Paavo: Running with science

HURLEY - As of Friday afternoon, 588 people had signed up to take part in today's 46th Paavo Nurmi Marathon.

During registration at the Hurley K-12 School, race officials said there were 48 teams signed up for the five-member relay race, 184 people signed up for the full marathon, 152 for the half-marathon, and six teams for the two-person relay, as of Friday afternoon.

Race director Rita Franzoi was pleased.

"We try to keep adding and making it more for the entire community and also for families," Franzoi said, mentioning the kids' race, the color run and other events associated with registration day.

She said the marathon is one of the oldest races around, just one of the reasons people are drawn to it.

"There aren't a lot of marathons in the month of August and the Paavo is known for its challenging course," she added. "And it brings a lot of people back year after year."

Miles Oschwald, originally from the Milwaukee area, is pursuing his master's thesis in sports psychology from a university in Finland. He had a table set up during registration day and was collecting data for his thesis on runners' psychologies.

Runners who wished to participate in the self-report experiment were asked to fill out a few surveys, one of which had them rate various emotions and how they felt they impacted performance.

Oschwald said a person could eventually create a profile for an individual runner and after analyzing the data, determine how to improve their performance.

"It's just sort of a thing to help them be more aware of how their emotions might be affecting their performances," he said of one of the surveys. He also mentioned another that addressed competitive nature.

Being a marathon runner himself, he wanted to run a race this summer. He collected data at another race in Manitowoc, Wis., but didn't get to run in it, so he signed up for the Paavo.

"It worked out nicely as far as timing, because I'm home for a few months this summer," he said. "I'm sort of looking at different marathons in the Midwest area to go and collect data. The neat thing for me is that since this is the Paavo Nurmi Marathon, and they have a Finnish community here, I can go tell my Finnish friends when I go back in September that I did the Paavo Nurmi Marathon and collected data here."