Boston, the sea-leve elite running mecca?

Author: OverTheHillAndBack

"As a member of the BAA High Performance team you will receive the following training support: Warm Weather/ Altitude Camps"

THEREFORE YOU ARE ALL WRONG. To the old timers smoking dope, no elite athletes are making the decision to train in boston winters and none ever will again. Bill Rodgers was one in A BILLION. An ANOMOALY. You can't make decisions in life based off the one exception. Get that?

To the young kids crying about how stupid it is to have an elite team in boston because the winters suck. READ THE BAA WEBSITE and get informed before talking a bunch of dribble about things you know nothing about.

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BR was no anomaly, he went to Phoenix and/or Florida for good parts of the winter. Other than that he travelled a couple of weekends a month at least for races etc.

Lynn Jennings primarily trained in NH all year round as did Joan Benoit in Maine.

Hodgie, you are right, Billy used to head to Arizona in the winter once he made some money.

Lynn and Joanie did train up here, but women's running was not as competitive as it is now.

I'd say comparing track records of Mahon vs Coogan is not an appropriate "apples-to-apples" comparison -- give Coogan some time.

At Mammoth Mahon coached a select group of professionals. And he's been at it longer.

Until a couple of months ago Coogan's main job has been coaching college teams, which involves a lot more work around the periphery than coaching pros.

What are you getting at? / What's your point? / "BR" first succeeded while training in Boston full-time and later was able to travel to train ? / Causation vs Correlation ? / Science Much?

Hodgie-san wrote:

BR was no anomaly, he went to Phoenix and/or Florida for good parts of the winter. Other than that he travelled a couple of weekends a month at least for races etc.

Lynn Jennings primarily trained in NH all year round as did Joan Benoit in Maine.

"Old timers smoking dope?"

Hey, it's been 5 days, OverTheHillAndBack!

OverTheHillAndBack wrote:

What are you getting at? / What's your point? / "BR" first succeeded while training in Boston full-time and later was able to travel to train ? / Causation vs Correlation ? / Science Much?

Hodgie-san wrote:

BR was no anomaly, he went to Phoenix and/or Florida for good parts of the winter. Other than that he travelled a couple of weekends a month at least for races etc.

Lynn Jennings primarily trained in NH all year round as did Joan Benoit in Maine.

I agree with you almost no one would CHOOSE to spend an entire winter training in Boston unless they had to.

To say it is not possible to be successful while remaining in Boston to train through the winters is wrong.

hrunner2 wrote:

That's a straight up lie. I live in Bay Area and can be on endless sprawling trails and hills within 15 minutes of running. There's nothing comparable to that in Boston. Furthermore you can run on the bay area trails for just about 360 days a year, whereas there is about 5 months max of trail running in Boston.

Where in the Bay Area do you live and where the f*ck are these trails? Where I live I can go in a few directions and get maybe a mile or so worth of trails each way within 4 miles of campus. I had access to significantly more trails just west of Boston where I grew up and just north-west of Boston where I went to college.

EAST BAY. From Tilden all the way to Lake Chabot.

The Bay Area is a huge place, and goes far beyond the privileged walls of Stanfraud:

http://gis.ebparks.org/maps/activityfinder/

i lived in boston for a long time... the trails suck compared to the bay. It isn't even close.headlands / mt tam state park / redwood regional / diablo / purissma / santa cruz mountainsthe minute man trail? are you serious? fells? you can go to places in point reyes or the headlans and run on trails for more than 30 miles - that isn't true of blue hills / fells ... i've run them

you dope -here, 1.5 miles from San Francisco pick up the trails in the marin headlands... here is a 50k that comes right by there that is basically all single track, runnable trails.http://www.headlands50k.com/Here is a 100k if you want morehttp://miwok100k.com/site/so yeah, I guess a mile and a half is long way to travel to get to these hundreds of miles of trails.

stanford student wrote:

hrunner2 wrote:

That's a straight up lie. I live in Bay Area and can be on endless sprawling trails and hills within 15 minutes of running. There's nothing comparable to that in Boston. Furthermore you can run on the bay area trails for just about 360 days a year, whereas there is about 5 months max of trail running in Boston.

Where in the Bay Area do you live and where the f*ck are these trails? Where I live I can go in a few directions and get maybe a mile or so worth of trails each way within 4 miles of campus. I had access to significantly more trails just west of Boston where I grew up and just north-west of Boston where I went to college.

I was running on the streets of Cambridge last winter, hit a patch of ice and went down. Surgery and 6 weeks of crutches followed. If you've even been on crutches during the winter, it's not a fun thing. So much for toughing it out in the cold and snow, right boys? I don't care how "tough" you are - running in bad winter conditions is a bunch of cr*p.

Boston can't be a sea level distance running Mecca because the people are too fast paced, uptight & unfriendly. The East Africans live in a relaxed environment where they do nothing but sleep and drink tea and it is this we should seek to emulate, not a crappy snobby uppity city.

Boston's history with elite training groups like in the 70s is long gone.

People are friendly as heck in Boston! It's kinda like New York, a lot of bluster comes with it.

Blunt, insult-laden Boston friends can be a lot more interesting than some of the fake friendly glazed donut narcissists of Northern California!

Eww cmon wrote:

Boston can't be a sea level distance running Mecca because the people are too fast

Then it might be better suited as a sprinting Mecca?

"there is about 5 months max of trail running in Boston." - OverTheHillAndBack

You must be thin skinned. You remind me of Bay area runners that come home for Thanksgiving and nearly freeze to death on a short sleeve run when it's 50F out. You must be confusing "able to run trails" with "able to run trails while bronzing shirtless in Vibrams."

The only reason not to run on trails is deep snow/ice. Usually the snow that falls will be gone in a few days. This amounts to a month of the year at best if you stretch it out. Now, if you're in Rochester/Buffalo, NY, with 10+ feet of snow a year, then you better have snow shoes if you want to run the trails year round.

"Some of the worst weather in the country for several months per year." - pipe dreamer...

Again, a great exageration. Ever run in central NC/SC/LA/MS ? Run at 5AM because the heat index will hit over 100F for a few months? You can't just put on a long sleeve and run through that like you can a cold day. The only days I usually don't go out are below 10F or -15F wind chills, but you could count those on one hand.

"If you live here, it is very expensive" - pipe dreamer...

Have you been to the Bay Area? Boston's still cheap compared to there. If we really wanted a runner mecca, why not Detroit? Work a few weeks, then buy a house. Anything more costly than Detroit is certainly "expensive." Many a Boston runner, not living in a trendy neighborhood can get by on $500/mo rent or less (split).

So, let's not be hyperbolic. You don't have to live downtown and run only on the Esplande/Charles trail (a nice 18mi loop really) while paying high brownstone rents and running on a treadmill 120 days a year. You can live 10mi out, pay a ton less, run the Blue Hills or many dozens of state and local parks and get use of the plethora of indoor tracks (more than any town in world, 6, soon to be 7), many of which are affordable to use and the Reggie which is public.

BUT, is Boston the "mecca," the place which is above all else in the world, where all devote runners must pilgrimage? Of course not. Some place in AZ would certainly take the cake for that moniker.

Snow on trails gets packed into ice and gets no sun. You can't run in the middlesex fells for months after a decent snow storm, even after it warms up. Seattle has much better running weather than Boston. In the winter it drizzles petty often and the sun never comes out, but the temp rarely goes under 40. And the temperature goes under almost 60 every night in the summer and rarely hits 90 during the day

BackBayCoder wrote:

"there is about 5 months max of trail running in Boston." - OverTheHillAndBack

You must be thin skinned. You remind me of Bay area runners that come home for Thanksgiving and nearly freeze to death on a short sleeve run when it's 50F out. You must be confusing "able to run trails" with "able to run trails while bronzing shirtless in Vibrams."

The only reason not to run on trails is deep snow/ice. Usually the snow that falls will be gone in a few days. This amounts to a month of the year at best if you stretch it out. Now, if you're in Rochester/Buffalo, NY, with 10+ feet of snow a year, then you better have snow shoes if you want to run the trails year round.

Oh wow do you want a medal or star for running on trails in the winter? 1 month a year at best? Where were you this winter and what kind of crack were you smoking? The snow on the sidewalks and shoulders of Route 16 along the course didn't thaw for almost 3 straight months, yet you claim that the trails in the fells were gone after a few days? That's utter BS.

Simple physics here, if its a trail and its in the woods and shaded, and the temp does go about 32, then the snow doesn't magically clear it self.

Furthermore, the fells suck. Get over it. Literally though, they actually do. All of the accessible wooded places in Boston are just "hook-up" spots.

As someone from a state with real mountains and real trails, I'd rather just run on the Charles or anywhere else that's actually cleared than lolly gag around in the "woods". It's pretty much the same analogy to east coast "tree skiing". It's a joke. Those of us who now the real thing are amazed as what passes as a trail, woods, and hills in MA.

Altitude training for sea level races is the stupidest thing going in distance running today. If anything, it has ended or prematurely stunted many a career.

Horst Girth wrote:

I came of age running near Boston in the 70s, I love the idea, put forth in the Boston Globe today, of Boston as an elite mecca.

But, it's a sea level! My solution, I invite all the Boston elites to come for a training block in my adopted city of Oaxaca, Mexico. The cuisine is world renowned, and there are endless rugged trails 5 - 7000 feet.

http://thegrumpyrunner.blogspot.com/2014/09/boston-running-mecca-redux.html

Just a thought. Let's face it, from 800 up, you need a training block at altitude.

BackBayCoder wrote:

"If you live here, it is very expensive" - pipe dreamer...

Many a Boston runner, not living in a trendy neighborhood can get by on $500/mo rent or less (split).

Sorry, you know not of which you speak. It will be $1000/mo for a shared rental where you get your own BR. I guess if you want to sleep in a bunk bed and share a room, sure $500/mo.

And this is NOT in trendy neighborhoods. Waltham and Watertown come to mind. Go ahead and google rents in those towns and see what you get. Of course, maybe you're thinking of Mattapan (Murderpan). Bars on the windows, anyone?