The Oregon Coast

After running the 10,000m at the Portland Track Festival on Friday night, Andrea and I had a full weekend in Portland/Oregon before we had to fly back to SLC on Sunday night... we took full advantage of our time, as you would expect!

Forest Park - Leif Erikson Drive

We kicked off Saturday morning with a run at Forest Park on Leif Erikson Drive - a gravel / dirt road closed to traffic. It was very cool, like a rainforest back there (I guess maybe it actually is a rainforest?). From there we headed out to the coast and spent the afternoon/evening in Seaside, OR. I don't even want to tell you how much ice cream we ate... the amount is slightly embarrassing and you wouldn't even believe it. Lets just say that they had $1 cones at the beach, and Safeway has the best Moose Tracks. Good thing we went for another afternoon run on the beach! :-)

On Sunday, after Andrea knocked out a good tempo run (accompanied by her personal pacer, me), we did a lot of walking around Cannon Beach and Ecola State Park. These areas were classic Oregon coast - big wide beaches, towering rock monoliths, and it was always chilly!

You would think that a stop at Dairy Queen would have been the highlight of the drive back to Portland on Sunday afternoon, but that is actually debateable. The clouds broke and with the clear skies, we had some amazing views of Mt Hood and Mt St Helens. Seeing those mountains made us think one thing - we need to get back to the PacNW with our skis!

Women's 10K at PTF - 4 of these gals went under the OT "A" standard of 32:45

$1 cones in Seaside!

Seaside

Can't really get far off the ground the day after a 10K! Achilles don't bounce back that quickly!

She can fly, though!

Our hotel was along this river, 2 blocks from the beach

The good stuff!

Cannon Beach

Ecola State Park - Crescent Beach

Very cool to see a forest with giant trees right next to the ocean

Stop on the way back to Portland

Mt Hood!

Portland Track Festival 10,000m

On Friday (June 8) Andrea and I headed up to the great northwest for the Portland Track Festival at Lewis & Clark college. Unfortunately, due to a hamstring "tweak" earlier in the week, Andrea decided not to race because she didn't want to risk re-aggrevating it before the upcoming half-marathon in Duluth. So it was up to me to run a fast 10,000m to kick off our weekend! I ran 30:03, which was a 63 second PR.

The race started at 9pm (my usual bedtime) under the lights. Below is my race recap, which I copied from my fast running blog.

I decided to scratch from the 5,000m on Saturday night so Andrea and I could spend a fun vacation weekend on the Oregon coast. As great as it would have been to get lapped by Dathan Ritzenhein, we ended up having a really fun weekend so it was the right call... pics from the rest of the trip will be posted tomorrow. One more big race on tap for this spring - the USA 1/2 Marathon champs in Duluth!

Race Recap
3 mile easy run in the morning with Andrea. Then a half day of work and flew to Portland. We landed and all the stereotypes about the city were confirmed within minutes - it was raining, our rental car was a Subaru, and there were bike lanes and complicated recycling options everywhere! Got to the hotel, took a nap, then headed over to the track at Lewis & Clark College around 6:30pm. Watched a few of the other races, then started warming up ~8pm. It felt weird to be starting my run at the time I'm usually getting ready for bed.

This was my first track race since 2008, and first 10K on the track since 2004. It had been a long time since I had been in this type of environment. The rain had stopped and the weather was nice and cool - it was a perfect evening for racing.The field was a little more than 20 guys, so when the gun went off there was some jostling, but I managed to avoid getting spiked and also managed to avoid jumping out too quick.I settled immediately into the rhythm I wanted - 72 second laps. First 3 miles (1600m splits) were 4:48.5, 4:47.0, 4:48.6 (14:24.1 at 4800m, and ~15:01 at 5K). Perfect.

The leaders were wayyyy out front, and I had positioned myself behind 2 guys in light blue singlets who were clearly working together to try and break 30 minutes. We were sort of the "chase" pack, although we weren't really chasing anyone. The blue guys went out a little faster than me, and it took 4-5 laps to catch up to them. Once I did, I sort of hung behind for the next 6-7 laps. Apparently they were not too happy that I had latched onto their group, and one of them said something to me about sharing the work, so I jumped out to the front at 5K and took over the pacing for a while. Next two splits were 4:49.3 and 4:50.7 (24:04 at 8K, a little slower than I wanted). The pace was just lapsing a tiny bit - 72.0s were becoming 72.5s, but those 0.5s add up!

5 laps to go - one of the blue guys is long gone off the back, the other one passes me and puts a gap on me. The lapping game is heating up now as well. I'm running in lane 2 passing the slower runners, and also being courteous enough to move out to lane 2 when I'm being passed by the faster guys. I'm starting to think sub 30 is out of the question. The sixth split was 4:50.4 (28:54.6 at 9600m). I mustered up what I had left and closed the last lap in 68.0. As I approaching the finish line I heard the guy calling out the times - 29:58, 29:59, 30:00, 30:01, and THEN I came through at that point and just said "D@MMIT!" With a smile on my face, of course. Heck, I can't really complain about running 30 flat for 10K when I've never broken 15 minutes in a 5K on the track.

Ahhhh so close, but no cigar. Final time was 30:03 and I came in 9th place (haven't seen official results yet). I gave it what I had. Obviously 29:59 would have been a much nicer number, but in terms of my fitness, its the same thing. I'm content for now. This is still a big jump for me, a PR by over a minute. I ran about what I expected tonight. 

Racing on the track is different... its honest, its exposed, its a bit intimidating in some ways. There's nowhere to hide out there. If you slow down, everyone watching knows it. I love it - and I hope to continue to race more in these types of meets.

I cooled down for about 4 minutes, then went out for ice cream w/ Andrea and two of my friends who live in Portland. It was good to catch up with them, and we all had a good night. Almost on cue, the rain started pouring again once the track meet had ended for the night.

Its very late, so I'll wrap this up. A good race for me, even though 30 flat isn't "equivalent" to a sub 65 half-marathon, I believe I'm capable of that next weekend if I have a great race. I can hold pace pretty well when moving up from 5K/10K to the half.

Oh, and when you haven't worn superlight spikes for anything longer than 200m reps, running 25 laps in them will beat your feet up really good :-)

Here are the Top-10 results...

10000 Meter Run Open Men
================================
1 273 Tyler Pennel Western Stat 28:33.38
2 123 Jonathan Grey Team Usa Min 28:35.52
3 255 Tonny Okello Santa Monica Tra 28:53.39
4 417 Shadrack Kiptoo-Bi Unattached 29:01.38
5 284 Gabriel Proctor Western Stat 29:17.41
6 324 Robert Scribner Hansons-Brooks 29:20.30
7 145 Charles Hillig, Jr Unattached 29:48.56
8 193 Gregory Leak Tacoma City 29:56.32
9 183 Jake Krong Saucony 30:03.07
10 222 Dan McLean Tacoma City 30:28.87

California Part Two

Finishing kick of the Fontana 5K

Some more photos from the California trip... these are the pictures that my aunt took...

Trying to say something intelligent for the camera

Uncle John and I in Santa Barbara

No caption really necessary for this one...

I have to be completely honest - I love my Kinvaras, but they
aren't the best shoes for walking around on slippery ocean rocks! :-)

5K / Mile / Santa Barbara (Race Reports and Photos from California)

Start of the Fontana Days 5K

I spent the past weekend out in California, racing on back to back days and hanging out with my aunt and uncle. I flew out to Ontario on Friday afternoon and someone from the city of Fontana picked me up at the airport and drive me to the hotel they had arranged for me - seriously awesome hospitalitity and I can't thank them enough for treating me so well.

Race #1 (Saturday) was the Fontana Days 5K. Jordan Horn from the McMillan Elite team took it out really fast right from the gun (he won easily in 13:42). I ran splits of 4:31, 4:37, 4:35, :28 to finish in 14:10, good for second place overall. It was a really cool race and fun to get my legs moving that quickly! You can read my full recap of the race on fast running blog: Fontana Days 5K Recap

After the race and some refueling at Dennys, I drove out along the coast to Santa Barbara with my aunt and uncle (Aline and John). We spent the rest of the day milling about in SB (such a cool town!), eating lots of pizza and ice cream - you know, the usual stuff.

Race #2 (Sunday) was the Platinum Performance Main Street Mile. A true middle distance event, not exactly my forte these days, and I was in a bit over my head. Marathon training makes you strong and efficient, but you lose a bit of the explosiveness necessary to run really, really fast for 4 minutes. I'm slowly getting it back, but I'm not quite there yet. Anyways, I got my butt kicked in this one - four guys ran under 4:00 (winner was 3:55!). I finished 9th out of 11 runners in the elite men's heat... I had 4:09.4 on my watch but the time posted ended up being 4:12. Oh well, whatever. It was fun to mix it up and shock the system a bit. Again, my full report from the race is on FRB: State Street Mile Recap

After the men's elite heat - they had a DOG MILE. You gotta check out these pictures.

Road miles are a lot of fun - something I want to organize in Salt Lake City... maybe next year?

Post-race refueling was at IHOP this time, and then I had a full day of sightseeing before flying back to SLC. John, Aline, and I checked out the Santa Barbara Mission, the town of Solvang, and several beaches along the coast.

Both of these races are top notch events and are worth checking out. I'm hoping to go back next year and I already have 13:39 / 3:59 in my head :-)

Fontana Days 5K

Beautiful Santa Barbara

Racing the mile on State Street

Finish Chute

Santa Barbara Mission

This would be an awesome climbing tree!

Solvang, CA

Some of the best cookie dough ice cream I've ever had can be found here
(no offense to Kroger)

The Pacific coast!

Aline and John

No dogs?!?! Not fair!!!

The Santa Barbara airport is TINY

I flew out on this little prop plane at sunset. Very cool flying along the coast at that hour.

Quick results from the California race weekend

A full post with lots and lots more pictures to come... but here's a quick recap of the weekend... I ran 14:10 for 2nd place at the Fontana Days 5K on Saturday, then 4:12 (or 4:09, depending on which clock you were looking at) for 9th place at the Santa Barbara State Street Mile on Sunday.

Had a great time visiting with my family, sightseeing, and eating lots of pizza and ice cream... living the dream!