Summer Days and nights on the road in Vermont - GMR Review

A few months ago, I received an invitation to join a team for a fabled 200 mile relay. That's right, 200 miles. But before you jump to the conclusion that I'm solely nuts, our team consisted of 11 other people, split between two vans that would leap frog one another during 30 hours of running.

The scenery is what you'd expect from Vermont. Green, mountainous, epic vistas and then there were the little details. During my 3:30am run, the near full moon was setting just in front of me to my right, while the darkened sky was giving way to the early morning sun behind my left shoulder. I quietly ran through a Christmas tree farm, seeing triangular shadows looming in the early morning mist, and smelling the deep pine as it moved over the roadway. My other two runs were equally experiential with rolling hills, turtles, and lots and lots of cows.

Minimalism, Barefoot Running, and a touch of science.

The Most Informal Running Club Ever - TMIRCE - at City Sports on June 11th had a bit more appeal than usual. We hosted our first ever, and in my opinion, best ever, minimalist clinic. In a nut shell, over the past few years and in response to the popularity of "barefoot running" as described in Chris McDougal's Born to Run, Informal Runners of TMIRCE had been asking about this phenomenon that we have come to know as the minimalist movement. In response to your questions and inquires, we invited Dan Lieberman, Harvard Professor and Human Evolutionary Biologist to come and share with us his findings and personal thoughts on the movement.

Informal Queens of TMIRCE Track - and some guys too.

The queens of track and Ryan

Sunny, warm nights in Boston don't happen often enough, but when they do, people shake off that wintery rust - grabbing the bull by the horns and coming out on Tuesday nights to run faster and stronger. The workout was a simple "sandwich" 1200m - 800m x2 - 400m - 800m x2 - 1200m and a 200m on top, bringing the total distance to 6.2k. What was special about last night was the great camaraderie between runners, supporting each other, clapping and cheering as we finished each lap.


It's been exciting to hear all the great success stories from runners who have been coming out to track workouts and pushing themselves. TMIRCE encourages runners to support one another and to push one another in running - and sometimes life  -  when we need it. That being said, informal Ryan recently ran a 5 miler at a 7:20 min/mile and attributes some of his recent successes to track workouts. Congrats to him for really utilizing track to get a bit stronger and faster and seeing success.

Last night we shared the track with several other clubs, all going through their weekly motions of run and repeat. Our workout pushed us to run a bit further than normal though, keeping us out 15 minutes later than our usual Tuesday workout. No one seemed to mind though, since the weather was immaculate. Not represented by the photo above are the 4 other runners, Ray, myself, Evan, and Renee who were either nursing blisters, speeding around the track, or just playing Words with Friends. 

After the beating ourselves playful into the ground, we went to Charlies Kitchen, home of the famous Double Cheeseburger and jalapeno poppers. The beer flowed and burgers demolished by the ravenous runners. A typical night of track, and post track celebrations as constituted by the Tuesday tradition.  

INFORMAL MINIMALIST CLINIC