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Twin Cities Running Stores

crossn81 — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 14:22:27 +0000

You can buy shoes almost anywhere it seems. But runners tend to be a little more picky about shoes that are going to carry them over the miles. Most runners tend to prefer a good quality running shoe or the growing trend of going barefoot. Even barefooters need clothing and accessories. So I’ve compiled a list of the “running specialty stores” in the Twin Cities metro area. I’ve commented as best I can on them. I’ve listed the Top 5, followed by a few others! I hope this list is helpful and please provide feedback on your experiences.

	Run N Fun – St Paul, Burnsville If you were to ask most of the guys I run with, they would say this is the only running store to visit. The Burnsville store just opened last year and their St Paul store was in the news due to a robbery. Their staff is extremely knowledgeable and experienced. The St Paul store, which I’ve been to a few times, covers 3 or 4 store fronts and offers quite a range of merchandise. Like most of the other stores they offer a great discount for local running clubs (I know the MDRA and USATF-MN). They have a Facebook group that shares photos, upcoming events, and information. Finally, Run N’ Fun is the choice of most of the local college teams.
	Marathon Sports – Minneapolis This is probably the running store I’ve been in the most. The MDRA training groups have had special discounted events there. Most recently I won a gift certificate from the MDRA Annual Party. They are known for having a doctor in the store twice a month. They are also located a block from Lake Harriet. I’ve always been impressed with the staff and the products they offer. The last event hosted there included post-run bagels and drinks plus a special discount (larger than the normal MDRA).
	Running Room – Minneapolis, Burnsville, Woodbury, St Paul, Rochester, and Maple Grove This is the closest store to our house and I’ve been there a few times. They are the most “corporate” of the specialty stores. Running Room is a chain of stores in Minnesota, Iowa, and Canada. I was not overly impressed with their staff the few times I’ve been there. But they have some amazing sales. One thing that sets the Running Room apart is their marketing machine. It helps to have the large corporate backing (i.e. not being family owned) but they have a monthly newsletter and sales.
	Gear – Edina I’ve never actually been into this store. Some friends of mine really love it and say it is one of the best running stores. Here is their Facebook Fan Page. It is actually very close to Marathon Sports.
	TC Running Company – Eden Prairie We visited this store one night for a Team USA-Minnesota event. Nothing really stands out to me about that brief experience. They sponsor a team and have an RV that makes appearances at races. Their Athlinks page has some great info.

Other Running Stores

I included some “corporate” stores, because they do sell running shoes and occasionally the staff can be very helpful. In college we actually went to Finish Line. They didn’t really provide much technical help, but we got a good discount.

Schuler’s Shoes (Twin Cities New Balance) – Bloomington, Burnsville, Golden Valley, Maple Grove, Roseville, Saint Cloud, St Louis Park, and Woodbury

Runner’s Edge – St Paul Their website doesn’t work and the phone rings and rings. Anyone know if they are open still?

Nokomis Shoe Shop – Minneapolis

Runners Gate – Lakeville

Gear West – Long Lake

Start Line – Minnetonka

REI - Roseville, Bloomington, Maple Grove

Foot Locker – Minneapolis, St Paul, Richfield, Edina

Finish Line - Burnsville, Mall of America, Minnetonka, Maple Grove

Technorati Tags: Running Shoe Stores, Shoes, Store, Twin Cities

7 Christmas Gift Ideas

crossn81 — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 01:55:25 +0000

: Image by chotda via Flickr

As the gift-giving season of Christmas approaches here are seven ideas for the runner in your life. Oh wait, that is probably you. Let your gift giving friend see this list! The following links are to my reviews of the product so you can see what I thought before you add it to your list.

I really enjoyed the Spirit of the Marathon movie.
I continue to wear my Pearl Izumi Go Shorts.
Hopefully you don’t need it, but if you have Plantar Fasciitis then I recommend the Strassburg Sock.
I have really enjoyed my Garmin 205 and would recommend any Garmin watch that is 205 or higher.
If you prefer to read I highly recommend Once a Runner by John Parker,
for those with a sense of the spiritual side, Running the Sacred Art by Warren Kay,
and don’t forget Blaine Moore’s book about Marathon Preparation and Recovery.

If you really like to read I’ve created an Amazon collection of recommended running books.

Whenever possible the posts contain links to my Amazon Affiliate account where I earn a very small % of each sale (which will hopefully help make my Christmas that much better – but probably not since I haven’t earned very much to date.)

If you wanna buy me a gift check out my Amazon Wish List!! hint, hint.

Guest Post: Tune-up Races

crossn81 — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 14:49:50 +0000

Coach Mike Nawrocki with MDRA’s 2009 Fall Marathon Training Class had some good words to say about tune-up racing for the marathon.

You may be asking, what is a tune-up race? It is a race you run between now and Labor Day weekend to simulate the race day environment of a marathon. I recommend some of the bigger races with fast fields, because that will be closest to what you will experience when the marathon comes around.

Why do a tune-up race?
a. Fourteen weeks is a long time to train without racing. A tune-up race helps break your training up into smaller pieces, so this training process won’t feel like such a grind.

b. Practice race day logistics. Take it from a savvy veteran like me, who famously (infamously?) ran the first mile and a half of the 2006 TC10 with a safety pin in my sock: race day logistics matter. I lost over a minute fishing that **&%$# safety pin out of my sock and am still bitter every time I see a safety pin (unfortunate, because they are used at every race, making me one bitter guy). A tune-up race allows you to practice your eating, bathroom, drinking, and gear preparation routine.

c. Practice pacing and running your own race. Savvy veterans and eager rookies alike need to practice race-day pacing. Running a tune-up race is a low-stakes way to find out if you are prone to being unwittingly sucked out to a faster start than you intend. Better to find this out now than at mile two of the Twin Cities Marathon.

d. Help determine your marathon pace vs. Practice your marathon pace. Don’t know what your marathon pace should be? Race a ten miler, 15k, or half-marathon. Consult me or Marty afterwards and we can put the race in the context of your training to help you come up with a goal pace for October 4. Already know your goal pace? Go run a half-marathon at that pace. See if you can hold it without getting sucked into the dynamic of racing harder.

Buyer Beware
a. Tune-up races may not be for everyone. If you are recovering from, nursing, or managing an injury, a race could very well be too risky in terms of aggravating this injury. Remember everyone’s second goal for this class: get to the starting line healthy.

b. Racing is essentially a hard workout. You should contact me or Marty for guidance on how to train the week before and after any tune-up race.

c. No races after Labor Day. It breaks my heart to not recommend the MDRA City of Lakes 25k to everyone, because I serve on the MDRA board and have MDRA pride. But it’s just a tad too close to the marathon. Talk to Marty or me if you are interested in the City of Lakes race and we can decide together if it is a good idea. If your competitive streak is such that you are prone to racing hard no matter what, City of Lakes or any post-Labor Day race is just too close to the target marathon, as you may put wear and tear on your legs without enough time to fully recover.

Thanks Mike!

2009 Marathon Class #1

crossn81 — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 15:57:59 +0000

The first “class” session of this year’s Fall Marathon Training program focused on three areas

1) Places to run in the Twin Cities Metro

2) Training Philosophy

3) Goal Setting

Where to Run in the Twin Cities Metro?

Of course I’ve written about great places to run, some of which Nathan included in his presentation:

Here are some links to the places he talked about:

Minneapolis City Bike Routes
Hennepin County Bike Maps
St Paul City Bike Routes
Metropolitan Council Routes
Three Rivers Park District (lots of parks and trails)
Fort Snelling State Park
Afton State Park
Minnesota Monthly lists some other bike trails
Dakota County Parks – including Lebanon Hills and Terrance Oaks
Kate Havelin’s Minnesota Running Trails book

Listen to the audio of Nathan’s presentation here. [See post to listen to audio]

Marty and Mike talked about the training philosophy of this year’s class (I guess it varies slightly with each year’s coaches) and what we might expect. Marty mentions that he isn’t a huge proponent of using lots of fancy terminology or wasting money on expensive tests for things like VO2 Max or Lactic Threshold. He subscribes to a more “old school” mentality of getting the miles in and alternating between hard and easy runs. With a diverse group of athletes in the room, he said that we won’t work much on specific speed workouts but getting the long runs in and doing some hill training. We are hitting the hills much earlier this year than last and knowing these guys we’ll be doing some long runs on hills as well. Their goal, as stated later by Mike is to make sure we have fun and cross the finish line.

Feel free to listen to their sometimes humorous discussion here.

[See post to listen to audio] For some reason I can’t get this to work. Any suggestions? It is the same exact link as the one above… You can scroll to the bottom and listen to the full audio – this section begins about 16 minutes in.

Mike continued the evening’s discussion with a talk about goal setting. He used a simple pyramid diagram to show what the most important goals are. The three main goals of a training program are to

1) Have fun/good experience in the training program

2) Get to the starting line healthy

3) Finish (this is then split into 3 subcategories)

a) Finish

b) Target Pace – Double your 1/2 marathon time and add 10 minutes (similar to McMillian Calculator)

c) Dream time – This is a stretch goal that you shouldn’t even think about on race day until after the 1/2 way point and really start going for it after 20 miles.

Listen the audio of Mike’s presentation here. [See post to listen to audio]

You can listen the complete audio (about an hour long from this first session here) [See post to listen to audio]

Got IT Pain?

crossn81 — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 10:21:19 +0000

A tight IT Band is not a good sign. It needs to be stretched out and loosened up or it could turn into the dreaded IT Band Syndrome.

I was told my a massuse last year that my IT Band was extremely tight. So I started stretching it on a regular basis. I did some research and found this excellent information sheet about the IT Band. By a trained physical therapist it lists some of the who, what, when, where, why, and how questions of the IT Band.

I think most of us are most concerned about not having problems with it and could care less about some of the anatomy that surrounds it. She lists five keys to preventing ITBS – but they are actually almost identical steps to preventing any injury!

The list is:

- Changing running shoes every 300-400 miles and alternating between shoes with every run. I’ve occasionally talked about my shoes and shoe preferences.

- Slowly increasing mileage (no more than 10% a week or on any run), including adding hill workouts gradually. Downhills can add a lot of strain to the ITB.

- Avoid uneven surfaces. More likely always running on the same side of a cambered or cantered surface like a road. One leg can become predisposed to ITB because of the extra pressure placed on it.

- Keep the knees warm. Seems like if you are predisposed this might be helpful. She said below 60 – but above 40 I’m wanting to wear shorts.

- Cool down and stretch after a run. Ice if needed.

The article continues on and offers some stretches and strength training ideas specific to the ITB. For now you’ll just have to go read up on it.

Technorati Tags: IT Band, ITBS, iliotibial band

Google Earth – Enhanced Features Free

crossn81 — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 09:19:07 +0000

You can do some great things with Google Earth if you spend some time getting to know the program. It can be fun to zoom around the world and look at different city and countries. Lots of organizations have created mashups using Google Earth, like this one about the genocide in Darfur.

I wasn’t convinved about Google Earth until I found the feature that allows you to add your GPS “tracks” and create an image of your run. Most recently I did this for the Securian Frozen Half course. Here is what it looked like:

You can spin it, zoom in on the image, add the 3D skyscrapers, add landmarks, and a lot more. Last year I paid a whopping $20 to have the privilege of adding GPS technology to my free Google Earth software. I thought it was a small price to pay for some cool images.

I recently received an e-mail saying that the latest upgrade to Google Earth 5.0 will now include free GPS data imports. Err they took my money and now offer it for free. If you still want to pay you can get a Google Earth Pro account which offers some excellent features (but not ones I need).

The latest version of Google Earth lets customers import and track global positioning system (GPS) data. Our Google Earth Plus customers told us GPS tracking is one of the main reasons they choose Google Earth Plus. Now, since you can use this feature for free in Google Earth 5.0, there’s little separation between Plus and the free product. In order to simplify the decision of which version of Google Earth best meets our customers’ needs, we decided it no longer made sense to continue Google Earth Plus.

So if you’d like some new images and a different look at your running routes via GPS download Google Earth 5.0, for free!

Technorati Tags: Google Earth, Earth, Google, GPS, Garmin

Indulgence: Ultra Running

crossn81 — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 09:34:33 +0000

That was a clip from Indulgence: 1000 miles under the Colorado Sun.

From their website:

Indulgence: 1000 Miles Under the Colorado Sky features ultra-marathon phenom Anton Krupicka in a high-definition running film inspired by mountain ski and bike films. The film will offer the viewer a first-hand look at Anton’s life as he trains in the mountains of Colorado, Utah, Nevada, and California during the summer of 2007. The film’s presentation will reflect Anton’s simple approach to life and running and his continued pursuit of this minimalist ideal amidst the expectations of modern society.

It looks pretty good. Anyone seen it yet?

Technorati Tags: Indulgence, Ultra-running, movies

Can You Run Across America?

crossn81 — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 08:48:50 +0000

Do you have what it takes to run across the entire country? Probably not for most of us. But Charlie Engle and Marshall Ulrich are planning to run across our great country from San Francisco to New York City while filming a documentary called Running America. It sounds like a great project as Engle and Ulrich make the long journey they will be running with running celebrities and average runners from every walk of life.

That’s right if you live near or are able to drive to their route across the country you might be able to be apart of their documentary. I went through some of the initial steps, but they aren’t coming near Minnesota at all. They will be going through Indiana and Ohio though. You can see their full route which has a lot of Super 8 hotels on it! Super 8 is one of their main sponsors. The route tends to skip around major metro areas, but gets pretty close. The run begins on Sept 12 and finishes on Oct 27.

If you are interested in being a part of the documentary go to the Screentest website where you can “audition”. It is basically filling out a questionarrie and submitting your application. If you have trouble finding it you can click here to be taken to the Running America Screentest page. It does appear there is a $3.95 charge to submit your application to be reviewed (not really sure where it goes).

Here are the bios of the two main characters:

Charlie Engle

has run through some of the most forbidding terrain on the planet and has learned many lessons about life along the sway. With a lot of determination and the ability to endure hardships in every way, Charlie has moved from a life of drugs and alcohol to a life of understanding and learning to live with himself. After many years of sobriety, he has become a top athlete, spokesperson and philanthropist.

Marshall Ulrich

is the only person in the world to complete the Triple Crown of Extreme Sports: world class ultra runner, record setting adventure racer, and Seven Summits mountaineer. His specialty is competing in extreme conditions including desert and adventure racing, as well as mountaineering. Marshall has: * Completed over 116 ultra marathons averaging over 100 miles each. * Completed 12 expedition length adventure races, including all nine Eco Challenge adventure races – something only two other people in the world have done. * Reached the summit of each of the Seven Summits, including Mount Everest, all on first attempts.

Are you going to or have you already signed up to join the documentary? Let us know.

Technorati Tags: Running America, documentary, Marshall Ulrich, Charlie Engle

Can You Be An Olympian?

crossn81 — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 09:10:45 +0000

Two average guys, Dennis and Christian decided as part of the 5 in 5 Challenge that they would see how they fared against Olympic athletes in 5 different events. You can read more about it at the 5in5.com blog.

The 5 events were:

100m freestyle,
100m dash,
110m hurdles,
long jump and
the rings (in gymnastics)

It is a pretty neat video, so be sure to watch it. I won’t spoil the fun, but I bet you can guess the outcome!

Finally, there is some bonus footage at their blog entry.

HT: Get Fit Slowly

Technorati Tags: Olympics, Video

Twitter Tagging

crossn81 — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 08:41:16 +0000

Last week I wrote about the great tool, Twitter. I mentioned it was great for building friendships and community with runners and other people. One of the great ways to build discussion around a specific topic or event on the web is by using tags. I use tags all the time on this blog to make sure others looking for something about running can find it easily.

With Twitter you are able to tag your tweets as part of a broader discussion using something called a hashtag. One of the popular uses of Twitter is during conferences or meetings to help broadcast what is going on or for possible meetups. To help facilitate this happening someone decided to start using hashtags to make searching for related tweets easier. A hastag is simply using the hashmark or pound symbol (#) before a series of letters. It was made really popular during the San Diego fire and was being used for the Iowa flooding. If you go to a Twitter search engine such as Summize (now Twitter Search) and searched for the hashtag #IowaFlood you’ll get hundreds of Tweets about the flooding.

Why is this important? Every major group, organization, conferences, etc has a hashtag. As of today I haven’t seen any for running. I think it would be nice to find other Twittering runners and see how their workout went. Most of the runners I follow on Twitter tweet a summary of their daily run or race report.

I was going to propose the already famous ORN be used for a hashtag, but a quick search pulled up some unsavory content – add a “p” to the beginning. So, let’s scratch that idea! Back to the drawing boards, I did some more research and found that some people had already started using #run, but that is a little simplistic and maybe boring! Then I came along a tweet from @runnershigh that #runlog is being used by Twemes to create Twitter Running Meme. Twemes also allows you to get an RSS feed of tweets posted with the hashtag.

Therefore, I propose that from here on out we all use #runlog to tag running posts.

Anyone else have thoughts on a better hashtag?

Used appropriately I think this would be a great addition to our running community.
Step One: For it to work properly you should follow @hashtags on your Twitter account. This will help facilitate the hashtags bot to find your tweet and index it in their service.
Step Two: Start using #runlog.
Step Three: Use the Twitter search engine of your choice to find out how other runners ran today. I recommend Summize (now Twitter Search) or Tweetscan. You can also use the RSS feed from Tweme.

Can you do it? I’ve been using it for awhile now and a few others have picked up on it. You can follow my Twitter Running Log here at Hashtags, or via Summize, or at Twemes.

Note: According to hashtags.org their service has been broken since July 10, due to a Twitter-side error. You can continue using the #runlog though and it will make it easier to search for. And the service should resume normal processing eventually!