Peter BG Shoemaker

The best advice I've seen yet

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From Herb Hedgecock (an ‘older’ runner of some note), to a first timer:

  1. Have a crew to drive along and help. It’s really useful to have someone ahead of you in a car, with the window rolled down 2 inches and the doors locked, yelling to run faster, and that you only have 47 more miles to go.
  2. Get someone to jog along with you for the latter parts of the race. This gives them and you practice in conflict resolution as you become surlier, curse more, and literally go to hell.
  3. Learn to pee on the run. Why stop? And who really cares about wet shoes after 20 miles?! And if you finish the 50, you will smell so bad that no one will notice the shoes.
  4. Eat and drink at every aid station. Remember that you paid good money to abuse your body doing an ultra. The least you can do is get part of that money back in food and drink. Also steal as much food as you can at the finish area before you leave.
  5. If you really want to run a fast competitive first 50 miler, then watch your diet, get plenty of rest, do some long training runs of 4-6 hours while practicing eating and walking, do some speed training, pick the right genes from your parents, etc. However, the best idea is to forget all of that foolishness of running a fast first race. Instead go out drinking with the ultra veterans who know how to beer-load, and enjoy yourself. Remember your body is going to let you know for a long time that it went 50 miles. Be nice to it – beer – before the run.
  6. The 25:5 method is to WALK 25, then get in a car and drive 5! Get it right; otherwise your body will really be mad at you.
  7. If you’re really still serious about this non-sense, then consider therapy; you may yet be one of those who can be saved.

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For many years now I've left a trail of flecks across the Internet. Just begun novels; explorations of culture, music, writing, food, the future, mountains, long distances, shallow oceans, deep canyons; oddly-composed music; even more oddly-constructed poetry; impassioned editorial; strident analysis, and a slew of images, sounds, and scribbles. Most of this has passed into the aether, waiting only for some semi-sentient algorithm to pull it from obscurity twenty years hence. In the meantime, there is this lodestone, gathering what it can.

Coordinates

I've spent the last 15 or so years exploring the borders of markets, innovation, curiosity, technology, culture, society, and policy, with very little regard for passports or visas. While my early travels are documented elsewhere, I now spend my time with Pinyon Labs, a strategic foresight research firm. We do spectacularly interesting and innovative stuff in transportation and energy for private industry, government, and non-profits.

Elsewhere

I've been slowly trying to consolidate the virtual me, spread as it has been across the nets. Most of my writing (at least my better stuff) is available at atelier tushu, my workshop and exhibition space. There too you'll find a smattering of painting, photography, and sound sculpture past, present, and future. Elsewhere is my writing on running really, really far. There is also an irregularly updated collection of cultural ephemera called CultureLust that I maintain when I think about it.

You + Me

Email: peter dot shoemaker at gmail dot com
For the paranoid or exceptionally well-informed: I can be contacted securely through any public key database.
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Skype: peter.bg.shoemaker
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