2010 Running Mission

My running mission for 2010 is to run more miles then anyone I personally know. Cough Cough Tommy "TwoTone" Nettuno Cough Cough As well as any of the pains in the arses over at Sayville Running Company. I would also like to run fast, but I believe putting in the miles will help that and that is why my mission is what it is.

My 2009 finished with me running 3628 miles over the course of 353 out of 365 days of the year. Yes I missed 12 days of running, I don't know how I can sleep at night but I do. This year I plan on blowing that figure out of the water.

I guess you can say that this "Running Mission" is my "New Year's Resolution". I will take you along on this journey and recap as much of it as possible for you all here on a monthly(?) maybe more frequent basis. What you can expect to see is an overview of every run, a highlighted workout from the month and some other neat stuff. Basically if you are non runner you will most likely find this to be boring and an eye gouging experience. So Enjoy!

January 1st - AM - Midnight run in Central Park that kicked off the New Year. 4 Miles in 21:30, 519 518 535 518, Hilly from mile 2-3 a nice hard tempo effort and lending a hand to Leo. - PM - 6 miles with B, Leo, Mango & Soltan, nice solid run.

January 2nd - AM - Shakeout 7 Miles quads a little sore from the race. - PM - Another shakeout run just 3 miles.

January 3rd - 16 miles in the wind and cold, legs loosened up as the run went on.

80 miles for the week, but 38 for the Year to Date(YTD) miles.

January 4th - cruised an 8 mile run, had a bit of slop on the road.

January 5th - AM - WO 6x1k 314 315 316 313 311 312, done on the roads, a little windy for my liking, but there are no excuses in running, just inhibiting factors. - PM - Shakeout 6 with the SRC crew.

January 6th - 12 mile run, heavy heavy heavy legs!

January 7th - 10 miles with 5 x 300 at the end.

January 8th - Easy Peasy 8

January 9th - AM - 5 miles - PM - 5 miles.

January 10th

This is my Highlight Work Out of the Month (HWOM)

WO 15 mile cutdown run, a cutdown run meant to get progressively faster as you continue your run. This run is going to be a 15 mile run so I have elected to break it down into 3 5 mile chunks. After each 5 miles passes I will pickup the pace. The pace targets I have set for this particular WO are 7:00 minutes per mile, 6:30 mpm, and 6:00 mpm.

The run started at a comfortable 7 minute pace a gradually worked its way down. I averaged 6:55 mpm for the first chunk of 5 miles. Then I moved the pace to 6:30 mpm, and gradually increased the speed. For the second 5 miles I averaged 6:25 mpm. Then onto the last chunk of 5 miles. At this point in the run my legs are burning and screaming at me to slow the pace, but I push forward. Running the last 5 miles in 29:22 a 5:53 mpm, feeling very satisfied.

The conditions for the workout were decent, just some wind a bitter cold nip in the air. I managed to keep the transitions pretty even and fluent. No drastic change in pace. All in all I am happy!

81 miles for the week and 119 YTD miles

January 11th - AM - Shakeout 4 - PM - 8 miles with the Boys and Leo.

January 12th - Cruised 8 miles

January 13th - AM WO 15x 1 minute effort with 1 minute rest. - PM - Easy 4

January 14th - 12 miles

January 15th - AM - 8 miles PM 4 miles with strides at the end.

January 16th - AM - WO 4 mile tempo 21:20, then did 50 meter accelerations.

January 17th - 17 miles at River Road (RR) with Pollard and we rolled that, 1:53:04 which works out to 6:39 mpm. Felt really strong, will need to take the next day or two easy to help recover from the hard weekend.

87 miles for the week and 206 YTD miles.

January 18th - AM 4 with 150 strides on the St A's indoor sports complex. - PM - 8 with B and Soltan

January 19th - SRC loop for 10 miles.

January 20th - AM WO 6 x 800 with 90 seconds rest, followed by quick 50's. 230 232 226 228 230 235, done on the roads lots of wind and coldness that was not nice on the fast. The fast 50's felt good. PM Shakeout 3 miles.

January 21st - Mid week long run, 13 miles.

January 22nd - Easy Peasy 10 miles.

January 23rd - AM 8 miles and then strides with racing Flats on. -PM- loosening up 4 mile run.

January 24th - AM Race - 5k at Caumsett State Park. Some rolling hills, no competition but a lot of fun. Good fitness indicator, 15:59; 5:03 5:13 5:13 and :29 PM shakeout 3 miles.

84 miles for the week and 290 YTD miles

January 25th - 14 miles of cruiseyness (6:50 mpm)

January 26th - AM easy 3 PM 8 miles with 8x200 in 32-33. Felt really smooth on the 200's!

January 27th - 12 miles

January 28th - WO at 8 in the morning, Snow and Wind (kid you not) 3x2 mile with three minutes rest, 10:45 10:45 10:45.

January 29th - 8 miles in the ice cold weather. Millrose in the PM! It was awesome.

January 30th - AM 4 late night from Millrose PM 8 miles with B in the ICE COLDNESS!

January 31st - WO 15 mile cut down, 34:35 32:11 29:10 Overall time was better, the effort was a little tougher with the tougher weather conditions but I love doing this type of workout. Last mile was in 5:30! PUMPED!!!

86 miles for the week and 376 YTD miles.

I didn't realize how much this would actually take up. I might do weekly or fortnightly blogs. It will depend on my mood! As of right now I am averaging 12.13 miles per day, which would bring me out to 4,427 miles for the year. Now I know that I wont keep that pace but if I can finish up around 4k miles for the year that will be a good improvement.

Till the next one!

Club Nationals 2009 Day 2

Highlights from Day 2 of Club Nationals 2009

This is what our Van looks like thanks to the drive through the blizzard in PA.

Here is the view from our room. Rupp Arena on the left, and thats about it.

Chaklos here is your number, if you can get down here by 1:30 you can wear it. Hope they are not working you too hard!

The "Best Facial Hair" I have seen since getting down to Lexington. Look at that Beauty.

A close 2nd?!?!?

Other highlights from day 2

- Oatmeal from Starbucks.

- Course Preview Hills, No Flat, Terrible Footing, and Loops. Cross Country?

- John's Run/Walk Store has nothing on SRC.

- Burgers from Sawyer's.

- Zombieland in the theatre for $1.50, the best buck fifty I have ever spent!

- Cornbread from deSha's, Salad from deSha's and Dinner from deSha's.

- Blades of Glory on our Flat Screen in the Hotel.

Day 3 is upon us. We race at 1:30, keep an eye on the USATF website for updates and results.

Club Nationals 2009 Day 1

It is 4pm and we have been on the road since 9am. We have stopped once to get gas and take a quick pit stop, the benefits of no women and no Kevin Beach on the trip. We are getting ready to enter West Virginia and this is what we are in the middle of

Our estimated arrival time was just before 9pm, but now we had to take our speed down and take it nice and slow so we are falling behind schedule. I guess safety takes priority in this situation.

I am seated in the back seat of an 8 passenger mini van. However we have it filled with the 5 members representing the SRC Racing Team for USA Club Nationals. Soltan is behind the wheel handling the car like a champ, Brendan is the co-pilot/DJ and doing a stellar job at that, Adam is bucket seat 1 typing away on the blackberry keeping us entertained with Letsrun.com banter, Pollard is in bucket seat 2 and just seems to be along for the ride while adding excellent insight to the conversation and then there is me, Petrina, back bench seat all alone with no friends, just along to document the memories that we are making.

We just entered West Virginia and the snow has stopped and the speed limit is 70 MPH. Lexington here we come! Morgantown detour?

We detoured in Charleston for some dinner and fill up on gas. All I can say is WOW! What a crazy experience!! After that Adam got behind the wheel and we started to roll to Lexington! We arrived a little after 9pm and got settled in the room. The others went for a run and went to bed. It was a long day.

It is now Friday morning, shawn and I got up for a run and now are at Starbucks to have some brekkie and get internet access. The “cheap” hotel makes you pay for their wifi. The plans for the day are to scope out the course, hit up the specialty running store near by and then packet pick up. Check back later for updates!

The Man The Myth The Legend!

2009 Ocean to Sound!

With More Stuff to Come...

Another Past Two Weeks

This Man

Was responsible for the incident that happened at the start of the Sayville Summerfest

Overall the Sayville Summerfest was a great outing for the SRC Gang. The race was the final race of the Sayville Summer Series. The overall winners were SRC's own Michael Petrina and Sandra Kolar. All the results can be seen at Sayville Summer Series Link.

The race was great and I will let the pictures speak for themselves.

The following weekend was the miles. This being a teams point race SRC was heading out for a good race.

I have added a quick clip of the finish of the Massapequa Merchants Mile. This was a chance for us to let our hair down and do something that we haven't done in a while. It was a ton of fun. Great Showing SRC!!! Only if the Race was scored on points and not time...

Its Been Awhile

I last checked in after the Massepequa Firecracker back on July 5th. There the SRC team stole the show. Now flash forward a few weeks and two races later SRC is still doing it the only way they know how.

On July 19th 2009, was the Thunder Run 5k up in Hauppauge. This was a teams race and Sayville was looking to continue its way up the team ladder. However there was a few little snags in the team. Kevin Beach had come down with a bit of a niggle in the shin/ankle area and Brendan Barrett was feeling under the weather and didn't want to push through it and get even more sick. SRC sent Mike Petrina, Paul Murphy, Ryan Soltan, and Steve Chaklos to the line to keep the ball rolling.

The four of them did exactly that. All four ran intelligent smart races and kept themselves in it the whole time. The conditions were not ideal, but still better than prior years. With many runners playing it cautious the first half mile Petrina decided the first uphill was a good place to make a jump to the lead and stretch it out a bit. That's exactly what happened, Petrina sat in second place around the hilly and tough Thunder Run course waiting for the right time to shift gears and bring it home. With a half mile to go Petrina pushed it to the front and never looked back, winning in a time of 16:20. The rest of the team followed right behind. Paul Murphy was a strong 7th in 17:09, Soltan and Chaklos then rounded out the four SRC team racers with a 9th and 10th place respectively in 17:20 and 17:22.

All in all on this day SRC left with plenty of hardware and most importantly the 100 team points that was needed.

Jump ahead to the 26th of July and you have the CF Run of Sayville 4 miler. While not being a teams race it was still a good showing for the whole SRC team. Petrina, Barrett, Soltan, Banger, Beach, Mullaney, Connors, and many others toed the line for SRC.

Some of you who were there might have notice that some of the SRC faithful were rocking their Alumni jersey's. All in good fun Petrina was running with the Ferret of SBU, Soltan was in the Black and Gold of Adelphi XC and Beach was wearing the Purple of Scranton U.

While I don't want to bore you with race details I am being forced to give you step by step details...NOT. All the team members competed while especially Barrett and Beach who were back after their week hiatus. Here is a quick look at the SRC Finishers.

1 1/8 Michael Petrina W. Babylon NY 24 M 21:29 5:23

3 1/8 Brendan Barrett Sayville NY 25 M 22:05 5:32

6 2/8 Ryan Soltan Sayville NY 25 M 22:53 5:44

9 3/8 Kevin Beach Long Beach NY 28 M 23:48 5:57

11 1/26 Craig Banger Smithtown NY 41 M 24:20 6:05

14 1/12 Matt Connors Brightwaters NY 34 M 24:41 6:11

34 4/26 Bill Mullaney Sayville NY 44 M 27:14 6:49

57 5/8 David Oroza E. Patchogue NY 25 M 29:19 7:20

If I missed anyone please let me know. All in all it was a good two week stretch for the SRC faithful! Catch us all over the next two weeks in the Sayville Summerfest and then at the Massepequa Mile.