OTQ x 2?

Grabbing a bottle towards the end of a long run on Saturday

We spent this past weekend doing the usual - training and recovering. Another long run in the books... 19 for Andrea and 24 for me, on the Jeremy Ranch Road in Park City... the ultimate place to get strong.

As anyone reading this site knows, I'm attempting to run a sub 2:19 marathon this fall to qualify for the Olympic Trials. Well, the big news (although not surprising to anyone who knows how amazing she has been racing) is that Andrea is now really leaning towards making her marathon debut this fall... and taking a shot at qualify for the Olympic Trials as well. She'd have to run under 2:46 (6:19 pace) to get that OTQ.

The only real question is where Andrea should go for it. Running the full marathon at Philadelphia (with me) makes sense logistically, although courses like CIM in Sacramento are faster, and I could potentially serve as the pacemaker.

For now, we're just cranking along on the training, and not racing again until October. I've run 134 and 142 miles in the past 2 weeks; Andrea has been in the high 70s, and we've both had some good tempo runs and track sessions.

Regardless of whether we both make it to the trials, or one of us does, or neither of us does, the fact that we have put ourselves in this position to even be having these types of conversations says a lot about how hard we have worked in the past year. Its going to be exciting to see what happens this fall.


Jeremy Ranch is where you go for strength-building long runs. Rolling hills the whole time, all uphill on the way back.


Finishing up the long run


Andrea soaking the legs in an ice cold stream after her 19 miler


Wearing a helmet while doing perfect pushups... safety comes first! :-)

I can't believe 9/11 was TEN years ago... I dug up some old pictures from that fall...


Again, its just crazy to think about how long ago this was... This was our varsity 2001 XC team, my senior year in high school.


These were good times! And I look pretty much the same as I did when I was 17 years old. Cool!