Running Times, Online

7/22/08

Dear Readers,

Hope all is well and this post finds you healthy and running strong.

I have been recovering from the treadmill mishap a few weeks ago and gradually am feeling stronger and more confident in my fitness and stamina.

I had a decent race this past weekend, July 19, 2008 the Rockville Twilighter 8K finishing 7th in 25:30 and as the 2nd American.

I was looking at going sub 25:00 but was not as strong as I had hoped and lost some focus/time as I was battling with an African Runner that kept cutting the course (he was jumping the curbs and I would lose 3-5 seconds every time he did it, even after I asked him to stop) so I was spending more time yelling at him than focusing on my race which was my own fault but I dislike cheaters and I do not want them to get away with cheating if I can help it. I still caught him about a ½ mile from the finish but it was frustrating to have someone cheat to get ahead.

I am happy with the effort and I feel like my chances this weekend, July 26, 2008, in the USA National 50 Mile Trail Championships at Crystal Mountain, WA are quite good if I can stay in contact with the leaders.

It looks like the race is attracting a lot of talented Ultrarunners and I am excited to be a part of the race and look forward to mixing it up and testing myself against these guys and girls and the trails since I did not get a chance to run Western States due to the fires in California last month.

Anyhow, I wanted to let you all know what I am up to and I hope you check out the USA National 50 Mile Trail Championships website to see how it went.

I hope your running is going well and look forward to having some good news to report next week.

Have a great day and talk to you soon.

Best Regards,
Michael Wardian

by Katie Wolpert

NOW…

Day 5 of this meet hosted a particularly significant and emotional event for me: the women’s 3000m steeplechase final. It was the first time this race provided the women an opportunity to qualify for the Olymics. This race is particularly near and dear to my heart. Although I was born a few years too late to really be a part of the beginning of the event in this country, I was racing it competitively at a time when national qualifying standards were just being announced, and when those standards were slow enough that even I could consider attempting to run one of them.

So it was with a heart full of excitement and pride that I watched the field of 16 highly qualified women take to the track yesterday, running times worthy of national championships and olympic qualification, and racing each other like we’re meant to do in this sport. My bare arms were kept warm in the chilly night air by adrenaline and excitement as Ann Gaffigan told me afterwards, “Well, I can tell you one thing, this event is legit,” because for many years the steeplechase has been accused of being the event runners do when they aren’t fast enough to be a miler, or a 5K runner. “Those 5K girls would have been left in the dust out there tonight,” Gaffigan said.

The women’s steeple community is small and by necessity, close-knit. Off the track, there’s no such thing as a rival in this sport yet, because the improvement of the entire event is dependant on the steeplers working together. Because although we have a great crop of quality steeplechasers in the country at this time, one lives in Michigan, another in Colorado, and another in Utah. One woman is out there training in Nebraska, another up in Minnesota and a third over in Virginia. There’s not yet enough depth in the event to expect any given race to provide the competitve experience necessary to run fast.

Most of the top steeplers are fairly used to running qualifying times on their own, but in order to prepare for international competition, some amount of racing know-how and experience jumping the barriers with someone on your shoulder is priceless. Ann Gaffigan is responsible for bringing the community together. Through her website, steeplechics.com, she not only promotes the event to onlookers like you and I but she has gathered an incredible resource for the athletes themselves.

She provides schedules of upcoming meets that will have a women’s steeplechase and contact information so that unattached steeplers (who often lack funding or agents) can get themselves entered in the event, and she acts as a liason so that the country’s top female steeplers can arrange to meet up and compete against each other to provide that valuable competitive experience.

The other thing I wanted to tell you about is the discus caddies, but that will have to wait until another time. Thinking about this steeplechase stuff is too exciting, I need to go for a run.

by Katie Wolpert

You can’t do much as a runner without encountering a reminder of how small our community is. The web that connects a daily jogger to an olympic medalist is not very large.

Starting in high school, I cheered for my teammates of course, and my childhood friend who now runs for a different team, my cousin who runs for the school across town and for my neighbor’s granddaughter who is a promising miler for the school from a neighboring town.

In college I cheered for my teammates of course, and the guy who also ran in my home town and my older brother’s friend who runs for another school in my conference. I paid attention to results from across the country to see how my former teammates and rivals are doing in their respective conferences and divisions.

Thus began the construction of my tangled web of running connections. And so I find myself here in Eugene, at the Olympic trials, still tangled in the middle of that same web. I have a high school teammate competing for an Olympic berth in the 400m and a former steeplechase rival in tonight’s finals. I’ll be cheering for a good friend’s running clubmate in the men’s 10,000m and a cross-town aquaintance in the women’s 5,000m.

After the men’s 800m finals on Monday, when three “locals” stormed the finish line to make an Oregon sweep, most of the media members who have been covering events at Hayward for decades declared in absolute terms that the crowd was louder than they’d ever heard before.

Andrew Wheating, though he hails from Vermont, was wearing the colors of the Oregon Ducks and has been adopted here as a native son. Wheating had crossed paths with the town of Eugene and in return, the entire community came together behind the kid and cheered loudly enough to push him through the line in second place. “I thought I was out of the game from the start,” Wheating said, “but I finished faster than I thought I could.”

I’ll be caught up in the excitement of the whole event as much as the next person, but let’s face it, we all want to cheer for a hometown favorite.  So best of luck to you Mary, Maureen, James and Amanda. You might not know who I am anymore, but our paths have crossed in the past and I’ll be yelling for you out there.

photos courtesy of Pacers Running Store

Dear Readers,

Hope all is well with you and yours.

I was looking for a challenge and I got it last weekend.

I thought I was going to be running the Western States 100 Mile Endurance race but it was cancelled due to the wild fires in Northern California.

I was devastated by the cancellation as much of my training this year had been targeted to this 100 mile race.

In view of the Western States cancellation, I was looking for something to do and with the help of Marathonguide.com and Pacers running stores, I was able to find a neat challenge that I had been thinking of doing for a while.

As you may know, I was attempting to break the World Record for the fastest marathon on a treadmill (2:21:40) and also the fastest 50K (3:10:19) on a treadmill and I failed at both attempts.

Herewith a link to some articles about it in case you didn’t see:

Technical Problems and a Cloudy Head Prevent Wardian from Setting Record: Through 24 miles in 2:09:15 (5:23 pace) Wardian was 30 seconds ahead of where he needed to be. But with the restarted treadmill showing ten minutes and and just under two miles elapsed, Wardian experienced what so many do at the end of a marathon - a bit of confusion. Miscalculating the remaining distance required to complete the marathon, Wardian stopped his run with just over a mile to go - thinking the distance complete. read more at marathonguide.com >>

Have you ever run more than 25 miles on a treadmill, seeking to break a world record for stand-in-place marathoning, only to get slightly confused about your distance, become overwhelmed by heat, come up less than a half-mile short after shutting off the machine prematurely and and then collapsing and then briefly winding up in a hospital? Well, sure you have, but you should read Michael Wardian’s story anyhow. Read more from Washington Post >>

I felt like I was ready for the challenges and while we had some technical problems with the treadmill and me even with all those set backs the records still seemed like they were within my grasp.

However, looking back on it, I was hurting by 22.5 miles (around 2 hours when the treadmill shut down for the 2nd time, I had trouble getting it going again and lost some real time) and then was pushing a little too hard and sweating way too much.

I probably also should have had more Sports Drink and definitely I should have had some more salt and electrolytes during the run but all these things I can correct for the next time and I will be ready for the challenge.

I see this as a definite set back because anytime I don’t achieve a goal it is tough but I am also very excited that I was running so well for so long and I look forward to continuing to push my boundaries and see where it will take me.

Hope everyone has a great holiday weekend and look forward to see everyone out there.

Best Regards,
Michael Wardian