10 mile run

I will be coaching my oldest son's soccer team in the fall and this morning I had a training course for all the coaches. It was at the Lancaster Soccer Complex, and after doing a google map from my house found it to be almost exactly 10 miles away. I decided I would run there and Andi said she would pick me up after my class so I left the house at 6:40 am to make it in just in time for the 8:00am class. I remember about half way there, running by a digital sign that had the temp at 72 degrees. It was most certaily above 80 for the last few miles. There is no break from the sun on Ave M. The run was tough for two reasons. First, I haven't run that far in a while, and secondly, I haven't run in that kind of heat in a while. I carried an Ultimate Direction water bottle (with hand straps) in each hand. They are great for carrying fluid on the run.

16 mile fast finish long run (1:58:28)

Pictures stolen from Clay's Blog.
The plan today was to meet Clay and Zac at 7:00 and Zac and I would run a 10 mile run (5 easy, 5 tempo) while Clay ran a recovery run after yesterday. I wanted to put in a few more miles so I got out there early and did 6 warm up at 7:40 avg pace. The weather was perfect, cool and calm. I met up with Clay and Zac, got a hit of Gatorade, and we set out west on the aqueduct. Zac and I eased into a comfortable pace for the first few miles. Zac was making it look easy on the way out. Here are our first 5 splits, 8:02, 7:55, 7:41, 8:02, 7:36. We hit the 5 mile mark in just over 39 minutes and turned around. The first mile back we started to pick it up and each mile there after was about 10 seconds faster than the last. The last 3 miles were tough but we pulled each other along to finish the 10 together in 72:20! We finished our return 5 in just over 33 minutes! Here are our last 5 splits, 6:58, 6:48, 6:39, 6:23, 6:14. Nice work Zac!

Zac is running the Surf City Half Marathon to keep him training through the winter. He will run a good time after a workout like that. Including Zac, we have a good AV presence at Surf City. Clay, Dale, Chuck, Lauren and I are running the full Marathon along with my pal Ron from Las Vegas. Zac, Neil, and recently friends Eric and Dawn are planning on running the half marathon.

Total time for 16 miles today was 1:58:28 (avg pace 7:24).
Total weekend miles 28!

I am trying to get in as much good weekend mileage as I can, when I can. With the holidays, a weekend trip to Vegas and a trip to Colorado planned there will be limited time to train.

They have been getting a TON of snow in Minneapolis this weekend. Check this out! Yes, there was SUPPOSED to be a football game today!

Charlottesville, Virginia

I was in Charlotesville, Virginia this weekend at a continuing education course titled, Running Medicine 2010: Running Through the Ages. I was informed about this course by a former classmate of mine Ron, who was very interested in going. He went last year when the topic was triathlon athletes/training, and said it was awesome! So we met up in Washington D.C. and flew into Charlotesville, VA on Thursday morning. The course was at the University of Virginia and the campus is very colonial with lots of history. The school was founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1819. Edgar Allen Poe was a student there but did not complete his studies, now they make t-shirts that have his image on them and say "Distinguished Dropout."



Ron did not sleep much on the plane, so while he took a nap I decided to run to Monticello (home of Thomas Jefferson). I had asked the concierge and he said it was about 5 miles, so I started the Garmin and off I went. As I ran I realized that this was probably some national monument that I would have to pay to enter and I had not brought along any cash or credit card. It was exactly 5 miles to the visitor center where I was informed that it would be 22 dollars to go up and see the house. I was also told about a nice trail/boardwalk down to the highway again which I took back to stay off the road. I ran the 10 miles in about 75 minutes and then did a few extra miles around historic Charlottesville. After that Ron and I ran around UVA for another 5 miles so I am crediting myself with 18 miles for the day.

On my way back from Monticello I started to notice a burning sensation on my left achilles tendon. I even stopped to check my skin because it felt like the start of a blister. It continued to bother me the rest of the miles that day and was then sore that afternoon and the next day. I iced it a few times and took some ibuprophen. I was worried about the race on Saturday (Charlottesville 10 miler) and even more concerned about my effort considering the LD50 is now 2 weeks away.

The bulk of the course was on Friday and it was excellent. I will make another post on some of the topics once I can organize my notes and thoughts. Frank Shorter was the keynote speaker and he discussed the history of competitive and recreational running and also training older runners. He was a chatty speaker but everyone didn't seem to mind listening to him talk about running politics and performace enhancing drugs. He was very friendly and didn't mind signing a few autographs for me!

Saturday morning my achilles felt about 95% better so I laced up my addidas adizero tempos and we walked over to the starting line. Frank Shorter was the offical starter for the 35th annual Charlottesville 10 miler, and he addressed the field by saying, "I'm not running with you this year because i just had a 170,000 mile tune up on my hip." He just had a hip resurfacing surgery fro.m an old biking accident. The weather was perfect, about 50 degrees, sunny, and calm. All the first timers at this race were told to go out conservative due to the amount of hills late in the course. I wanted to start off slower anyway to test my achilles. Frank fired the gun and off we went. My heel felt great. I was hoping to run around 62-63 minutes before it started bothering me, now I didn't know. My PR at my only other 10 mile race was 62:20. The course was certainly hilly. We were either going up or down the whole time it seemed. I was able to use the downhills, some of them quite long, to recover and prepare for the next incline. I went through 5 miles in 30:42, still feeling good in the achilles. It finally started to burn around mile 8 but didn't affect my stride or give me any sharp pain so I continued on. Miles 8 and 9 were tough, and if I had known the course better I would have started my kick earlier, but I still PR'd in 62:01 (average pace 6:13)! OFFICIAL RESULTS HERE. That means my second half was 31:39. I was 41st overall (over 2300 finishers) and 4th in my age group. I was very pleased with the PR considering the course and that I have been training for an ultra trail race. I got some ice on my achilles right away at the medical tent. Ron finished his first 10 miler in 1:37:45 which I thought was a great effort considering he finished the LA marathon only two weeks ago.

Here are my mile splits: 6:25, 5:57, 6:10, 6:02, 5:59, 6:07, 6:13, 6:11, 6:27, 6:03. I know that those don't quite add up to 62:01 but the Garmin was a little off on the mile splits. It says I went through 5 in 30:31. My achilles as been sore but not too bad. I will be taking it easy for the next two weeks. I don't think I will be too happy if my achilles starts to bother me at mile 8 on the LD50!

10 miler (6 miles at threshold pace)

I got in another hard evening run tonight. I like my Rancho Vista loop with extra Marie Kerr Park loops because it is well lit and has a decent shoulder. After a warm up mile at 7:07, I pushed the pace a little harder than I have in the past but wasn't able to sustain the pace as long. Tonight I was running on lack of sleep and poor nutrition this week. The next six miles were as follows: 6:25, 6:16, 6:18, 6:11, 6:15, 6:27 (avg 6:18). By this point I was spent. I decided to shut it down after 7 miles, I was thinking about shutting it down after about 4 miles. I then cruised home at 7:30 pace and finished the 10 miles in 1:07:20 (avg pace 6:44).

Long trail run planned for Saturday morning.

The biggest track news this week was that Eric Flores of California Lutheran University threw the hammer 214 ft 3in. He was voted SCIAC athlete of the week. Why is this so amazing you ask? Well that mark is the best hammer throw in NCAA Div. III history! It would have won the NCAA Div. I National Championships last year by 12ft. His shot put throw this year would have been NCAA Div. I All-American last year. Did I mention that he is a sophomore? I just checked it out and 236 ft is an Olympic "A" standard, 210ft is an Olympic "B" standard. Maybe we'll see Eric at the 2012 Olympic Trials.

I will leave you with a video of coach Brad Hudson. This is a segment of a lecture he gave at the Super Distance Summit 2010. The entire interview has not been posted yet but I found this segment very interesting.

10 on the 10th

I got in a good 10 miles this morning. It has been extremely windy around here for the last three days but this morning was just breezy, well breezy for here anyway. I decided to do smaller loops so I would not have to run into the wind for any long period of time. I included a few smaller hills with a downhill finish. I completed the 10 miles in 1:13:47 (7:23 pace) It ended up being more like a progression run but the up hill portions were in the first half of the run. I didn't realize that today was the tenth until I got to work. So it was 10 on the 10th.

Happy 70th birthday to Chuck Norris!


Here is a plug for the Nutty Runners 5k this Saturday at 8:30 am at Joe Walker Middle School. The course will follow the parade route for the Almond Blossom Festival. My friend Dale Lister is the race director. Sign up online here.

10 mile Sat. (1:17:27); weekend in Lone Pine

I got up early on Saturday for a 10 mile run with a goal of turning around at M and 70th West (almost as high as you can get without going up on the aqueduct). The pace was comfortable averaging 7:44. As usual it is uphill on the way out and downhill all the way home.

Mile splits were 8:11, 8:15, 8:08, 8:06, 8:07, (then the turn around), 7:36, 7:19, 7:20, 7:16, 7:04.
Total ascent 820ft.

My left hamstring was sore for the rest of the day but is fine today.
The highlight of the weekend was Saturday morning we left town for Lone Pine, CA (the portal to Mt. Whitney). Mt. Whitney is the highest peak in the contiguous United States. We didn't go to the top (it is a pretty intense 11 miles to the top and at 14,505ft is not for children), but we did drive up to see the trail head (8,360ft) and went up the first few feet of trail. The trail head area is also the finish line of the Badwater Ultramarathon, a 135 mile race from Badwater in Death Valley, CA which is 282ft below sea level. In other words the lowest point on the country to the trailhead of the highest summit in the country. It was beautiful weather this weekend with the highs in the mid 70s in Lone Pine.
While we were in Lone Pine we also did some picnicking, rock scrambling, hiking, eating, playing, tricycling, sliding, and picture taking.See the Stutelberg Scoop for more pictures.

10 miles total with 3 threshold pace miles

I did not get a run in on Saturday. It has been getting cooler here in the morning (low 40s) and those pre-sunrise runs are harder to make happen. I had to dig out my running pants for my run on Sunday morning. We still slept in and I left about 7:30. I wanted to get in a few miles at threshold pace again so I went out to Lane Park for my warm up. It is exactly 1 mile around the block there so I did that twice, then a 2.5 min recovery, followed by one more mile, for a total of three mile at threshold pace.

My threshold pace should be about 6:20, although I haven't raced since July 4th, and I haven't done any time trials to gauge my fitness. My first two laps (miles) around Lane Park were 6:11 min each and my last mile (after that 2.5 min recovery) was 5:55. It didn't feel like my HR was up too high (my HR at threshold pace is around 165-170) so maybe I am getting a little fitter. I was pretty well rested too since I only ran once during the work week, which was an easy run. Total distance for the day was 10 miles in 1:11:32 (average pace 7:09). This was a similar workout to September 13, 2008 when I was running 6:20-6:30 pace on my threshold runs.

If I do another workout similar to that one again I will start to add one more mile (with about 1-2 min recovery in between) at the same pace until I am up to 6 or so. That would be a pretty killer workout. Since I only have two weeks until my next race I will probably do some more hills this week, and maybe one more tempo run either next weekend or early next week. Probably only two more quality workouts before race day.

My dad sent me the newspaper from Minnesota after the Twin Cities Marathon. They also run a 10 miler and 5k that day. Olympian Kara Goucher won the 10 miler in a course record 53:15. She was using this race as a tune up for her marathon debut in New York City on November 2nd. Her coach, former NYC and Boston Marathon winner, Alberto Salazar, who had a heart attack last year and a defibrillator placement, ran the 10 miler as well in 1:08 and change!

Minnesota trip with a few runs

Well we have one more day of vacation which includes a long day of traveling back home. I found a few minutes to update on the running portion before heading to bed.

June 21: Andi and I both got in 4 mile runs before loading up the boys and driving to LAX.

June 22: Recover day!

June 23: I ran my favorite 10 mile out and back run on the Theodore Wirth Parkway from my dad's house to Cedar Lake and back. I always have a good run when I visit and today was no different. I ran the first mile in about 6:45 and just kept on going. Total time for 10 miles was 68:30 (average pace was 6:50 which is marathon race pace). I was hitting 6:40s until mile 8 and 9 which are mostly uphill. It was a great run. It sure is humid out here. Here is a picture of the parkway from my dad's house.

June 24: Traveled to Gull Lake.

June 25: Andi and I ran 5 miles averaging 8:10 around the perimeter of Cragun's Resort where we stayed. It was almost exactly 1.5 miles around the resort.

June 26: I did a 6 mile evening run on the parkway. There is a 3 mile loop of the parkway that is a 1.5 mile straigh-away on both sides. I ran the loop twice to make 6 miles total. The first 2 miles were a warm up then I hit the next uphill half mile at vVO2max with a half mile recovery, then a hard mile at vVO2max with a mile recovery, and finally another uphill half mile hard and a cool down. I did not wear a watch so I have no idea what my splits were but the mile was almost certainly under 5:50. I finished with 4x100m accelerations in front of the house. I'm feeling pretty good right now, low 18:00 5k shape for sure.

June 27-28: Back in Minneapolis visiting friends and relatives.

25 miles total so far since my last post. Tomorrow we head back to California but Andi and I plan on running to Lake Harriet which is about 8-9 miles from the house. Well see just how far it is. The garmin has some trouble getting a signal with all the big trees around here.



The best running news since I have been on vacation:

1. High School runner German Fernandez broke the 29-year old boys 2 mile record running it in 8:34.40 at Nike Outdoor Nationals. See the race here.

2. The Olympic Trials have begun in Eugene, OR and the women's 10k finals were on the 27th. It was a great race with Shalane Flanagan and Kara Goucher both qualifying along with Amy Begley. See the results here.

The men's 5k and 10k and 1500m finals should be very exciting. Check out all the Trials news here.

10 mile long run (1:16:00) plus May totals

I extended the 9 mile route by 1 mile this morning. The 7:50 pace for the first 5 miles was a little bit tougher than I would like it to be, even though it is slightly up hill the whole way.

Here is the run down: Average pace 7:36, mile splits 8:24, 7:51, 7:59, 7:52, 7:56, 7:20, 7:14, 7:13, 7:06, 7:00.

My left hamstring was a little sore today, but I have determined that it is actually gracilis tightness.

Today was June 1st, so total mileage for May was only 76 miles and 516 for the year to date.


News:
Usain Bolt set a new world record for the 100m this weekend in 9.72. With a name like "Bolt" he was born to be fast, and he ran in a baggy tank top, not a skin tight speed suit. See the race here.

San Fransisco, Long Beach, and Surf City Marathons combine to form the California Dreamin' Racing Series.

This one's for Clay: Tony Young Sets World 45-49 Age Group Mile Record Of 4:16.09. See the race video here.

Have a great week!

Nine mile Thursday becomes 10 MILE THURSDAY!

As the title states, I upped my Thursday run by a mile to make it an even 10 miles. I will play around with the format but I will try and stay around the 10 mile total. The only problem with adding mileage is that I have to get up earlier. I left the house around 5:40 this morning. The nicest part is that it is usually not windy in the morning.

I got as far as 60th W. and Ave. N before turning around. For those of you out of the area that means I was able to get up to some decent hills. My first mile was 8:10, I then averaged 7:30 for the next 4 miles until my Garmin battery died.

I'm sure I was faster on the way home since it is all down hill. I was at 5.25 miles at the turnaround so my total was 10.5miles. When I got home I did 4x100 striders in front of the house.

For those of you looking for a new challenging race, how about the Glamour Magazine Stiletto Run in Amsterdam. The rules are you must where heels at least 9cm for the 350 yard race. The winner takes home 10,000 euro. See video.

First Post

Well, I have officially signed up for the 112th running of the Boston Marathon scheduled for Patriots Day 2008 (Monday April 21st). I have been running off and on since moving to California and need some motivation to get me out the door in the morning (the 110 dollar entry fee is now my motivation). The entry is not official yet as they need to verify my qualifying time from the Las Vegas Marathon 2006 (3:04:12). I will announce when it is made official.

I am also inspired to start a running blog from a new running partner and physical therapist in California (Clay Patten) who has been blogging on his running, and my wife (Andi Stutelberg) who keeps a blog on our growing family. I kept a pretty detailed running log when I was in high school but never since. This, hopefully, will keep me honest knowing that so many of you are reading and visiting this exciting journal daily.

It is also the start of the new year this week. A time for resolutions I guess. I have never needed a new year to get me running, but it was another good excuse. Also, I figured Jan. 1st is a good time to start a new blog, not that it matters at all. So I decided to start it on December 30th, 2007.

My last run of 2007 was actually yeterday December 29th, 2007. I ran a 10.5 mile loop from my house to 60th and Ave. N and back mostly in Quartz Hill. The route is mostly up hill for the first 5 miles and down hill on the way home with the steepest mile being Mile 5. The splits confirm this (7:35, 7:09, 7:18, 7:22, 7:46, 7:27, 6:55, 7:03, 7:10, 6:41, and the last .5mile cool down 3:40). Total time 1:16:08, average pace 7:15. My calves are sore.

My goal for Boston is to be under 3 hours again. I did it at Grandma's Marathon 2005 in 2:58:37 my marathon PR. Ultimately a PR would be nice and 2:55 would be icing on the cake.

I've got some work to do.

See you next year. Boston here I come!