Upcoming Coach Kiprunning Website Updates

Our Coach Kiprunning website underwent a significant revision roughly two years ago.  In that time, we have monitored traffic on the site to get the best sense of how our visitors are interacting with it and what improvements we can continue to make to it.

Now the time has come to work on some additional updates and tweaks to the site, keeping in mind the ways that we can offer our visitors the best user experience possible.

As a result, it is possible, though we hope to minimize this possibility, that our visitors might experience modest interruptions and glitches on the site over the next few weeks as we tinker with it. We apologize in advance for these slight inconveniences.

To try to remain accessible to all of you, we are alerting you once again that our contact information is included in the bottom right margin of this blog.  Please let us know if you have questions about Kiprunning's coaching services or the Sports Club and if, for any reason, you are having difficulty finding the appropriate information on the official website.  You can also feel free to hit me up on Twitter @JosephPFisher1.

We hope to have everything updated by mid-summer, so we are going to work to be as efficient as possible.  Thanks for your patience.

P.S.  Stay connected with us this blog, too.  We will continue to update it while we are working on the website.

Sunday Funny

Late last week, Washingtonian Magazine published a great exposé on the mythological being known as The Sun.  Supposedly, this being was ready to emerge to dry off the rain-soaked DC area, providing us with something called "warmth" in the process:

Warmth is a feeling brought about by The Sun and its magical rays. It starts on the skin’s surface and eventually melts into your bones, provoking you to take off your wooly cardigan and lift your face towards the sky. Important: DO NOT lift your face toward the sky if the rain continues. You will get wet again and you are out of dry towels.

Warmth is apparently a thing that runners need to monitor, because it is something that, according to Runner's World, can have a negative effect on a runner's physical well-being.  We trust that this is true, but as of today, we are uncertain if warmth, or "warmth," will ever visit our humble urban center.

In the meantime, please read both of the above hyperlinked articles in anticipation of the remote possibility that at some undetermined time in the future, we will be "warm," "dry," and full of joy.

Kiprunning Sports Club Training Update: 5/14/2016

The Kiprunning Sports Club will meet this Saturday morning, 5/14/16, at 7:45 am for our usually scheduled long run.  As always, we will meet at Georgetown Running Company, which is located at 3401 M St. NW, Washington, DC 20007.

In the meantime, if you have questions about your workout, or about the Sports Club in general, please contact me.

Race Recap: 2016 DC Komen 5K Race for the Cure

This past Saturday, I ran my fifth Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure 5K, the race dedicated to fighting breast cancer. As always, the experience was amazing. Estimates place the total field at about 15,000 people, which is just incredible for a 5K. People from all walks of life participate in this event, and the proceeds go to a great cause.

The start of the 2016 DC Komen 5K Race for the Cure

For me, this is a race of remembrance and a chance to make a small contribution to cancer research. When I participate in this race, I remember my mother, who I lost to an unrelated form of cancer, which she struggled with for a long time. A few springs back, I lost her just a couple of weeks before the Komen 5K.

This race is filled with great people

I say all of this to emphasize that, sometimes, it’s best to approach races like this without the usual goals of setting a PR or winning an award. Instead, it can be a great experience simply to enjoy the course—the Komen DC route is particularly beautiful—and knowing that your effort is supporting a cause that benefits thousands of people.

I ran well on Saturday. The course is flat and fast, and if you are looking for a 5K PR, this is a good race for that, particularly if the weather cooperates (Saturday morning was quite beautiful—partly sunny and in the 50s).

A view of the Jefferson Memorial

Joseph P. Fisher insisted on this duck picture

The field tends to be more relaxed and recreational, but there are always a few very competitive runners who participate in the race. Again, I have run this race five times, and I have been fortunate enough to win it three times. No matter how I perform, though, I always enjoy the opportunity to run strong with some local runners.

Congratulations to all the runners and walkers of the 2016 Susan G. Komen race. It was great to be out there with all of you.

Remember, run steady, and run strong.

Wilson

Coach Kiprunning at Legal Deboccery with The Capital Area Food Bank

Coach Kiprunning was honored to be a part of the 2016 Legal Deboccery event, organized by the Women's Bar Association.  This event was held at Pinstripes in Georgetown.

For the third consecutive year, Legal Deboccery has served as the kickoff event for the Capital Area Food Bank's Food from the Bar Campaign. This campaign is a partnership between the Capital Area Food Bank and DC's legal community. In 2015 alone, the Food from the Bar Campaign raised $261,000 for hunger relief efforts in Washington, DC; Maryland; and Virginia.  Since 2008, the DC legal community has provided funding for over 2,000,000 meals.

Legal Deboccery was sponsored by Koonz, McKenney, Johnson, DePaolis & Lightfoot; Alderson Court Reporting; and Joseph, Greenwald & Laake, PA.  Raffle prizes were provided by Coach Kiprunning, Running Specialty Group (care of Georgetown Running Company), DC Road Runners, Mayor Muriel Bowser, LexisNexis, Pinstripes, and Blue Star Case Solutions.

Once again, we are grateful that we were asked to participate in this event, and we look forward to being a part of similar events in the future.

Event photos below:

Kiprunning Sports Club Training Update: 5/7/2016

Runners,

The Kiprunning Sports Club will not be meeting this Saturday morning, 5/7/16, for our long run.  I will be competing in the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure, and as a result, I will not be available to coordinate this Saturday's workout.

In the meantime, if you have questions about your workout, please contact me.

We will continue with the Saturday morning long runs on the morning of May 14, 2016.  Sports Club members should plan to meet at 7:45 am at Georgetown Running Company on that day.

Race Recap: 2016 New Jersey Half Marathon

Runners do actually "run the shore" in this race

Though I didn't participate in this year's New Jersey Half (or full) Marathon, I had a great time attending the event and watching the race.  I've run in both the half and full marathons in the past, and I do think that this race is rapidly becoming one of my favorite spring running events.  The field is not too large--but yet remains serious and competitive--so the registration process is very low stress. The organizers also allow for event changes and registration deferrals, both of which are helpful when unexpected injuries--are there any other kind of injuries?--arise.  Finally, the support along the course is seamless and professional, making it an experience that is on par with the race's more famous Northeast siblings in New York and Boston.

The respective courses, in their own ways, offer runners exactly the kind of running routes that they need to perform well.  The half marathon course, which roughly follows the first 11 miles of the full marathon course, snakes back and forth through  Oceanport, Monmouth Beach, and Long Branch, offering participants a good amount of shielding from any aggressive winds coming off of the ocean. This portion of the course offers the race's only significant hills, and those hills only climb a few modest feet in elevation.  Beyond that, the course is flat, and after the first 8 miles, it starts to stretch out, giving everyone an opportunity to work the last 5K without the interference of sharp turns.

The full marathon course hooks south on Ocean Avenue at roughly mile 11.5, at which point the course turns into an elongated straightaway through Deal and out to Asbury Park and Ocean Grove. This stretch is helpful for marathoners as they are settling into a cruise pace on the way out and are, we hope, hanging onto a more aggressive pace on the way back.  The only tricky factor here can be the elements.  If it's hot, runners are really exposed on this stretch for most of the second half of the race.  The same applies in windy conditions and, as was the case this past Sunday, rainy weather as well.  Still, this section of the course affords runners an excellent opportunity to establish solid consistent pacing on the back end of the race.

In addition, the spectating experience is equally excellent.  Since the race begins in one of the large parking lots at Monmouth Park racetrack, runners and spectators alike have plenty of room to get to the start and to get the kind of positioning that they want.

Even if you are fast, you are not horse racing fast, but you feel that way when a bugler calls you to post

It's also worth nothing that this race is one of the few where the start line experience is similarly exciting for both runners and spectators.  Each of the event's waves are called to post by Monmouth Park's bugler, which is both adorable and energizing, even if you are only boarding a spectator bus to take you to mile 10, which is what I did.

Speaking of mile 10, excellent coffee for the spectators:

Their pastries are really good, too

Coach Kiprunning did have one runner compete in this past Sunday's event--my brother Kevin, actually--and he set a PR by about eleven minutes, so that was really, really great.  Last Sunday's conditions were not ideal--it started to rain with conviction about an hour after the race began--so to have anyone set a PR on that day (I'm sure many people did) was definitely a great accomplishment. Chronotrack lists the results for both races, so give them a look.  It was a good, if wet, day out there. Congratulations to all of you.