test

Nike Free Flyknit 4.0

One Happy Return

The blog is coming back, as I'll have a bit more time to post over the next few months. For those of you that don't already know, I'll be taking a leave from work to train for the Olympic Trials in January. Look for updates soon.

2010 in Review - Already?

I'm approaching the one-year anniversary of my last post, so I'm a little overdue in sending an update. As I'm getting ready to close out my competitive racing season this weekend in Boston, it's been apparent that traveling for races has been a bigger focus for me in 2010. I've been able to visit both coasts and add a few more states to the list of those I've visited. Of course, none of this would have been possible without the help of some great race directors, elite recruiters, and my agent, Roger. A HUGE thank you to all!

Here's a brief recap of some of my races in 2010.

Jacksonville, FL - Gate River Run 15K (U.S. Championships)

• This race was clearly early in the season. I pulled an amateur move by forgetting to bring a jersey and wound up racing in my roommate's T-shirt. I'm pretty sure I was the top finisher with some semblance of sleeves. I was also able to add an Olympian to the list of people I've beat, as I passed Dan Browne heading over the final bridge. He clearly wasn't in top shape, but I'm still counting it.
  
• Dan Browne
  

Spokane, WA - Bloomsday 12K

• This was an awesome race! Spokane was great, the course was challenging, the field was solid, and I raced well! There was a hill called "Doomsday" that was a steep rise for basically the entire fifth mile, but I was able to use it to my advantage and roll on some guys late in the race. I went through the 10K right around my road PR, and finished the 12K under 37:00, coming home with some American citizen prize money.
  
• Results

Fargo, ND - Fargo Marathon

• This was my first marathon. Throughout my training in the spring, I was shooting to run under 2:19, which would have qualified me for the Olympic Trials. Going into the race, the weather forecast was horrible. The Saturday of the race was slated to be 80+ degrees with strong winds. This wasn't exactly good news for me, especially as an inexperienced marathoner. The morning of the race brought rain, which helped the heat, but it was still sticky and windy. When the race started 2:19 was the furthest thing from my mind, which was actually a good thing. I went through the half-marathon point in just under 1:11 and decided to push the second half. Surprisingly, I was able to sustain the effort for most of the second half, finishing in 2:19:55. I'm glad the first one is in the books.
  
• Video
  

Northport, NY - Great Cow Harbor 10K

• The afternoon before the national cross country meet my senior year, I remember Tim Miles and I talking about some of the bad races I had over the course of my college career. At that point, things had been going really well for me, and the national meet was no different. Everyone who races for any length of time is going to have some rough patches, and it can be comical looking back once you are far enough removed. My race on Long Island was definitely one of the "bad" races. From the start I could tell I was in trouble. I was feeling off before the first mile, and after pushing the second mile up the course's main hill, I was hurting. I tried to push through, hoping I would feel better. It didn't work. My fifth mile was just under 6:00, and I finished in 32:44.
  
• Map
  

Boston, MA - B.A.A. Half-Marathon

• I'm heading to Boston tomorrow morning for my last race of the year. I'm excited and ready. Previews are below:
  
• Elite List
• Bio
  

Merry Christmas!

My Week Off

I had promised an update soon and I'm running out of time before I leave for vacation, so here it is:

Today was my first official day in my new department at work. I'm still a Business Analyst, so that part stayed the same. I was initially going to take this whole week off work for vacation, but I figured since I would be around the cities anyways, I might as well try to get up to speed in my new area as quickly as possible. I moved from tabletop to lighting and wall decor, so the businesses are fairly similar from my perspective. I'm actually pretty excited to get back to work and get in the full swing of things next Monday. My attitude is a little surprising, even to me, but I think it really helped to have even the smallest of changes.

As for my vacation, I'm really excited about that, too. It will be the first time that I've taken more than one day off work since I started last September. I'm flying out to Cleveland tomorrow morning, where my parents will pick me up. We're going to the Twins game tomorrow night, so hopefully the weather cooperates. From there, the details aren't totally clear to me. I'm not the greatest of planners, and since my parents did all the work, I'm just going with the flow. I know for sure that we will be driving to Niagra Falls and Toronto, but I'm not sure how long we are staying at any of the stops. The trip finishes (for me) in Detroit, where we'll be going to another Twins game before I fly back on Sunday morning. It's not the most exotic sounding vacation, but I'm still pretty pumped about it!

As far as running, there always seems to be an update. I've only got two confirmed races lined up for the Fall so far. The first one is Saint John's Invite in September, which I hope serves as a good barometer for where I'll be a few weeks later at the TC10 mile, my second race of the season. I ran both races last year, but I feel with the level of training I've been doing, I'll finish considerably better than a year ago. With work, it's been tough to be mentally prepared to do workouts after already putting in a full day. Workouts are my top priority going forward - I need quality. I'm not going to be skipping any of the workouts on my calendar just because I can't focus solely on them, and I'm going to try like hell to make sure they are productive.

Volume will be another focus, but may eventually have to take the back burner. I'm anticipating my highest monthly mileage ever in August, which ideally will be between 525 and 550. The August before my senior year, I ran 499.9 and just to prove it wasn't all about the numbers, I didn't run that extra tenth of a mile. I've already got my biggest long run this month (yesterday, 23 miles) and I'm feeling really strong. Tired, but strong. Hopefully I'll be able to parlay these increased emphases into some better race results, but I'll have to wait to find out.

July Update

For anyone that used to read this blog and still periodically checks in, I think this post is going to come as a big surprise. It's not that I'm writing about anything profound, it's just that I haven't posted a single word since last September. I wrote about how things were going during my first week of work - now that I've been at Target for ten months, the comments seem a little dated. It's time for an update..

First of all, one of the reasons the writing stopped so abruptly in September was a computer issue. My laptop made it all across Europe with me , but apparently the trip from Spring Valley to Bloomington was too much for it to handle. I managed to fix it enough to the point where it was serviceable for checking email, but that was the extent of it's functionality for about six months. After March, when I finally bought a new computer, I really don't have an excuse. I was just lazy, I guess.

What else is new in my life? Well, my sister Lindsey bought a house in Bloomington, my other sister Alissa and her husband, Drew had their second child, and my friends are all getting married. As for my major life changes, I moved from Bloomington to St. Paul - a grand total of about 13 miles. I'm now living with two friends from college in a brand new (at least in June) three bedroom place just across the river from Fort Snelling. It's an awesome location for running, commuting and improving my social life. Along with trails on both sides of the river, there are tons of great places to run in the southwest corner of St. Paul. I'm able to take the light rail to work, which makes things a lot more flexible both in the morning and at night. I'm also living closer to a number of my friends, which is a huge bonus.

As I hinted at before, I am still dabbling in the running and racing scene. I'll be commenting more on that in future posts. For now, I thought I would post a picture from the awards ceremony at my last race, an 8K in Cedar Rapids, Iowa (I'm in the back row).


Since it apparently works with weekly TV shows and blockbuster movies, I'm going to give a little teaser of what's to come in my future posts, assuming they come a little more frequently..

• New car!
• August vacation with my parents
• Department change @ Target
• #1 pick in Fantasy Football draft
• Fall races
  

Real World: Week 1

It's 83 degrees outside right now in Bloomington and for the first time since before I left for Ireland, I'm waiting around for it to cool down a little before I run.  Running has been a little different my first two days of work.  I found out that it's not exactly light out (like it was all summer across the pond) before 6:00 AM.  There are some awesome routes that I have discovered so far, with nearly every one having some involvement with a nearby lake.  I have also found it difficult to cut back my mileage much.  I remember writing in an interview how it takes just as much discipline to take it easy towards the end of the season as it does to get out and keep running a ton during the summer and winter months, but so far this fall I haven't had that discipline.  I do have a few more things to say about my running in the recent past and the near future..

1. I posted new highs for summer mileage (1,252) and weekly mileage (130)
2. For those of you who didn't know, I raced at the SJU Invite last week, finishing in 26:04 to narrowly beat out a slew of impressive former teammates.
3. I'm signed up to race both this weekend at Fort Snelling in a 5x5k relay and on October 5th for the TC 10 mile.  I'm excited to do both.

Hopefully I didn't completely lose my audience, despite the month-long gap between posts.  To avoid rambling on about the pros and cons of my train trip across Europe, I thought I would write a one word summary and explanation about each city that I spent at least one night in over my final two weeks.  Here it goes:

• Brussels - bittersweet (I loved the city when I was there my first night, but I ended up missing my flight back to Dublin and had to spend the night in the Brussels airport)
• Paris - predictable (Almost everything I saw I expected to see, which was probably mostly my fault)
• Nice - gorgeous (If the beaches weren't filled with rocks, I might not have left)
• Venice - frustrating (The islands were like a maze and the maps only added to my confusion)
• Salzburg - perfect (I loved how the size of the city, the atmosphere, the sights and almost everything else about it)
• Munich - rich (Filled with color, music, and history)

I also just completed my second day of work in the "real world".  I'm working at Target Headquarters in downtown Minneapolis.  Surprisingly, my bus ride from Bloomington is about the same amount of time as it was last summer when I lived in Minneapolis, and it drops me off less than a block away from my office.  I've been able to meet up with a bunch of people that I knew from my internship last summer, which is really awesome.

Oh, and one more thing. My fantasy football team is 1-1 and I'm not happy about it.