While none of the sorrow over the bombings at the finish line of the Boston Marathon is, or should be, forgotten (I wrote about it here that week), many of those who ran the race have begun to also allow themselves to reflect on the race itself, the running, and the happy (or difficult) day that preceded the attack. People are reclaiming pieces of the day; the iconic moments that each year make a marathon such an important part of the running calendar.
Many, many runners have added Boston 2014 to their calendars – out of a spirit of defiance and solidarity.
For marathoners, achieving the iconic Boston-qualifying time (BQ) is often a key goal in their development. Once that’s achieved? For some, the next benchmark is cracking three hours.
With those folks in mind, I’d like to share the course strategy I ran, as it helped me achieve my goal of getting in under three hours, along with some notes from the training cycle.
Running the Boston Course, Strategy
The Boston course is a net downhill – my Garmin showed 479 feet of elevation gain and 926 feet of elevation loss during the run. What makes the course difficult is that the first 16 miles are pretty much all downhill, which encourages rash behavior. Then between mile 16 and 21 you climb four hills, the last one being the storied Heartbreak Hill. These climbs, after the 16 overly-speedy downhill miles, can leave your legs in pretty poor shape. If you overrun the first 16 miles, 22 to 26.2 will be quite unpleasant.
I encountered that unpleasant experience first hand in 2010. I was maybe 3:10-3:12 fit, but I got sucked into the easiness of the gentle downhills and ran the first half on what – if memory serves – was about a 3:08:XX finish pace. Thinking I could “put time in the bank.” Of course I hit the hills and crumpled, struggled and wheezed up them and then tried to speed up on the far side of Heartbreak Hill, only to have my quads seize up. The last five miles were a terrible, exhausted slog, completely bonked, a white haze of fatigue. I could hardly keep my head up straight on my neck by the end. I finished in 3:12:46, and maybe that’s not much slower than I would have run it if I’d paced better, but the final five miles needn’t have been so utterly miserable.
So, I was hoping not to do that again this year. After nine marathons, including this one, I have concluded that you (or at least I) can’t put time in the bank.
What I aimed to do this year at Boston was put energy and muscle in the bank. I hoped I was 2:59:XX fit. All my training benchmarks suggested I could run 6:45 pace for a marathon distance. I knew that if my goal pace was 6:50 and I was training by my Garmin, I’d better aim for 6:45, since you can’t run the tangents perfectly (or at all) in a race as crowded at Boston.
So at the start, rather than saying to myself, “hey, I can run 6:45 pace, but that means I should run the downhills even faster, say 6:35,” as I would on a course where the hills were more normally spaced and the first 16 miles weren’t on downhill, I concentrated on not running any faster than my goal pace for the whole first 16.
It felt easy though 10. Then work from 10-16, but not too hard, concentration was required at that point, but not grim determination.
And then, because I’d gone easy (by sticking to goal pace) on the first 16, the hills were hard work, but actually fun. I didn’t try and maintain the 6:45 pace up the hills, but tried not to go any slower than 7:00 and reclaimed as much as I could on the downhill sides. The first hill at 17 was a relief; my legs were happy for the variety. I wove in and out of the crowd and passed a bunch of folks. And I was able to speed up a good deal going down the other side. Even by Heartbreak, I slowed but still felt good, kept passing folks, and recovered quickly at the crest. Here are the splits from those miles.
17 – 6:52
18 – 6:53
19 – 6:41
20 – 6:52
21 – 7:00
The most critical number, though, was the split for mile 22 – which was 6:37. With that mile done, and the fastest one of the whole race, and only 4.2 to go, I began to feel confident I could hang in at a decent clip. Overall, I averaged about 6:43 pace for the last five miles. After mile 26, the last .4 miles (per the Garmin anyhow, and here’s where you have to expect you’re going to overrun the distance in a big, crowded race), was at 6:26 pace.
So there’s my suggestion on strategy for the Boston Marathon course, based on my admittedly limited course experience, but a positive outcome three years later and the second time around: official time 2:58:43, avg. pace: 6:49.
| k | 10k | 15k | 20k | Half | 25k | 30k | 35k | 40k | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0:21:09 | 0:42:18 | 1:03:26 | 1:24:33 | 1:29:10 | 1:45:39 | 2:07:07 | 2:28:30 | 2:49:32 | |
| Finish: | Pace | Proj. Time | Offl. Time | Overall | Gender | Division | |||
| 0:06:49 | 2:58:43 | 2:58:43 | 1845 | 1734 | 248 | ||||
The Training Plan
The plan was from Pfitzinger’s Advanced Marathoning, and I’ve followed it for (I think) 7 out of the 9 marathons I’ve run. It’s enabled me to make consistent gains over the seasons, and this year make a more than 5 minute jump from a 3:04:05 PR at the fast-and-flat Baystate Marathon course October 2012. I highly recommend picking it up. Great advice throughout and the plans grow with you as you advance. My copy is battered, dogeared, annotated and well, well read. Sadly, not autographed.
Takeaways from the training cycle:
- The Pfitizinger plan breaks the training into four mesocycles of 3 to 6 weeks each focused on different elements of prep – endurance, lactate threshold training, race prep, and taper.
- Each mesocycle contains a race-pace long run, which builds throughout the program to an 18 miler with 15 (I do 16) at race pace five weeks from the marathon. I’ve found that if I can hit my paces in the race pace run, I can hit those paces in the marathon. (I wrote about it here.)
- The plan includes only a modest amount of speedwork – frequent strides and then once a week either a long tempo run or later in the plan long 5K pace intervals.
- A key workout combo is a 10 mile or so Tuesday run with 5-6 miles at tempo pace, and then a 14 mile Wednesday long run. I think this was one of the most potent parts of the plan for me.
- The Pfitzinger plan offers different versions for up to 55 miles per week, 55-70 miles per week, and 70 plus miles per week. I ran the 55-70 plan, but my schedule was so crazy with work and family obligations I had to modify, cutting some of the recovery run doubles out, and staying at between 55-62 miles a week most weeks.
- For scheduling reasons, I had to do my Wednesday night long runs (about 14 miles), a. at night, and b. on the treadmill because I had to be listening for the baby monitor. I actually ended up running about 50% of my mileage on the treadmill – and I think this helped immensely. This was the least tweaky/injured I’ve been in any training cycle, despite being the highest mileage season yet. I think all those mentally grueling nighttime 14 milers were much less physically grueling than they would have been on icy, snow packed sidewalks.
- The treadmill also let me control my hill workouts. For most of my 14 milers, I ran a warmup few miles then started alternating flat treadmill 1/2 miles with 1/2 mile climbs for 10 miles or so. I think this helped.
- My last race pace long run, 5 weeks out, was bang on – 18 miles with 16 at around 6:45, with the last two of the 16 faster than that. When this works, whatever that race pace is, I have been able to hit in the race. When I blow up, I know I have to modify the goal.
So there you have it. If you’re considering training at a similar mileage level or similar race goals and have questions I didn’t address here, feel free to drop me note. See you on the roads soon! A cool 3-minute video by the BBC on the art in the cathedral in Cologne (Köln); particularly interesting, the grotesques at the end. One of the most wonderful side benefits of business travel has been the opportunity to see–and go to Mass in–a variety of beautiful Gothic European churches. I was in Cologne on business last year and taking a run on a Friday evening and found myself in front of the cathedral described in the video linked to above as the hour struck. Amazing, massive sound! Like a squadron of jets going right overhead; huge, overwhelming, amazing, numinous. Shakes awake one’s very soul. Running Tip: The famous Rhine River runs through Cologne, and there are pedestrian paths on both sides. Bridges take you across the river at regular intervals. I started my run at the Radisson Blu on the east side of the river, which is a quick walk from the Köln Messe (the big exposition center). It was a quick jog down the Duetz-Meulheimer Straße, and I think I cut over on the Barmer Straße as I worked my way toward the river, but I can’t recall, doesn’t really matter. You can see where you headed as you see the city skyline and the cathedral on the other side of the river. You’ll get there. I got to the river’s east bank and there was a wonderful path, often packed dirt, that ran north treelined through a lark park area – wonderful views of downtown across the river. I went up about three miles and crossed a bridge and came down slightly more crowded but very picturesque bike path that offered great views of the river and of the city center coming up in front of me as I ran south. As you can tell, I don’t tend to map these out ahead of time. I use my Garmin to tell me distance and keep major landmarks in sight. That allows for happy accidents, like in Cologne, when a few winding turns around crowded blocks in the downtown brought me to the square in the front of the cathedral! Wunderbar! The rivers of great cities usually offer great running opportunities along their banks, and even in densely crowded cities, the river walkways usually let you avoid frequent stops for lights at intersections! Here are a few shots I took while I was there. I met a young guy from Denmark in the long walk through the corrals after the finish line at the Boston Marathon. He had just PR’d, and I had just run the best race of my dang life, just waved like a madman to my wife and eldest son on Boylston Street, just had a sweet and smiling volunteer wrap a space blanket around me, another hang a medal around my neck. I was spent and ecstatic and grateful. Grateful for being able to run, for health, for the sunshine and the day and these people, these amazing people. And now as I and hundreds of fellow runners went on through the long corral toward the bag pickup and family meeting area, this guy and I chatted about what makes Boston special. I asked how he’d done. “They have the best crowds in the world here,” he said, beaming, elegant, rolling Scandinavian accent. I agreed. Twenty six point two miles of pure New England spirit. Your ears hurt when you finish the Boston Marathon, in a good way. We talked. For a minute the guy from Denmark and I were old friends. We shook hands, or fingers at least, since we were both clutching the bags full of snacks they give you, water, bananas. This is what runners are like post marathon. The barriers are down, and otherwise restrained folks hug volunteers and strangers and tell their wives and kids the “I love you’s” that they ought to say more often. We parted at the bag pickup and the sky was blue and I got my bag and found my way to the family meeting area for the people whose last name begins with B and rolled out my legs, put on some deodorant and slipped into my Boston 2013 shirt. There are few moments in life when you are simply happy and thinking of nothing but gratitude, content. Kris and David arrived, beaming, and we embraced. David, who is 10, took a picture of Kris and me. We have a lot of post marathon shots together, she and I, but this one is the best. We met friends from our New Hampshire running club for drinks at the Four Seasons, where the staff all applaud when you walk into the lobby with your medal on. A ridiculous splurge, but for a lot of us, marathon day is third only to Christmas and Easter. Better than a birthday by far. And I wanted my son to get the whole Boston experience. I wanted him to love marathons the way I do, or at least understand why I do. We posed for pictures with friends, compared race stories, how did you fare in the hills, brother, how many Gu’s did you take? And then one of our friends came in. She’d just finished when something exploded amidst the spectators on Boylston Street. And the runners in the finishing corrals had begun to run. They ran another mile after the marathon she said. And her eyes had that look in them that you don’t see often here in New England. Tears and genuine fear, haunted and horrified. One of the guys hugged her. Congratulated her on finishing and was still smiling. Because we didn’t know. I don’t think any of us understood it then, how bad things had just gotten. The staff in the Bristol Lounge had turned the televisions to the news and they were showing smoking, smashed places on Boylston Street where David and Kristen had just been. Where we’d all just run by. But we still didn’t know, really. Kris had parked at Alewife and we figured it was time to go, so we collected our friend Joseph, a strong Kenyan masters runner who on the right day for him (not this day) might have run a 2:24 and won his division, and headed for the T. People on the sidewalks knew something was happening, but not what. The first T stop we came to was closed, and all were being directed to the big stations. Faces were anxious. A few people were crying. Someone who’d been walking with us, who I’d fallen into a chat about race times with, borrowed my phone to call for a ride. He tried to get through three times. All circuits were down. We headed for South Station and my phones – work and personal phones – began to chirp. Text messages. Facebook and Twitter. A flood of anxious questions from family and friends and colleagues. But no phone circuits available. Just text after text. That’s when we knew that whatever had happened wasn’t a gas main or transformer or anything normal, or explicable. Whatever had happened had just echoed from Boylston Street, all the way around world, and back to my phone via dozens of anxious loved ones. I walked fast then, marathon legs or no. I wanted my wife and son on the train and on the way home. Sirens. You know the rest. Or as much as I know. The two bombs, the hundreds of terrible injuries, the three dead and more just hanging onto life. As we listened, mourning, to the radio reports on the car radio as we drove north on 95, a pall settled over us. It contains the stony weight of shared sorrow, and who knows when it will lift. These were our people, all of them. Our son went off to school today and he was okay, but he had a hard time getting to sleep last night. We’d prayed together, with all the kids, and I told him, it’s okay, it’s okay. And somewhere in me, I believe it. It’s okay. It has to be. It’s horrible, and lives have been ended, and more have changed beyond recognition, and the world is not a safe place. But I love you, son, and it’s okay because that’s the best we can do; love each other. And keep running. Evil is not a thing, it’s a lack of a thing. It’s a void where the relationship between God and something, someone, in the world ought to be. We can fill that space, leave no room for evil. I would not necessarily have run Boston again next year. There are other marathons to explore in the limited time we have. But now I know I’ll register. I told David that: I’m registering for this race next year. Let’s not be afraid. Lets fill the world with life and be damn well defiant about it. Isaiah said, “They that hope in the LORD will renew their strength, they will soar on eagles’ wings; They will run and not grow weary, walk and not grow faint.” Let’s love each other. Let’s choose to run this race together, as old friends who have never met. Because as bad some days are, Boston crowds are the best in the world and this race, however you choose to run it, is the one we’ve been given to run, this is the world we’ve been given to fix, and these people in our lives are the ones we’ve been given to care for, to cherish, and to let care for us. Sleep tight, son, because there’s good work ahead of us, and a race to run. I was out in Anaheim for work a little while ago, and in addition to having to squeeze a few very early and night recovery and tempo runs, I had a 14-mile midweek long run on the calendar (those who’ve suffered under Pfitzinger’s marathon program know these well). After a three full days on a tradeshow floor, my feet were killing me and the thought of an evening 14 miler on traffic congested streets and tourist crowded sidewalks felt purgatorial. I asked the folks at the hotel desk, and they had no ideas for options. Luckily, a bit of Google searching and a map consult turned up reference to a Santa Ana River Trail. From the Anaheim Convention Center run east on Katella Avenue for about 2.4 miles. You’ll cross under the 5 and eventually 57 (Orange Freeway), cross over the Santa Ana River and then jump on the trail on the other side. I ran north on the trail and swung around when my Garmin showed 7 miles. The trail is paved bike path, although there’s a nice dirt trail that runs parallel for much of it – easy on the feet. Shady trees, flowers blooming, lots of cyclists and runners. I finished the run in the dark and never felt unsafe – though can’t vouch for the overall safety of the neighborhoods the trail might pass through. And some stretches were a bit lonely and dark, especially passing under the overpasses. Like always when travel running, use good judgment. Look what came in the mail today! Just 22 days until Boston! Tomorrow is the last 21 miler before taper. Bib #4628, corral 5, wave one. 3:04:05 was the qualifier. Sub 3 in the cards? Based on the training… Perhaps, with the right me on the right day! I ran my marathon simulator run Sunday – five weeks out from Boston – and have to say it went pretty darn well, which gives me some renewed hope for cracking the three hour mark at Boston on April 15. So what’s the marathon simulator? It’s a long run with 16 miles (or 16.4 if you want to be picky and achieve an actual “metric marathon” of 26.2 kilometers) at your proposed marathon race pace. It’s run five weeks out from the marathon, at the end of a normal week of your peak mileage running. No taper in advance. The idea is that if you can run this workout before your taper, you can run the marathon at the same pace after the taper. Based on my experience (eight marathons to date), it works. I first read about the simulator back in 2008 when I was training for my first marathon. (I wrote about it here.) The concept made sense and I’ve made it part of my marathon build up ever since. When I’ve hit the paces in the simulator, I’ve hit them in the marathon. When I haven’t, one of two things has happened. I’ve either dialed back the goal a bit, as I did before Cape Cod in fall 2011, when my race pace runs told me I was in 3:05:00 shape not 3:00:00 shape. Or I’ve gone for it and bonked, as I did at Baystate in fall 2012. I aimed my marathon simulator run five weeks out at a 6:50 pace and ended up bagging it 11 or 12 miles into the pace miles because I could already feel myself red-lining – it was an end-of-race effort way too early. But I told myself I was still recovering from hard racing at Reach the Beach and went for the sub-3 at Baystate anyway. Ran strong, at pace, for 20 miles, then bonked. Last 6.2 were a trudge. Ended up at 3:04:05 – a PB but not the race I’d wanted. The simulator knew. Here’s a recent article on the simulator, which as it turns out is a run used by the Hansons-Brooks Distance Project. And the original one I read all those years back in Runner’s World. This Sunday’s run was my strongest simulator yet. We got back from an overnight at Kris’ mom’s down in MA on a beautiful, sunny, 40F, breezy Sunday afternoon. I wore shorts and long sleeve compression shirt, light gloves for the first few miles. Prerun nutrition: pizza and cheesecake the night before for proper fat-loading. Then a light breakfast, eggs. Mid-morning squash soup. Cereal bar on the ride home. And just before the run, a slice of bread wrapped around some peanut butter and banana. I took two Gu packets with caffeine during the run, one at 45 minutes in, the next at 90 minutes in. Drank 8 ounces water during the run. 2% chocolate milk with coffee mixed in directly after the run. I’d been nervous about how this was going to as I’d been feeling physically stressed and tired. I never made it to the mileage the Pfitzinger plan called for – high 60s maxing at 70. I barely squeaked in 60 mile weeks, and even to manage that meant ugly late night training runs, once work was done and the kids were in bed. Life’s busy these days. But nevertheless, I got the 14 mile Wednesday nighters done, and I think it was these that helped this run feel controlled throughout. I started with two warmup miles, (7:48 and 7:33) before I jumped into the 16 marathon pace miles (6:46, 6:44, 6:45, 6:46, 6:48, 6:46, 6:49, 6:44, 6:47, 6:47, 6:53, 6:46, 6:45, 6:47, 6:43, 6:43). I really had to focus on holding pace starting about mile 11. It was hard work after that, but I never felt like I hit my lactate threshold or that my heart rate got too high, or even that I was breathing too hard. I never hit a spot where I didn’t think I could have sped up if I needed to, and I finished with the two fastest miles of the run. And if 6:51 is what I need to crack three hours, then the that roughly 6:45 range ought to provide some margin of safety relative to crowds, imperfect tangents and the vagaries of the day. All of which is to say, that if prior experience proves out, and if its not 90 degrees nor a 40 mile an hour headwind, Boston ought to be a pretty decent race for me this year. I’ve got three weeks left to train and two to taper. And maybe I’ll get that sub-three hour time. Either way, having the simulator done and behind me is a confidence booster – and a relief. It’s snowing again this morning in Munich, and it strikes me how much the weather here in Bavaria feels just like home in New Hampshire (or my native Vermont). But it’s not just the weather – there’s something oddly familiar to a New Englander about so many aspects of the Bavarian landscape, cuisine and culture. Get that feeling every time I’m here. This is the third time we’ve held Avionics Europe here – and this has been the largest yet. But next year – on to Abu Dhabi. That, I think, will feel somewhat less familiar to New England. Vine is a video creation app for iOS devices that lets you take a very short video, using a radically simple set of controls, play it back on a loop, and then post it to Vine, Twitter and Facebook. That’s about it. Not sure why this is cool, but it is, maybe because it takes away the auteur pressure of more complex video tools. You just point the iPhone at something, press the screen and the video captures, release, it pauses, press again, continues recording. Simple, but the results are oddly compelling. Stop motion, Daliesque artsy stuff, Grudge style Japanese horror vibe.Perhaps it’s the same way a “non-artist” (quotes suggest I’m not sure such a thing exists) will sit and doodle away with a pencil and ruled notebook paper, but freeze up with a canvas and set of oils. How much pressure can there be to be great with such a simple tool? Permission to be creative for fun. The app’s been live a few weeks, and people are already writing copious posts about its potential uses for biz, marketing, etc. (Here’s a link I tweeted last week on using Vine for B2B content marketing, for example.) This feels a bit early, since the app hasn’t quite figured out how to filter out inappropriate content (you can guess what some people will do with six seconds and a camera), and how big can the user base be now? Also, the format seems slightly too short for really cool “how to” or product intro videos. But who knows, they add an Android app to the suite, capitalize on their relationship with twitter, build in some embed and better sharing features, and maybe this will be as big as it is interesting. By the way, if you’re experimenting and want to delete a post, the method isn’t obvious. There are three little dots under the video in the app view. These allow you to delete or share a post. Too much running will kill you is the gist of the Wall Street Journal piece several folks have pointed out to me this week. Ironic it is getting passed around on the week I start my training for the 2013 Boston Marathon. The WSJ story is built around an upcoming editorial from the British journal Heart in which James O’Keefe looks at a two recent studies and draws the conclusion that while moderate (less than 25 miles a week running, slower than 8 minute pace) endurance athletics benefits longevity, activity higher than that diminishes longevity (will kill you sooner) by putting too much wear and tear on your heart. You can read the whole article here. It’s written heavily weighted toward O’Keefe’s opinion – it mentions critics of the interpretation but allows O’Keefe to dismiss them without actually presenting any of the basis for the criticism. Alex Hutchinson, who writes the Sweat Science column for Runner’s World, has penned a response to the Journal story pointing out flaws in the theory. One is that the study that found overall runners live 19% longer than non-runners, but that of those runners, those who run more than 25 miles per week do not get this benefit, quantified the association of running and mortality after adjusting for things like “body mass index, current smoking, heavy alcohol drinking, hypertension, hypercholesterolemia,” etc. As Hutchinson points out: What this means is that they used statistical methods to effectively “equalize” everyone’s weight, blood pressure, cholesterol, and so on. But this is absurd when you think about it. Why do we think running is good for health? In part because it plays a role in reducing weight, blood pressure, cholesterol, and so on (for more details on how this distorts the results, including evidence from other studies on how these statistical tricks hide real health benefits from much higher amounts of running, see my earlier blog entry). They’re effectively saying, “If we ignore the known health benefits of greater amounts of aerobic exercise, then greater amounts of aerobic exercise don’t have any health benefits.” It’s well worth checking out the whole piece, and other pieces and Hutchinson’s other Sweat Science columns. Another thing in the WSJ story that gave me pause was a quote by Dr. Kenneth Cooper, cited later in the article, suggesting, “If you are running more than 15 miles a week, you are doing it for some reason other than health.” (Then the Journal let him slip in the idea that he had a suspicion, but no evidence, that running also causes cancer. I have a suspicion that every time I drink a good quality India Pale Ale, a magical space unicorn prevents an asteroid from hitting the earth. On that basis, I will continue to consume India Pale Ales for the sake of all mankind.) I can tell you from personal experience that running 15 miles a week may have helped my general aerobic fitness, but it had almost no weight control benefit. When I moved into the 30 mile a week range, my aerobic fitness jumped tremendously, and even more importantly, my weight dropped by about 20 pounds. The fact that there are clearly identified health risks tied to obesity (including coronary heart disease, diabetes, and yes, cancer), suggests that an activity which could control weight, such as running more than 15 miles a week, can very certainly be done with a primary goal of health, even if other benefits (camaraderie, the fun of competition, etc.) are also derived. It further suggests in a very practical way why the flaw borne of equalizing for things like weight before analyzing longevity data (that Hutchinson points out above) is a serious one. I run for a lot of reasons, but at the core of them is a desire to keep weight off, stay aerobically fit and control stress. I’m 42 and I’ve got four children ten and under, and I want to spend as many vigorous years with them as I can. That’s the goal. Why then do I run marathons? Because the audacious challenge of the marathon distance, and the desire to race it with some competence, requires a programmatic and lifestyle discipline that experience tells me I would not otherwise apply to my personal fitness. In other words, time-specific, challenging and fun goals help me stay motivated to meet broader more general goals like staying fit for a lifetime. All that said, if definitive data someday proves the risks of distance running outweigh the benefits, I’ll heed it. And I suppose for that reason I’ll continue to read these articles and try and consider them with an open mind when they get passed around. But for now, the training goes on. I’ve 15 miler on the calendar for tomorrow if anybody wants to join me.
Art of German Cathedrals
What I Told My Son The Night After The 2013 Boston Marathon
Looking For A Long Run in Anaheim? Santa Ana River Trail
22 Days Until Boston!
The Marathon Simulator Run – 5 Weeks Out, Great Predictor of Race Time?
Bavaria, Like Home In So Many Ways
The benefits of limits: Vine’s interesting social video idea
I heard about the new social media video app Vine last week on Slate’s Culture Gabfest’s podcast, that week’s episode titled, aptly, Six Seconds of My Life Manage to Bore Even Me Edition. Since then, it has seemed to come up everywhere. Like when you buy a car and the notice how many there are on the highway, or when you learn a new word and then hear it used again right away. I’m beginning to think of it as the Dave Dies At The End effect.John Dies At The End
Caught John Dies at the End last night after hearing it chatted about in both horror and lit circles (podcast culture Venn diagrams), and terrific – recommend it if you are into campy, indie, artisanal horror. Caveat – not for everyone, very vulgar and not even a little bit family friendly. Directed by Don Coscarelli (who did the Phantasm movies), written by David Wong (Jason Pargin), a senior editor at Cracked.com. Awesome secondary role for Paul Giamatti, The dialogue is fantastic, cast is fun to watch and blend of bizarre comedy offbeat philosophical musings and gross-out horror is dead on.First week of my marathon training plan and I learn too much running can kill me? Or not…