Monday, October 08, 2007

CONSOLATION

Umm, in case you missed it, it was hot this weekend. At 6 AM it was 72 degrees and the dew point was already 65. Any desire to run 26.2 miles had exited my body on Saturday when we set a record high of 87 degrees. If it’s any consolation to the folks that ran yesterday, I had a nice 10 mile run in 58 degrees and light ran this morning.

For those of you that are sick and tired of running hot Minnesota marathons, Charlie Mahler has written a nice opinion piece on why TCM should change the date of the race. And while we’re at it, let’s make Grandma’s Marathon earlier in the year.

Instead of running I was able to help out with a little reporting on the women’s race. I hopped on my mountain bike and caught the start, along with miles 3, 7, 10, 13.1 and 21. My notes can be found here. It turns out it’s hard to report on a 2.5 hour race when you only see each runner for about 2 minutes. Oh well, it was still fun.

Afterwards I got to hang out in the elite tent and act like I knew what I was doing. Actually, most of the elite-elites were gone, so I got to hang out with the local age-group elites. I’ve already interviewed a bunch of them through emails, so it was nice to be able to talk face-to-face. And I’m happy to report that I didn’t drool on Carrie Tollefson when she was standing right next to me. Maybe next time I’ll even talk with her.

As you can guess, there weren’t many performances worth writing home about, although the men’s winner ran by himself for the last 18 miles and ran a solid sub-2:14. Locally, Angie Voight continues to impress. She has aspirations of qualifying for the Olympic Trials, however, her last 2 marathons have been run in tough conditions, Grandma’s and TCM. Still, she managed to PR in both cases - dipping under 2:55 yesterday.

A week ago, Melissa Gacek ran 2:45:06 at Toronto to qualify for her second Trials. And at St. George on Saturday, Erin Ward qualified for her first Trials with a 2:45:55, while Kelly Mortenson missed qualifying by less than 90 seconds with his 2:23:28.

Quick running update; I ran 42 miles last week on 6 runs.

Quote of the day;

“Not to be today. He was on but it wasn't anyone's day. He ran well. Makes me wonder how well he could have run with decent weather. 2:22 or under? Makes you wonder.” - Pete Gilman on Josh Metcalf

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