Steady 8 miler

The only calm morning this week and I got to enjoy it! It was beautiful out this morning and I got in a nice steady 8 mile run in 60:18 (7:32 pace). It is exactly 3.1 miles from my house to the end of Ave M at 75th West. Sounds like a good time trial run to me.

Found some great slow motion video of the men's and women's leaders at the Boston Marathon. I love watching people run in super slo mo!

Boston Marathon 2:03:02!

Me at the finish line, Boston 2008

It was an incredible day in Boston. It must have been magical to be there.

Four men broke the previous course record, set last year.

Two men broke the world record by almost a minute, although because of Boston's loss of elevation and point to point nature the records will not be ratified.

Geoffrey Mutai won the race in 2:03:02!

Moses Mosop was second in 2:03:06 in his debut marathon!

Ryan Hall's time is the fastest American time ever, first American under 2:05, and broke the Boston course record, and he was FOURTH!

The 2010 Boston Marathon winner, Robert Kiprono Cheruiyot was less than a minute off his course record that he set last year. This year his 2:06:43 was only good enough for SIXTH PLACE!

17 of the past 20 Boston Marathons have been won by a Kenyan man. This dominance continued again this year with Geoffery Mutai.


8 of the past 12 Boston Marathons have been won by a Kenyan woman. This dominace also continued this year with Caroline Kilel in 2:22:36

Two women ran under 2:23 today and finished within 2 seconds of each other. In the last 4 years the women's race has been decided by 3 seconds or less!

The second place female was American Desiree Davila, who's time of 2:23:38 is the fastest ever for American females at Boston (previously held by Joan Benoit Samuelson).

Joan Benoit Samuelson, who had been dealing with back pain and thought about not even starting the race, ran 2:51 at the age of 54.

Kara Goucher ran a PR by over a minute with a time of 2:24:52 (a time that would have won Boston the previous 4 years) just 6 months after giving birth to her first son, and placed FIFTH!

Great video recap of the significance of this years Boston Marathon.

Watch more video of 2011 Boston Marathon on flotrack.org

House to House run

We were in Las Vegas/Henderson, NV for the weekend. Saturday morning I am usually pretty tired and I sleep in a little. Sunday I got up early and went for a run. My good friend Ron recently bought a new house and I decided to run over there and meet him on his recovery run. He and his wife Julie had competed in the Rage Triathlon at Lake Mead the day before and both PR'd in their races! Congrats to you both. The city of Henderson has been working on a network of bike paths around town that are all interconnected. I took part of one trail over to Ron's house. It was exactly 4.5 miles from my mom's house to Ron's house. I arrived a little early so I ran through the neighborhood and found the entrance to the River Mountain Loop Trail. This bike path connects the eastern side of Henderson to Boulder City and Lake Mead. They are doing final construction that will make it a full 35 mile loop. I ran another 3 miles on the RMLT and then met Ron and his dog Sulley for a 3 mile trail run. Ron's house is in a great location for biking and running. There is no need to drive anywhere to get started. Total mileage for today was 10.

Coolest Gameshow Ever!

Finally getting some national recognition

An article from the most recent Running Times magazine by Sergio's coach, Joe Rubio. The entire article, on year round race-ready fitness is worth the read and makes a lot of sense if you are a high mileage runner who likes to step up and down in race distnaces. When I first met Sergio I thought he races a little too much, but after reading this I understand how he makes it work for him. It helps when you can go win a half marathon and have it just be a long marathon pace run.

Progression Cruise Intervals with Dale & Joel

Hey I got out early again to get my run in today! I did an extended warm up of 4 miles then a mile on the track with Dale. Joel came out today as well and we decided on running mile repeats with short rest. We ran the first one easy in 6:53 and then decided that we didn't need a full lap recovery today so we just did a slow 200m jog. The next three miles were 6:48, 6:38, and 6:35. Joel and I ran together with Dale about 10 seconds behind. After 4 I asked Dale if he wanted to do one more. He agreed and I decided to pick up the pace. Joel hung on for 3 laps but faded on the last lap. I ran 6:07, Joel was 6:13 and Dale was 6:54. It was a nice crisp and calm morning for a track workout. My right leg is feeling better with each run. We'll see how sore it is tomorrow. Total mileage for today was 11!

Less than one week until the 2011 Boston Marathon. I am excited to watch and follow the race, especially the women's race. It is a stacked field. Reporters are saying that there are 15 women in the race who have a chance of winning. Three of the top 6 American female marathoners are running: Kara Goucher, Desiree Davilla, and Blake Russell. It was also just announced that Joan Benoit Samuelson will be running as well. Her 23 year old daughter qualified so she decided she would run too. There is speculation that she will try and run an Olympic Trials qualifying time (2:46) which she narrowly missed at Chicago (2:47:50). She says she would like to run under 2:50 for sure. I wonder if Boston is like the Masters golf tournament. After you win once are you are guarenteed entry for life?

8 mile Rancho Vista Loop

The weather is back to gorgeous and I need to start taking advantage of it. I got out today for an hour run before church on my good ol' Rancho Vista loop. My entire right leg has been acting up. I feel totally out wack and out of balance. It doesn't affect my stride but it takes a few miles to loosen up and then is sore for a few days from the hip to the calf. I need to start practicing what I preach a little and get back on my hip and core program. It will do me some good. After I "loosened up" today I got into a nice groove. Here are the splits. 8:23, 7:39, 7:26, 7:27, 7:00, 7:08, 6:50, 6:39. Total miles=8 in 58:30 (7:20 avg pace). Ed Whitlock ran 3:25:40 at the age of 80 in Rotterdam today! Unbelievable! Dale you just have to maintain your fitness for 30 more years and you have a shot at breaking his record! Thought there might be a world record out there but the winner ONLY ran 2:05:27, almost a minute and a half off the WR. American Kelly Calway ran 2:44:47 at Rotterdam. She has a fun blog that I linked too on my training blog list to the right. She was 13th female and first female American.

Up coming local events for track fans

Hey track fans! There is some exciting events coming up in the SoCal area that I wanted to bring your attention to. On Sunday April 10, Chris McDougall (author of Born to Run) is leading a barefoot/trail run in Griffith Park along with a book signing of Born to Run. The event starts at 1:00pm at A Runners Circle Running Store in L.A. Scott Jurek will be there too!

There are two track meets that would be worth watching this weekend too. The Arcadia Invitational starts tonight and will be live on runnerspace.com. This is always one of the best High School meets in the country, especially on the west coast. Last year the boys 2 mile had something like 16 kids go under 9 minutes! The other event started yesterday is the Rafer Johnson/Jackie Joyner Kersee Inviational at UCLA. There will be some top athletes there and JJK will be there too. Saturday at noon they scheduled a "walk with Jackie." I don't know what that means but it should be a good time. They are running the mile Saturday afternoon.

Next weekend there are two more track meets worth checking out. The Mt SAC Relays will also have some of the top runners in the country and a few Olympians I'm sure. That is April 14 and 15. UCLA is also hosting a dual meet with Oregon at Drake Stadium in L.A. on April 17th which sounds really exciting. Running events start at 1:00pm and should conclude by 3:00pm. Here is the schedule.

Finally, the USC and UCLA dual meet is at USC on May 1st. This is always a fun meet as there is an intense rivalry between the two schools. The Payton Jordan Invitational at Stanford is the same day and always attracts some of the best runners in the country. Flotrack should have it streamed live.

Oh, and of course the London Marathon and Boston Marathon are on April 17th and 18th respectively and both should be great to watch with top Americans in both races.

9 miles with company

I did it! I finally got up early enough to get in a run! I got up at 5:00 and left the house about 15 minutes later. I headed west on M-8 and ran into Sergio Reyes (see previous post) going the other direction. I turned around and joined him for about the next three miles until we got to Joe Walker. There I met Dale who wanted to do some cruise intervals on the track. Last time we ran miles at around 6:40 pace with 200m recovery. Dale is still recovering from the LA Marathon and dealing with some other issues and he couldn't quite hit those times today. My first mile was about 6:45 and he was behind me. I told him we should do a full lap recovery instead of just 200m and I ran the next one in 6:38, but Dale was closer to 7:00. Then we decided to cut everything in half and run 800s with 200m recovery. I ran 3:13 and 3:09 and Dale was getting progressively slower so we called it for the day and did a cool down. I am crediting myself with 9 miles for the day.

Can Ed Whitlock, now at the age of 80, break the 80+ AG record for the marathon (record is 3:39:18)? We'll find out this weekend at Rotterdam! He felt he could have run 3:20 but came down with a cold. I guess he ran a 1:34 half marathon last fall!

Another good form drills video

Runner's World May 2011

I received my newest issue of Runner's World Magazine tonight and was excited to find this on page 40.

Shoe donation

I recently went through my closet and got all the old pairs of running shoes out. I wanted to find a good organization to send them to. There are quite a few groups that collect shoes and take them to people around the world that can use them, not necessarily for running, but for protection and hygenie as well. One of the main ones is Soles 4 Souls which states that they would take new or "gently used" shoes. I think most of my shoes were more than just "gently used" so I continued to research. I found another site by Nike Reuse a Shoe that recycles used running shoes. They take them apart and grind them down, then use the material to make athletic fields including tracks. I decided that this is the way I would go, so I boxed them up. I went down to the post office and asked them what the cheapest price to ship the box would be. It ened up being around 18 dollars, so I decided to hold onto them. I figured Nike was going to make money on my old shoes anyway, and didn't like that idea either. Then a friend of ours told us that Sport Chalet was collecting used shoes for Soles 4 Souls to send over to Japan and give to the victims of the tsunami. Andi and I both boxed up a bunch of used shoes and took them over on Saturday. They are taking donations until April 10th so if you have old shoes you would like to donate some where, and have a Sport Chalet nearby, it is a great and easy way to help out some people that realy need it.

Andi made a good point. She said, "Karl, how many Japanese people will be able to fit in your size 13 shoes?" A few I hope.