Tag: Paul Greer

TRACK COMES TO U.S. NAVAL BASE SAN DIEGO

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FullSizeRender(48)San Diego, CA. — Even as the world celebrates the pinnacle of the art form in Beijing at the 15th IAAF World Track & Field Championships, we are reminded that each and every one of the athletes representing their nation’s colors in China began their journey on an anonymous oval where the top prize arrived upon the smile of Mom or a “Well done” from Dad, and where personal goals created podiums of pride long before the world at large ever took notice.

Last night those smiles, “well dones” and personal satisfactions returned to the old U.S. Navy Base San Diego track for the first time in more than a generation as USATF San Diego long distance chairman Paul Greer and his merry band of tracksters organized the first competitive track and field meeting in 35 years at the home port of the Pacific Fleet. (more…)

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TRYING ON NEW DISTANCES

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With Memorial Day upon us, the shorter road and track & field seasons have begun in earnest.  The Bolder Boulder 10K and the inaugural IAAF World Road Relay kick off the summer action this weekend in Colorado and the Bahamas. But there remain several 26 & 13-milers in California to round out the first half of  the 2014 marathon season, beginning with this weekend’s Cliff Bar MountainS 2 Beach Marathon & Half Marathon from Ojai to Ventura.

Yet with the completion of the spring marathon season we still tend to see many new runners step away to return to their “normal” routines before gearing up for their next long marathon build-up in the fall.

For the last several years my wife Toya has been helping San Diego TC Coach Paul Greer prep hundreds of mostly new local runners for the June 1st Suja Rock `n` Roll Marathon via the club’s Rockin’ & Runnin’ Program. But Toya has several other clients running the Mountains 2 Beach Marathon this Sunday, as well. Since most of her clients are relative newcomers to the game, the following advice she sent out this week was a good reminder of how many of today’s runners remain tethered to either the half or full marathon as the sole expression of their running.  But how, with a little encouragement, they might broaden their horizons and find new challenges to take on. (more…)

RELEASING THE ATHLETE WITHIN

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     Trends come and go, but despite a balky economy running events throughout the country have continued to experience a wave of women participants as the overall numbers in the sport show steady improvement year to year. According to Running USA, women filled 53% of event fields in 2010, men only 47%, a sea-change from the statistics found in the early years of the first running boom of the late 1970s and early 1980s. 

     Notwithstanding this participation boom, and despite the fact that the world’s best runners have continued to produce faster and faster times at the tip of the running spear, there has been no echo boom in terms of competitive improvement in the everyday runner.  Participation alone has become the mantra of the masses.  

But as I found out when my wife Toya began coaching local runners in San Diego this year after receiving her ACE-certification in personal training and exercise science certification from UCSD, there are still runners who have an old-school desire to seek out their limits and discover what literary critic Harold Bloom calls “the difficult pleasure”.

     A mid-30’s marathoner with a demanding full-time job, Jesu Claridad was in many statistical ways today’s typical female runner.  She had run seven marathons with a PR of 4:50. Then she met Toya. (more…)