May 25th Update

            My blog updates have been a bit less frequent these days. To summarize, I’m in the process of finishing up my Ph.D. in chemistry at MSU, getting ready to start a job at 3M, and recently bought a house in the Longfellow neighborhood in Minneapolis. Did I mention that the house is 4 houses away from my sister Dawn!? Needless to say, there are a lot of big changes going on in my life right now, but I’m taking the time to enjoy them. At the risk of sounding cheesy, I have been lucky to have good people involved in my life which has made and will make the up and coming transitions much easier than they could be. So thank you to everyone that has helped me along the way.

            As far as running is going, running is actually going great. My knee has been a little bit bothersome, but I’m finally able to run normally without taking an anti-inflammatory. My workouts and races really were horrendous leading up to the Indy Mini Marathon, but I believe that I raced to the best of my fitness level at Indy and really did execute a near perfect race for the fitness that I was in. I just took 2 weeks where I ran workouts, but I wasn’t concerned about the mileage that I was hitting (I believe I hit 80 and 62 miles the last 2 weeks). I’ve been true to my goal of running workouts to get in shape rather than to show I’m in shape. I plan to do a lot of training at or near marathon goal pace (5:11’s) and incorporate more cut down runs into my training where the workouts will be on the roads. Here’s a quick summary of the workouts I’ve run post-Indy

Tues May 10^th - 4 miles in 20:42.

Sun May 15^th – Was fortunate enough to meet up with a former college teammate John Heitzman. We ran 20 miles where we took 10 minutes of recovery running (at or little under 6:00 pace) between each interval 2 x 1 min at 5:08ish pace, 1 x 15 min (5:06, 5:09, 5:08), 2 x 1 min at 5:08ish pace, 1 x 5 min (5:05). It was a great run on a great day. I believe John is ready to set a nice PR at Grandmas Marathon this spring.

Thurs May 20^th – 12 miles with a 9 mile cut-down segment (6:29, 6:17, 6:09, 5:57, 5:46, 5:38, 5:27, 5:25, 5:10).

Sun May 22^nd – 20 miles slow in the heat.

Tues May 24^th – 3 miles 15:23 (5:11, 5:07, 5:05), 0.5 mile rest (6:30 pace), 2 miles 10:16 (5:06, 5:10), 0.5 mile rest (6:40 pace), 1 mile 4:58.

My last workout was really the best workout that I’ve run in quite some time and I’m beginning to actually feel good on workouts where I feel that I could’ve run more intervals. It’s great to have that feeling back again. I plan to continue to run workouts that challenge my body, but workouts that allow my body to recover on a week to week basis. I’m planning to race significantly less than I have over the past 2 years, but I’m sure I’ll still hop in an occasional race here or there. The end goal is to run 2:16 (give or take a minute) this fall. That obviously can not happen if I have setbacks this summer, but I’ve really gained a lot of experience over the last couple years and think that I have the perfect training plan for me to run fast in the fall. I’ll continue to update my workouts in future blogs, but I plan to keep my mileage between 85-90 miles for the next couple weeks. Good luck to everyone racing this weekend.