NBC/USATF Drop Baton

Today was the U.S. Olympic Trials Marathon in Houston.  There were at least 10 runners with Iowa ties in the race, either as prep runners, collegiate runners, or now living and training in Iowa.  The past two weeks have been filled with excitement reading up on how their training has gone and what their strategies for the race was going to be.  Additionally, I have been following several of the other top runners interviews through sites such as FloTrack, RunnersWorld, and RunningTimes.  I anxiously awaited this morning’s coverage of the race. ..........

I am a member of the USATF, have spent over $600 in clothing through their team sales department, and have even been an official volunteer for USATF at the 2010 U.S. Championships.  I even plan to run in a USATF Championship event this year.  So, it pains me to write this, but the coverage was abysmal.

First, NBC owns the rights to the video coverage.  They even dedicated a two-hour time block to broadcast the event.  Unfortunately, they scheduled their coverage to start six hours after the race started.  By then, all interest was gone.  I knew the results, I had seen the post-race interviews on FloTrack, and was not going to reward NBC for their mistake. Additionally, they delayed coverage for 10 minutes while an NHL hockey game finished.  What in the world did NBC air this morning instead of the trials?  Who thought that rebroadcast coverage was superior to live?  Why did they think the afternoon time slot against several NCAA basketball games and the start of an NFL playoff game was better?

NBC, you blew an amazing opportunity for a good national audience and an opportunity to inspire new/existing runners.

Next, the USATF coverage was just as horrible.  Their website linked to mile-by-mile splits for both the men’s and women’s races.  Pretty cool, right?  Until, of course, the site stopped loading data.  The men’s splits stopped after 8 miles and the women’s splits never showed up.  A check right now, has women’s split times intermingled as men’s times and several of each series of splits are still missing.  There were less than 300 runners in all!  Yet, the Boston Marathon can send real-time splits via text messages as well as web-updates covering all 27,000 runners in their race seamlessly.

So, I was forced to get mile-by-mile commentary from someone watching video transmitted by the USATF via the pace car.  Thank you FloTrack!  Sadly, that only provided details on leaders, so I still had no idea how the Iowans were running or even some of the top Americans (like Josh Cox or Deena Kastor).  Worse yet, the video feed cut out during the closing moments of the women’s race, so there were no updates for almost ten minutes.

Finally, the final results were not posted until about 12:30 PM, almost two hours after the last man finished and about 90 minutes after the last woman.  The 7500 runner Living History Farms Off-Road Race here in Iowa processed by Cal Murdoch out of the backseat of his car had results done quicker.

USATF, this is inexcusable.  The fans of American track & field and marathon running expect far greater from the governing body of the greatest team in the world.

Here is my training for the past week.

This week, I had a 20-mile long run and a 2-a-day on the schedule.  Common convention would send me out for the long run on Sunday, but the prospect of getting up at 5:30 AM later in the week to put a run in before work did not appeal to me.  So, I opened the week with the 2-a-day.  I have a hard time figuring out why the Pfitzinger plan has me splitting a 10-mile day into a 6-miler and 4-miler, but later has me doing runs of 13 and 15 miles in addition to the long run.

Anyhow, I did both runs at Ada Hayden and ran loops on the gravel, upland section.  I went solo for both runs today.  I found myself getting into a nice rhythm and rather than backing off into what was supposed to be a 7:30-8:00 pace run, I let myself cruise and enjoy the runs.  First run total: 6 miles – 39:45 (6:38 pace).  Second run total: 4 miles – 26:58 (6:45 pace)

Monday was supposed to be my tempo run while I paced 800-meter repeats, but my running partner was sick, so I went out for my 20-miler.  I did two 10-mile loops on the Stagecoach gravel and hills.  In the middle, I had some makeshift recovery food since I did not plan for this run.  I had a Yoo-Hoo and a NutriGrain bar.  They did the trick and the run went great.  Total: 20 miles – 2:13:43 (6:41 pace)

Tuesday turned into the track workout, but I was too shot from the long run to attempt the tempo continuously (pacing during the repeats and continuing on pace during the recovery).  So, my 10-miler with a 5-mile tempo turned into a 9-mile run with 3 miles of repeats.  Also, I was pacing, and not pushing, so they felt pretty good.  Check back in 4-5 weeks when I’ll be doing them at <2:30 and see how I feel.  My splits were: 2:44-2:40-2:39-2:37-2:36-2:37.  Overall, the effort was not as challenging as the tempo, but the speed work did not go to waste either.  Total: 9 miles – 1:06:56 (7:26 pace)

Wednesday was a nice recovery day.  We ran through Iowa State’s campus and out to the Towers and cross country course.  The weather changed again, dropping about 25 degrees and picking up 20 mph NW winds.  Overall, it wasn’t bad, but we beat the snow by running at 2:00.  Today was the first day in about a week that my right calf and hamstring didn’t have a knot in them, which left me pretty exciting for my next hard workout.  Total: 7 miles – 54:21 (7:46 pace)

The next day I was back inside at ISU.  The first 8 miles were recovery with my running partner and we went 7:41 pace.  I had a fifteen mile run on the schedule for the day, so I ate a PowerBar and went right back at it.  I covered the last 7 miles at a 6:15 pace and just for kicks I pushed HARD on the last half mile.  I ran it in 2:32.  Total: 15 miles – 1:45:17 (7:01 pace)

Friday, was back indoors again.  I had 13 miles total and started off by pacing a progressive run.  This was the first progressive indoors and the facility was easily 75 degrees and very dry too.  It made it a little harder.  I was a little surprised to see an ISU track athlete eating McDonalds, but otherwise the atmosphere was pretty uneventful.  The remaining miles after the progressive went well, but were uninspired.  Total: 13 miles – 1:31:35 (7:03 pace)

Today was a recovery run and we took it outside.  It may have only been 30-degrees and there was some fresh snow on the ground, but it was fantastic.  I do not enjoy a long string of day running indoors.  Facing a third day was already a little daunting.  We went down Bloomington and Duff.  Total: 7 miles – 54:00 (7:43 pace)

This was a great week of running.  I feel fully charged for next week’s challenges and recovered from last week’s aches and pains.

For the week (Sun-Sat), I hit 81 miles in 9:32:35 or 7:04/mile.