Stanford Invitational

The big, early season distance carnival that is the Stanford Invitational took place last night.  And, we had some good Montana reprsentation.

In the women's steeplechase Alexa Aragon (Billings Senior) of Notre Dame ran 10:25.82 for 3rd place in her section.

In the men's steeplechase:

• Lynn Reynolds (Dillon) of UM ran 8:55.60 for 2nd in his section.
• John Ricardi (Gardiner) of Club Northwest ran 8:59.99 in his section (which was the top seeded section of the night)

In the women's 5K:

•  Lois Ricardi (Gardiner) of Club Northwest ran 16:36.77 in her section.
• And, in the top seeded section, Katrina Drennan of UM ran 16:12.60

And, in the top seeded section of the men's 1,500, Patric Casey (Laurel) (and who switched from MSU to Okalhoma this winter) ran 3:43.17 (about a 4:02 mile).

Some pretty stellar performances for our home-grown, big sky talent.

Full Stanford results can be found at http://www.rtspt.com/events/stanford/invite2012/

Comin' Around

Well, the old Buzzard seems to be coming back around on the running front.  Last week was 25 miles, this week should be 28 (woo hoo - a whole 4 miles per day).  The foot seems to be holding up just fine.  And, the areobic conditioning seems to be progressing pretty well also.  Both pace and heart rate are dropping nicely; and, seem to be getting really quite comfy down to 7:30 pace.  Hope to be getting comfy pace down to 7:teens in the next couple of weeks. 

The big news for the week was venturing out on the roads for the first time.  In my recovery to date, I've been doing everything on the treadmill.  It's a nice forgiving surface that allows for a uniform, consistent foot placement every time.  That really minimizes the risk of a bad foot fall that could tweak the metatarsal. 

But, as with everything, you eventually have to take the first bit of something new.  So, I headed out with my track kids for a short workout on Wednesday.  And..................the foot felt fine.  No twinges, no tweaks, no nothin'.  Felt - well - normal.  And, man, was I happy with that.  I was really quite anxious about how things would feel when I hit the pavement - especially when you condider that I hadn't run on pavement since the 1st of December (4+ months).  But, it looks like I did the right things in coming back from the stress fracture and I think that the foot is pretty solid.

The workout entailed 1.5 miles warm-up, then 1.5 miles at tempo effort.  This meant around 9:00 to 12:00 of hard effort for the kids (but not all out) ------ or, about the time that they are working during the 2-mile.  Wanted them to get used to the longer, sustained effort and to work on their concentration and maintaining a strong pace.

As for me, I ran with our 2nd group of guys at 6:30 pace.  And, it went all right.  I was reasonably comfy until the last 400 meters.  Then, the effort caught up to me a bit.  Still held pace; but, it became a bit of extra work to stay there.  Considering that I hadn't really run at sub-7:00 pace since MT Cup last fall, I was pretty pleased.

Hoping to gradually get back to some level of fitness and strenght over the next couple of months.  While I know I won't and can't be competitive at Wulfman in mid-June, I would like to be able to get through that race with only mild discomfort :-)

See you on the roads, tracks and trails

The Muddy Buzzard.