Cool Drink for a Hot Summer: Boost Your Endurance

Posted on June 16, 2011 by Marshall

Icy Drink for Greater EnduranceLast spring, science confirmed what most of us slushie/slurpie/slurry-loving athletes already knew: drinking something icy cold on a hot day can help you exercise longer. The study reported an average increase of about 50 minutes in endurance after drinking a syrup-flavored ice slurry, what we in my house call a “slushie.”

Sure, you can stop at a convenience store for a Super Guzzle or whatever, but we don’t have that kind of thing here in the mountains where I live, and besides it costs a lot less to make your own.  So we do slushies the old-fashioned way, in a blender.

When I was running from San Francisco to New York a few years ago, Heather perfected a slushie recipe she could whip up in the RV with our super-powered Vita-Mix machine, which I asked her to write down so I could share it with you. It should work in any blender suitable for crushing ice. Here’s what she provided yesterday …

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Posted in Hydration & Nutrition, Training & Tips | 1 Comment

Landmark on Highway 50, So Long

Posted on June 14, 2011 by Marshall

You know that empty, strange, solitary feeling you get when you hear that someone you used to know died months ago? On Friday, I learned via Facebook that something awful had happened back in January, something that’s put me in an unsettled mood. I guess it’s mourning. I don’t know what else to call it.

Right after the new year, vandals destroyed something of mine, at least it felt like mine. It really belonged to everyone who’d ever seen it, a bit of Americana along U.S. Highway 50, which is a barren stretch nicknamed “the loneliest road in America.” I wrote about having seen it during my 2008 transcontinental run, how at first I thought it was a hallucination but then fell into a sense of wonder over its quirky beauty, the thousands of stories behind its strange presence just outside Middlegate, Nevada: Continue reading →

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Posted in Book, Running on Empty (2011), Friends & Family, Run Across U.S., SFO-NYC (2008) | 5 Comments

Mount Eiger, Matterhorn, Mont Blanc: Alps Trilogy

Posted on May 25, 2011 by Marshall

Back in the mid-seventies, Clint Eastwood made a mountaineering action thriller, The Eiger Sanction. It’s set largely in the Bernese Alps, where a climber who’s planning to ascend the treacherous Eiger also has to dodge bullets fired by a hitman. People die and double-cross. Great movie.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEc1aEYmiA8&playnext=1&list=PL267768393AECCD55[/youtube]

Original trailer for the 1975 movie. Check out the footage of
the mountain starting around 2:00!

I’d read the book a few years earlier and become fascinated with Mount Eiger, the most dangerous character in the story. Germans call it Mordwand: a sheer, 13,025-foot “death wall.” Since 1935, more than 60 people have perished trying to get up the north face.

So, of course, that went on my list of “gotta do” climbs. Back then, I was in my early 20s, and I had yet to scale any significant altitude. But I’d been dreaming of summitting Mount Everest and other great mountains since I was 5 years old.

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Posted in Badwater Ultramarathon, Mountaineering | 3 Comments