he jumped on a train and arrived the next morning in Boscawen and ran and won the New England Championship.

If you haven’t signed up yet, you won’t be able to.

“We had to cap it off because we didn’t have any more medals,” said Sarah Normand, race director of Manchester City Marathon. At first, sign-up was slow, but it picked up quickly in the past few weeks after they placed the final shirt and medal count. If it’s a success this year, she expects there will be more runners next year.

And for those who aren’t ready for the full 26.2-mile course, there is a half marathon also full. On Saturday, there’s a kid marathon — though the kids aren’t running the full race at once. Normand was able to get area schools and organizations to participate in the race by having the children run 25 miles before race day and complete the last mile at Merchantsauto.com Stadium.

Runners can also race as a team. Four or five runners can run together and average their time for their best overall time.

It’s a certified marathon course, which means it’s a qualifying course for the Boston Marathon, though in order to qualify, one needs to run in a certain time depending on one’s age. [See sidebar for times.]

Creating a marathon course is a long, tedious task. One can not just lay out 26.2 miles and call it a day. To be a certified marathon course, one that will not only qualify one for the Boston race, but one that can break records as well, a course needs to follow certain guidelines.

The marathon craze
The course needs to be set up so that the elevation doesn’t drop more than one meter per kilometer over the course of the race. The start and finish line cannot not be more than 30 percent of the race course distance apart, so that the race has a mixture of headwinds and tailwinds.

“It’s not difficult. It’s just detailed,” said Ron Fitzpatrick about certifying race courses. Fitzpatrick is the certifying official in New Hampshire and Vermont for USA Track & Field. “It’s kind of like knitting.”

Before Fitzpatrick measures a course, he calibrates his very precise odometer that’s strapped to his bicycle, by measuring a straight line with a steel tape measure that takes into account the ground temperature and how much the steel will expand or contract. He then measures the course twice, tracing the way the runners would run (cutting corners for the shortest distance). The two measurements have to be within .08 percent of each other. When he’s finished, he measures his calibration course once more to verify his odometer is still accurate. If any records are broken on the race, the course is measured once more.

“It’s eligible for records,” Fitzpatrick said about the course. “But I don’t think there will be any set on that course. It’s a tough course.”

One cannot break records in the the Boston Marathon, as its start and finish line are too far away from each other.

The first seven miles of the Manchester course are the toughest, as the course rises 200 feet in that stretch. Between miles five and six, there is a drop of about 100 feet, but then the course rises about 150 feet between miles six and seven.