Thursday, September 19, 2013

Deadspin: How Far Did Rocky Run?

Oh, Internet!  Ask and ye shall receive!

Over at Deadspin, someone created a route to determine how far Rocky would have run to hit all of the locations in the Rocky II training montage.
What’s always amused me about this scene is how absolutely little sense Rocky’s route makes: South Philly becomes North Philly becomes the Italian Market becomes North Philly again, and so on. Obviously, the montage isn’t meant to be taken seriously as an actual workout; it’s just a few scenes strung together so “Gonna Fly Now” can play and Rocky can finish at the top of the Art Museum steps.
Has the city not figured out that this would make an amazing ultramarathon?


Monday, September 16, 2013

RnR Philadelphia Half-Marathon Race Recap

It's been a while -- almost two months -- since I've posted.

I really didn't have it in me to write about my training.  When I'm not racing every weekend, the posts seem to blend together.  I abandoned my SmartCoach plan in July and, on most days, ran as much and as fast as I felt like.  It was the most pleasant training experience I've had.  

On Saturday, Stef and I went up to Philadelphia for the Rock 'n' Roll Half.  I had such a good time the last time I ran a race in Philadelphia (see what I did there?), I was looking forward to running in the city again.  The course was flat, covering the center city area and the Schuylkill River trail.  Before the race, Stef and I completed one of the items on my bucket list: running up the stairs of the Philadelphia Museum of Art -- Rocky style.


The view from the top is amazing.


I may not have been in shape to run a sub-2:00 race, but I kept telling myself to run the first half somewhere in the neighborhood of a 9:00 to 9:30 pace and pick it up during the second.  I kept an eye on my watch during the first half and noticed a few times when I was running a sub-9:00 and had to tell myself to pull back.

I started to lose steam in the second half of the race and never really pushed myself faster than I ran the first half of the race.  According to my watch, I hit 13.1 around 2:04.  My official race time is 2:05:07.


I feel good about this.  I registered for the Richmond Half Marathon in November, and I intend to train. (For real.) It should help that fall running is much more pleasant than summer running.  Between now and that half, I have the Army 10 Mile Race and the Marine Corps 10K.