Spirit of the Marathon and Yokan...

Just a heads up for anybody interested... There is a documentary film about the marathon entitled Spirit of the Marathon about 7 marathoners and the story of their preparation and races at the Chicago Marathon. I haven't seen it yet, but it has been in the works for a few years, and I am looking forward to seeing it. It is showing in theaters for a special engagement on one day, January 24, 2008. You can check out some info on the film at the website:

http://www.marathonmovie.com/

I have rarely seen any documentary film about running that I didn't enjoy. Well, I haven't seen a whole bunch of them, but one of them called Running on the Sun is one of my favorite movies of all time. It's about the running of a 135 mile ultramarathon which goes through Death Valley (lowest elevation in the continental US) up to Mount Whitney (highest elevation in the contiguous 48 states). The PBS science show, Nova, also had a special episode entitled "Marathon Challenge" that documented the training and physiological changes that first time marathoners went through when training to run the Boston Marathon.

I think these types of documentaries are interesting not only for marathoners, but are probably of general interest to all types of runners just because you get to see the kind of struggles that occur when training for such a long distance running event. Even non-runners can find the inherent drama of long distance running interesting as I have watched Running on the Sun with a non-runner who really enjoyed it. So maybe if you ever felt like it would be cool to run a marathon, maybe these movies are something that can get you motivated or inspire you. Even if you don't feel like ever running a marathon, maybe it will get you out the door to run a couple of miles around the neighborhood.

While in general I love reading or watching almost anything about running and racing, there's something about these documentaries that gets my blood pumping. I guess maybe they remind me that I'm not the only crazy person out there running in the streets, that maybe there are people who are even crazier than I am! Probably it's just the old saw that "birds of a feather flock together". People just like to see and be around people who they perceive are like them.

Maybe that's why it's usually fun to be out there at a local running race. Usually people who show up to run a road race are a pretty friendly bunch. Even if you don't know anybody, chances are it would be easy to strike up a conversation with anybody else who happens to be wearing a race number. And there is a sense of community too, as there seems to be a lot of good will that reaches from the fastest to the slowest and vice versa. If you're a runner but never ran a race before, I highly recommend experience. And even if you weren't thrilled the first time, give it a few more shots because you never know when it might catch on with you.

On a different subject, today's cool food item is green tea jelly or green tea yokan. That's the stuff that's in the picture to the left. It's a Japanese treat that's made from beans, sugar, and agar. It's kinda like Jello, but instead of using gelatin which comes from dead animals, it uses agar which comes from plants, usually seaweed I believe. The consistency of the yokan is not as soft as Jello, but it's more like the inside of a Three Musketeers candy bar but not as dry.

I usually prefer the red bean jelly which is made from azuki beans, also called hongdou (red bean) in Chinese, but the store I went to only had these huge blocks about the size of a Snickers candy bar. The jellys on the left are flavored with green tea and are actually made from some type of white bean instead of the traditional hongdou. Each jelly is about 1 1/2 inches by 1 inch by 1/2 inch large and approximately 100 calories each.

Going back to running for a moment, the size and calorie content of these jellys make them almost ideal for carrying around for long run nutrition when training for a marathon. In fact, I have used them during long runs for energy and they seemed to work good for me. Plus they are yummy any other time too.