I Ran the 2008 Philadelphia Marathon

Marathon shoes, orig­i­nal­ly uploaded by Black­mail Is My Life.

23 weeks of train­ing came to fruition yes­ter­day as I com­plet­ed the Philadel­phia Marathon in 3:13:33. I ran through three pair of Puma sneak­ers, the last three I had from my Philebri­ty Fit Club win­nings. They served me well. I ran over 750 miles in the past six months, and they were with me every step of the way.

Want some high­lights? Of course you do!

  • It was crazy cold. I’ve read that it was 27 degrees at the start, but 19 with the wind chill. For con­text, con­sid­er this: the air horn that would’ve sig­naled the start froze! May­or Nut­ter had to count­down the start.
  • I ran most of the race behind a man who wore shorts, no shirt. Need I say more?
  • That crazy cold made for some crazy con­di­tions. The water was freez­ing on the street at the water sta­tions, mak­ing a dif­fi­cult run treach­er­ous. I tip-toed through them gin­ger­ly, fin­gers crossed. I did­n’t fall, so that tech­nique clear­ly worked.
  • The course map was wrong! I think peo­ple had an idea that we would­n’t be run­ning up South St. as it’s been torn up. We ran up Spruce instead, which meant run­ning across some Bel­gian block. How quaint! Sprain an ankle in a colo­nial style!
  • There are cars parked on the course. Peri­od­i­cal­ly the Clif pace run­ner would call for fans to step back off Chest­nut St., which would real­ly help, except they were actu­al­ly pro­tect­ing us from the cars parked on the course. I did­n’t see any­one wipe out on a hood of a parked vehi­cle, but it was def­i­nite­ly possible.
  • Speak­ing of wipe­outs I did­n’t stop to watch: I was run­ning in Fair­mount Park when sud­den­ly the pack part­ed and I saw a white flash in my periph­er­al vision. I iden­ti­fied it as a shoe. Its own­er was in hot pur­suit, div­ing back for it against the oncom­ing run­ners. Like I said, I did­n’t wait to see if he was tram­pled. I hope not.
  • The Clif bar pace guy was great, but: he ran the first half of the marathon behind pace, and then made up the dif­fer­ence in the sec­ond half. This was a dis­as­ter for a run­ner like myself, who needs to stick to one pace and run like a human metronome.
  • A half-marathon is a piece of cake. Every­one should do one. I was­n’t crow­ing like this in Sep­tem­ber when I ran my first, but now I think it’s safe to say that 13.1 miles just isn’t that far. It seems far, but if you take the time to pre­pare your­self, you can total­ly run this dis­tance. Think about it.
  • Run­ning fans make fun­ny signs. The fun­ni­est I remem­ber read­ing read: Bet U Wish U Taped Ur Nip­ples Today. I did­n’t, but I laughed any­way. I need­ed to laugh. I just fin­ished run­ning Lemon Hill.
  • Speak­ing of hills, Philadel­phia isn’t as flat as every­one says. It’s hard to visu­al­ize just where the course takes you, so the lit­tle hills here and there real­ly catch you by sur­prise. Fair­mount was tough; Lemon Hill was tougher; and that last lit­tle over­pass into Man­ayunk was the worst.
  • Every­thing you hear about the last 6.2 miles is true. I ran 20 mile train­ing runs three times. I was con­sis­tent­ly able to dig in and run the last four miles up to 20 sec­onds faster than my work­out pace. Not so on Sun­day. I sput­tered to 8 minute miles by mile 22. Should I have eat­en anoth­er gel? Maybe, but there was­n’t much left in the tank anyway.
  • Hav­ing said that, I think that I went out too fast. The adren­a­line was flow­ing and I felt great in those first sev­en miles. I cranked out a sub‑7 mile some­where in there. Did­n’t mean to, but I did. Did it hurt me? Prob­a­bly, but I still man­aged a 7:19/mile aver­age on the run.
  • Any­thing else? I’m already look­ing for­ward to next year’s marathon. I real­ly want­ed to qual­i­fy for Boston and I just missed it this year. I don’t feel bad­ly about it; I only spent six months train­ing for this one and I near­ly did it. I plan to rest, recov­er from this run, get some new sneak­ers (pos­si­bly Pearl Izu­mis), buy a run­ning jack­et, and stay frosty this win­ter. I hope I see you out there!
  • Last, but not least: I want to extend a spe­cial thanks to Ross and Bryan from Philadel­phia Run­ner. I can’t say enough how great these guys are and how wel­come I feel every time I walk into their stores. Their sup­port and encour­age­ment were won­der­ful. Ross even hand­ed me a water along the course!
Posted on by J T. Ramsay 8

SXSW Music Festival 2009

As I read this post over at Goril­la vs. Bear, I could­n’t help but think, “Who’s actu­al­ly going to SXSW next year?” I went for the first time in 2008 and had a lot of fun. Sure, I was lead­ing a team on a gru­el­ing four day mis­sion in desert heat for my day job, but that’s the trade­off. It was a cool expe­ri­ence. But will I go back next year? Prob­a­bly not.

Why? There are a few rea­sons, but let me start with the most obvi­ous. Few peo­ple care about SXSW cov­er­age, even among indie enthu­si­asts. The blo­gos­phere is glut­ted every March with chat­ter and video of new bands. It’s the sort of noise that turns peo­ple off. It’s also not all that inter­est­ing when many of these bands will criss-cross the coun­try on their route to Austin, or as they depart. Why go when the band will be com­ing to you anyway?

And video? It’s impos­si­ble to shoot, edit, and cut fast enough to keep it inter­est­ing. I talked to my friend Bran­don at Stere­ogum about how tough it is to make SXSW cov­er­age com­pelling when the audi­ence is fed up by the time the fes­ti­val ends. I don’t even know if I saw Pitchfork.tv’s cov­er­age on their site! It’s dis­heart­en­ing because this is the sort of con­tent pro­duc­ers want to work, main­ly because few out­lets can pro­vide HD video on-site, which keeps it above the ama­teur shaky cam shots you see all over Youtube. It’s a great idea that has­n’t yet been real­ized. Maybe Qik and oth­er livestream­ing prod­ucts will make it work, but we’re not there yet.

What does that mean? It means going back to basics. It means out­lets big and small will send few­er cor­re­spon­dents, if any, to cov­er an event that grows larg­er every year. SXSW has defied the odds as the music busi­ness con­tracts, but I won­der how it will fare as the econ­o­my con­tracts as well. I sus­pect that they’ll see few­er cor­po­rate spon­sor­ships, which will make those pesky, fun free shows more dif­fi­cult to pro­duce. SXSW may regain con­trol of its beloved fes­ti­val, but who’ll pony up for those lame cre­den­tials? All the fun stuff hap­pens at the unsanc­tioned events!

2009 will be an inter­est­ing year for the music indus­try as fes­ti­vals and entre­pre­neurs try to buck con­ven­tion­al wis­dom. (If you haven’t read Idol­a­tor’s take on the Top­spin mod­el, I rec­om­mend you do.)

Posted on by J T. Ramsay

Philadelphia Marathon Course

A printable Marathon Map on TwitPic

Click on the pic­ture to enlarge the map of the Philadel­phia Marathon course.

I can’t believe this is just a few days away now. I’m real­ly con­fused and scared by the last ten miles of the course. I don’t know how all those peo­ple can be fun­neled up one side of Kel­ly Dri­ve and back the oth­er. I don’t think run­ning all the way up Chest­nut St. will be all that fun either. Run­ning up Wal­nut dur­ing the Philadel­phia Dis­tance Run was a night­mare. I just hope I’m far enough to the front of the pack to not have to wor­ry about the course being clogged by folks who are turn­ing around look­ing for their friends. I’m keep­ing my fin­gers crossed!

Posted on by J T. Ramsay

Decibel Magazine’s Year-End Issue

Deci­bel Mag­a­zine’s year-end issue is a mon­ster dis­ap­point­ment. It’s been a bad year for pub­lish­ing — just check out this offer to see how bad it is for writ­ers — but Deci­bel’s year-end issue is usu­al­ly some­thing worth­while, an oasis of inter­est­ing music writ­ing in a hol­i­day sea­son — a desert of awful great­est hits albums, Christ­mas albums, and stan­dards record­ed by wiz­ened pop artists.

This issue was ema­ci­at­ed 96 pages. It was a bad year for met­al, or at least it seemed that way to me. When I am famil­iar with most of the top 40 met­al albums, I know some­thing’s amiss. (I haven’t paid seri­ous atten­tion to met­al since I accept­ed my cur­rent gig. I still love the music; I’m just not seek­ing it out as much.) The top ten fea­tures the usu­al sus­pects: that Dis­fear record that came out ages ago; the oblig­a­tory Opeth nod; rel­a­tive upstarts Made Out of Babies; Bal­ti­more­an black met­allers Nacht­mys­tium; and mind-bog­gling­ly awe­some pop met­allers Torche. The list is so under­whelm­ing that Torche does­n’t even rate a cover!

It is worth not­ing that my favorite Japan­ese doom­say­ers Coffins rat­ed the 40th spot for their 2008 joyride, Buried Death! Hails!

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not one of these peo­ple danc­ing on print medi­a’s grave. Heck, I’m ask­ing for Beer Advo­cate for Christ­mas! Our house­hold is lit­tered with print media. That’s part­ly why I can’t real­ly wrap my head around what made all print media decline so rapid­ly, and why mag­a­zines I’ve loved (and worked for) fade so fast.

I know print­ing and mail­ing costs have risen, but that does­n’t explain how peo­ple declared their inde­pen­dence from print overnight. They’re not all auto­di­dacts are they? They still want to read all kinds of lists and have things rec­om­mend­ed to them by author­i­ties of one sort or anoth­er. Where are peo­ple find­ing that sort of con­tent, if not in mag­a­zines that have pro­vid­ed it for gen­er­a­tions? Have their audi­ences real­ly become so Inter­net savvy?

Posted on by J T. Ramsay

Music Industry Shrinkage

I’m catch­ing up on the starred items in my Google Read­er and as I sift­ed through posts about awe­some can­dy bars to Rosselli­ni, I came across this item from Idol­a­tor about how quick­ly the music indus­try is shrink­ing. Now I’m sure that my for­mer self could’ve nav­i­gat­ed the Bureau of Labor Sta­tis­tics for clear­er num­bers, but there’s some­thing that comes up in Mike’s post that inter­est­ed me: the notion that at some point of labor equi­lib­ri­um, the music indus­try will return a profit.

The idea that the music indus­try is still bur­dened by the bureau­cra­cy that grew dur­ing their boom years is a pop­u­lar one. One imag­ines beau­ti­ful peo­ple attend­ing par­ties and doing lit­tle else in gild­ed offices in New York and Los Ange­les, with exec­u­tives doing laps in vaults like Scrooge McDuck.

Of course, if you’ve been to a major label’s offices in the past few years, you’ll find quite the oppo­site. When I vis­it­ed Uni­ver­sal/Is­land-Def Jam to hear Mari­ah Carey’s E=MC2, I was shocked to find spar­tan cubi­cles orna­ment­ed in lit­tle more than pro­mo­tion­al posters and the odd gold or plat­inum record. The office was staffed almost exclu­sive­ly by young peo­ple — very young peo­ple — most younger than me.

This is pure­ly anec­do­tal evi­dence, but I think the music indus­try is being man­aged in much the same way any busi­ness look­ing to scratch out a prof­it is: rely on cheap, young labor and hope for the best. “Cut­ting the fat” may help, but what does one do when all the fat’s been cut? Worse, what hap­pens when you cut the fat only to real­ize that those peo­ple would’ve been bet­ter used to build new busi­ness that’s been neglect­ed for lack of ded­i­cat­ed staff?

(Here’s an idea of their des­tiny in the New World Order.)

Posted on by J T. Ramsay 1