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Running To Get Ready

Last Sunday was a fantastic day to stretch our legs and get out for a brief 6 hour run. We decided to run the Potomac Heritage 50K. The run started at Woodley Park. We worked our way through single track trails to the C&O Canal, traversed over the Key Bridge, ran along the Potomac Heritage Trail until we hit the BELTWAY - and then ran back!

This is Craig and Dave's last long run (long meaning more than 25 miles). However, Andrew will be running the Marine Corp Marathon this coming weekend. Be sure to wish him 'good luck'

Would you jog the extra mile for eco-friendly shoes?

Just when you thought you'd forever be crossing finish lines wearing less than eco-friendly shoes, the big names are starting to go green, so these versions are widely available.

Alternative materials like "green rubber" go easy on the petroleum and PVC, which may release carcinogenic dioxins during production.

Some lines forgo the leather and are mostly vegan.

Fair trade supports foreign workers, ensuring they earn a living wage.

Wanna Try?

New Balance - the most socially responsible of the big shoe manufacturers, New Balance recently phased out PVC and has many vegan options.
Veja Sneakers - OK, so this site's in French… but these shoes are hot-to-trot. Fair trade sneaks made using organic cotton, available at Scout ($138).
Brooks Cascadia 2 - developed in part by vegan marathon champion Scott Jurek using "green rubber" that incorporates silicon rather than petroleum ($95).

Ideal Bite's Leftovers Tip - when you're done with them, give them a chance to be reincarnated as playground groundcover.

Source: Ideal Bite

Former NWF Chair Joins Crazy Craig's List

Photo: Becky Scheibelhut

Taken earlier this week (Indiana)

Hi Crazy Craig,

I'm glad all you asked me for was a donation. Ha! That sounds like a long run to me but well worth the effort all of you are putting into it. I am honored to donate this for the cause. You will always remain a very special person in our life and we will always admire your love for NWF and wildlife. Thanks once again.

Love,
Jim and Becky Scheibelhut

Views and People on the Long Run...

Here are a couple of views along the Potomac Heritage route.
The photocredits are those of Anstr Davidson. See below.

Much of what I love about running comes from the sensory richness of being out there; seeing, hearing, smelling, and feeling the softness of dirt trails, the squishiness of mud, the shock of cement pavement, the fragrance of bloom, of fallen leaves, of the pastoral landscapes I often train in, the temperature changes of stream bottoms vs. ridge tops. The little sorenesses that appear, peak and disappear as the run goes on.
Equally anticipated is the who of running; the friends and colleagues and absolute strangers I run with. Those strangers are strangers only briefly; they often become future running partners, mentors, and advisors.

Anstr Davidson is a trail runner and one of the founders of the Virginia Happy Trails Running Club. The photos above were taken during the running of last year's Potomac heritage 50k but the course was just as beautiful this past weekend. The first photo is of runners jamming up to past through a large culvert, over rocks, above a stream and heading for the C&O Canal.

Both VHTRC and Reston Runners have helped us get to this point for running the JFK 50 Miler. For years, I've known of the Happy Trails people through other ultra marathon runners. In training for my 50 mile run, I've gotten to know some of these people that develop, monitor and promote trail running in our area.

Anstr Davidson is one person who has helped so many local runners go the distance and become inolved in ultra running. He recently spoke to the Reston Runners JFK 50 Miler training group, giving us invaluable running tips dosed with a good amount of humor. He has run the JFK about 23 times! And he was there last Sunday leading the pack as the PH 50K started. From the Happy Trails web site, a note on Anstr:

"Anstr is also a founding member of the VHTRC. He maintains the club's Web site and embezzles money as the treasurer. His running career is all behind him. He still does JFK every year because he forgets not to. Anstr lives in Arlington, Virginia where he slaves away at a very stressful retirement."

Good people like Anstr make running not only possible but give us models of what we can strive to be.

Milestone: 50% Employee Participation

In less than a month, employee participation has more than doubled thanks, in part, to challenges from Jeremy, Marie, Jaime and Larry. Thanks again to everyone who has donated.

- Crazy Craig

P.S. Don't forget to ask your friends and family to join my list!

The Nature of a Short Ultra

This past Sunday, the CCCC crew-- Dave, Andrew and I --were out again, meeting up with about 80 other runners in northwest Washington DC for the Potomac Heritage 50K run. Anything over the standard marathon distance is considered an ultra marathon, but this is a short ultra. The JFK, our November 18 race, is 50 MILES. A respectable distance.

We all checked in with the run coordinators at around eight AM and around fifteen minutes later, we were all on our way. I am referring to this PH 50K weekend activity as a run in order to clarify the point that runs are fun and casual; races are work. The JFK, too, is a run. Fun.

Hours later, all three of us returned to the starting point for great food, trail stories, a beer or two and some much deserved groaning and Vitamin I. I for ibuprofen, that is. Dave had really been in a hurry-- so unlike him-- and finished in about 5 hours and 40 minutes. Andrew and I were taking our time, sticking our heads in giant hollow trees, watching great blue herons, etc. and came in about an hour later.

The run course took us through a number of parks, habitats and neighborhoods. Two sharp images continue to run through my head concerning the nature of our run. While in Washington DC, as soon as we left the manicured landscapes of northwest DC and entered the open space of the city, except for the larger trees and a few shrubs, the landscape was populated with plants from somewhere else. Most astonishing were acres of the invasive porcelainberry vine. Kudzu, the poster child of invasive plant battlers everywhere, also carpeted what had once been forest and meadow but the grape-leaved vine with the stunning blue berries had it beat.

Over on the Virginia side of the Potomac, where we picked up the Potomac Heritage Trail, invasive plants dominated the first miles of the riverside woods heading out towards our turn around point. Beyond a certain point however, the landscape starts to change as the massive rock outcrops of the Potomac Gorge tower over the trail. This section of the river is one of the most impressive and diverse habitats in the entire region. Few know how accessible it is from the George Washington Parkway parking pulloffs. What had been Chinese knotweed, porcelainberry, perilla, Japanese honeysuckle and stilt grass gives way to our native flora... a ground cover of wild ginger, the withered stalks of false Soloman's seal and Indian cucumber-root and so much more and an understory of paw paw, spicebush and bladdernut.

If you finished this run, your reward was knowing you'd run the course. No fancy shirt. No awards for the top three finishers. No certificate or medallion.

I left with a much better idea of what my place, the Washington metropolitan area, offered in the way of ecological challenges-- trying to reclaim landscapes lost to vigorous invasive vines fueled perhaps by the high carbon dioxide levels of this changing climate we're producing. And I gave myself an award; four pods from an American bladdernut found somewhere along that rocky trail.

Try to find the four pods in the photo above. Like the chestnuts found weeks ago atop the Blue Ridge, I'll plant the seeds of this native shrub and have a living remembrance of this beautiful run, on a beautiful day with a couple of good running buddies.

Crazy Craig

It's a Long Hard Journey

On October 14, 2006, Crazy Craig and his two partners in insanity sharpened their running skills and joined two thousand others in running the Under Armour Baltimore Marathon. This meant we all received some quick history and geography lessons about Baltimore including a great loop around Ft. McHenry, a nifty race finisher blue crab medallion and a real running shirt from the Under Armour people. Most race t-shirts are cotton and useless for running. This shirt was great; it will not find its way into my running shirt quilt or braided rug.

There were a lot of people running, each of us with a different story and on a different journey. The marathoners were joined along part of the course by additional thousands running the marathon relay and the half marathon races.

For Dave, Andrew and I, this was to be pretty speedy running. No stops for salted boiled potatoes, M&Ms, donuts or other trail run delectables. It was a GU and GatorAde diet for me along all 26.2 miles.

For some of the non-humans along the race course though, the journey was different and far more challenging. My bird list, kept in my head, mile by mile, was sparse. It is fall and little is singing and what was singing or squawking was overpowered by the sounds of human life in the city. This course covers much of Baltimore and so habitat diversity was on the thin side in most places.

The bird highlight might have been the double crested cormorant staggering out of the water on the north side of Ft. McHenry. The best habitat was the tidal marsh on what might have been the southwest corner of this National Park Service site but there was no time for further investigation. My bird list numbered only 9 species.

What gave me a lift however, somewhere around mile 23, was a monarch butterfly. It would never have been off the ground in the low 40 degree temperatures of our 8 AM start by 11 AM, the sun had warmed its overnight roost and it was again on its way to Michoacan, Mexico.

Monarch populations in the northeastern US this year were impressively high. Soon after our Sunday run, the reports of hundreds of thousands of migrating monarchs coalescing into a massive orange, balck and white maelstrom headed for the US Mexico border began to appear on the listserv overseen by our friends at Monarch Watch

That lone butterfly, one at the tail end of the migration that passed south for the winter, gave me a kick that pushed me over the finish line; it was better than energy gels or cheering crowds.

My journey that day was easy; the butterfly had thousands of miles yet to cover before it rested among the limbs of the oyamel fir trees high up in the mountains of western Mexico sometime in early December.

Challenge From Larry

Dear NWF staff:

My appreciation and thanks go to Jaime Matyas, Jeremy Symons, Marie Uehling for their recent match commitments to Crazy Craig’s Challenge, and to all the NWF staff, friends, and family who have recently stepped up and joined Crazy Craig’s challenge to raise $50,000 in support of NWF’s crucial wildlife and global warming work. Their commitment has been personally inspiring.

On top of their match commitments, today I am adding my own match of $500. I welcome you to join me and the others who have already generously supported this campaign to help us reach our fundraising goal of $50,000 total and 100% employee participation. Please visit www.nwf.org/crazycraig.

This initiative shows the commitment of our staff to inspire Americans to conserve wildlife. Working together, we are helping to create a future of hope for wildlife and our children.
Thank you for your support.

Regards,

Larry Schweiger - President & CEO

JUST ADDED: 100% Participation Teams

Click on "Who's on Crazy Craig's List" to see the teams that have 100% employee participation. If your team is 100% but is not listed, please send an email to crazycraig@nwf.org.

Thanks to everyone who has donated thus far!