In the 1972 Olympic Trials “Go Pre” shirts were everywhere in honor of Steve Prefontaine, the celebrated runner from Oregon, the stands were full of them. When Prefontaine started to get ready for the race, several of his competitors removed their warm ups to reveal “Stop Pre” shirts sarcastically making fun of all the Pre fans in the stands. As followers of running lore know, Pre won the race and upon finishing someone handed him a “Stop Pre” shirt which in a classic moment of track and field history, he donned the shirt and took his victory lap. As much as I don’t like Pre, IMHO this was an amazing moment, I wish I had seen it. The shirt and concept of “Stop Pre” has always been a statement of futile challenge to me. Yeah go ahead an try to stop Pre, good luck!

So today as I was running I was thinking of that and came up with the Idea of a “Stop ms” T-shirt in the familiar red octagon. Well that didn’t really fit my concept of futile challenge, so I changed the idea to “Stop Me”. I want to make t-shirts and sell them on this blog, but maybe I will just try to make a single running shirt for now. I just checked the domain name and most are already taken, I wonder if they are being used?

Last week I saw “Chariots of Fire” for the first time. It was pretty good, the music was really dated and didn’t work for me. It was also very religious with the one runner being Jewish and the other refusing to compete on Sunday. It was a favorite movie of my college roommate who was also a runner and is pretty religious, I can see how it appealed to him. As for me, I liked the aspect of standing up for his convictions, but it didn’t really work for me. I was hoping to feel inspired, but I really didn’t. My next running movie I am going to re-watch is Run Lola Run, a very good French thriller. I have the soundtrack on my Ipod and I love running to it, great German rock/metal.

I also recently saw an interesting movie called District 13, another French flick. This was an action movie, but instead of car chases they did parkour. Parkour is style of free running where nothing stops the runner from continuing. All obstacles are overcome. Here is a great parkour scene from District 13. An example of its popularity in the mainstream, their was a great parkour scene in the James Bond flick Casino Royale. For those of you interested in trying it out, here is a tutorial on rolling. I have always wanted to do parkour on a more serious level. I even found a tumbling course where the instructor did parkour and would be willing to tailor it for me. I chickened out. I’ll have to be satisfied with my log jumps in the canyon, though after watching that rolling tutorial, I am getting re-inspired.

So I finished up the week getting over 20 miles for the fifth week in a row. I am really noticing a change in my conditioning. Now my biggest challenge is going to be losing some pounds. I am at 187 right now, and if I could get to 175 I would feel a lot better about continuing the mileage. I know my knees wouldn’t mind. I have been lucky to have few problems with my knees in general. I have noticed on the days when I do 8+ mile runs, I have been getting a bit sore. Nothing major, but enough to make me want to ice them and be careful with my stretching.

Today on my run (and several times recently) I have been focusing on breathing from the belly. As much as it might not look so great, it does allow you to bring more oxygen into the lower portions of your lungs. I have been lucky to have pretty good lung capacity (I won the underwater swimming contest in Long Island NY in 1972 when I vowed to stay under until I saw my rival Alex’s ankles!) I find myself doing the belly breathing when I am getting most pooped. I have been trying to shift to it, when my breathing wants to switch from 2 in, 3 out to 2 in, 2 out. Using the deep belly breathing allows me to continue breathing 2-3. This then gives me another level I can step it up to if I need to.