Summer Running, Had Me a Blast
By the time readers have this issue in their hands, I will have participated in five races this season and volunteered at a sixth. Such is our collective joy at the resumption of in-person racing that some of us have gotten a l ittle carried away with registrations! It has been so much fun to test ourselves, to watch elites throw down impressive times and to bask in the togetherness of being outdoors in one place with a lot of other happy, sweaty people.
As much as it was fun to race again, to consider effective training strategies and to really push hard, I have always had a love/hate relationship with racing. I’m sure I’m not alone when I say that racing sometimes elicits fear—of the unknown, of potential failure, of disappointment in our results or of not living up to our potential. I almost always return home after a leisurely weekend long run with a sense of joy and satisfaction, but at a race, I never know if the result will be elation or devastation (or something in between). Some people thrive on this, others less so. For recreational runners or those who are no longer likely to match the PBs they set years ago, is racing worth it? Definitely a subject for a future issue.
For those of us who find summer running challenging due to heat and humidity (or who are training for a race in a hot climate, like many of our elites going to the World Championships in Eugene, Ore., or to ultras like the Western States 100, this issue will be invaluable, with Andrew McKay’s excellent piece about heat training and acclimation. And speaking of the World Championships, Paul Gains takes us into the lore of Oregon’s Hayward Field, which got a dramatic facelift for this meet in 2018–2021. We look forward to bringing you the results— check runningmagazine.ca from July 15 to 24.
We also have a profile of Darius Sam, the youngest person ever to complete the Moab 240—a 240-mile (386-km) race on a single loop in Moab, Utah. Most people would say that successfully finishing such a long race requires not only dedicated training and experience, but co-ordinated support; at 21, Sam had none of these. This is his remarkable story.
Reading about running: the marriage of two of my favourite things!