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Relay del Sol

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Location:

Fort Collins,CO,

Member Since:

May 15, 2003

Gender:

Male

Goal Type:

Local Elite

Running Accomplishments:

Unaided PR's:
5K: 14:48 (Track - 2001)
10K: 30:45 (Track - 2001)
10K: 31:32 (Bolder Boulder - 2013)
Half Marathon: 1:06:09 (Duluth - 2013)
Marathon: 2:17:54 (Grandma's) - 2014)
Marathon: 2:19:47 (Indianapolis Monumental - 2013)
Marathon: 2:19:49 (Indianapolis Monumental - 2010)

Aided PR's:
10K: 29:38 (Des News - 2011)
Half Marathon: 1:05:30 (TOU Half - 2011)
Marathon: 2:18:09 (St George - 2007)
Marathon: 2:17:35 (Boston - 2011)

Short-Term Running Goals:

Diagnosed with Ankylosing Spondylitis in June of 2008. Started taking Enbrel in March, 2009.

Run as much as I can, and race as well as I can. Make the most of however much time I have left as an able-bodied runner.

Training for the 2018 Colorado Marathon

Long-Term Running Goals:

  Run until I'm old, and then run some more. Stand tall.

Personal:

1 wife, 2 kids. 1 cat. Work as a GIS Specialist/Map Geek

Endure and persist; this pain will turn to your good. - Ovid

Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. - Romans 5:1-5

 

 

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Miles:This week: 0.00 Month: 0.00 Year: 0.00
Saucony Trail Shoe Lifetime Miles: 247.50
Hoka Clifton Lifetime Miles: 491.50
Saucony Type A6 Lifetime Miles: 186.50
Saucony Zealot Lifetime Miles: 478.75
Saucony Kinvara 6 Lifetime Miles: 433.50
Saucony Kinvara 6-2 Lifetime Miles: 358.75
Brooks Pure Connect Blue Lifetime Miles: 337.25
New Balance Trainers Lifetime Miles: 314.50
New Balance 1400 Racers Lifetime Miles: 65.00
Brook Pureflow Lifetime Miles: 99.50
Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesCrosstraining milesTotal Miles
54.204.0013.203.400.0074.80
Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesCrosstraining milesTotal Miles
6.500.000.000.000.006.50

Easy run out to the end of the canal trail and back. Didn't wear a watch. Glorious morning out.

(Adrenaline yellow: 445 miles)

Comments(5)
Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesCrosstraining milesTotal Miles
10.000.000.000.000.0010.00

Ran the landfill loop with Dave. Dropped Dave off and did a couple extra miles with 6x100m strides. Averaged 7:05/mile pace for the run. Ave HR 143. Felt very good today.

(Adrenaline orange: 153 miles)

Add Comment
Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesCrosstraining milesTotal Miles
12.204.000.000.000.0016.20

Rainy, nasty day today. Unfortunately, I needed to do a longer workout today, weather good or bad. I ran the first 7 miles with Dave, averaging around 7:10/mile. It rained pretty hard on us, and my shirt was soaked, plus I lost feeling in my hands. I dropped Dave off at home, changed my shirt and shoes, and put some gloves on, and then ran over to the gym. I ran 6:20/mile pace on the way to the gym. The rain let up a little bit too, which helped. At the gym I jumped on the treadmill for 40 minutes, and started at 6:30/mile pace, and bumped up the pace every 5 to 10 minutes -- 6:15, 6:00, 5:52, 5:45, 5:39. So it was a nice progression up to marathon pace. At 5:39 pace my HR was steady at 168. Ave HR for the run was 150. Ave pace for the entire run was 6:45/mile.

I wore the Polar foot pod while on the treadmill. Its pace measurement was dead on up to 6:00/mile pace. Then as I ran faster and faster, and the pod drifted, displaying slower speeds. I found this same trend while doing track intervals last week; the pod was accurate at normal pace, but not at CV interval pace (5:10-5:15/mile). This is because (I suspect) that the my stride is different enough at higher speeds to invalidate the calibration, which was performed at lower speeds. For this one reason (in my mind), GPS is superior to foot pods: it works at any speed and any stride.

(Cascadia:  41 miles)

(Adrenaline black: 387 miles)

Comments(6)
Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesCrosstraining milesTotal Miles
8.500.000.000.000.008.50

Ran with the del Sol team through Providence before our pre-race meeting and BBQ. Nice easy pace. It made up for the nasty cold, wind, and rain. It's fun running with a pack. Makes me feel tough. I fly to PHX tomorrow.

(Adrenaline yellow: 454 miles)

Comments(2)
Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesCrosstraining milesTotal Miles
8.500.000.000.000.008.50

Nice easy run with Dave and Clyde in Phoenix. We found a very nice paved trail to run on near our hotel on 44th and McDowell. Ran near 6:30 pace and slower. Did 4x100m strides.

(Adrenaline orange: 162 miles)

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Race: Relay del Sol (187 Miles) 19:10:57, Place overall: 2, Place in age division: 1
Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesCrosstraining milesTotal Miles
6.500.005.800.000.0012.30

AM - Easy 5-mile pre-race morning run with Clyde and Dave. Pace around 7:30/mile. Similar route to last night.

(Adrenaline orange: 167 miles)

8 PM - My first leg of Relay del Sol (Leg 5). Borrowed Sasha's Garmin and warmed up for 1 mile. Since AZ doesn't do daylight savings, it was quite dark by this time. Temperatures were in the low 60's, and very little wind. Dan came in to the exchange and we had a clean handoff, and I took off. I basically wanted this to be a good threshold run. The leg started on a gentle downhill, and I did the first half mile in 2:30, 5:08 for the first mile. Everything felt very good, and I could feel the lower elevation difference. There was a gentle climb from Mile 1.5 to Mile 3.5, and my pace slowed to 5:30/mile on this stretch, but still felt very strong. From 3.5 to the finish (5.8), I had a nice gentle downhill, and I opened it up along this stretch and averaged 5:00/mile, including a 4:58 mile near the end. Average pace for the overall leg was 5:15/mile. I was very pleased with this, as I felt like I could have kept going at this pace for another 5 miles or so. Good start to the relay. Cooled down about a half mile afterwards.

Team-wise, at this point we were running very well. Dave, Clyde, Dan, Jon, and I all exceeded our projected paces by quite a bit, and Sasha was right on his projected pace. We started the race with 4 teams in our wave (the other 70 teams started in waves earlier in the morning and afternoon), and it became apparent after the first couple legs that it would be a two-team race between ourselves and Google; the other two teams were way back. Google, however was putting distance on us with most of their runners. They have a very good team, including a 3:39 1500m runner who has run Oly trials. They also had very nice matching warmups and uniforms. We had a scruffy-looking bunch of people and a van without working doors. It had all the makings of a really bad sports movie.

To be continued.

(Burn: 84 miles)

Comments(3)
Race: Relay del Sol (187 Miles) 19:10:57, Place overall: 2, Place in age division: 1
Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesCrosstraining milesTotal Miles
2.000.007.403.400.0012.80

Day 2 of Relay del Sol

Caught a couple hours of sleep at Exch 12, on the wrestling mats in the high school gym the exchange was at. It wasn't the best-quality sleep, but I definitely dozed a bit.

Van 2 came in around 12:30AM. They too were exceeding their projected times, and they managed to close the gap on the Google team by a few minutes. I can't remember exactly, but I think we were about 4 minutes behind after 12 legs.

Dave, Clyde, Sasha, and Dan all ran exceptionally well again, to start our next series (leg 13-18), but Google ran even better, and by the time I got the baton for Leg 17, we were slightly over 10 minutes back. I could be wrong here, as my memory is fuzzy. I'm sure Sasha will know.

My Leg 17 was around 3:30AM, so it was still, and around 50 degrees temperature. No wind. Good conditions for fast running. This leg, though, was 7.3 miles and on a steady 1% uphill grade that gained 384 ft over 7.3 miles. I was a bit concerned about it, but once I started running, it didn't seem very bad at all. I guess all those Ogden Striders races have served a purpose in that I can't feel hills anymore until they are over 6% in gradient.

I wanted to get another threshold workout out of this leg, and just let my body guide my pace and the garmin report it. For the first half of the leg I was running consistent 5:40 miles. I was feeling very good, so I pushed it a little harder on the second half of the leg to 5:35 miles. I lost 15 seconds slowing down and even stopping for various stop lights, but other than that, no mishaps. The leg ended up being about a block long, as exchange 17 was a bit further than my maps had it. Oh well. Ended up averaging 5:40/mile for the leg. By this point in the race, we were passing teams that started before us, and I mananged to pass 4 other runners during this leg. Better yet, I was able to close the gap on Google by 4 or 5 minutes. I was very happy with how it went, and felt that I would have enough juice for a good V02Max workout on the final leg.

Jon ran very well on his leg, and we gave the baton to Van 2. Time for another siesta. This time I didn't have much time to sleep, but did managed to close my eyes for a few minutes in the van while sitting at the Exch 24 parking lot.

Van 2, meanwhile, ran the legs of their lives and amazingly closed the gap on Google to 20 seconds by the time they handed the baton back to us. Over 110 miles into it, we had a true race on our hands! We thought that if we could just keep things close during our final leg set, we could at least give Van 2 a chance to win it. Google's Van 1 was definitely faster than our Van 1, but we hoped to do some damage control.

It was light again by this point. Dave, Clyde, Sasha, and Dan all ran their hearts out, and when I received the baton, we were about 4 minutes back. This was a lesser spread than our previous sets, so we were "outperforming" them in a way, by reducing the relative difference.

My last leg (28) looked to be quite fast, judging by the profile. It was only 3.4 miles and mostly downhill, with about a 2.5% gradient. This is somewhere between Top of Utah and St. George, as far as downhills go. I've been running downhill well so far this year, and hoped to hit 5:00 miles or under for this last leg, and leave whatever energy I had left out on there on the road.

Temperature was about 70 degrees, so a little warm, but not too bad. However, there was a noticeable headwind, not a total killer, but big enough to slow me down a bit. I averaged 5:06/mile, which I was happy with considering the headwind. I mananged to dip under 5:00/mile pace during the last half mile. Plus I closed the gap on Google by about a minute.

Jon maintained the gap, so Van 2 started their last set of legs only 3 minutes behind. However, we did not have our cheesy, stereotypical sports movie ending. Google pulled away from our rag-tag bunch during the last 6 legs and won by about 10 minutes. They ran 18:59:39, which is 6:05/mile for 187 miles. We ended up around 19:10:57, which is 6:08/mile. We finished 45 minutes ahead of our original projected time, meaning everyone ran incredibly awesome as a team. Third place was an hour and 40 minutes behind us. Results are here.

Not only did the race end not end like a Hollywood sports movie, but Google did not turn out to be the Hollywood sports movie villain either. They did not cheat, try to sabotague us, or wear evil mustaches. Rather, they were very nice, were great competitors, and gracious winners. We enjoyed talking to them throughout the race and afterwards at the finish line. Great job Google!

Cody and James (who were in Van 2) may write about this to verify, but it seemed like we gave it our all during the middle of the race just to surge up to Google and stay as close as we did. By the very end, Google had a bit more gas left in the tank for a knockout punch. But this is how to race, whether it be a relay or individual event. Sometimes it's necessary to take a gamble and surge hard just to stay with someone, and they pray that either you can do it one more time or that the competitor is hurting worse than you are. But races are often won by taking chances like that. And there was certainly nothing to lose.

I also think that one reason (besides altititude reduction, nice weather, and good training) that we all ran so well is that during events like relays you can relax and run without pressure. You can try things you wouldn't normally try, as there is really no consequence. Yes, we competed with Google, but really it was a big game, one that was fun to play. Being able to relax and "play the game" without worrying about PR's and such I think helps people to run faster in some cases. Just my opinion.

Check out the blogs of Cody, Dan, Dave, Jon, James, Clyde, and Sasha for their personal experiences and thoughts about the relay.

(Burn: 93 miles)

(Adrenaline orange: 166 miles)



Comments(4)
Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesCrosstraining milesTotal Miles
54.204.0013.203.400.0074.80
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