Global Running Day: one new runner at a time!

Another belated post, 3 weeks have passed since this event occurred, time flies when you work hard while traveling around the world... even a few days of time off in Poland with the family didn't help! But, as the saying goes, better late than never, and for my own records at a minimum.

Global Running Day, yet another of these daily celebrations which we don't have enough days in a year to all fit! But what is it exactly?

We have to thank Wikipedia for so much information (not fake news!) made available at our finger prints. I've always liked the concept but didn't remember how many years it did... run! Here you are, it has been 9 years.

Global Running Day is a day that celebrates the sport of running. It is held annually on the first Wednesday of June.[1] Participants of all ages and abilities pledge to take part in some type of running activity by submitting their names through the Global Running Day website. Global Running Day 2018 is scheduled for June 6.
Global Running Day was formerly known as National Running Day and began in the United States. The first event was in 2009.
The inaugural Global Running Day was held on June 1, 2016. More than 2.5 million people from 177 countries pledged to run more than 9.2 million miles. New York City Mayor, Bill de Blasio, declared June 1, 2016 to be Global Running Day in the City of New York.[3] 2014 Boston Marathon winner Meb Keflezighi led a group run from the Boston Run Base,[4] and the Atlanta Track Club organized a “run around the clock” event, where at least one person from the Atlanta metro area would be running every hour of Global Running Day.

Last year I organized a celebration at the IBM location I'd Been Moved to (yes, being moved is something so frequent in our company that some people came up with this alternative acronym meaning a while ago...).

As a group we logged 306 miles on June 6, 2017 so I set the hefty goal of 400 miles this year. I'm not sure what happened this year, the weather wasn't even too hot, but we came up rather short with 211 miles this time.

Now, at the running clinic I organized, there were a handful of experienced runners, even one who knew Michael Wardian and Jim Wamsley (last week, Jim broke the Western States 100-mile course record with an amazing time of 14 hours and 30 minute, shaving off 15 minutes from the previous record, totally mind blowing!). [Photo credits: Henry Wang, IBM]

On the other end of the spectrum, there was a colleague whose husband has organized a trip to Patagonia at the end of the year. She wanted to get ready for this 6-day trek by getting back in shape and taking on running. Perfect timing and it was refreshing to get questions on these initial interrogations which every new runner has, such as breathing, stride, posture, pace, where to run, where to buy shoes and which shoes. Many of the things we take for granted after running for several years.

I ran along her for her first 1.5 miles, stopping twice to let her catch her breath and celebrating this key initial milestone.

I went back on our site 2.2-mile loop and ended up with 15 miles before having to rush to another meeting but very happy to have witnessed the birth of a new runner!

Hope you had a great celebration for that day yourself, 3 weeks ago, and looking forward to seeing the birth of many more runners before we celebrate the 10th anniversary of Global Running Day!

Global Running Day @ IBM SVL: 300 miles in the bank!

Oh, no, I didn't run 300 miles today, just 5% of that, but the point was to get as many colleagues to run, or walk, and log as many miles as a group. Since it was a first for our site, there was no previous reference or benchmark and I'd say: mission accomplished!

The first Wednesday of June has traditionally been National Running Day in many countries. I'm not sure who had the initiative, or if it was even connected to the infamous Global Warming threat, I don't recall the event being global, that is worldwide, the previous years.

I few years ago, I had organized a National Running Day event at North San Jose, the IBM location I was the Senior Site Executive of, on North First Street. This location being vacated last November, I moved to a site further South on Bailey Avenue, so deep in the countryside that we have our own park and farm, or ranch, including a private 2.1-mile trail loop!

We have more than 1,600 people working at the site and reporting to quite a few distinct divisions or groups so it's really challenging to gather everybody around a single theme or activity. Given this context, it was great to get 107 participants accepting to log their run or walk at lunch time for a total of... 300 miles!

I was hoping we would log more than 100 miles as a group, and dreaming of breaking 200 miles maybe, now the bar is set at 300 miles for our next event, wow! Which many asked to occur more frequently than this yearly milestone. We'll certainly try quarterly at least, aiming at monthly eventually.

The weather was perfect, not as hot as yesterday thanks to a nice breeze and a thin layer of clouds. I even heard on NPR tonight that some rain was expected on Sonoma Valley and Silicon Valley tomorrow, very unusual for California in June. It should be light rain showers anyway, but fresh water is always welcome!

Participants appreciated getting refreshments, fruits and granola bar to recharge after the effort, thank you Sandy for setting it up!

I spent more time chatting with participants, answering questions, making new connections, than running but I still managed to run a few loops for a total of 14 mile. Here is the pretty cool Relive.cc flyover (click on the link or the image below to watch the 1-minute video). By the way, it includes an episode when I stopped to chat with colleagues and forgot to restart/resume my Garmin watch, translating in a straight line across the longer loop; oops, rookie mistake! At least you see that we are really in the middle of nowhere, albeit still in San Jose.

I pledged/reported our 300 miles on the Global Running Day website tonight, and the overall number of participants is now at 1,247,761 from 186 countries!

Special thanks to the IBM managers who supported this event, and all the colleagues who joined the fun of this healthy activity on a very special day! Hope you, readers, had your own Running Day celebration with some miles on the treadmill or, better, outdoor (you can let us know in the comments).

Run Happy all as we say at Brooks!

PS: sorry, no group picture, our hundred participants popped up randomly over a period of 3 hours around lunch time.

National Running Day: way to celebrate

There are so many things to celebrate in our world today, every day is an opportunity and has its National label! Fortunately we only stop working for the major ones (Veterans' Day, Memorial, Labor, Martin Luther King's, Thanksgiving) but think of those ones: Earth day, Sewing Machine Day (this Thursday!), Juggling Day, Fudge Day, Eat your Vegetable Day.. And many more available for instance at www.daysoftheyear.com. By the way, sorry Chikara, I'm not going to write about this past Saturday's National Doughnut Day which you enjoyed so much per your Facebook status... ;-) Last week, Wednesday was the annual National Running Day. With about 50 million runners in the US, this could almost be a National Holiday! Like most of the previous years (e.g. 2010), I did extend an invitation for a group run to my IBM colleagues. Last year, a handful registered but none showed up. Thankfully Agnès was able to join me and we ran a few miles together at Alviso. This year, 13 positive responses and 3 shows: not an overwhelming response, but still some progress!

Sandy and Sonoko picked the walk option, starting from the Alviso parking lot

while Sumanth and I started running from the office, 1.25 miles away.

Sumanth has already run a half-marathon and is dreaming of pushing to the marathon. We ran the first 3 miles together and I'm very confident he can do it with some specific training. I went on for 2 more miles (10 miles out and back), far enough to see a dozen of pelicans.

Since the ILOG acquisition and our move to the IBM office on North 1st Street, I've run hundreds of miles on the flat levee of this Santa Clara County Park that too few people know about.

The full loop is 9 miles but you can run any distance and see some birds along the salt ponds and the Alviso Slough which allows boats to access the Bay. There is even a Yacht Club with half a dozen docks:

Again, a nice way to celebrate the most practiced sport in North America, running!

I ran every day last week and logged 107 miles after the 106 miles of the previous week. On Saturday, I ran 31.5 miles from Cupertino to Palo Alto, hopping on the Stevens Creek Trail in Sunnyvale, running through Mountain View's Shoreline Park all the way to the Palo Alto Baylands and airport. It was hot and I was happy to clock a 3:11 marathon and 7:14 min/mile average pace overall for this 50K training run.

On Sunday, I went to the top of Black Mountain on Montebello, did the Bellavista loop for a second ascent of Black Mountain (no walking!) and enjoyed a cold shower at the waterwheel on the way back, seeing Hannes and Monique Vogel again, as we had already met the previous weekend!

Sorry for the delay in posting this account of last week's National Running Day. It was a busy weekend finishing up some work projects and packing for Europe. Next post from Portugal then!

Hello Mr June! June, really?

No, this isn't a scoop, the word went out in November 2010 when the page owners of the "Tribute to the Trails" Calendar Project page on Facebook, Glenn Tachiyama and Wendy Wheeler-Jacobs, sent a preview of the 2011 calendar. Several friends spotted me on the June page and here we are, it's June already! Well, with the cold and rainy weather, it surely doesn't look like June here in North California, what a strange year. I ran by the Stevens Creek reservoir this Saturday morning and it's 100% full! Conversely, Europe, and France in particular, experiences an extreme drought and tornados keep devastating the East of our country...

So, here is the picture Glenn took on the Western States course last June (2010) as we were approaching Duncan Canyon (the aid station manned by the Quicksilver running club of San Jose, my ultra racing club):

Photo credit to Glenn Tachiyama who is doing an amazing job capturing the essence of our sports at so many events and on so many different trails. His contribution to this calendar project helped raise $17,680 for the Washington Trails Association, what a great... Tribute to the Trails!

Just behind me is Meghan Arbogast who was going to finish in second place, just 14 mere minutes behind Tracy Garneau, in 19:15:58 and 22nd overall.

And check this link to the whole album/calendar pages.

Well, June is here indeed but what a strange weather! This Saturday, I ran to the top of Black Mountain in the storm (wind and rain), that was quite unexpected, I've never seen that since we settled in California 13 years ago. No way to get any heat training in this year so far...

Earlier in the week, on Thursday, I organized a National Running Day celebration at the office. Last year, only one runner showed up. This year, 6, quite an increase! We went to Alviso Marina County Park for a 4 mile out and back. We talked about participating to the Silicon Valley Turkey Trot in November as an IBM team.

Also, on Wednesday night, I attended the Vespa night organized by Peter, Gillian and Don at ZombieRunner in Palo Alto.

There was a lot of scientific studies to back up Dr. Stephen Phinney's speech promoting the virtues and benefits of a low carb diet. It certainly is surprising to realize that Inuits for instance can live a normal and very healthy life with a diet based on 15% proteins and 80% fat! Here is one of his article telling you more about the corresponding keto-adaptation mechanism: Ketogenic diets and physical performance.

I personally don't feel ready to kiss goodbye to my dearest carbs (bread and pasta to just name two) but the good news is that we have Vespa to help reaching out to our largest source of energy in our body: the so-called infamous fat! You should give it a try, it really works very well for me and many other athletes to get great runs.

2 graduations (Alex and Greg), one conference in San Francisco (I'm speaking on Wednesday at Semantic Technology, about Decision Modeling), likely not going to log 80 miles as I did this week. But at least a few fast miles, hopefully. And wishing you the same for this week, Run Happy! In the unusually good or bad weather you may have this Spring...

National Running Day: make it two days!

June 2nd, 2010 was the official National Running Day this year. It was also the day Alex had his Congressional Page program departure ceremony in DC, so this is where I celebrated this special occasion to run. On the famous Washington National Mall, with temperatures above 80F at 7:30 in the morning... At least a bit of heat training, at last...

I didn't see that many runners unfortunately despite the occasion, and I don't think the national day was such a hit overall. Besides, while the prospect of running on the Mall again was exciting, having to stop at every intersection makes you lose quite some momentum. Not to mention the opportunities to stop to take pictures of the monument for this tour of the Capital. Quite a few shots from these two days actually, follow my picture "tour" on Picasa!

Apart from running and visiting the city again, it was actually quite an experience to see Alex so at ease in this most official environment and being able to visit non public areas of the Library of Congress, the Congress itself and the Senate, both above and under ground!

Anyway, back to the title, I doubled the celebration by organizing a run at the IBM site I'm attached to on North First Street in San Jose. I created a flier to advertize the run set for June 8th and contacted the local event coordination team so Bev could post the date and location in the weekly newsletter. Out of about 450 employees, 7 responded to the call and registered. Not many, but an opportunity to make new connections and spread the word about the benefits of running. Unfortunately, a last minute all-hands meeting for one of the divisions prevented 4 to join us, and another one bailed out, so we were left with my colleague and running buddy, Michael, and another participant, Wendy. Michael and I were happy to make her discover the nearby Alviso Marina County Park at the bottom of the Bay, an amazing park and wildlife refuge for birds. We ran 5 miles for this inaugural Company run.

Hope the National Running Day will be more popular, more... National, next year to see many more new faces on the roads and trails to experience the joy of running! In the meantime, all, Run Happy out there! :-)