The Perfect Mile: Three Athletes. One Goal. And Less Than Four Minutes to Achieve It

The Perfect Mile: Three Athletes. One Goal. And Less Than Four Minutes to Achieve It by Neal Bascomb

Wes Santee, John Landy and Roger Bannister were all trying to be the first to run a sub-four-minute mile. As I only recognized one of the names, I had a strong idea how it would turn out. However, the story is still dramatic. Each of the runners had challenges. It is clear that a bit of good (or bad) fortune is involved in setting athletic records. It is interesting to see parallels with the modern mess of the NCAA as well as the attempts to complete the first female sub-four mile.

Of the three, Wes Santee had the worst luck. He was constantly stymied by the US athletics association. At one time, the prevented him from running the mile because he already qualified in another event. Later, they banned him because he received too much money in expenses. (The organization had authorized those expenses and made a financial killing on the events, but Santee wasn't able to see any of it.) After college, he was full time in the military and competed in running events there, but never got to run an official sub 4 mile.

John Landy was from Australia and had little support from his national sports federation. He also competed in one race against Bannister with an injured foot. He was the second person to break four minutes and held the mile record for three years.

Bannister was the first to officially break the record. He held onto the ideal of amerture individual competitor, only reluctantly getting outside coaching. He was also studying and later working as a doctor. The running was a sideline. He had pacers help out and came close to running a sub-four mile numerous times before he finally broke the barrier at Oxford. The weather was horrible that day and he thought about trying again another time. However, it cleared up close to race time and he was able to do it.

The audiobook has a small afterward where the author discusses his experiences meeting the runners and the very different personalities. 

Running with the Buffaloes: A Season Inside with Mark Wetmore, Adam Goucher, and the University of Colorado Men's Cross Country Team

Running with the Buffaloes: A Season Inside with Mark Wetmore, Adam Goucher, and the University of Colorado Men's Cross Country Team by Chris Lear

I wanted to like this book. The story was appealing, but the writing was not as engaging as I would have liked. The author was embedded with the Colorado cross country team. They were good. They were good. They always finished among the top teams, but never quite won it all. (Since then, the team has won multiple championships.) The training was very demanding. The coach had athletes set goals and held them too them. There was also tragedy in the season, with one runner dying while riding his bicycle. The book explores the backstory of some runners along with recruiting challenges. It is a good insight into collegiate cross country, but could be much better.

Biking and Walking everywhere

CityStrides - focusses exclusively on "foot" activities (runs and walks). Signing up with the referral link gets you a free 7 day trial of "reporter" feature. What I find most useful is the "node finder". This lets you zoom into areas of a map and quickly find areas you have not yet covered. When starting an area, this is of little value. However, when getting the last little bits, it can be extremely helpful.

CityStrides bases coverage on "nodes" extracted from Open Street Maps. These nodes are generally any place where there is an intersection or a curve in the street. With a tight grid pattern, the nodes are often just at the intersections. This means that you can get credit for a street just by doing half the grid. (e.g. you can run all the East-West and get "free" credit for the North-South ones.) Technically, you could be able to "see" the rest of the street, so I don't have a problem with it.

Your main goal is to get "streets" in a city. In normal mode, getting 90% of the nodes in a street gives you credit. (In supporter mode, you can also do "hard mode" to require 100%). You can also manually match streets if needed. A street is defined as something with the same name in the same city. Small cul-de-sacs count as a street as do 10 mile long arterials. In a city like Seattle with a strict cardinal naming system, the same "street" can start and end multiple times through the city in non-connected segments. You may think you completed the street, but didn't realize there was another chunk of it elsewhere. CityStrides does have the ability to "Go" to a street and see all the nodes included. CityStrides does include cardinal directions, so a street like "145th" will have separate streets for "North 145th", "Northeast 145th" and "Northwest 145th". In Seattle, 145th is also on city border, so you can get credit, there is credit for them on both Seattle and Shoreline (as well as a bit of Lake Forest Park.) 3.5 miles down that street gives you 7 streets, while 5.5 down 3rd Ave NW gives you 1 street. (You do get a Shoreline node at the end, but that street picks up again later in Shoreline.) Meanwhile, there are a few other isolated nodes that are a complete street for less than a tenth of a mile.

Premium can be purchased for $5/month with no commitment. I like this approach and have used it - primarily for the node finder. CityStrides is also strickly web based, but has a web "App" that can be installed on the phone, 

Wandrer - tracks both bike and foot events. It includes coverage for individual neighborhood units. Rather than track nodes, it tracks entire streets. The map allows you to explicitly call out roads that you have not seen. I like this approach for viewing neighborhood coverage. For regular users, when you sign up, it will only import the last 50 events. Premium membership ($30/year) gives you a complete import. (All new activities are added.) I held off on this for the simple challenge. I wanted the chance to try to cover areas that I have not covered recently. 

I find wandrer to be both slick and confusing. The map and the points system can be a little weird.

Activities Map - This is my github project for mapping all of my strava activities. It also lets me keep a complete local backup of all activities. I like using it to slice and dice versions of activities that I then upload to google my maps. Then I can have them appear on my regular google map display. I like to use it to look at my "range" of paths. I can see a long continuous path. I can also place all my activities on a map without any background which makes a nice view.

Strava - I record most activities on my Garmin watch, but upload them all to Strava. I have had a paid membership at times. It is nice to create a record of activities and respond. I have included activities recorded from my phone and other old tracks I had. This makes it much more complete than the Garmin activities. I also track shoes, names, etc. from Strava.

For the Glory: Eric Liddell's Journey from Olympic Champion to Modern Martyr

For the Glory: Eric Liddell's Journey from Olympic Champion to Modern Martyr by Duncan Hamilton

Eric Liddell was a crazy fast Scottish runner immortalized in Chariots of Fire. He was also devoutly religious and served as a missionary in China rather than compete in further Olympics. He was undefeated in almost everything he ran. Perhaps his only second-place finished occurred shortly before he died. He died in a Japanese-run internment camp in China. He kept his spirits up, continued to help others, and wrote about faith. He died in the waning days of World War II from an undiagnosed brain tumor and malnutrition.

The book is fairly detailed. I found it interesting to read it shortly after reading other books about Mao and the Chinese revolution. Liddell's life was involved in the same events, but from a western perspective that differed significantly from the Chinese view.

Let Your Mind Run: A Memoir of Thinking My Way to Victory

Deena Kastor started running because her parents wanted something to help her keep busy. She did very well. She soon discovered that she had a lot of natural talent for running and started winning many races. She had a lot of success, but found her mind could be her mind could be her biggest impediment. She later went to train with a coach in the mountains. He helped with altitude training as well as attitude training. She was able to have significant success, but also had additional challenges going forward. While sports are about physical skill, the mental part can be even more important.

Running with the Pack: Thoughts from the Road on Meaning and Mortality

Running. Aging. Meaning of Life. Dogs. All is woven together in Running with the Pack. The author decides to run a marathon a few years shy of his 50th birthday. He has enjoyed running for most of his life, but his body is more equipped for sprinting than running. Injuries have plagued him. In training for the marathon, he was progressing well so he pushed himself harder. This led to an injury. He kept coming back too strong after trying to heal, thus leading to further problems. (And ironically, he started running because he was afraid he had gout, but he likely had a stress fracture instead.) Despite all this and a lack of training in the weeks leading up to the marathon he decided to do it anyway.

A lot of his running had been done with dogs. These companions experience a basic joy of running and give him reason to continue. 

He sees running as something that has meaning unto itself rather than something that provides alternate benefit. Even from a biological level, running helps clear out thoughts and allows the mind to solve some of the hard problems that were not solvable when "it was the boss". Running also helps our general energy expenditure to catch up with what the body is expecting.

As we age our physical ability declines. This is a genetic trade off that mammals have made. Reptiles and amphibians tend to be fairly equal in their abilities until they die. The decline is inevitable in life. We will not be able to run at age 50 like we did at 20. The regression will continue as we get older.

The book has many nice insights into running and aging. It is great to think of the meaning in what we are doing rather than just expect everything as a means to an end. Even something like happiness is not necessarily an "end". In work it is good to find something that we enjoy doing and then find somebody to pay us for it. Anything can be professionalized. It is up to us to find our meaning.

How to Think About Exercise (The School of Life)

At a Stanford climbing class, the instructor had trouble getting the class to understand some climbing techniques. He then resorted to explaining it in terms of physics and vector math. This immediately clicked with the class.

In How to Think About Exercise the author takes a similar approach to help those with intellectual inclinations better relate to exercise. The chapters are divided into topics: Pride, Sacrifice, Beauty, Humility, Pain, Consistency, The Sublime and Oneness. We read about how Haruki Murakami's running enabled his writing and how Darwin's walks helped lead to scientific breakthroughs. Tolkien, Hume and others all make their appearances in the discussions.

What I Talk about When I Talk about Running: A Memoir

Haruki Marakami was running a jazz club. One day, while going to a baseball game, he felt he should write a novel. He did and won a prize. Later he decided to sell the club and dive in to writing. He went on to become an accomplished writer. Writing was a much more sedentary activity, leading to concerns about his health. He took up running to be active. It also helped him to give up smoking. He likes the solitary nature of running. He competes only with himself. (Though it is depressing that age tends to bring down running times, no matter how much training is done.)

This book is primarily about his experience running, with some sidelines of his life and experience writing. He doesn't think running is for everybody. Being forced to do something can make people hate it. However, when they discover it on their own, it can be a joy. This goes for both physical activities and academic interests. Keeping up at anything is important. Giving your body a rest from running gives it a chance to "relax" and drop some of the gains that have been made.

He would typically put in long time periods running, covering large numbers of miles each week. His first "marathon" was a solo run from Athens to Marathon in the summer heat. (It was not a great experience, and may not have been the full marathon distance.) He later did a marathon each year, and even did an ultra. (Though that seemed to suck the joy out of running.) He ran in New York, Boston and Japan. He achieved remarkable physical health, but he seemed to most enjoy the mental benefits.

Bravey: Chasing Dreams, Befriending Pain, and Other Big Ideas

Alexi Pappas lost her mom to suicide at a young age. She was raised with her brother by her father and a succession of Au Pairs. She sought out other for "help", desiring independent "mothering", but being upset when moms would "force" mothering upon her. She was always a fast runner. However, in high school, her coach wanted her to focus exclusively on running. She didn't want to. This may have helped her to go through puberty more "normally". (She believes that a lot of the training regimes are focussed on men and not so useful for female athletes.) 

She attended Dartmouth, distance running for the school. She acknowledged that there was always some pain when running hard. (However, running while hungover made things much worse.) She also had dreams of writing and filmmaking. However, she decided to go to Oregon instead and run. Eventually, she ran in the olympics (for Greece) and had show sponsorship. However, she hit a low after the olympics and lost most everything before bouncing back with the help of friends and professionals. The rebirth of her running career was coming back and running the Chicago marathon. However, her body was not fully recovered. Rather than drop out, she decided to keep going at a slow pace and finish.

Her focus (with her husband) has now been on filmmaking. She had some bad first reviews, but decided to stick with it. The book ends with a focus on general life experiences. She believes people can achieve big goals with hard work. However, most people have trouble keeping the motivation. (She gives examples of athletes who go for help with injuries, yet don't do all the rehab needed and end up returning again for the same injury.) She also has great respect for the work of single parents and for quality mental health professionals that help treat "illness".  (Her mother has a high achieving computer professional in days when women didn't do that. Alas, friends of her mother also committed suicide.) The book ends with typical advice.

Born to Run

After reading this book, I was dying to go for a long run. I remembered the runners high I felt the first time I ran home from high school. Running was a source of freedom and pure pleasure. I remember feeling this pure enjoyment again on a 15 mile run. It was only supposed to be 5 miles, but the runners high and the pure enjoyment kept me going back for more. This is the running the book describes, not "training runs" or workouts, but pure pleasure runs.

The focus is on Mexico's Tarahumara tribe. They run long distances as part of their normal life, with only flimsy foot coverings, yet never seem to get injuries (or "old person" diseases.) From their, the author delves in to long distance running, anatomy and physiology and evolution. The conclusion? Humans were born to run, says biologist David Bramble. Homo sapiens have the bodies to complete long runs. They may not be as fast as other animals, but they can outlast them. Humans can breathe multiple times per stride, release heat through sweat and continue a moderate aerobic pace over long distances. Human feet also seem to be configured well for long distance running. Athletic shoes tend to be a leading cause of athletic injuries, often fighting problems that never existed. Most important of all, to really succeed in running, a runner needs to enjoy it. A runner having fun can go further and longer than a runner running for glory or simply to complete a goal.

In the course of reaching these conclusions, the history of "ultramarathons" (like the Leadville Trail 100) is discussed along with profiles of many ultramathon champions. The pinnacle is the "Copper Canyon" run staged by Caballo Blanco in the Tarahumara homeland in Mexico. The author participated here along with the locals and some champion racers from the United States. (A local ended up winning, but not without a close fight.) The story is told in a dramatic fashion, but still filled with interesting facts.