Every run is a good run, but here are some worth planning, saving and training toward.
Inside one of America's top tourist locales is a runner's paradise.
When John D. Rockefeller owned the land that now comprises Acadia National Park in Bar Harbor, Maine, he had a series of carriage roads built. Today, these 45 miles of wide, crushed-stone roads are closed to motorized traffic. Even at the height of summer tourist season, then, they're more a sojourn through unfettered nature than a run amid the madding crowd.
And what nature! Lakes and ponds formed by the retreat of Ice Age glaciers, a mix of evergreen and deciduous trees, crisp, cool air, and that sweet, forgiving surface underfoot rolling through valleys and up and over small mountains. Run there at peak fall foliage and you'll be excused for thinking you're running through a master landscapist's painting.
Adding to the this-is-what-I-think-about-when-I-fantasize-about-running-locales factor is that the carriage roads are linked throughout the park, with easy-to-follow signs pointing the way at all intersections. It's rare for me to run on them and not wind up adding on just to spend more time bathed in peak experience.
Over the last three decades I've run in most states and on four continents. If I had to pick one location to spend the rest of my running days in, it would be Acadia's carriage roads.
Scott Douglas
First Boston Marathon? Here‘s What to Know
The exploration inherent in all running becomes writ large when you're away from home. A few runs in a new land teach you more about its character, and give you a better sense of local daily life, than the view from a car or the words of a tour guide. Our means of moving is fast enough to allow us to cover a decently wide area, yet slow enough to allow us to truly observe and absorb. Running through unfamiliar lands allows us to be more traveler than tourist.
That being the case, what better way to say you've really seen the world than to run on every continent? Travel logistics will almost certainly mean you'll be on the ground for at least a few days, ample time to branch off in different directions and see a wide range of quotidian and geographic details. And, of course, you'll be a lot more likely to find good places for post-run refueling.
S.D.
There's an inherent satisfaction to be found in a geographical run: around the lake, to the top of the mountain, across the canyon. One of the grandest geographical runs is coast-to-coast, Atlantic to Pacific or vice versa. Doing it requires two to five months away from your job, an ultrarunner's penchant for long runs day after day after day, and either a friend with an RV and time to drive alongside you or friends in every town from New Jersey to California (see runtheusa.com). But the things you'll see: grand cities, quiet towns, wooded Eastern mountain passes, Western rocky peaks, grand prairies, deserts, storms -- the vast expanse of this continent. And in the end, the ability to look at any map of the country and say, "I ran from there ... to there."
A much more attainable coast-to-coast run is available in Panama, where 50 miles takes you from the Caribbean port of Colon, up over the jungle-covered hills of the isthmus, alongside Gatun Lake and the locks of the canal, and, finally, down to the rolling waves of the Pacific alongside cosmopolitan Panama City. You can do it in a day, once you get there (best to do as part of a larger vacation). While it isn't a half-year odyssey, it is a challenge, with heat, hills, and inevitably a downpour or two such as you've never seen elsewhere in the world.
Jonathan Beverly
Baseball geeks have their fantasy camps, where they hobnob with old-timers in a contrived setting. Runners can do them several orders better by plopping themselves down in Iten, Kenya, and learning from past, current and future Olympians in one of the running capitals of the world.
Godfrey Kiprotich, a former elite who helps to run the KIMbia Athletics camp in Iten, estimates that this farming town of less than 10,000 people atop the Rift Valley contains at any time at least 500 professional-class runners. One of the many perspective-providing lessons of time in Iten is that phrase "professional-class," by which Kiprotich means runners capable of winning money right now on the U.S. or European road circuit. Thing is, many if not most have never left Kenya, and dedicate their lives to running in the slight hope that they might one day get a chance to compete overseas. Put another way, in Iten there are a few hundred runners dreaming of being the next Allan Kiprono, who had never raced outside of Kenya before taking world cross country champion Gebre Gebremariam to the line at August's Beach to Beacon 10K.
What does this have to do with you? If you ever want to have your internal gauge of what matters in running reset, go to Iten. You won't find prima donnas or AlterGs or obsessions over shoes and gear or gadgetry run amok. You'll find simple, hard training, usually three times a day, in groups where someone is always going to feel better than you. You'll remember how good it is to be regularly humbled. You'll think you've run as long and hard as you can, and then you'll hang on for another few minutes, and then another few minutes, and then the run will be over. You'll experience firsthand just how slow some of the best runners in the world go on their recovery runs. (Even at 8,000 feet of altitude, you'll be able to keep up with them.) You'll be reminded that a bad run is just that, a bad run, not the end of the world, not the end of your season or competitive hopes. You'll relearn the faith that good luck follows hard work. You'll never forget that the only "secret" is there are no secrets.
And when you get home and return to your routine, you'll find it a little harder to come up with excuses, a little easier to resist the voice telling you to back off on the fourth of your eight repeats. You'll have been reborn as a runner.
Former world cross country champion Lornah Kiplagat runs a training center in Iten with Western-style accommodations. See lornah.com.
S.D.
Running Times Editorial Staff
Get a dozen of your favorite running friends together, rent a couple of vans and you've got all the makings for 24 hours of sweaty, stinky, sleepless fun. During a race like the Hood to Coast Relay (hoodtocoast.com), not only do you get to run three fast races in less than a day, but you also get to encounter the best and worst traits of your buddies in the middle of the night. It's the most fun you can have while racing this hard. You come up with wacky nicknames for each other. You run with glow sticks. And, of course, you don't have the time or opportunity to shower. The crazy thing about relays is that no matter how tired you are, you're bound to run faster in each of your subsequent relay assignments, even if you're too giddy to make any sense of your splits while running a 6.7-mile leg at 3:30 a.m. Of course, there's nothing like having a green apple PowerGel, a salt tablet and a swig of Accelerade as your pre-run breakfast, either.
Brian Metzler
CHASE PRE
Those lucky enough to race around the oval at Hayward Field in Eugene, Ore., know it's like no place else in the world. The fans are as vociferous and knowledgeable as any sporting venue in the U.S., and they're known for picking up runners with a rhythmic staccato clap and carrying them to the finish line. "Yeah, this is by far the best place to run anywhere," says U.S. 10,000m record-holder Chris Solinsky. "You might not be leading the race, but they're there for you."
Recreational runners can get their own thrill of running at the legendary oval in one of the Oregon Track Club's five late-summer all-comers meets (oregontrackclub.org). For a $3 entry fee, you can race three events that range from 400m to 5,000m (plus field events and hurdles) and get a chance to chase the ghost of Steve Prefontaine. A short trip to Eugene lets you also run Pre's Trail and other routes around Track Town USA. The grandstands are mostly empty during the citizen meets, but it's not hard to imagine a roaring crowd as you hammer down the homestretch.
B.M
London Marathon Results
There's something acutely challenging about running at 10,560 feet, roughly the base elevation of Leadville, Colo. -- the highest incorporated city in the U.S. -- a full 2 miles above sea level. Even though the air you breathe is still made up of 21 percent oxygen, there are fewer oxygen molecules, meaning your lungs and heart are all working considerably harder to get fuel to your muscles, but your blood still winds up oxygen-depleted, or hypoxic. You can feel it in just a few steps if you run from 6th & Harrison streets in Leadville at the start of the Leadville 10K, Leadville Trail Marathon or the Leadville 100. Still, with good fitness and a bit of acclimatization, your body can adjust and grind through the miles. A long run at that altitude (whether 10 miles, 26.2 or 100) gives a whole new meaning to "heavy legs," but there's something sublime in knowing you can adapt to running so high in the sky.
Running above 14,000 feet -- to the top of one of Colorado's 54 highest peaks -- is a whole different ballgame, with considerably fewer oxygen molecules in every breath you take. While it can be quite a painful thrill to run the paved road to the summit of 14,264-foot Mt. Evans (racingandergroand.com), or the trail to the top of 14,115-foot Pikes Peak (pikespeakmarathon.com), that effort just adds to the rush of the "top-of-the-world" elation at the summit.
B.M.
Do you recall the old joke about someone asking directions in New York? Q: "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?" A: "Practice, practice, practice." As Marty Liquori said, "Road racing is rock 'n' roll; track is Carnegie Hall," and the way to a national championship track meet is no different: practice, practice, practice. Unlike a road championship where the masses run with the elites, track meets limit their fields, and championships are reserved for the select, chosen few. In 2010, you had to run 13:52 for 5,000m if you're a man, 15:55 if a woman. Or 29:01/33:55 for the 10,000m. Even ifyou have next-to-zero chance of medaling, standing on the track amid this elite cohort is worth putting the rest of your life on hold for, even if it takes several years to pursue this single dream.
Nowhere near that standard, even if you could quit your job and do nothing but train? You can still run in the rarefied air of the track in the national club championships with much slower qualifying times (15:30/19:00 for 5,000m and 33:30/40:30 for 10,000m) or at the masters national championships for age 30 and up, which requires no qualifying times, just the courage to put yourself out on the unforgiving oval. The reward? A race defined exclusively by time on the best venue designed by man for running fast, and a memory of giving your all in a whirlwind of fellow serious athletes. (For more on all championships, see usatf.org.)
J.B
Forget arbitrary routes laid out on a suburban grid with each mile tidily marked. Nearly every weekend (and some weeknights) in Ireland they gather at the bottom of one of their craggy hills and say, "Race you to the top and back."
The Irish have been doing this for centuries. Legend has it aging hero Finn McCool decided to choose a wife by staging a women's race up and down a mountain in County Tipperary (some versions say it was a nude women's race). Unfortunately for Finn, the winner had a mind of her own as well as great legs, and ran off with his handsome cousin, Diarmuid. This set the sport back a bit, but the mountain still bears the name Slievenamon, Mountain of the Women. In Ireland, legend and reality lie side by side: You can race Slievenamon today; the January race is 8K with 591m of climb, with course records of 33:55 (men) and 42:12 (women).
Every hill here has such a rich and shrouded history, and each is as unique as its name -- Annacurra, Ballyhoura, Slieve na Muc, Croagh Patrick, Carrauntoohil. The competition lives up to the scenery: You'll find living legends and friendly comrades as you slash through gorse and heather, climb into the clouds, slog across bogs, and fly down rocky ridges with a panorama of green pasture and rugged coastline displayed below you. Post-race, the awards and war stories at a local pub are unmatched in hospitality and joie-de-vivre. (Details at imra.ie.)
J.B.
London Marathon Results
Some classic events every runner should aspire to do once in their life. Not because your life would be incomplete if you didn't do them, but because they provide a barometer of excellence by which to measure other race experiences. For most of these, the first trick is getting a race bib, as each sells out quickly.
01 BOSTON MARATHON
Running the oldest marathon in the U.S. never gets old. For sub-elite competitive runners, qualifying for Boston is one of the few non-arbitrary measures of having achieved a level of success. Test yourself on the Newton Hills when you're 30 and go back and do it again when you're 40, 50 and 60. Fortunately, the raucous Wellesley College girls are always young and always loud.
02 Races - Places
Heading for its 100th edition, this 12K across San Francisco is a fast, competitive race for some and a wild costume party for others. Those lines tend to blur when you get passed by a centipede of runners cruising along at 5:30 pace. For an extra challenge, you can run it naked.
03 THE DIPSEA
With its age and gender handicapping system, this 7.1-mile trail race in Mill Valley, Calif., gives slower runners a 1- to 22-minute head start and creates an exhilarating cross-country-style mayhem as you maneuver up a flight of 672 stairs, over relentless rolling terrain and down devil-may-care descents on the way to the finish line at Stinson Beach.
04 Download Your Training Plan
The race that started the ultrarunning movement in the U.S. is one of the hardest 100-milers on the planet, which is why the entry criteria demand that you've put in your miles before you can get your butt to the starting line. In theory, running 100 miles from Squaw Valley to Auburn, Calif., is your reward for getting in.
05 PIKES PEAK
The 13.3-mile trail to the top of this 14,115-foot Colorado mountain that inspired the "purple mountain majesty" line in "American the Beautiful," can seem never-ending, which is why a lot of runners first opt only for the Ascent. But what goes up, must come down, which is why most return to tackle the marathon.
06 PEACHTREE 10K
Remember that Nike "No Finish Line" poster of the mid-1980s showing runners collapsed under a spray of hoses in the heat at the end of a 10K? Think July 4 in Atlanta and you know what this race is all about. Hot, fast, and did we mention hot? Yet perennially one of the largest road races on the planet.
07 A Part of Hearst Digital Media
In her pre-race greeting from Staten Island just before the start, New York Road Runners president Mary Wittenberg welcomes everyone to the "Running Capital of the World." Whether you buy into that claim, there's little that compares to the sights, sounds and smells of weaving through the Big Apple's five boroughs en route to the finish line in Central Park. And if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.
