BOOK REVIEW

I’m sure it’s a slow day due to the holiday weekend, so I thought I’d just post something I already had written up. About 2 months ago I mentioned The Runner’s Cookbook. After receiving a copy, I wrote a brief review for MDRA.

Cookbook Review by Chad Austin

Every once in awhile I come across a simple idea that makes me think, “Why didn’t I think of that.” The most recent case being a book entitled The Runner's Cookbook: Winning Recipes from Some of the World's Best Athletes. It was compiled and edited by Alison Wade, who simply emailed professional runners and asked them to send her their favorite recipe, along with a note on why they chose that recipe. Just reading through these notes and looking at the running photos was enjoyable, because it’s not something found in your typical cookbook.

The end result contains 100 recipes from over 90 different athletes, including everything from breads and soups & salads to main dishes and side dishes. Being runners, you can bet there are plenty of pasta recipes like, Pasta Arrabiata (Sebastian Coe), Artichoke Lasagna (Amy Hastings), Pumpkin Lasagna (Deena Kastor), and Mushroom Risotta (Chris Lundstrom), just to name a few. Don’t worry, just because they’re professional athletes doesn’t mean they left out the dessert section. There are over 20 recipes for cookies, pies, and other goodies.

Minnesota runners are well represented thoughout the book. You’ll find Dick Beardsley’s French Toast, Bob Kempainen’s Corn Chowder, Kara (Wheeler) Goucher’s Veggie and Chicken Stir Fry. You’ll also find a variety of recipes from Team USA Minnesota runners, Kristen Nicolini Lehmkuhle, Carrie Tollefson, Matt Gabrielson, and Katie McGregor.

So far I've only made one recipe from the book, Matt Gabrielson's Grandma D's Goulash. Do not be alarmed that my youngest daughter said, "Ew, what's that smell?" and my oldest daughter said, "If I take one more bite, can I have something else?" These are standard responses in our household for any meal that takes longer than 30 seconds to prepare. Trust me, the goulash was delicious.

Best of all, this is a fundraising cookbook and all the contributions go to the Ryan Shay Memorial Fund and the Jenny Crain "Make It Happen" Fund. The price is $14.95, plus shipping and handling. Go HERE to learn more about these runners, preview the table of contents, and to place an order.

Quote of the day;

“I have this marathon a little bit in my heart.” – Uta Pippig, referring to the Boston Marathon

DETRIMENTAL

Getting up at 4:30 AM and then staying up till midnight to watch the Trials – with only an hour nap – is not conducive to running the next morning. Rather than squeezing something in last night, I enjoyed taking the day off and getting back up this morning for a 10 mile trail run with Evan and Jason.

I know rest is a key component of any training plan, but it always seems more detrimental when I take the first day of the month off – or even the first day of the week. It kind of feels like I haven't done anything yet for this new time period, why am I taking the day off - even though I ran a hard workout the day before.

Anyway, lack of sleep was well worth it to watch the Trials, especially the men’s 800m and the men’s 5000m final. Great job by Team Minnesota’s Matt Gabrielson to finish 8th in 13:38.06. That’s about 8 seconds away from his PR, but at his level it’s more about competing – something I know he’s been disappointed with lately.

In an effort to help out Mike, who’s one of the recruiters for the TC-10 mile, I wanted to mention how local elites can get a comp entry into the race. If you go to this page and scroll down, you’ll see a list of the time standards. If you meet any of those standards, send Mike an email at: michael_nawrocki AT yahoo DOT com. This should be done BEFORE signing up or trying to enter through the general lottery process. If you are eligible for a comp entry, DO NOT enter the lottery process.

Run fast, save $60. It's that simple.

Quote of the day;

“I feel good, because I stayed in there and competed, which I’ve kind of been slacking on the last year or so.” - Matt Gabrielson

LUCKILY

Luckily, most mornings I’m able to get up and get my run in without much fanfare. Then there are mornings like this morning. As I backed my car out of the driveway at 4:40, all I could think was, "WTF am I doing? Amy and the girls will be sleeping for 2 more hours and I’m going out for a hard workout."

No, I didn’t pull back into the garage, but that would have been sweet. Instead I got in a great workout; 16 miles in 2:07, including a 2 mile warm-up, 2 x 1.5 miles at tempo with a 2 minute rest, 1 hour easy, 2.25 miles at tempo, 1.5 mile cool-down.

I made a conscious effort to start a little quicker so that my first mile wouldn’t be like 7:00 as it has been in other workouts lately. It ended up being around 6:35, which is better but could still stand to be a little faster. While running the easy hour portion of the workout I was really dreading dropping back down to tempo pace. I was thinking I’d be lucky if I manage 7:00 pace, so I was pleasantly surprised to find myself running 6:31 pace.

I closed out last week with a 12 miler on Saturday giving me 59 miles for the week on 6 runs. This morning’s workout was actually supposed to be run Sunday, but sleep and family stuff got in the way and I ended up just running an easy 8 miles yesterday.

All this means that I closed out June with 265 miles on 27 days of running, including 3 double days. While that’s down a ways from my 301 in May, I’ve also added in a lot more workouts during the last 5 weeks.

I can’t end this post without addressing the women’s 10,000m. Around 8 PM on Friday I realized the race was on TV. I set my alarm and crashed for an hour. I was glad I woke up because it was a great race. Of course I hated seeing Katie McGregor finish 4th again, but Amy Begley ran an incredible race. She had to run sub-31:45 to make the team and she ended up running 31:43.6 and did so by running a huge negative split, like 16:11/15:32, including a 67-second last lap.

Be sure to check out the men's 5,000m tonight from 8 - 10 PM Central on USA.

Quote of the day;

“Amy really is the story of the night. She ran amazing. We have been together every step for the past year and she is the perfect example of hard work paying off.” – Kara Goucher, referring to Amy Begley

PERFECT 10

I actually have lots to cover today. Of course, I think it’s all interesting, so I hope you’ll stay with me here. First off, I want to talk about women.

I thought that’d get your attention.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that, in general, men like to look at women – the cute ones, pretty ones, beautiful ones and, of course, the hot ones.

I have an on going debate with one of my high school friends. He claims that less than 10% of women – we’re talking like 18 – 40 years old – are attractive. I told him the percentage is higher than that. Part of the ‘problem’ behind my reasoning is that my running lifestyle is made up of beautiful, very fit women.

Sure I’ve known this for a long time, but it really occurred to me at the Grandma’s Marathon and half awards ceremony. I should have brought my high school buddy, so he’d know where I was coming from.

With all that said, I’m happy to report that it’s my 10th wedding anniversary today. While it’s always fun to look, I really couldn’t be any happier than being with my wife. She’s a perfect 10, for me. She’s the kindest, most caring, patient person I know – traits she gets from her mom, which hopefully she’ll pass on to our girls because I’m sorely lacking them.

And as they saying goes, I definitely “out kicked my coverage” in terms of the looks department. It makes me wonder why she’s stayed with me so long – 13 years total.

Normally I like to get all sweet and mushy, but since she’s probably not even reading, I’ll get back to the topic of running.

Speaking of hotties, the women’s 10,000m finals are tonight. The race starts at 9:20 Pacific, which means we’ll know who’s made the team by about midnight Central. Here are some previews from The Final Sprint, Letsrun and Down the Backstretch.

As everyone else is saying, Flanagan and Goucher should be one and two. I’m picking Goucher because I think Flanagan won’t be as concerned with winning because she’ll want to run well in the 5,000m too. Third place should be very interesting. I’m going with Katie McGregor because she’s the most experienced and she’s had her 4th place finish in 2004 eating at her for four years. Plus, she’s a Minnesotan and I’m a big homer.

Last night I was reading the latest Track & Field News and I came across some changes that I wasn’t aware of regarding who makes the Olympic Team. I figure there are other who aren’t aware of them either.

Remember 2004 when Carrie Tollefson won the 1500m at the trials, but didn’t have the A-standard? Well she was able to go to Europe and eventually earned her A-standard before the Games. This year they are not allowing for the chasing of standards. If you don’t have the A or B-standard by the end of your event, you won’t be going to the Olympics – even if you win the trials.

Also, there are 4 possible permutations regarding how many athletes go to the Olympics in an event, based on if they have the A or B-standard; A, A-A, A-A-A and B. That means we can send 1, 2 or 3 athletes with the A-standard or 1 athlete with the B standard.

And since maximizing team size takes priority, should a B-standard athlete win their event, they would be passed over for the Games by 2 or 3 A-standard athletes. That means someone like Katie McGregor could finish 4th and still make the team if one of the gals in front of her only has the B-standard. On the other hand, it means Carrie Tollefson will have to drop her season’s best 1500m time from around 4:15 to the A-standard of 4:07 in order to make her second team – finishing in the top 3 without the time standard means nothing.

I know it’s all confusing – the letsrun article linked above explains it pretty well – but it should make for some very interesting distance races. Look for the runners without the A-standard to push the pace early if they want any shot at representing the U.S. in Beijing.

Quote of the day;

“By necessity you take 10 days off your job to do the Trials properly. You give your whole life over to running, jumping and throwing. Both the watching and the discussion thereof… Your family and normal friends don’t understand, but who cares? This is your passion. Your reason for being laid out bare for all the world to see. Revel in it, my friends, for it only comes around once every four years.” – Garry Hill, editor of Track & Field News

BIG QUESTION MARK

When I blogged yesterday the plan was to run an easy 5 last night, and then meet up with Scott for a more moderate paced run today and then a harder workout tomorrow. I emailed Scott and found out he’s out of town and I decided to switch things around a little. Rather than an easy 5, I just went to bed early so I could get up at 4:30 for a hard workout.

The workout called for the following;

12:00 warm-up
40:00 at marathon pace
5:00 at tempo pace
20:00 at M
5:00 at T
10:00 at M
12:00 cool-down

I’ve kind of been inter-mixing my workouts – some sections are based on time others are based on mileage, which makes the Garmin a little more helpful. So I took the above workout and ended up doing this (times are off the top of my head);

2 miles warm-up – 17:10
6 miles at M – 41:15
¾ miles at T – 4:50
3 miles at M – 20:55
¾ miles at T – 4:55
1 ½ miles at M – 10:30
1 mile cool-down – 8:15

Total workout 15 miles in 1:48 (7:12 pace)

Overall it was a pretty solid workout. One of the things I keep in mind when looking at this on paper before running it, is that after that initial 6 miles at M, the pace gets quicker. Normally after a hard section you back off the pace and recover. That’s not the case with this type of workout. Maybe that keeps me from pushing too hard too early. I’m not sure. In any case, the last 1 ½ miles at M is tough – especially starting at 5:00 and running solo.

This seems to indicate that I’m in about 3:05 shape right now – give or take 5 minutes. Where I go from here is the big question mark.

Quote of the day;

“I think I’m prepared for it. That’s the number-one thing. You have to be confident in your training and ability and feel like you’re ready for anything. I definitely think I’m ready.” – Katie McGregor

INCOMPLETE AND IRRELEVANT

Another day without much to say. Just an easy 5 miles this morning. I plan on running another 5 miler this evening. It’s always weird when you feel fine the day after a workout, but two days later your legs are tired.

All right, we’re only 2 days away from the start of the Olympic Track Trials. If you’re like me you’ll be following as closely as possible and trying to stay on top of all the action. Reading serious articles and results is great at all, but it’s important to have some fun along the way. To help with that, the guys at LTOB are taking on a new project titled; 3000 Miles to the Trials: Incomplete and Irrelevant Coverage of the 2008 Olympic Track Trials. It looks like it'll have articles, videos, photos and more. Check it out.

Quote of the day;

"I ran, I didn’t race. I didn’t get any action until the last couple of miles." - Jeremy Polson, describing the Garry Bjorklund Half Marathon in which the leaders were strung out

WORK TO DO

Training seems to be kind of sporadic lately. Being on vacation for 3 days and going to Duluth for another 2 days didn’t help much. It seems like I’ve been moving workouts around, pushing them back or skipping them entirely. Yesterday I had a nice tempo ladder workout;

2 mile warm-up
3 miles at T
4:00 easy
2 miles at T
3:00 easy
1.5 miles at T
2:00 easy
5:00 at T
2 mile cool-down

I’m still not hitting the paces that Daniels suggests, but I feel like I’m listening to my body. Part of the problem is that my body is telling me that I need more time to get going. I should be running sub-6:30 pace for my tempos and the first mile of my initial pickup was like 7-flat. So there’s some work to do.

There are days when you want to wake up, but you can’t. And then there are days where you want to sleep in – typically, few and far between – but you can’t. After staying up till nearly 10 PM last night, I tried to sleep in today. However, since I was wide awake at 4:50 I just got up and went for a nice 10 mile trail run. I felt surprisingly good, given yesterday’s workout.

I’ll close today with a couple of links. Kristen Lehmkuhle has updated her journal. In it she describes her frustration with a stress fracture and trying to squeeze in a 10,000m qualifier before the trials.

And speaking of the 10,000m trials, the women’s final is this Friday night at like 9:40 Pacific. Katie McGregor, who finished 4th in this event in 2004, has a nice interview HERE.

Quote of the day;

“I eat whatever the guy who beat me in the last race ate.” – Alex Ratelle