Tag: Victoria Barnaby

Hump Day Round UP

File this under ‘breaking news‘ and also under ‘terrible news‘. David Goodman got hurt. Per the NE Distance Facebook page we found this tidbit:

Goodman suffered a freak injury that is threatening his outdoor season. He dislocated his elbow in a fall. Wrappings came off on Monday and the doc says it’s healing nicely, but we’ve already had to cancel his opener which was going to be this Friday in Princeton. We’re going to see how he responds to training over the next week and make some last minute calls on the races we were planning – April 13th at the Brown Invite in Providence and the April 28th Peyton Jordan in California. We will keep y’all posted.

We have two theories on this injury:

1.) David incurred this injury in a diving attempt to save Molly Huddle’s life. As a sign of gratitude, Molly joined the NE Distance board of directors.

2.) David had to arm wrestle his teammate/roommate Meaghan Hobson to see who’s turn it was to do the dishes. Although Meaghan won she still had to do the dishes because she hurt him so badly.

In all seriousness, we wish David a speedy recovery and hope he doesn’t miss too much time (if any at all).

On to more positive news…

In case you missed it, we featured the SISU Project in our Club Spotlight section of the latest issue of Level Renner (Mar/Apr 2013, pg 25). When they put out a call looking for blog volunteers to help spread SISU shortly after, yours truly answered the call. The product of our collaboration can be found here, along with other creative blog posts by some names that will be quite familiar to you. Read about my SISU, find your own SISU and help spread SISU by checking out their blog.

At the end of February I was sitting in the RaceMenu office talking with Brendan Kearney about how good of an idea it would be for Bill Rodgers to finally join Twitter. He had been suggesting it to Bill, then I tried helping out with this tweet:

 

We put that up a while back and forgot about it…until Bill recently joined Twitter. I’d like to think that’s the tweet that finally pushed him to do it. I know, I know, that’s wishful thinking (to the max). Either way, please join us in welcoming Bill Rodgers to Twitter (and I guess Level Legion too since he’s following us now)!

Big things coming are coming your way soon. We should have interviews up with Tim Ritchie and Hilary Dionne sometime before the marathon. Tim is looking to make a big splash on the scene as he makes his marathon debut. Hopefully the weather is a tad more cooperative this time. Hilary was 15th at Boston last year and also the third American woman. That’s crazy good. Looking forward to hearing what both of them have to say about the 2013 race.

I will also be making an appearance on the radio to talk about the marathon on the The Boston Sports Stamp (AM 1510) show with Victoria Barnaby and the rest of the gang. That should be really fun and a great opportunity to get the word out about the locals who are ready to make some noise on April 15th.

And finally, I just wanted to take a moment to reflect on just how far we have come. Almost a year ago now, Kevin Balance, Joe Navas and myself donned our Level t’s and stormed the marathon expo. The website was still fairly new, we didn’t have much up yet in terms of video footage and our audience was much smaller.

As we made the relentlessly made the rounds (over multiple days) in an effort to network and further the cause, we kept getting asked about Level Legion. Well, not in those terms specifically but more along the lines of ‘how many subscribers?’ and ‘how many Facebook friends?’, etc. At the time we might’ve only had 250 or so friends on Facebook and as proud as we were of that number we soon realized it wasn’t impressing many of our new acquaintances.

We’ll be returning to the expo this year with the same mission and definitely see it as a triumphant return. Our Facebook following has swelled to 1,229 (and counting) and our web traffic is growing at a strong rate. We know there’s still a lot of growth ahead of us, both before the marathon and continuously after, and you can help with that. If you love what we do (even if it’s only a mild ‘appreciation’ to a strong ‘like’), please make it official and help out by:

Screen Shot 2013-04-03 at 4.21.09 PM

As the image to the right shows, we made it easy for you and have links to most of those options right there on our homepage. Any (or all) of these would be a huge help to us and make us look that much more attractive to the people we meet on Marathon Weekend. All it takes a is a quick click; it’s free, easy and totally non-intrusive. Officially joining the Legion will help us get a better product out to you.

Thanks again for your loyal support and we look forward to covering your races, workouts and stories going forward.

Rant & Rave

Rant

Thank you WBZ for lowering the bar so very much with this enlightening gem of a news report: Runners Already Preparing for Boston Marathon. You guys set the bar so very very low with this gripping piece that it just made our job that much easier.

Come on, man!

People are “ambitious” for training six weeks ahead of the marathon? I don’t know about that. It sounds like they’re in danger of over-training. Slow down, guys, you don’t want to embarrass the competition too much. Don’t they know that we let the Kenyans and Ethiopians win just because we’re good hosts? It’s the polite thing to do.

If that’s ambitious then I don’t know what the meaning of that word is anymore. The only good thing to come from it has been the comments posted both on the article site and on Facebook, one of which was questioning whether or not the posting was an Onion article.

Rave

It’s official: 3-D print technology is here and in use on the track! Jack Bolas just became the first pro to run a race using shoes printed with that tech. The article is short but very interesting.

Did you see?

They grow up so fast. Victoria Barnaby, who has been featured on Level a few times now, is already getting opportunities elsewhere. Here she is

Races

Reminder: our Holyoke St. Patty’s Day race contest is still open. Winner will be selected this Friday. All you have to do is like a couple of Facebook pages for a chance to win entry to a great race?! Why not?

Congrats to the James Joyce Ramble on being selected to host the 2013 American Masters 10K Championship this April! That should be a very competitive race (and fun to watch).

BU MINI MEET #1 RECAP

Guest blog by Victoria Barnaby

Ah yes, it is officially wintertime.

A true New England runner knows it’s wintertime not when the first frost arrives, nor when the first snow falls, nor when a double is accomplished in complete morning and evening darkness. No, a true New England runner knows it’s wintertime when the BU Mini Meet series begins.

The BU Mini Meets offer athletes an opportunity to get some pre-season races under the belt and get the speed kinks out before the higher profile meets happen later in the season (like Terrier, Dartmouth, Valentine, etc.). Last weekend the series kicked off on Saturday with Meet #1 at the BU Track and Tennis Center.

While the meets are seen as “low key,” low key in the sense you can email to sign up or sign up day of and pay at the site- it doesn’t necessarily mean you can walk up to the line without potentially being challenged in your race. Depending on the weekend a fairly sizeable crowd shows up- although it does fluctuate each year based on when the Holidays fall in the week and when the cross-country races finish up.

I haven’t been to a mini meet since 2006 and this past weekend I was pleasantly reminded that these things move quickly. Yes the runners move quickly, but so do the officials. Promptly at 10AM the gun went of for the 3,000 meter run. For all races men and women, all ages, are combined in multiple heats per event and only a minute or so passes by in between each heat. This race was swiftly followed by several heats of the 400 meter run, the mile, the 200 meter and lastly the 800 meter run.

Call me partial but one of the top moments of the day was GBTC Allison McCabe’s 9:32 3,000 meter run. Allison was fresh off a solid race in Kentucky last week for Cross Country Club Nationals and went straight into indoor track racing. Allison has been in the New England racing scene for several years now and has been a top finisher for the club across multiple seasons. What you might not know is that Allison has spent at least half of her training in the pool this year and the other half running a high quality 20 miles a week- thus making her 3,000 meter race, over a 10 second PR, that much more impressive. She ran in the 2nd fastest heat with all men, slowly working off the back group and pushing the pace straight into the last 2 laps where she went into overdrive and sprinted to the finish. McCabe’s time broke the GBTC women’s club record for the 3k by mere tenths of a second, which was previously held Kyle Linn McQueen, who has had a string of phenomenal races herself this past year.

McCabe charges into the record books (courtesy of Ryan Irwin)

No doubt we will start to see competitors making early season debuts in the BU Mini Meet series this month so be sure to keep an eye out for results and Level’s coverage on the latest news from the meets.

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