Well some good and some bad from the weekend. The good was I set a 7 second PR from 6 years ago (only 6 more years till 28:35), and I ran a smart race in a good position the whole time. The bad was just the last 4-5 laps where I let the pack put 10-20 seconds on me after running a perfect race for me up to that point it was disappointing for them to pull away from me at the end.

After the race I had in my mind that I was going to I was going to go to In-N-Out burger and get a double double animal style (the 3×3 would have been too much). I didn’t look up any before the race and figured I could just drive around and find one. Well after driving all over Palo Alto passing 3 Jack in the Box, 2 McDonald’s, a Taco Hell, and many other restaurants it just did not want me to find it. It felt like Harold and Kumar go to White Castle, without the drugs and cheetah, and me wanting to go to In-N-Out Burger. I knew my stomach was not going to accept anything else so I kept searching only to come up empty. After 30 mins of driving being 12:30 am and my stomach rumbling, I settled on a Jack in the Box which was terrible. Today I have a plan, I mapped it out on the way to the airport for lunch this afternoon, and I will not be denied.

Up next is the Dick’s Sporting Goods Pittsburgh Half Marathon in 2 weeks on May 15th where I will be running to defend my title from last year.

Tonight I will be competing in the 10k at the Payton Jordan Invite. I am in the second heat of two going off at 10:30 West Coast time. My training has been going well and now that school is done for the semester I will be able to give some more regular updates.

In other news my favorite band of all time The Beastie Boys are coming out with a new album, The Hot Sauce Committee Part 2, you can listen to the whole streaming album here. I think this album is great and they released a 30 minute video to go with the album with some of the music in it.

I will post an update later tonight of the race. Flotrack will be there so if anyone on the east coast is still up at 1:30am check out the live coverage.

As I sit on the bus for our 14 hour bus trip down to t-town Alabama I have been thinking about my past month of training. With the exception of the race in jacksonville I have been really happy with all my workouts. While you always want to bring your best game to a US championship, I knew I wasnt quite ready to go and definitely not ready to go out at the pace I did.

I like to think I am in the sham wow phase of my training were I am just soaking up all the workouts and mileage till I need to wring it all out at the end of June. I think it is important to race a fair amount so when it comes time to race you don’t forget how, but it is just as important to keep the end goal in sight and keep those races along the way in perspective.

This weekend in Alabama will be a brief trip to some warm weather and a good kickoff to the outdoor season. I will be doing the 800/1500 m double like I did last year (2:00, 3:55) with a workout afterwards. I will try and get some video up after the race with a quick recap.

Todays race was not my best. I didn’t run the time I was looking to, I got beat by a lot guys I shouldn’t have and just not a good day overall. One good thing that came out of this race was some motivation. Not that I didn’t have any motivation before the race but this definitely makes me want train even harder so I make sure I don’t have another performance like this one. One thing that is important is forgetting the bad races with the good, you never know what the next race will be like.

I am going to try and get a video interview of Rebecca, Artie, and myself up here from sunny Florida where we will be up into the 70’s today.

So I haven’t really kept up my end of the bargain of posting twice a week on here. But one of my vows for lent is to get 2 posts a week up. In my time off of blogs has been spent training and just being back in school.

This past weekend I took a trip down to notre dame to pace part of the mens 5k at the last chance meet. My coach (Artie) was not exactly thrilled with the idea, but I kinda wanted to do it mainly just so I could do part of a workout with some other people around me. So the plan was to pace about a mile and a half and then do a 3 x 10 minute tempo with 30 second surges at the 4 and 8 minute mark of each tempo. The pacing part of the workout didn’t go exactly how I wanted and soon realized why Artie didn’t want me to do it. My lap splits were a bit erratic which normally isn’t an issue for me and I felt like I was just pressing a little bit. I ended up coming through the mile 1-2 seconds slower then I was supposed to and about 3-4 seconds off after the mile and a half of pacing. But after pacing the workout turned around for me. On each of the tempos I felt stronger and ended up getting a really solid workout out of it.

So as I finish up my final preparations for the gate river run 15k this Saturday I have to remember that it is not always about how you start out a race or workout it is about how you finish it.

Tonight I will be pacing the first two miles of the 5k at the Meyo Invitational at the University of Notre Dame. Flotrack will be there covering the races so you should be able to tune into the streaming live coverage and see me out front. As far as I am aware right now I am supposed to be coming through the two mile mark in about 8:58 but that may change depending on what they want. 

It will be fun seeing some old friends at the meet coaching their teams if they will be able to make it through the snowmageddan of the mid west. For me this was no different or any worse then any winters I experienced at St. Francis or the blizzards of ‘93 and ‘94 in Pittsburgh.

I will get a recap of the weekends efforts up after I pace the 3k on Saturday morning.

This is an often used quote by Steeler coach Mike Tomlin and one of my favorites. This weekend I was originally planning on running in the US half marathon championships, then I was sick over the Christmas holiday and my training wasn’t where I wanted it to be. But that is an excuse and I don’t make them. So I am using this time now to put in more of the work that will pay off come July. Call it what you want, putting hay in the barn, plowing the fields, or just putting the work in.

I have been having my most consistent tempo workouts in the past year these past three weeks. Which is not always fun when you are doing them but looking back you can appreciate the work that has been done. So after some rambling I guess the overall point of this is no one wants to hear why you didn’t do this in a race or finish as well as you would have liked. What you are doing for the next race or what you are going to do better next time is the only thing that matters.

So after a long lay off of really updating anything, I have made the commitment to start updating twice a week. The last 3 months have been pretty low key with not really racing that much. My last race was US Club Cross Country Championships, I ended up finishing 14th and helped my Hanson-Brooks team to a 2nd place finish. I went out there and went after the race leading through the first 2 miles and sticking with the lead pack through 5 miles. This race was after a a much needed short lay off after pacing the Chicago Marathon. Then moving into the holiday season I got sick between Christmas and New Years forcing me to take a couple days just to kick it. Now I am gearing back up again with some consistent training and putting together some solid workouts. Next up for me is some pacing duties at the Meyo Invitational where I will be pacing the 5k on Friday night and the 3k on Saturday morning. Since I do 100% of my workouts alone, it will be a nice change to have some people around me and to get a good weekend of workouts in.

This past weekend before Thanksgiving I got to relive the past. I got to go back and watch the Mideast Meet of Champions for cross-country 10 years after I had ran in the 2000 edition. It was weird showing up to the course 10 years later still knowing where the mile mark is and where the course goes. This meet is for the top 10 seniors from each state in the mid east to stack up which state has the best senior harriers. When I ran the meet it included Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. It now only hosts four states dropping Pennsylvania and West Virginia, I don’t know why these states were dropped but I think it is a shame decreasing a strong field to four schools. This year Indiana dominated the mens race going 2-8, partly because some of the top seniors from Michigan and Illinois decided not to run. My senior year was the same year Dathan Ritzenhein was a senior in Michigan, he was the only one of the top seniors from all the states the did not run the race but still had a pretty tough field. The other post season meets (Foot Locker and Nike’s NXN) in my opinion are just diluting some of these other long standing post season meets and the title of National Champion. But that is a topic for another time.

Going back and seeing this race got me back in cross country mode as I prepare for the US Club XC championships in Charlotte, NC on December 11th. I have always liked running cross country but I sometimes felt I had better races in me then what I showed out on the course. But I am taking in a fresh and positive attitude into this race, my training is going very well and I am ready to go and have some fun competing as a team with my Hanson-Brooks teammates.

So I really have to get better at this and start making more time to fit a short blog in every week or so. I have been really busy lately with starting school back again at Western Michigan graduate biological sciences program, work, and running. Where I am at running wise, I did my favorite small town race the Minster Oktoberfest 10k in Minster Ohio last weekend. I have done the race twice in the past (3rd in 2007, 2nd in 2008) and I was really excited to be back again this year. After going out pretty conservative the first mile(4:52) just feeling out the competition I started put the screws to pace running the next three in 4:33, 4:35, 4:33. I had a pretty good lead at this point and was on course record pace through 4 miles, but then we turned back into a pretty strong head wind the last 2 miles to the finish and could only muster a 5:00 and 4:53. I finished in 29:35 which was a little disappointing but still came away with the victory. The atmosphere is great at this race and will keep coming back as long as they will have me.

Currently I am in Chicago, IL getting ready to pace the lead women in the 33rd Bank of America Chicago Marathon. Right now I am on tap to go through the half marathon mark in 1:10 which is 5:20. I am really excited to be here for marathon weekend and look forward to getting out tomorrow and doing some work for the lead women. If Liliya Shobukhova wins the marathon she will also take home the half of a million dollar world marathon major prize purse.

Also congratulations to Kevin Doyle for winning the race of champions this morning.

Attached is a video of the beautiful weather we are enjoying here in Chicago from elite hospitality suite at the top floor of the Hilton.