Jason Lehmkuhle's Journal

March 26, 2008 (Posted March 27, 2008)

It’s been a difficult month or so since my last entry. A couple of weeks after what was a good run for me at the Houston Half Marathon (second in the USA Half Marathon Championships in 1:02:32), I felt like I was rounding into really good shape. I had strung together a handful of promising workouts and I was excited about USATF Cross Country nationals and the rest of my spring racing schedule. As it played out, I was maybe a little too excited.

A few of us were finishing up a longer track workout with a handful of 200s. I had spiked up for the first time in, well, I can’t even remember… to break them in for cross country. Feeling fast and doing my best Michael Johnson impression coming around the second turn, I felt a twinge, then a little bit of a pop followed by a bolt of searing pain running down the back of my leg.

At first I was confused. Was this what it feels like to pull my hamstring? Had I actually run fast enough to cause acute trauma to such a large muscle group? Sickly, I was proud to learn that I was capable of injuring myself in a way I thought was reserved strictly for sprinters or athletes with a much, much, MUCH higher percentage of fast-twitch muscle fiber. My misguided gratification didn’t change the fact that I now had to deal with and treat the new injury.

Initially, the hamstring seemed to heal pretty quickly, but I managed to re-aggravate it a couple of times while attempting workouts that I now realize I wasn’t quite ready for. Begrudgingly, I had to drop out of USA Cross Country and the Gate River 15K. In recent weeks though, I feel like I’ve turned the corner with it. I’m trying to remind myself that it’s still a long march to the end of June and the Trials. In fact, taking into account that “long march to the Trials,” being in peak, hamstring-straining form in February probably wasn’t a good strategy for me anyway.

Looking forward, April and May are going to be important for me. I need to get a qualifying mark in the 10K, which is going to be no small task this Trials cycle. I’m doing everything I can to get healthy and strong now. I’m anticipating being able to get back on the track for workouts here shortly... of course, with new-found respect for my explosive stride and its inherent danger to myself and others (insert giant wink).

January 18, 2008 (Posted January 18, 2008)

Houston
My recovery from the Trials in November has gone much better than expected. I’ve heard other runners talk about how they recover much quicker from their good marathons than from the disappointments. It’s a strange phenomenon (maybe a psychological one?). Someone should do a study on it. In any case, I took a little time off after New York, but I really didn’t feel like I needed it. I’m at a point now where unless I have some physical ailment my body feels better and my life operates more smoothly when I’m running 120-mile weeks. It’s the proverbial “sweet-spot.”

I had registered for the Aramco Houston Half Marathon (the USA Half Marathon Championships) before the Trials, unsure about whether or not I’d be ready for it. After a few workouts post-Trials though, I knew it was worth going down to do it, if for no other reason than that it’d be a good rust buster.

I was more than pleasantly surprised. I finished second, running a PR (1:02:32). James Carney ran a really impressive/gutsy race, pushing from the gun. I hung on through 7 miles where he gapped me for good. I came back on him a little on the way back into town (11-12 miles), but I didn’t have enough to really make it interesting.

I’m also really proud of Kristen (my wife). She snuck under 1:13 in her debut at the distance. I’m really more excited about her prospects this spring than mine. She’s running really well right now. It’s been a bit of a struggle for her the last couple of years. Hopefully, this is her year.

The Frozen North
When I travel to races and chat with people from more southerly latitudes, I am consistently asked about training in Minnesota in the winter. More specifically, the question is, “How do you do it?” My response has always been that I don’t “do” it. Instead “I drive to Arizona, with all of my buddies in the AARP.”

I have friends in Phoenix whose hospitality I’ve abused for the last half-decade. Every year, I’d wait until I saw the first single-digits high in the forecast, and then I’d get in line on the highway with the other snowbirds fleeing the northern Midwest (occasionally stopping at Cracker Barrel).

This year, however, I’m staying put. Why? I freely admit to being soft and growing up on the other side of Iowa, but I’m tired of the natives and most of my teammates regularly reminding me of this fact.

More importantly though, a good, cold, snowy winter tends to force training periodization. It’s hard to do a whole lot intense running when you’re bundled up and negotiating questionable footing, so, you end up doing a lot of slowish miles, laying a nice base for the spring and summer. Sure, we sprinkle in a little on the indoor track or treadmill, but the winter generally tends to slow things down. This formula has history, and you can’t argue with the results: Ron Daws, Steve Hoag, Bjorklund, Beardsley, Kempainen, etc…

I’m not running a spring marathon this year. I’m instead shifting my focus to the track. With little need to be pounding out long marathon-pace workouts, things seem a little more relaxed. I can simply spend time laying that nice foundation before building some momentum into May, June, July and the Trials. So far, things seem to be going well, but the forecasted “high temperature” this weekend (yes, the whole weekend) is -2. There’s a 50/50 chance by Monday I’ll be following a Buick with Minnesota plates through Oklahoma.

November 6, 2007 (Posted November 13, 2007)

Running any marathon, for me, is an emotionally charged experience. You pour so much energy for many months into a singular effort that, because of the nature of the marathon, is very difficult to get right. In running terms, it’s a high-risk, high reward undertaking. Train relentlessly, make the necessary sacrifices to take care of your body, race intelligently and finish with passion. As a professional runner, if you do all those things and run a fast marathon the rewards are great (emotionally and financially).

However, you might do all those things, make all of the sacrifices, and a rogue weather system, missed water bottle or blister may leave you with only a battered ego and a long recovery period. Some of my highest highs and lowest lows have been after marathons, and I’m sure I’m not alone.

This past weekend, the Olympic Trials with New York City as the backdrop, the stakes were raised tenfold. I trained harder than ever, raced smart and had what was probably a career day…(fifth place in 2:12:54).  Within moments of finishing, when I would normally have been soaking that experience in, it all seemed unimportant.

I found out about Ryan Shay’s passing a few minutes after I finished. It didn’t really sink in right then, and I don’t know if it really has yet. The whole story, the whole day is tragic and surreal. There’s no way to prepare to hear that news in that setting. Of course, I can’t even begin to imagine what it was like for Alicia and his family. My heart goes out to them.

I knew Ryan as a friend, competitor and occasional training partner. Ryan was a great marathon runner because he wasn’t intimidated by the distance and its inherent risks. He was also more willing than most to make all of the necessary sacrifices. I always envied Ryan’s drive and focus. He spent his days doing everything he could conceive of to get better, never skipping the little things, the things that even a lot of elite athletes tend to “forget” when they’re busy/distracted/tired (eating right, stretching and strengthening imbalances and generally taking care of your body).

Our paths crossed often, at races or during an occasional trip to warm weather or altitude. Ryan was difficult to train with, only because he could push himself to places in workouts I couldn’t. I was in Phoenix over the winter a couple of years ago, and I made a couple of trips to San Diego to visit friends. Ryan, who was living in the Olympic Training Center at the time, was nice enough to let me join him. I knew I had to give myself a couple of days on either side of those trips to freshen up and recover.

I also remember the World Championship Half Marathon in Edmonton in 2005. Ryan ran an inspiring race, finishing 15th while literally refusing to be dropped by a pack of East Africans who were taking turns throwing in mad surges. I exorcised the memories of my much less inspiring race away with a few Canadian ales that night, but Ryan, Mike Morgan (of the Hansons) and I had agreed to meet in the morning for 10 miles before we caught our flights. I dragged myself out of bed and tried to work through my headache as we started.

A couple of miles in, Ryan, irritated with our sloppy running, started to push the pace. By about four miles Morgan and I had ceased our inane conversation on the previous night’s antics as we were struggling to stay a few strides behind. By six miles we couldn’t see him anymore. Ryan was a month away from running the New York City Marathon and he wasn’t about to waste a good run on me and my beer soaked brain. From Ryan, I learned a lot about what it means to REALLY dedicate and apply your self. He was a great athlete and better guy. He will be missed.

Thank you Ryan Shay.

September 27, 2007 (Posted October 4, 2007)

Busy. That’s been me over the last few months. Based on what I’ve gleaned from conversations with runners and non-runners alike, a lot of people think elite athletes lounge around all day between training sessions sipping Gatorade, napping, and visualizing kicking ass or something similar. Maybe this is what some elites do, and maybe this means I’m not really an “elite athlete.”  Paula does still have me beat in the marathon. That valid debate aside, I’ve always managed to fill my days with activities, most of which are not running related. There are a lot of days I have stuff to do (other than visualizing ass-kicking) from the moment I get up until about 3 minutes before I go to bed. I like it this way, and, in fact, I run better when I’m not maniacally focused on running. I have a tendency to make the daily minutia of training too important and critical when there’s nothing else to think about.

My other commitments keep me from dwelling on bad workouts or races. They also hold my visions of grandeur at bay when training is going better-than-expected. Running a great workout, let’s say repeat 1000s three seconds faster than last year, isn’t that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things and it certainly doesn’t pay your mortgage.

So, what have I been doing? Well the big news is that I recently (in August) got married. I’ve spent a lot of time over the last couple of years attempting to convince my now wife, who is entirely too good for me, that I’m a smart, good looking man capable of a committed adult relationship. If you know me, this was no small task. Then, this summer, I spent even more time planning the event.

Most of my days, when I’m not racing or getting married, revolve around my work. I mentioned in a previous entry that I’m a freelance graphic/web designer. I also coach. I’ve been a cross country and track assistant at Edina High School for a couple of years now, and I love it. It doesn’t feel like a job most days, but, in season, three to six hours daily tend to vanish from my already tightly budgeted free time. The result is that I still can’t beat Andrew Carlson in Tiger Woods golf, and I’ve proven to be an unreliable blogger here. My apologies by the way…

Yeah… and training. I’ve been doing some of that too. After looking at the date of my last entry, I can’t really go into detail about the year since then. It would make many people physically ill to read that many run-on sentences. In summary, it’s been good overall. I had yet another disappointing marathon performance (Boston in April), but aside from that, I’ve raced consistently well: fifth at the half marathon champs, fifth at the 15K champs, fourth at the 10K champs and third at the recent 20K champs.

The focus for me this year though is the upcoming marathon trials in New York, and all of the training for much of this summer and fall is pointed toward that. After Boston, I decided that I really needed to change my approach for the trials. We’re doing things a lot differently for this buildup. All of the key and most of the secondary workouts are over hills to simulate the rollers in Central Park. I’m also doing longer workouts and more at marathon pace. Last week, we did 17 mile marathon pace run on a hilly loop just south of the city. We’ll have a couple of more key workouts there in coming weeks.

My last tune up race is the Twin Cities 10 Mile. I’m excited about another national championship in my backyard, but it’s hard to think about anything other than November 3 in New York. Somehow, I’m sure I’ll manage to keep myself occupied until then though.

 

December 8, 2006 (Posted December 11, 2006)

It’s been awhile since I’ve “blogged” (again, my apologies). This is not so much due to lack of interest or time, but mostly due to the lack of things to report on… or, to be a little more concise, a lack of interesting, fun, positive things to report on. I prefer to fill the ether with warm fuzzy inspirational nuggets, and I’m a bit short currently.

To summarize my last entry, I said, “Blah, blah, blah. I’m in the best shape of my life, and blah, blah. I can’t wait to run the Twin Cities Marathon, blah, blah-dy, blah.” Had I run 2:12 and won, there’s a good chance I could have come up with a stream of those inspirational nuggets laced with some self-congratulatory subtext (in case the sarcasm didn’t come through there, re-read it and roll your eyes).

As things worked out though, Twin Cities was just short of a disaster and it’s taken significantly longer than the aforementioned week to bring myself to rehash any of it in print. My guess is that most people (currently not listening to emo) don’t want to hear a rambling, disappointment-fueled rant. I think I’ve waited just long enough to get a little perspective, and I hope my journal entry here doesn’t end up sounding too negative.

The last thing I want to do after a bad race is “talk” about it. I do a pretty good job putting forgettable efforts behind me, in part due to my ability to remove any reference to them in passing conversation. However, avoidance is easier when you blow up at a race in say Connecticut, or better yet, Finland. When you run your hometown marathon, many people, some of them armed with cameras, watch you.

On this occasion, those nice people watched me lead several miles early on, picking their interest even further. Subsequently, it was much more difficult to pretend to be clueless when some of them asked me, “We cheered for you at mile X. How’d it go?” Or, more bluntly, “I saw you finish. What happened?” Being forced to talk about it, though, has had a hidden benefit. It’s also forced me to do a better job analyzing the race post-mortem, and I hope I’ve walked away from this one having learned something. Time will tell.

“So,” you might say, “Twin Cities went badly. I get it. What happened?” I wish there was a singular simple explanation, something like, “When I was hit by that cement truck that emptied its contents of Quick Crete into my shoes at mile 23, it surely slowed me down.” That would have perfectly explained the way I felt, and I could have moved onto my next marathon knowing that success hinged on avoiding trucks transporting paving materials.

The answer, unfortunately, has been somewhat more elusive. I ran by mile 20 at 5:04 pace feeling a little roughed up, but in control, and somehow by mile 24 I had been reduced to a cramping, stumbling mess, blindly weaving toward the finish. I’m still batting around four or five potential reasons for the epic bonking. In no specific order I’ve come up with:

- too aggressive early (I pushed the pace after a slow opening mile)

- too aggressive in the middle (I could have let the pack go at 16 and conserved)

- not drinking enough (I battled a side stitch that stopped me from drinking)

- drinking too much (same thing with the stitch, chicken or egg)

- not tapering correctly (maybe I should have skipped a couple of second runs)

- just generally being mentally soft (I can still hear my high school track coach yelling “Hike your skirt up and finish the thing!”)

The real answer is probably a combination of a few of the things I’ve mentioned, or, as many wise people have offered, it may have been completely out of my control. It was the will of the marathon gods… it just wasn’t my day. Whatever drove my marathon train to bonkdom, I’m certainly not alone. I’ve lived through a couple of crashes now, and just about everyone who’s run enough marathons has a similar story or six. It still is hard to deal with, particularly because I can’t turn around the following week and redeem myself (without the right blend of pharmaceutical help).

Right now I’m trying to focus on the next thing. After a little down time, training was initially pretty good, but I may have gotten too ambitious. I’m struggling with a couple of niggling injuries right now. With any luck, I’ll work through those in the next couple of weeks and look towards the Houston Half Marathon, some altitude training in Flagstaff and winter cross country in Boulder. There’s always another race.

Thanks for reading. Happy Holidays.

September 2006 Entry (Posted September 20, 2006)

Greetings again. Before I get started on volume two here, I need to apologize for its lack of timeliness. I’ve been informed that a single blog once every several months isn’t exactly up to international blogging standards. For all three of you (hi Mom, Dad and Aunt Charlene) who were anxiously awaiting an update on my summer training and racing, I am very sorry you had to wait. I’ll get with the proverbial program from here on out.

I left off talking about my last couple races of the spring and switching gears to marathon training. I’m running the Twin Cities Marathon on October 1, which is a little under two weeks away now. For better or worse, my whole summer has really revolved around preparing for TCM. By and large, the preparations have gone very well. My golf game, however, has suffered and a couple of the guys that I occasionally fish and/or spend my summer recreational hours with have forgotten my name. It hasn’t all been slowly removing tread from my shoes. I have managed to squeeze in a little fun. Really, I just don’t like walleye (catching or eating) all that much, and, in the middle of a 23 mile day, consuming pancakes and napping takes precedence. The one lucky individual who assuredly hasn’t forgotten my name is the venerable Chris Lundstrom (alias Lundo), my training partner this summer. Unfortunately for Lundo, he’s heard all four of my funny stories from college approximately 200 times. In fact, he heard them all six or seven times a piece on the three hour run we did a couple of weeks ago and, yes, it’s doubtful that he ever found any of them funny to begin with. Lundo’s training has gone well too. I think we’ve been good for each other. Hopefully, he’ll agree to continue to run with me again in a few months after I get some new material.

My training volume has been as high as it’s ever been during the last couple of months. I’ve strung together some big weeks of 140 + miles (max of 153), and broken those up with a few “down” weeks (120ish miles) that included races. In the log since July there are 10 or so 20+ mile runs, a lot of threshold (tempo) work and a sprinkling of some basic track work. Many of the miles were on the course itself. I have the good fortune of living a half mile from the 16 mile mark on the TCM course. Such intimate knowledge of every pothole could be an advantage, but I’m beginning to worry that it might be even more of an advantage to be blissfully unaware of what’s coming. The last few miles of the course aren’t friendly to road-beaten legs.

There’s a school of thought regarding marathon training that centers around a belief that the training is best done uninterrupted, that is, 12 or 16 weeks of big miles and hard long workouts that consume all of your focus, effort and energy. No racing to test the waters, just training. This works for many great runners. Cosmas Ndeti won three straight Boston Marathons in the early 90’s, and that was basically the only race he ran each year. He spent the rest of the year resting (aka: lying around and putting on 15 lbs) and then doing a long protracted build up for the one race he really cared about. I don’t think though that I have the make-up (supreme confidence, single-mindedness) to train well in that way. Dennis (Coach Barker) and I agree that the feedback I get from racing occasionally is important. It cuts down on the chances that you’re running yourself into the ground without knowing it. I’ve embraced a system a little more similar to what a lot of the better road runners in 80’s followed. Greg Meyer, Dick Beardsley, Mark Curp and even Steve Jones raced often leading up to a marathon, allowing themselves to be a little more race hardened. Mostly the races this summer have been treated as workouts, but I’ve surprised myself with a couple of really good efforts. After a couple of hot road trips to Iowa in July (Midnight Madness 10K and the Bix 7 mile), I ran 29:02 at the Guidant Heart of Summer 10K here in Minneapolis. I followed that with a nice 20K in New Haven a couple of weeks later (59:55, a PR), and this past weekend I ran 29:05 on a hilly course at one of my favorite races, the Cow Harbor 10K in Northport (Long Island), NY. Even after all of the miles and a minimum of track work, I’m reasonably certain I’d run close to or maybe even under my 10,000-meter PR on the track if there were a meet tomorrow. I’m not sure that this means anything in terms of my marathon readiness, but it is different for me. In other marathon buildups, I’ve had pretty mixed results in tune up races. I suppose we’ll find out soon if the good racing form was/is a positive thing as it relates to an upcoming marathon.

So, what’s left? In terms of training, not much. I have a couple of weeks of rest (tapering) and restlessness. The inherent problem with marathon training is that you spend 3-5 months training for a singular race where, because of its length, any number of things could go wrong. As race day approaches I’m incrementally more skittish, paranoid and/or generally unstable. I’m waking up every night a couple of times in a cold sweat after dreaming that I missed the start of the race, and/or I’m running and I inexplicably run off course and can’t find the finish… and I’m wearing my school-issued t-shirt and shorts from seventh grade gym class... Good or bad, in a couple of weeks after it’s all over, I’m going to give Cosmas a call. We’ll order pizza and go to the driving range.

Introductory Entries

This is a first for me, that is, chronicling my life and having it posted for public consumption on the internet. I’m a little nervous, and I think this uneasiness stems from my feeling that most of what goes on in my daily existence doesn’t merit being “posted.” I suppose we’ll see how it goes. If I hear a collective yawn from the masses, I may decide to “embellish” my next journal for entertainment value (i.e.; make a bunch of stuff up). If my “blog” (is that what this is?) is half as entertaining as Matt’s (Gabrielson), it’s been successful.

In any case, what follows here are a few snippets from the last few weeks, including trips to the USATF Championships, the Peachtree Road Race, my buddy’s wedding, and the Super America deli.

Saturday, June 10
This was the last day of the Minnesota High School State Meet. I’m an assistant coach along with Luke Watson at Edina High School in the western ‘burbs. It’s been my first experience with formal coaching on any level, and, overall, I’ve loved it. My responsibilities are pretty minimal at this point. Our head coach, Jamie Kirkpatrick, is very good. He has the operation locked down and organized into a series of spreadsheets. My duties amount to nodding my head and telling the kids to listen to Jamie, and, really, I’m not qualified to do much more than this. In any case, we have a very talented bunch of kids. A couple of guys qualified for State in the 3200 and one of them also doubled back in the mile. As juniors this year, they ran 9:12 and 9:14. I hate to put any kind of public pressure on them, but, IMHO, they’re both 9 flat guys if they stay healthy next year… After the meet, I took a quick nap and then met Coach and Andrew Carlson at the track for a little 10K pace/simulation workout, 10 x 1000m with 60 seconds rest. It was far and away the best workout I’ve had all year. I’ve struggled through some more anaerobic workouts the last couple of weeks, but I think that stuff is finally paying off. 10K pace felt very smooth. I figure I’m in 28:10ish shape after the workout. Of course, what shape you “figure” you’re in after any given workout really means nothing.

Tuesday, June 13
Why am I choosing this, a nondescript Tuesday in the middle of June, to record a journal entry? What went on today? Absolutely nothing of interest, but I thought that I’d give everyone a little window into what average day is like in my life. In other words, the following paragraph will explain why there will never be a successful reality show built around the life of a semi-professional runner.

My alarm went off about 7:30 a.m. After walking to and from the bathroom gingerly as various ligaments creaked and popped in my knees, ankles and hips, I checked my email and headed out the door for an easy hour run. I got back, showered and then drove to the Super America (the northern Midwest’s version of Speedway, and a second cousin to Quick Trip) for my morning fare. What, you’re thinking to yourself, does an elite athlete find to eat at a convenience store to replenish and refuel for the rest of his training day? All the nutrients I need are contained within a 12 hour old chocolate muffin and a Diet Pepsi. At 11:00, I had a meeting at a title company that I do some website development for. I do freelance graphic design to fill my days. Website design can be interesting, but the corporate “team” meetings in the IT department of a title company aren’t. These meetings generally last about 30 minutes, and the only part of the meeting where I participate or understand what’s going on is the introductions. Shortly after I say, “Hi John. How’s it goin’?” the language spoken quickly switches entirely to abbreviated tech-speak involving something about the CMS’s XML in the UI’s that the database… whatever... I got home around 1:00 p.m., and the rest of my afternoon was a mix of work, recreational internet usage, and the Discovery channel. At 5:00, I got back out the door for another hour run plus a handful of strides, and because I like symmetry I ran the exact same course I did in the morning. Evening fun involved: “cooking” a frozen pizza, more work, more recreational internet, ESPN and falling asleep on the couch at 10:30 p.m… Riveting stuff.

Tuesday, June 20
Today I flew into Indianapolis for USATF Nationals. I tried to beat the system by going to Priceline.com at the 11th hour hoping to score a cheap hotel. On paper, it looked like I did. I’m paying about a third of the USATF “discount” price at the meet hotel for a nice room just down the highway by the airport. As it turns out though, the neighborhood is not exactly Central Park West. There are neither sidewalks nor road shoulders anywhere in a 3 mile radius from the hotel. There are, however, at least 10 liquor stores in that same area. On my 45 minute evening shakeout, there were 6 separate instances where I feared for my life, equally distributed between folks who didn’t appreciate my shorts and folks who didn’t appreciate me being on the same road with their car.

Thursday, June 22
It was an interesting day. The 10,000 was scheduled to go today, but as I sat in the check-in tent waiting to warm up, I watched the sky turn from a bright blue to charcoal black to that eerie shade of green everyone who’s grown up in the Midwest recognizes as the sky color that directly precedes Tornado sirens. The skies opened up about an hour before our scheduled race time, and they hustled everyone inside. I, and I think most of the other 10K guys, assumed that the storm would blow over and we’d end up running at some point that night. But, after a couple hours, there was still no word and people were getting increasingly anxious. It’s a little hard to mentally keep yourself ready to race when you’re not sure when and if you’re racing. The rain and, more importantly, the lightning never let up, making a return to the track impossible. There was an abrupt announcement around 10 p.m. that all of the remaining events would be rescheduled for tomorrow… I was half irritated and half relieved that they called it. I was not convinced that I really wanted to race in the rain after a three hour delay, but, at the same time, I really didn’t want to wait around another day. I had only done a 15 minute shakeout in the morning, but I opted for dinner and bed instead of trying to sneak some kind of run in at that hour. I’m wondering how the day, and the stress of the delay, will affect people. Something inevitably happens every time you race that can throw you. I’ve learned that you just have to be relaxed and roll with the circumstances. The less you dwell on having your routine upset, the less it’ll affect you.

Friday, June 23
Today I woke up and got in 5 miles with a couple of strides. I felt like I needed to wake the legs back up. Since the storms last night, the weather has improved dramatically. I think the high temperature was still around 90 degrees this afternoon, but it was markedly less sticky than the previous couple of days. After I ran, I repeated the process of slothfully lying around watching bad daytime television, trying to stay off my feet.

Thanks largely to the mellow mood of the god of isolated thunderstorms, we did stay dry and get on the starting line tonight. I didn’t really have a time or place goal coming in, but I felt like I had really turned a corner with my training in the last couple of weeks. I knew I was fitter and much sharper than when I ran my qualifier (28:33) six or so weeks ago in Palo Alto. I also thought that the seasonal Indy weather (soupy) would probably help me out. I generally run well in the heat, and although the Twin Cities aren’t exactly tropical, we have been training through a warm early summer. In any case, I put myself up at the front of the chase pack hoping to hold on and maybe pick off some guys at the end. Abdi, Jorge Torres and Meb had gapped the field early on, but at halfway they were only maintaining a 30 (or so) meter lead. We crossed 5K just under 14:15, and I felt pretty good. That lap Anthony Famiglietti made a pretty sharp surge. I looked around briefly to see if anyone was going with him, and there wasn’t a whole lot of movement. I felt too good to wait around and let the race develop ahead of me, but I was a little worried that a big surge might finish me off quickly in the heat. There wasn’t however, enough time to do a risk management study, and I surged up with Fam. Dan Browne followed. We ran a 65 second lap to catch the leaders, and immediately upon making it to them, another 66ish second lap was thrown in. That was the beginning of the end for me. I fell off the back of that pack a couple of times in the next couple of laps, clawing my way back only to get spit out again. I ran the last 7 laps alone, and they were not pretty. Abdi dropped out with a couple of laps to go, and I managed to hold off the rest of the field to finish 5th. The time wasn’t particularly fast, but I was pretty excited about where I had finished. It was a good race for me against that level of competition on the track.

Wednesday, June 28
I did what will probably be my only workout between USATF and Peachtree today, a 5 mile tempo followed by a handful of 30 sec. surges. I felt fairly comfortable rolling off 4:50s during the tempo, but my calves are still sore from the race last week. You’d think I’d have thought through a big race like that enough to remember to break in the spikes I was going to wear beforehand. You might think that, but you’d be giving me too much credit.

I’m looking forward to switching gears and beginning my marathon build up. I’m running Twin Cities this fall, but, in the meantime, I am just doing a little maintenance work and running a couple of road races.

Today was also Matt Gabrielson’s birthday. I helped him celebrate by drinking a couple of adult beverages, and calling him names. It’s his favorite thing… Matt and much of the rest of our group are off to Europe in a week or so to find some fast races. I’m a little jealous, mostly because I love those little baguette sandwiches and getting to use the three or four phrases I remember from high school French. It doesn’t, however, make any sense for me from a training standpoint. I need to spend July and August getting my marathon legs.

Saturday, July 1
Today was one of those days that if I had hired somebody to set my schedule, I would have made the decision to fire him/her the first thing Monday morning. From a hotel room an hour south of Minneapolis (Red Wing, MN), I was up at 6:00 a.m. to sneak a run in before Zac Schendel’s wedding. Zac is a long time friend, and, until recently, long time roommate. He made me his best man, which was an honor. But, he also made me wear a pink tie today to the ceremony. We’ll call it a wash... In any case, there was a wedding. Everybody showed up, most importantly the bride and groom. There were also pictures, good lasagna and a poorly executed toast from the best man. As soon as we could reasonably sneak out of the reception, Kristen (Nicolini) and I were in my car bonsai-ing back to the Twin Cities to catch a flight to Atlanta. We’re going down to run the Peachtree 10K and spend a little time with her sister. We got into Atlanta at about 11:00 p.m. local time, and I think the heat index was still around 100... ugh.

Tuesday, July 4
After a couple of days touring Atlanta, seeing the various Waffle Houses and Piggly Wiggly’s, I had to switch into race mode. We were up early, like 5:00 a.m. early, to get on a train to the start. Peachtree is, far and away, the largest race I’ve been a part of. The mass of humanity hovering around the start area is intense. We were lucky enough to be in a roped-off warm up area with the other elites. It had easy access to the start line, and, even more importantly, port-a-johns, but it was hard not to be intimidated by the size of the event. There are cameras everywhere and news choppers circling overhead. This is a REALLY big deal in Atlanta. The field at Peachtree is as fast and deep as any race in the country, and I knew I was easily outclassed by about a dozen of the names on the start list. The start is also down hill, and I knew there’d be a bunch of runners who’d get caught up in a super-fast early pace and then come apart pretty badly in the last couple of miles. I wanted to run off the back of the pack for the first half and then make my move during the series of hills in the second half of the race in hopes of running down anyone who was struggling. Unfortunately, I think even I was out a little too hard (13:35 through 3 miles), and suffered at the end. I still caught some guys coming in and finished in the money in 14th, 29:22. I was also first American. I think all in all it was a good effort. I’d like to go back next year. I think I can sneak into the top ten with a little better executed race.