Wednesday, January 16, 2008

In training, and plans for tour

I keep myself in reasonable shape; my freelance assignments involve remote, steep places. Because of this, I've decided to step it up a bit and train for my third marathon. San Francisco is a perfect place for this. It is pedestrian-friendly compared to NYC. Just getting to Noe Valley and back is a real workout; it's not long but the hills are steep. I love running on Irving. There are so many places to carb-load along the way (Arizmendi Bakery, for example.) The best part is the long traverse through Golden Gate Park. I love to run from the Haight to Ocean Beach and back, staying in the park for most of the way. Of course, there are occasional drug dealers stepping in front of me (the other day, I had 11 offers) For the most part, they are harmless. I think of them as speedbumps.
Also, I plan to be on tour to talk about my book soon (probably in summer.) I'm getting together a power-point presentation regarding the trail. Details to follow. This will be extremely low-budget (no brown m & ms and trashing motel rooms)
P.S., I am unfamiliar with drug nomenclature; wondering if anyone can translate "nuggets'' for me.

3 comments:

maud said...

Which marathons did you run? What was your best time? How many miles a week do you run while training? I'm considering running a marathon and would like some advice.

cactuseaters said...

hi, Maud. I've run two so far: the Napa Valley Marathon and the San Francisco Marathon. My best time was in Napa Valley --- four hours, six minutes. I would recommend doing the Napa Valley first (if you live around here) because it's such a beautiful and reasonable course. In fact, the last half of it is all downhill --- although I hit the wall so hard that it seemed like uphill! (the SF Marathon course is terrific but the hills really wore me out me when I did it. I hit the wall so hard on that one.) My best advice would be to build up slowly and gradually. Don't be overambitious at the beginning. I also liked the New York Marathon schedule (available on the Internet; I would go with the 'novice' training schedule, which emphasizes the 'build up slowly and relax'' approach. Eventually, you run some pretty big miles on the weekends, then you roll back to the shorter runs. Give it a try and let me know how it goes. By the way, the Bay Area is an outstanding place for marathoning. There is a lot of community support, group training opportunities, etc. Good luck with this! DW

cactuseaters said...

uh oh .. i think I gave Maud too much information!!!!