North Olympic Discovery Marathon Last weekend I finally put all my running to the test by completing my first marathon; the North Olympic Discovery Marathon. It goes from Sequim to Port Angeles, on the northern coast of the Olympic Peninsula. Overall it was a really good weekend since my family got to come out, spectate, and my Dad and Sister even ran the 1/2 marathon. I was expecting the marathon to feel like a harder training run, but it turned out to be a little more brutal. I thought I would be sore and stuff, but it almost felt like I was waking up from surgery for the next 48 hours (not that extreme, but similar); I just felt beat up! I waddled around for a couple days at work in an attempt to alleviate my stiffness and soreness, and am finally feeling pretty normal. So in the end, I did it in 4:18:45, which works out to 9:53 miles. Its funny because I was 2.5 minutes ahead of schedule when I was running with the 4:10 pacer at mile 19-20, which is a 9:30-ish pace. After about mile 20, I cracked, and was reduced to a measly shuffle. But I’m still happy with my time; if anything it makes me want to do another one since I know I could get one done in under 4 hours if I did another training progression. For footbags, I just have one to show: Also, I received an email from a company in Pakistan called Rakhra International asking if they could use my pictures of my footbags on their website. I was hesitant to comply, and asked to see their site first. I never did say if they could use my material or not, and looked at their website yesterday, and found out they just used all my pictures anyway. EDIT: They have stopped using my pictures and have their own line of footbags now.

Back to Bishop I was lucky enough this past week to get in a bouldering trip down in Bishop, California. The first two days were accompanied by some motivation sapping wind; the kind that blows tents flat to the ground and leaves yours with a nice layer of fine sand all over the inside. Despite the wind, and the following rain storm, the climbing was great. I had a few goals coming into Bishop, but only manged one of them. These goals were to onsight The Checkerboard (V7/8), try to send Xavier’s Roof (V11), and just to try to send a double-digit boulder problem in general. The only one I got was to onsight (technically flash, since I watched some videos of it) The Checkerboard, which was put up by Chris Sharma. Xavier’s Roof was hard… I did all the moves up to the last two holds, but couldn’t pull the last one. It takes putting your foot up at head height and then rocking over on to it to make a 3.5 foot span to the finishing jug. I had high hopes initially, but when I started feeling out that mantle, I figured Xavier’s Roof would have to be bookmarked as a project. In addition to all the bouldering, we also got in a day at Owens River Gorge. It was a good day to give the tips a rest, and I even managed to onsight Theives in the Temple (5.12a). For the week that we spent in Bishop, only one of them was a rest day. By the end, I think we were all feeling a bit destroyed. Our last day I was sort of scrambling to try and fulfill my other goals by searching out a V10 I could hopefully get pretty quickly, but came up short and ended my day by giving close to 50 tries on a super thin V7 called Junior’s Acheivement. I didn’t send, and I just had tips that ached when I tried to untie knots the next morning. Whenever I leave Bishop, I just want to go back!

Lincoln City 10k Last weekend I was able to make it up the coast and run in the Lincoln City 10k. It was a pretty good event, with good food afterwards, a fun course, and a long sleeve technical T-shirt to boot. I had a goal of getting under 50 minutes, and managed to run a lot faster than expected with a time of 46’15.3″. This works out to be 7’27″miles, which I am pretty happy with. I even came in 10th overall, and won my age division! There was a half-marathon as well, so my thought is that all the speedy people did the half-marathon instead of the 10k, which is why it sounds like I did so good. Nonetheless it was a fun weekend. And I also have another footbag; its a baby cougar/country cream atomic pattern:

Lots of Running So my footbag stitching has been sluggish, to say the least. I’ve made two bags in the past couple weeks, both feel good and are 60 grams: Instead of stitching and focusing on footbag, I have been running, climbing, and reading much more than I usually do. On Saturday, I ran 10.3 miles, with about 1000′ of elevation gain, and averaged like 10’20” miles. That doesn’t sound fast, but given the elevation, distance, and the feeling of not being cashed when I finished, I was pretty happy with it. Plus, I had no soreness or tightness afterward; It didn’t feel like it was a big, taxing effort. I think I’ve mentioned in an earlier post that I’m on a marathon training schedule. I figured since this will be my first marathon, I’ll probably just poke along and get it done kind of slowly. Over the past couple weeks though, I’ve been finding that I’m actually getting faster. I can run 9’30” miles comfortably (as in I think I could sustain that pace for up to 2 hours on a flat course), and even did a 9.1 mile run at a 9’20” mile pace without an undue amount of discomfort. It’s pretty cool to see just how effective training can be. (Oh yeah, my run on Saturday put me over 100 miles so far for the year – an arbitrary but fun landmark!) So I’ve been running 4 times a week, and climbing 3-4 times a week as well. Once or twice a week I climb and run on the same days. Even my climbing sessions have been getting longer. I’m starting to climb for a solid 2.5-3 hours every time I go in. It feels pretty good to be exercising and strengthening my entire body, and then be able to see the performance gains. I was talking about this the other day with a friend at the gym; we both agreed that the ideal occupation would be a professional athlete. Getting paid, or at least “making it happen”, to be in top form. Yep, that sounds awesome. The other thing I’ve been doing a lot of is reading. So far in 2012 I’ve finished 5 books: “Freefall” by Joseph Stiglitz (about the collapse of the economy), “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” by Mark Twain, “Relentless Forward Progress: A Guide To Running Ultramarathons” by Bryon Powell, “We The Living” by Ayn Rand (go read it!), “On Truth: The Tyranny of Illusion” by Stefan Molyneux (about the power, stability, and rewards that enacting logic and reason has over just accepting someone’s words as fact). And right now I’m reading “The Assault on Reason” by Al Gore. Right, Al Gore? (Insert Al Gore joke here) Regardless of who wrote it, it has a good conversation about the role, or absence of the role, reason has in today’s politics, government, and how it is conveyed to the public. To round things out, I’ll put up a new link. If you feel like it, you can check out all my runs that I do, and even be a fan: http://www.movescount.com/members/beckermj.

3 New Footbags I’ve got some new footbags to show. Two are regular sized and the third one is a mini, and all are 59-60 grams. In addition to my bags, I also made an updated stitching tutorial. I’ve been wanting to make it for a long time, but never made myself sit down and actually do it. It isn’t a completely new tutorial; I just go over some things that I do differently now and that I think make a better footbag. Also – Field’s Fabric (online fabric store) just started carrying some bright yellow (called sunshine) ultrasuede light! Go get some!