Run, Karla, Run!

Edison Peña, center, ran every day while trapped in the mine. Photo by Hugo Infante/Government of Chile.

Edison Peña, the rescued Chilean miner known as “The Runner,” will run the ING New York City Marathon on Nov. 7, Universal Sports reports.

New York Road Runners, which organizes the race, invited Peña to New York as their special guest after president and CEO Mary Wittenberg heard about his extraordinary efforts to stay fit and sane while trapped with 32 other men in a gold and copper mine near Copiapo, Chile. Read the rest of this entry →

Runners tend to be goal-oriented people. Whatever the goal may be, we plot, we plan and we train to make it happen—running right, eating right, sleeping right, doing everything “right.” But what happens when something goes wrong?

I found out the hard way in the last two weeks of my training for the 2010 ING New York City Marathon on Nov. 7. Reassessing goals and shifting expectations are among the hardest things a runner can do, especially when the goal is in sight.

Take Ryan Hall. After a hot streak in 2007 and 2008—he broke the North American half-marathon record, won the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials and at the London Marathon logged the fastest time ever by an American-born runner—Hall was officially dubbed the next great American marathoner. In 2009, he placed third in the Boston Marathon and won the Philadelphia Distance Run.

Then he made a goal: to break the U.S. marathon record at the 2010 Chicago Marathon on Oct. 10. Read the rest of this entry →

I’ll be a guest on “The Marathon Show” on Tuesday Oct. 19 at 12 p.m. EST talking about the ING New York City Marathon:

“The NYC Marathon is a monster. We have three NYC 2010 marathoners on the show who have also run it in the past. They’ll talk about the excitement of the start, a personal story about NYC and the spectacular finish, plus the 5K, plus much more. Join Karla Bruning, Magda Cardoso and Kevin Horty as they talk about America’s biggest marathon.”

You can listen live or on demand at BlogTalkRadio or download it free on iTunes. Check it out!

Photo by Phil W. Shirley

12 weeks down, 4 to go.

The ancient Greeks gave us a lot: the Hippocratic oath, democracy, the Olympics, and, of course, marathons. Race organizers around the world are celebrating the 2500th anniversary of the battle of Marathon this year (never mind the fact that it should be 2011).

But the ancient Greeks also gave us something else: the journey to hell and back. Reading Greek mythology, it seems like people were always trekking to the underworld for one reason or another; Odysseus, Hercules and, most famously, Orpheus all made the trip.

The joke that the distance to hell and back is 26.2 miles is apt. And like Orpheus ascending from the underworld, there’s no looking back.

The road to the ING New York City Marathon on Nov. 7 hasn’t been much different, marked by highs, lows, good news and bad news. The agony and the ecstasy are part of the journey. And my last two weeks of training have been filled with agony and ecstasy. Read the rest of this entry →

Robert Kipkoech Cheruiyot and Martin Lel, both of Kenya, will not compete in the ING New York City Marathon on Nov. 7 due to injuries.

New York Road Runners announced yesterday that Lel, a two-time New York and three-time London marathon champion, has injured his right leg. Lel, 31, won the ING New York City Marathon in 2003 and 2007. Cheruiyot, a four-time Boston Marathon champion, is out due to a groin injury. Cheruiyot, 32, finished second in New York last year to Meb Keflezighi of the U.S. Read the rest of this entry →

Photo by fotologic/Flikr

10 weeks down, six to go.

Believe. It’s a loaded word. One that is used and abused in popular culture, in religion, in politics, in all the areas of life where what we want to be true may not always be, and what is true is not always pretty. As humans, we have a unique ability to delude ourselves. And yet, we continue to believe any number of things for any number of reasons, some of which are worth believing.

Running isn’t any different. Every runner has a different set of beliefs: that stretching is good or bad, that running with headphones is helpful or a hindrance, that tackling an ultramarathon is sane or insane, that we’ll actually be able to achieve our running goals.

I began to question my beliefs during my last week of training for the ING New York City Marathon on Nov. 7. Read the rest of this entry →

Photo by Christy Hourihan

Nine weeks down, seven to go.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Training for a marathon is like riding a roller coaster. After the high of scoring a personal record at the OASIS Montreal Half-Marathon, I was due for a little deflation. You can’t sit on top of the roller coaster forever. At some point, it’s going to roll down.

And roll down it did. The last two weeks of training for the ING New York City Marathon on Nov. 7 have been full of shenanigans that forced many a change of plans. In the process, I learned the power of saying yes and no. Read the rest of this entry →

Running a tune-up race is a great way to prep for a marathon. Photo by Sergis blog.

Seven weeks down, nine to go.

Training for a marathon is long process. Much like my training for the 2010 ING New York City Marathon on Nov. 7, most runners spend at least 16 weeks, or the better part of four months, agonizing over every detail—longs runs, speed workouts, tempo runs, strength training, cross training, stretching, nutrition, sleep, avoiding injuries, avoiding illness, you name it, all for a few hours of agonizing glory. As the old U.S. Marine Corps adage goes—which my boyfriend and fellow marathoner-in-crime loves to quote—“Pain is weakness leaving the body.”

While all that weakness is busy leaving our bodies, we’re hoping that what we’re doing actually works. That come race day, we’ll be in our best shape to conquer 26.2 miles. All that pain better mean some gain.

But how do you know if your training is serving you well? There’s nothing like a big tune-up race to check in with your training. Running a race before your big marathon gives you an intermediary goal to work toward, and will let you know if your training is working, what marathon goals you should be targeting and what potential race-day problems might pop up. Read the rest of this entry →

Photo by Marzanna Syncerz © PhotoXpress.com

BRISTOL, R.I. — Six weeks down, 10 to go.

Today’s column is brought to you by the letter ‘P’ and the letter ‘R.’

I earned a pair of them on Sunday. It was a fantastic week of training for the 2010 ING New York City Marathon on Nov. 7; a week that reminded me what it feels like to be a kid on summer vacation, and made me grateful for all the running I’ve enjoyed.

Anyone who knows me knows that I love vacation. Who doesn’t? I love to travel and explore—as I child I used to pretend I was like Bert and Ernie searching the vast African jungle for Dr. Livingstone.

But my vacation this week felt a bit more like summer vacations of yore—running around the neighborhood, buying ice cream, hitting the pool, watching movies at night, and generally killing time in the most pleasing ways imaginable; basically, by doing a whole lot of nothing.

But remember what the end of summer felt like as a kid? A new school year is quickly approaching, and you know you have to make every single day count. You’ve got to run and play and swim hard. Because before you know it, you’ll be sitting in a stiflingly hot classroom staring out the window at a sunny patch of grass, remembering better times. And I was a kid who actually liked school. But I still liked unfettered summertime better.

Running a race in Rhode Island reminded me of those old summertime days. It was in fact a sunny day that swept all the clouds away. The air was sweet, the sky was an unbroken streak of blue, and not even a temperature of 80 degrees could slow me down. Read the rest of this entry →

The Montreal Half-Marathon starts with a 5.5 mile uphill climb. Photo of Montreal by Christine Scholes.

Five weeks down, 11 to go…

With another solid, feel-good week of training for the 2010 ING New York City Marathon under my belt, I’ve decided to look forward to the week ahead. Namely, I’m looking forward to my big pre-marathon litmus test—the OASIS Montreal Half-Marathon on Sept. 5.

It’s going to be an uphill battle—literally. When I looked at the elevation chart, I gulped. How could I possibly prepare for this race when uphill climbs are my Kryptonite, my public enemy number one, my Newman? Read the rest of this entry →

The ING New York City Marathon better watch its back. I'm training with renewed vim and vigor. Photo by Christy Hourihan.

Three weeks down, 13 to go…

In the 12th paragraph of this post, I’m going to confess something that very few runners ever admit. Something that has reinvigorated my running. Something that served as the wake-up call I needed if I’m really going to race, not just run, the 2010 ING New York City Marathon on Nov. 7.

Runners are generally a stoic bunch of achievers who will run to exhaustion or almost pass out from heat stroke. I’m often one of those runners, pushing myself to my limit for the greater glory of a personal record. And because I’m still on the cardiovascular upswing, I PR every time I race. And I mean every time. Of the 25 odd races I’ve run in earnest in the past three years (I’ve run another five at a jog for fun), I’ve set a PR in all of them.

Until last Saturday. Read the rest of this entry →