The real crossfit

I had an invitation to write something about the benefits of cross country (XC) skiing for a runner. Here's what I came up with:

In Canada, winter happens. Although many runners continue on their daily routes (now with tights and thicker socks), there is a second option: ski. I have been guilty of ignoring Canada's winter climate and running knee-deep in snow, but once upon a time I did ski quite often. Priorities have a way of changing, as does access to mountain trails, but growing up in Ottawa I competed in high school, then university, cross country skiing and running. While racing in one sport, I would see the other as "cross training". This continual back and forth gave me perspective on the benefits of form of training with respect to the other. So what does skiing have to do with the running?  

Banditing a run

What is a race bandit? Simply put, you run but you don't pay. I was mulling over the reasons one might see it right or wrong doing so. I felt it rational to post my ideas on the pros and cons of paying for a race. The coin is two-sided: Am I justifying an immoral act, and/or do races have much justification in claiming my money as rightfully theirs?

I run most every day without paying. What makes race day so much more special that I have to pay to run this day, this hour? Were I running on a private road, or indoors in a controlled environment, the rationale is clear enough; it's their turf, so they can charge whatever they want. If I own a private club I can choose to charge obscene fees for nothing more than the rights to exclusion. Outdoor road races are, however, an interesting beast. They cost plenty to enter, more power to them, but why pay at all? Let us consider what is rightfully owned by the race organizers.

This is SPARTA! (network)

I'm just testing the embedding of our site map for locations. I'm travelling to two of these places next month (Dhaka and Kanpur), so pretty excited about that.

How to make money in running

I have deceived you with this title; I have no idea how to make money running. I do, however, know how to spend it. Or at least that's what's been going on until now. I'm ending this practise.

Like many enthusiasts I bought the fancy merchandise, signed up for expensive races, and travel. Why oh why did I spend so much when a pair of ratty shoes and t-shirt was needed to accomplish a run? Unlike sailing or drag racing, there's little in the way of any equipment in running. But money, once earned from actual work (my day job), some law of nature declares it must be spent.  If I loved motorcycles I would probably spend what little extra I earn on touring the open roads. Maybe while en route I'd justify it with a little Zen philosophy. Were I a music lover, I'd equip my apartment with Bang Olufsen and a Yamaha sound mixer. Back to reality for a brief time I was a collector of hard-to-find DVDs (This includes the 8-hour Russian version of War and Peace and Decalogue). I also bought books plainly available at any library. Now I watch Netflix and borrow so progress has been made.

Winning races

On Sunday I won the Saint John Marathon by the Sea. To be more specific, I won the half marathon in a new fastest time of 1:13:20.

Here I am finishing in style (this is the first time I recall even finishing in style). Here's a link to a cbc news piece.   The reader comments accurately point out that the women runners are completely omitted. Sad.  

There was a long-standing record held by Paul Morrison set in 1996 at 1:14:28. For 17 years it held, which is far too long. The record was narrowly missed by Chris Brake in 2010 with a time of 1:14:46. Others have come not quite as close 

UDATE: Alex Coffin ran 1:13:25 in 2008, barely 5 seconds behind my time. The race organizers completely forgot to update the records. Even more fascinating is that Alex lives in Saint John. How did this escape everyone's attention? 

Several people warned me this is a really hilly course but I figured even with hills and not being in the best of shape I could probably do it, though it's unusual for me to have confidence in such things.

Nevertheless I registered, paying my $70 (which is insanely expensive for a nothing-race). I also figured if I was going to drive 400 km from Halifax I should at the very least knock that sucker down and bring the record into the present. After *almost* getting sideswiped by a car midway through the race (the cop supposedly directing traffic was busy buying a donut!), almost missing an unlabelled turn, I eventually managed to get under the old mark with a minute to spare.

But running 1:13 is not all that special. So why did I even choose this race?

It certainly wasn't for the money. The win netted me exactly one $75 Running Room gift certificate, which doesn't buy you a decent watch. I meant to take a picture of the draw prize table with random gifts that were better than the overall winners (a GPS watch!). I wasn't for the attention, either; I had no idea any news outlets were covering the race. It's a rather small one, though I later found out this was a lot of people's last hope to qualify for Boston. And as all know these days anything Boston-related generates news.

When I said that I decided to set a new record, I didn't factor in the hills. Originally, when I first knew of the existence of Marathon by the Sea two months ago, it was so I could run a sub 1:11 and qualify for Chicago. Running under 71 minutes is something I can do on flat ground, but I learned early on this wasn't going to be a 1:11 sort of day. Several people warned me this is a really hilly course. Having now experienced the hills of Saint John, I can confirm it is, among other things, a very hilly city.

Why run this fast, specifically? While I didn't think about Chicago when it sold out in April, you can qualify as late as August 31st with an "elite development" time. But the Chicago race was not on my radar until running the Cabot trail relay with the Toronto-based Black Lungs in May. After that suddenly I knew close to a dozen people going. That means shared rooms, shared stories, etc etc. I'm sure it would have been a good, though rather expensive, time.

On the subject of of expensive, let's assume I had run a 1:10-something on Sunday. What would I have had to spend to run 42.2 kilometres in the windy city? There's a Porter Airlines sale on right now, so I can go check.

Round-trip cost to fly to Chicago (from Halifax): $573
Four nights in a decent hotel near the biggest race in town: $400 (Assuming split costs here)
Marathon registration: $200+fees
Food, dinners out, bus tickets/commuting cost: $150
Random merchandise (everyone caves eventually): $150

Total, at the very least, will be close to $1500. And when I think about it, I don't really have that much to spend. I spent less than $400 on the Cabot trail relay, which to me was a far more unique experience than many marathons could hope. There is another reason I won't be able to go: I may be travelling to India and Bangladesh preciously close to race day. This trip is ridiculously exciting; the mere chance of travelling that far is incredible. To go there with a scientific mission in mind as well tips an already toppled scale. Not to diminish any marathoners' dreams, but since this developed in early August Chicago hasn't exactly been the foremost thing on my mind.

The next two paragraphs are petty, but I need some place to vent.

Going back to the subject of money, lately there has been a theme of me spending conservatively on running. If I can do the same running distance for cost x or another race for half that, I'll choose the latter. For instance, the Natal day 2 miler race I won two weeks ago cost me all of 20$.  That's a bargain right there.

With my cheapskate disposition I've looking for more bargain races to do. I like to be non-critical of races, but when they get too expensive I feel the right to be an extreme judge of every little thing they do wrong. If the Toronto Waterfront marathon were priced under $100, I'd be grateful of just being there. But as it is I can't say much nice about them. Likewise I paid 70$ for the Saint John race and they didn't have the decency to close a single road. Though I was appreciative of the free photos (such as the one above) I didn't appreciate being nearly hit by a car, so I can't say I plan on going back. If a race is going to be expensive, it had better be unbelievably awesome. Otherwise I can time myself, save a hundred bucks, and run any day of the week. On these days the traffic is likely quite open.  

A different kind of crossword

I had an idea about making a crossword with some novel dimensional qualities. I don't know if this has been done before in the NYT or whatever. From the ones I've seen it hasn't. Normally crosswords have an internal symmetry, but since this one can be tiled infinitely I didn't bother.

This is the crossword itself:

Here are the clues:

Omitting the solutions, here is what it looks like with a few repeated tiles. Take any tile and move it up, down, left or right by 15 squares and you'll find it's the same tile.

Enjoy. PS: I'd never be able to solve my own crosswords. Curious thing, I can fill in the blanks, but I can't fill in the blanks (if that makes any sense).


Solutions: (scroll down...)

Cost and time of stair climbing

I came across a short negative opinion piece by Hamilton Nolan complaining about mayor Bloomberg's attempt to encourage people climb more stairs. The original Times pieces reads

Mr. Bloomberg said on Wednesday that he had issued an executive order requiring city agencies to promote the use of stairways and use smart design strategies for all new construction and major renovations.

Nolan replies, "Will this get you in good shape? No, it will not."

Alex Hutchinson in turn replies to Nolan's claim that although it is extremely unlikely that stair climbing will "cure" the world of obesity, every little bit helps. And more importantly there are side benefits like (surprisingly?) taking less time to get places, making for more aesthetically pleasing spaces, and maybe even safer buildings (if everyone is used to taking stairs, it sure helps when the elevator is out of order).

Such initiatives are only intended as small steps in fighting obesity (pun intended). It may help, it may not. Nolan's article claims climbing a few stairs will not get you fit. Alex sees otherwise, and has the citations to back up his view.

I for one support the expansion of stairs. If you think of the movies, stairs make for grand entrances and make a statement, whereas elevators are utilitarian; they only get the characters moving to the next scene.

But enough about design. How many calories does one actually burn going up a flight of stairs? In Nolan's piece he cites a Livestrong factoid that reads

A 150-lb person must climb stairs for 6 hours and 30 minutes to burn the amount of calories in 1 lb of body fat.

Nolan cites this as evidence that stair climbing is too inefficient to be a good workout.

Opinions and health research aside, I was interested to find out how that number was obtained, so I started ab initio to see if I could replicate the numbers. 

First of all, 1lb of (human) fat contains of about 3500 Calories of energy. In the metric world this is 14,600 kJ of energy. In terms of pure vertical energy terms, to raise an object h meters into the air costs energy of the order

E = mgh

where m is mass (kg), and g is the gravitational acceleration 9.81 m/s². But not all energy goes in the vertical direction; some is lost to horizontal motion and other efficiency considerations. After some unexciting calculations (which I decided to omit), one may say, alternatively, that for a 150 lb person stair climbing can be said to cost 0.15 Calories per step at 15 cm climb per step.

Thus to burn 3500 Calories you must climb 3500/0.15 = 23,333 steps, or 3.5 km.

How fast does it take to climb that high? The fastest run up the 320m ascent of the Empire State Building is usually around 10 minutes (at 1576 steps). That's about 0.53 m/s. At that pace one could ascend 3.5 km in just under two hours (110 min). Most people will race the Empire building at a pace about half of that (similar to how the average marathon finishing pace is around half the winning time). This would extrapolate to middle of the pack runner taking about 4 hours to reach 3.5 km and burn 1lb of body fat.

Using some novel analysis in an 2010 article, Minetti et al found for vertical ascents higher than 500m one the maximum sustainable energy output is constant after about 400-500m. A person's rate of climb (measured as power output, W) is therefore surprisingly similar for all greater heights. Factoring in some breaks that would be taken and an slower pace if not racing, we see how 6+ hours is a realistic estimate.