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I race a fair amount, usually about 15 or 20 times a year but they are not always all out, nor is my preparation leading up different events the same. I like to classify races as A, B, or C categories. This might not work for everyone, but it does for me.

A races are your peak races. Some are adamant that you can only have two A races in a year, typically in this day and age these are marathons. I tend to think you can have more than than that if you are talking about shorter races. Plus you can have an A series, maybe 2-4 peak races in a season, e.g. going for a big goal time or racing in championships.

I had four A races on the schedule this year. The USATF 4 mile and Bjorkland half in June, the City of Lakes two weeks ago, and the upcoming marathon in October. I did specific workouts for these and tapered for a week.

B races take up the majority of races I’ll do in a year. Those are events that I’d like to do well but usually only take a day or two cutback in training. They are also often scheduled in a way to benefit the A races. I’d still like to have a good result, and will do a couple specific workouts (pace, or hills if it has a hilly course). The outcome of these can be interesting because sometimes the results are hit or miss based on how I’m feeling on race day, or stage in a cycle. This year the Get In Gear 10K, Kraft 5K, Bix 7, and Victory 5K (this Labor Day) were B races.

Next up are the C races. I usually do these as workouts that I run at a pace for a longer distance, or they are broken up into a race simulation, or progression. These are the true “training races,” and the overall pace or placing are not that important. The goal of these is to get the proper work done. So far this year I did a couple Park Run 5Ks during the winter to keep my legs going and to test current fitness, the Bay to Breakers (although a long-time bucket list race was run at a threshold effort, so not quite all out for 49 minutes of running), the road mile in August, and this weekend’s half were also C races.

My Weekend C Race

That brings us to this weekend. With an all out half marathon the other week, sandwiched between two pretty tough long runs I did not see the need run a hard race. However, I have been working on my “durability” (ability to hold a steady pace for a long time) this year and have been referring to John Davis’s book Marathon Excellence and his lecture that I attended earlier this year. This weekend’s session was 20-21 miles (32-33.5K) with 5X4K at marathon pace (MP) with a float recovery (MP+ about 40 seconds in my case).

We drove to Madison on Friday afternoon and spent the evening with our son and his girlfriend. Although this was not a competitive effort for me the scale of the workout was sufficient to make sure that I ate well on Friday, stayed hydrated and got some rest. It was at the end of a big week (74 miles) but at least I had caught up on some sleep depravation from the previous weekend and earlier in the week. It was a great marathon simulation weekend.

We arrived to the race an hour before the start and my plan was to run 6-7 miles for the warmup with the final 2-2.5 miles (3-4K) at marathon pace. My goal for next month is sub 3 (6:52/mile), and I wanted to aim for 6:50 on the faster segments. I ran about 3 miles easy out on the course which winds half way around Lake Monona and back, took a final bathroom break, and drink stop and then ramped up the effort running sub 7s for about 1.9 miles (3K). By then they were lined up and starting the national anthem so I had about 2-3 minute recovery before we took off. The warmup was a little shorter than planned, but I could make that up in the cooldown.

It’s not a big race, maybe 300-400 runners but the start narrow on a bike path so we had waves of about 100. I lined up near the front of the first wave (sub 8 minute miles) and settled into top 12-15 runners by a quarter mile into it, and place-wise pretty much stayed there almost the entire way.

Probably 80% of the race is on roads with the remainder on bike paths or sidewalks. They had a narrow lane of cones the entire way, going out you were supposed to say between cones and curb, but with slant of the road that was sometimes a challenge. I found my pace pretty quickly but had to check that a few times as dipped to about 6:40 pace on occasion.

One guy passed me early on, and I had three or four others in my wake. At 2.5K I eased up and they went around fairly quickly. On those first couple segments I had a hard time easing up to 7:30, and kept on seeing 7:05 or 7:10 on my watch. The 4K sets seemed long and took a fair amount of concentration. I wasn’t breathing hard but keeping the rhythm going on tiring legs took some mental work. The recoveries felt fairly easy but they seemed short!

There were two women and a guy running about the same pace as my faster efforts, and they would pull ahead when I eased up. However, I kept catching them on the 4K segments. Must have driven them a little crazy and I considered offering an apology, but that might seem a little pretentious so I just kept such thoughts to myself.

I passed the 2nd place woman before the turn around and the guy who passed me early on was a good 90 seconds up, and the first place woman was 30-40 seconds ahead. By the turn around I had already run almost 12 miles and the surges were not getting any easier. I calculated that I would have two more 4K surges and would finish with the final 1.5 or 2K at MP.

At about 9 miles

We were really strung out! On the return I ran at least a kilometer with only seeing a smattering of runners. But then the main pack started coming through in large clumps of runners. We had so many twists and turns and half block hills through there. By the time I was approaching the east side of the lake I the outgoing runners were gone. My son and his girlfriend rode by on their bikes and they gave some encouragement. I was tired but it was a good tired, and I felt no distress along the way.

With about 3 miles to go the lead woman seemed to be slowing up. I caught her once then fell back for the recovery. I then reeled her back on the penultimate surge, we ran alongside each other for a bit and then I pulled away. I hit one last recovery at about 11.5 miles (18.5K) in and just eased up for about a half mile. On the final surge I picked it to threshold-sub threshold pace (6:30+/-) and carried it in. Made up a lot of ground on the guy who had passed us in that first mile but not enough to catch him. My half marathon split was 1:30:20, which, considering the surging/floating nature of my pacing was very encouraging and about a minute faster than I had predicted.

I crossed the line, caught my breath, and dropped of some of my gear at the car and jogged another 3K for a cool down. 20 miles at 7:18 pace for the entirety. With 20K at sub 6:50 pace. I think I got my money’s worth for this C race.

Running in 2026 has been solid, but not my best. The highlights have been the masters 4-mile championship road race followed by the June half marathon. I won the age group for these events and have been reached 90% age grade on four occasions, but have not knocked on out of the park–at say 91 or 92% age grade.

Last weekend’s half was a key race, and I marked it as co-equal to October’s marathon.

Training

Although the marathon is kind of the end game for the year I wanted to be almost every bit as ready for this weekend’s half. Since the 4th of July I have had weeks of 61, 65, 63, 68, 66, 46 (sick), 75, 71, and 72 miles. However, note that a number of those weeks along the way had 7-day running totals in the 70s and 80s. Also about a month ago, I shifted back from purely marathon workouts to incorporating some half marathon-specific workouts to prepare for Sunday’s race. My self-critique of June’s race was that I had spent much of the spring doing sub-threshold work and broken tempos (6:35 to 6:50 pace), and when race day rolled around anything faster than 6:35 felt too fast. This time I ran some more reps at 6:30 or under, as well as incorporating weekly workouts that include 10K effort or faster.

Last week’s 5K was part of the plan, although I did not reach my goal of sub 19, let alone sub 18:50 I think running 6:10-12 was a good stimulus.

Following a big week through September 5th and 6th I took a hard taper, running 35 miles from Sunday through Saturday. And I only did a light workout of a few 800s and 200s on Tuesday as a final little tune-up.

The Race

This might be my favorite race in my new state. It’s not overwhelmingly big or crowded. They cap the entries at 2000 and in the two years that I have run the event, it has not come close to filling up. The course is fast, but not completely flat because you have to navigate six hills that are about 300 or 400 m long. It’s fairly scenic a double loop on a parkway that circumnavigates around two urban lakes. Although the field is not big, it’s competitive with the open winners running national class times, or close to it.

The weather here is hit and miss. We have had a hot and humid summer, and it stayed warm through last week. But over the weekend things cooled down and race day was near perfect, 55 degrees at the start with 70 percent humidity (a little high), and practically no wind (light breeze from the north).

I warmed up with a friend and lined up, only to be held on the line for an extra five minutes and an interminable rendition of the national anthem. The singer had a nice voice, but goodness, that was long!

It took about seven seconds to cross the starting mats and we were off. I went out too hard last year (about 19:00) for the first three miles and then had to work just to hang on. This time I wanted an easier go of it through those middle miles, and hoped to close fast.

We settled into a decent pace after the hectic first mile and I found a nice pack to go around the first lake, there were seven or eight of us. At first I was leading the group but the third mile I tucked in behind them. This time the first three were in about 19:26, so a lot more controlled than in 2025. The course basically a figure 8, with a long neck in the middle. That’s the hilly section and it has the most crowds so it’s kind of fun going through a quarter mile of not quite a scream tunnel but a definitely a lot of shouting and cheering.

The wind was more noticeable heading north along the shore of the second lake and I just stayed in the group. They picked up the pace in the fifth mile, from about 6:30 to low 6:20s. I stayed with the group for a mile or so, but the pace felt a little too fast for the middle part of the race, so I eased up slightly. My teammate caught up just before six miles and we ran together for about a mile, crossing 10K in 40:25. I caught up to another friend at 7 and we also ran together for a mile. That mile has the double punchy hill on the south side of the lake and we split an 6:38, slowest of the day. I knew I’d need to run average 6:30 pace or under for the rest of the race or I would not reach my A+ goal of sub 1:25 (the A goal was 90% age grade), so I picked up the effort and focused on catching runners ahead. The leaders of the pack I had been through the first 10K pulled away. By 9 mile I was feeling the breathing a bit, but we had a little group of three and I just focused on keeping in contact with them. And that’s pretty much how it went.

I split the 10 mile split in 1:04:57 and would need run about 6:27 pace for 3.1 miles to run under 1:25. I just did not have it. I stayed close to my compatriots (who were not doing a good job of running the tangents!), but that’s about all I could do, with splits of 6:35, 6:36, and 6:26 I did not quite have enough in the tank and finished in 1:25:14. Good enough for an easy age group win (3rd among those 55 and and older), and the overall age grade winner for men! Age grading at 90.4% and 1:03:35. I’m happy with it.

Finishing

Next up, this has been a recovery week and then two more weeks of training before the taper. I have a couple tough long runs to do, and two or three perfunctory threshold-10K pace type workouts on the training schedule. Meanwhile, enjoying the time after a hard effort!

This was my fifth Bix 7, and the fourth in the past five years. The last one before that? 1980. That was quite a gap but in those intervening years I was no closer than 500 miles (for two years) and other than that it was 1,000 to 3,000 miles away. In 2022 and 2023 we were still in Colorado but I felt compelled to come back and run this now epic Midwest classic road race.

My debut back in the day was inauspicious, I don’t even have the time and place but I remember the day as being rainy and that a good portion of the course (maybe 3 miles of it) were on cobblestone. I had just run a PB of 1:09 for the 20K the week before but developed a sore hip a day or two later but made the trip to the Quad Cities anyway because I already had an entry. I stayed with the late Gregg Newell and ran it more as a tempo effort in right around 40 minutes, but don’t remember if it was over or under that.

It was the day that Bix hit the big time. I its previous five editions a good local/regional ex-college runners from the year had won, including Gregg, John Lodwick, and Jim Eicken. In 1980 the race invited Bill Rodgers, still at the height of his career, and things just took off from there and the event became an icon for American road racing.

Returning in 2022 I won my age group with a 44:07 which was an age record. I came back the next year and ran 45:15 on a very hot day for another age record, and last year I got walloped and lost my age record by 45 seconds. But the racing and times are all in fun so I wasn’t broke up about it.

Training Post-Half Marathon

I took a few days off in late June after the half marathon, but did some light cycling and stretching and then eased back that first week. That was followed by by weeks of 55, 61, 65, and 63 miles (including Bix race week). Maybe these were a few miles under goal but I also did not want to rush into it this summer. I got in some long runs of 14-16 miles, with and without tempo work, and a few decent workouts. These included a couple of tempo runs, 10K effort reps, and couple of hill sessions. Bix was on my mind as a mid-summer event, but also I wanted to work through it. So on race week I did a long (10 mile) tempo effort at marathon pace and I just did an easy 4.5 miles on Friday before we headed to the Quad Cities (about 6 hour drive including stops).

Friday-Saturday

The drive was easy enough, although it is always a bit weird to go through Iowa where my family lived from 1968 through the 1970s. But by 1978 I had one foot out the door as my breaks from college were out of state. For whatever reasons, I have spent much of the subsequent years sort of downplaying the Iowa roots. Colorado is home, but I cannot deny the formative decade in Iowa.

We had we stayed and had dinner in Moline, where I had worked for a summer. We met our son kind of late in the evening but got back to the hotel by about 10 PM. I slept okay and we were up by 5:30. After a week of really mild temperatures (+/-60 at night) and lower humidity things were warmer than anticipated, but it wasn’t oppressive. It was 68 degrees and 91% humidity at the start of the race.

My past three efforts at Bix had more of a taper and I did not know what to expect on race day. I did find out that unfortunately my age group rival Steve was injured and would not be running this year after doing so well last year. So I felt that I could win the age group, but with a big race like this you never know who might show up. This time I made sure we lined up a little farther ahead, but we were still in the orange corral and probably 10 rows back from the front row. Fortunately, it was just about right not like last year when I was too far back and spent the first 1 or 1.5 miles dodging and weaving around people to get into a proper pace flow.

There was a little bit of that, groups of friends running three-four abreast so you had to way around them. I felt okay going up the hill, and really this was the least taxing first mile I recall from previous efforts. My watch clicked a 6:38 (compared to 6:55 last year), but it was about 5 seconds before the mile marker. The second my flowed rather well and I felt great! I was still passing a lot of runners but my breathing was under control. That was a 6:13 and had thoughts of maybe getting back under 45 minutes for the full 7. I felt good in mile three with the big downhill and then the tough climb that starts at 2.6 miles, but I was disappointed to split that in 6:38. I wasn’t dying but it sure felt more like a sub 6:30.

The leaders sped by on their return (nearing 4 miles for them about 3 for me), there was a huge pack of men and the lead women a couple minutes back . I enjoyed the long downhill before the turn-around and knowing that I’d be facing nearly 20 minutes of uphill discomfort once we headed back towards downtown. I split half way in 22:46, just about 5 seconds ahead of where I was last year. Nevertheless, this point I was not confident that I’d meet last year’s time. Last year I remember really pushing over the second half of the race, but this year I did not quite have that gear. I was not uncomfortable (this was the easiest feeling second half of my Bix efforts) but at the same time I could not find another gear. A handful of runners passed on that 3K stretch on Kirkwood and I did not go with them. However, I was also picking off runners here and there. Overall, holding my own.

The tough 4th mile was in 6:30 and the tougher fifth mile up the grind was in 6:35, and mile 6 (still climbing but mostly gradual inclines) was a 6:40 and I split 10K in about 40:40 soon after turning onto Brady Street and the downhill.

At about 10K (note, my arms and shoulders are not nearly that big!)

This is the best part of the course! But I was a little slow on getting my legs rolling, in previous years I ran the last mile between 5:40 and 5:50, this time it was 5:59. According to Strava however, I had the best kick this year with a final 400 in 1:18–egged on by a 20 year old runner who kept encouraging me.

Final result 45:29, with a 2-3 second negative split, and 2 seconds faster than last year. I won my age group easily (but did lose the 60-64 age group record to a friend/and a Quad Cities local). I was pleased with the effort and the result. Check off another Bix. I don’t think I’ll run it next year but plan to be back in 2028!

Post race with our son, with the Mississippi River and Davenport in the background.

I have wanted to do this race almost since its inception in 1991, which officially makes it a bucket list race. This was also the 50th anniversary of Grandma’s Marathon, the grandma event of the weekend, while the Garry Bjorkland half which started in 1991 may be the son or grandson (short generation times when it comes to running events!).

In 1992 we moved in 1992 from New York state to North Dakota (North Dakota!!!??? our NY friends would exclaim when we told them about the move–yeah it was crazy but I did get to study bighorn sheep for my doctoral research). I immediately found out about the half but back then the field size was limited to 1,000 Minnesota residents. So no go.

We did move to Minnesota from 1995-97 as I wrapped up my studies and Tamara found work in the North Star state, but I ran in Manitoba that same weekend in 1995, and in 1996 and ’97 I was battling injuries. So no go again.

Then we moved to far away places for decades (a quick year in Massachusetts an a combined 28 years in Colorado and Alaska).

I did make the trip to Grandma’s in 2021 of course, and although I did not reach my goal of a sub 3 marathon at age 63, it goes down as one of my favorite marathons due to its history, the course, race management, and overall vibe. Note, however, that was during the covid pandemic and field sizes were limited to half size for then (only 3,000 in the marathon, and barely one-third of the participants that we are now seeing). Masks, an odd start, and social distancing aside that was a very different experience from now.

That was the first major race in 15 months for the country and that was at the forefront of this new marathon boom. We can call it a running boom, but it’s very much driven by the marathon.

I wanted to get back for the half someday, and now that we are only two and a half hours from downtown Duluth it was much easier and justifiable to run the half. That and our son said that he would be doing the marathon as a Boston qualifier. Sign up was a major cluster. The race filled up in less than two hours. Fortunately I logged in within minutes of the opening and in time to secure an entry. Nevertheless, wow! 9,000 entrants and sold out so quickly. Duluth would be the place to be if you’re an American road runner, not that there were not many other significant events going on over solstice weekend.

Training

I summarized training last week. Roughly 60 miles a week for 9 weeks, discounting taper for the 4-mile road championships two and a half weeks ago.

Travel and Pre-race

We drove up on Friday morning and picked up our son at the airport. We hit peak craziness for bib pickup as the 5K was wrapping up and thousands of other travelers were making their way to the convention center. The center itself is well set up for big crowds, it’s the traffic and parking that were a challenge. With that done, we made pasta at the house we stayed at–very fortunate to house sit for a couple of house cats. Their owners were away and we got to stay at their place, instead of forking over $800 for two nights at an Airbnb or hotel.

My glitch, however, was forgetting my allergy medicine. I figured I’d be okay missing a night but it does help some with sleep and I woke up at 1:15 AM, with maybe just 4 or 4.5 hours of sleep and that was it. I tossed and turned until the 3:30 wake up time in order to make it to the bus by the 4:00-4:15 AM window for my wave. Crap that’s early!

Penned Chaos

I had a nice chat with a younger (almost all other runners are younger now!) woman on the bus and we compared notes and made suggestions on other races to hit in the Minnesota region–and beyond. The bus dropped us off at about 4:45. There was not much out there but six porta potties to start with, a dozen or so volunteers 50 yards upstream (up the road), and they loudly urged us toward the corrals promising “200 port potties!” I should have known that was a ruse to a false promised land.

Like a sheep I took to the corridor to Corral 1 and walked a ways (it seemed like several hundred meters) to the start site. As promised, there were banks of porta potties, with dozens shaped into connecting C patterns about four times over. Looked good. I still had an hour plus before the start but took advantage of the accommodations. Fine. When I stepped out and surveyed the situation I saw that we really were fenced in. At that time there was still some space to move around near the start and a few athletes had already started jogging in 50 or so meter circles.

Start area about an hour before start. Note corral blocking access to the street ahead.

With an hour to go that was too early. So I sat down for a bit and talked to a couple of friends. With 45 minutes before race time, I decided to find the loo one more time. The corral was filling up quickly and the lines were getting long. I waited in line for 10 or 15 minutes, and by the time I got out they had pushed the corral back even further–with officials yelling at the jogging runners to stop and move back–and now it was standing room only. No place to warm up!

I briefly thought of backtracking those 200 or so meters to find some open ground but that would be like swimming against thousands of salmon heading to the spawning grounds, the walk way was only 2 wide (maybe 2 meters). That may have been a poor decision.

With 20 minutes to go I moved up to take my position near the front. For record purposes in Minnesota they use gun time so if that’s on your mind you had better move up near the front–maybe farther up than you might want to or should be! We weren’t packed shoulder to shoulder but there was barely enough room to stretch. After the elite introductions (they had all the room they needed of course) and national anthem (always too long and drawn out for my taste), I ran/jogged/hopped a little in place for 5 minutes. That was my warm up.

Racing the 36th Annual Garry Bjorkland Half Marathon

The elites went off and five minutes later they counted down for wave 1 and we were off! It took less than 2 seconds to cross the timing mats and we were off without a hitch. My plan was to run 6:35 for mile 1 and then about 6:30 for a couple of miles, and I wanted to settle into 6:25-6:30 until the final miles, where hopefully I could pick it up some more. My A+ goal was sub 1:24 but that seemed to be a stretch based on this spring’s training block. But 1:24:30 to 1:25 seemed reasonable. An A- goal would be 1:25:40, which was right at 90% age grade. That’s my standard for 2026, 90%. So far this year it was 90.6% for 10K, 90% for 5K, and 89.4% for 4 mile but that was on a hot humid morning. I’ll take that!

I needed to hit about 6:32/mile for the 1:25:40 and that seemed very likely considering training and last year’s half time of 1:24:38 at a race in Minneapolis.

My heart felt like it was racing (it was fine according to my wrist watch) and I did not feel quite on in that first mile. I was not feeling awake and my breathing was rapid. But I hit 6:35 on my watch (about 6:40 at the split marker). From then on my watch would buzz about 5-10 seconds ahead of the markers, but was consistent so I’ll go by watch time.

Mile 2 was right where I wanted to be with a 6:28 and, I was in a good group but I was not feeling comfortable! The temperature at about 55 was fine, and I did not feel any wind.

At about 2.5 miles, still not feeling comfortable, I backed off the effort slightly and dropped back from that group. That was an executive decision to save the race. Although the pace was close to what I was aiming for, I did not want to be digging a hole and end up struggling over the final 5 miles and 5 km. I wanted those miles to be the strongest of the day. Had I kept pressing, I think I would have had a much rougher finish. I don’t know if that affected the final outcome, but at the time it was the wiser choice. I slowed to 6:35-6:43/mile. Miles 4-7 were 6:35, 6:39, 6:32, 6:44. At about 7.5 miles we turned slightly inland, the wind picked up and it became more directly in our face. It was not a bad wind, at about 5-7 miles per hour and it felt cooling, but it was enough to make you want to draft if you could.

At about 7 or 7.5 miles I engaged more into the race, shifting from pacing to racing. I ran behind a couple of women and some larger (6-foot plus) guys much for much of that stretch. And when I fell off a bit, which happened every half mile or so, I would re-focus and reel them back in! We had some hills too. Miles 8-10 went 6:37, 6:38, and 6:40. This was the slowest stretch of my race.

Once we were on the downward side of Lemon Drop hill (9-about 9.7 miles) I finally opened it up a bit and started running more aggressively and started passing more runners, which felt great. There were a couple of stretches where I had to back off a bit, but I was mostly keeping the pedal down. I went back and forth with a few runners as we passed others who had slowed. That felt great! The pace was not the 6:20-6:25 I had envisioned but still a solid 6:28-6:30.

The wind was strong in the mile or so through downtown, but there was not time for caution, we had to push through it. I knew we’d have a respite once we got to the harbor area with about a mile to go. I remember really struggling in that stretch in the 2021 marathon, but not in a half this year. It was all solid. A few runners passed by but I was passing just as many who were fading.

The last km of this course is mentally tough because you have to route around the museum ore ship, William A. Irvine. It’s maddening but I knew it was coming and just bore with it. For the final kick, the young woman in red, with whom I had run much of the way, had a huge kick and pulled away. Otherwise, I held my own and I finished reasonably fast in the final couple hundred meters . My final three miles were 6:32, 6:29, 6:29, and the final 200 m were at 6:13 pace.

I was tired, but not overwhelmed with fatigue at the the finish. It just did not seem like a day that I dug deep. I have done that in half marathons before, but this time it was a strong, steady, on the edge effort. Maybe if it had been a championship and places/points, and money were on the line I would have found another 45 or 60 seconds, but I don’t know. If I had pushed harder from miles 3-7 or 8 I might have folded and run worse over the final half or few miles.

I’m not complaining. It went about as well as it could have for me on this day. I won my age group by more than 2 minutes, scored an 89.1% age grade (top 15 overall for men including the pros up front, and top 3 for masters men), and set a new single-year age state record, according to the Raceberryjam website. It was a good day! Not great. But good nonetheless.

Post Hoc

Grandma’s Marathon and the Garry Bjorkland Half have a great reputation. Grandma’s in particular. I’d like to go back for that race, maybe after I turn 70 (which is coming up sooner than I would like!). However, I’ll say that the start line situation was an issue. Runners, particularly the competitive runners (top 20% for sure) need some space to warm up, as well have access to the porta-potties. According to friends who have done this event, this is the first time they funneled everyone into smaller corrals without access to adequate space for a warm up jog.

I can see keeping people out of landowners yards and lots of for businesses near the start–you don’t want people going to the bathroom on those properties! But there is a way to keep it open. Normally, you can warm up alongside the elites–why couldn’t we do that this year? I’ll be writing to race management, and will let them know that leaving no warm up area for a half marathon is not really acceptable for a runner.

Other Activities

It was our anniversary and Father’s Day weekend, so we celebrated by cheering our son at 22 miles, as well as watching the elite runners go by. He ran a 10 minute PB and qualified for Boston. We all went out for a fun dinner on Saturday evening and topped off the weekend with some sight seeing in Duluth.

Lead women at 22! Bashanke Bilo (2nd) and Dakotah Popehn (1st).

Our son cruising to a 10 minute personal best and a Boston qualifier.

Closing out a great day in Duluth!

Other than taking a couple of recent runs in the middle of the day in recent weeks, I did not prepare much for the heat and humidity. By the day or two before last weekend’s race I was beginning to regret that. And even then, the actual conditions were worse than expected. Earlier the week the forecast called for race temperatures to be in the mid-high 60s with a dew point of 61. A day before they were saying 70 degrees and a dewpoint of 67. By 7 AM on race day it was already 72 degrees and sunny. Jogging to the start line on Saturday we knew we were in for a hot one.

Reluctant A Race

Over the past eight or nine years springtime has been my best running season. I tended to build a good aerobic and strength base over the winter, without much racing, and then by March I was ready to roll. This was my first year back in the Midwest after more than a decade in Colorado and like the slow slide into spring weather that we had, my fitness seemed to just lumber along at its own pace and not according to what I wanted. Add to that some spring travel delayed my racing season, which did not start until late April this year. I was left with a five race season with a good rust-buster 10K (90% age grade), the Bay to Breakers 12K last month in San Francisco that was more of a B race that I trained through and paced at threshold effort, and the following weekend I did a 5K that you might call A-/B+ both in priority and in outcome. The short on that is that I was aiming for a 91% age grade or so and to win my age class. I ended up matching my lower end goal of 18:57 and 90% age grade but ended up second in my age class. I was a tiny bit disappointed but not broken about that. It was all part of the process.

My A-level races for the spring of 2026 were the 4-mile last weekend and a half marathon in another two weeks. I do not consider the 4 mile to be a great distance to race do not even have an age group personal best for the distance–which I last raced, hmm maybe around 2000. Even though this was a championship race on the USATF circuit, it just did not seem like that big of a deal. Furthermore, I am now on a great masters racing team (not that the last one was bad–it was one of the best in the country for runners aged 50+) but was not expecting to be a scorer. The top three on our team are five or six years younger and a lot faster than have I been running in the past two years. So I would just be a filler, or maybe put on the B team.

In some ways, this felt more like a no-pressure situation, where I would travel, hang out with my teammates for a weekend, and maybe run well enough to also get an individual medal.

Training

I put in about 60 miles a week of training for the past eight weeks and it has been solid but not spectacular. The first five weeks or so included a double threshold day, another day with a moderate workout (easy tempo or fartlek), and a longer run. Over the past three weeks I did the Bay to Breakers in just under 50 minutes (which for me was pretty hard, but not quite race level). Recovery from that was slow. Then eight days later I did the 5K race, followed by my longest run of the block (15 miles) and three days later a Michigan workout (nearly 10K of work at threshold or faster effort). With three hard days in a five day span I was hoping for some supercompensation. My teammates exclaimed that such training might be considered crazy. I tapered over the last five days prior to the race, and hoped that would be enough of a recovery.

The Trip and the Race

Peoria is 7 hours away by car and almost the same by air because there are no direct flights. So we drove. It wasn’t too bad, although keeping our driver from getting distracted took some teamwork at times.

We took a short 25-30 minute shakeout run on Friday afternoon, surveying the course, which is out and back on parallel streets, but not quite a full loop. It only has one hill of note, from about 0.15 in to 0.5, and it features a nice long gradual downhill finish. They were expecting fast times and perhaps some American records.

The race also hosts the professional USATF championships for men and women, and has done so for decades. The pros were the headliners, the masters have been but a graying to gray sideshow over the past two seasons. As it should be.

At the start of race it was 77 degrees with a dew point of 71, a good deal warmer than forecast. I was not confident of doing well in this race. The masters runner who beat me by nearly a minute at last year’s Bix 7 was entered, and my teammate who had finished ahead of me in two of the previous three races was also racing. I figured first place was out of the question, especially seeing my opponent do some strides just before the race–he looked so smooth and fast! Like an elite runner. And in this heat and humidity, I thought I might be fighting for third or fourth. Or just to finish on my own two feet.

The elite women and men took off at 8:00 and 8:05. We, the masters runners aged 40-89, lined up with our own double traffic lane and the citizen runners had their lane next to ours. We’d merge at about 0.2, at bottom of the hill. It’s not a huge race (with some 1,400 participants overall), so things would sort out fairly quickly.

Last year I took the hill a little cautiously and never really got back into it. My time was okay and I did score an 89% age grade on a warm/humid morning (but about 10 or 12 degrees cooler than Saturday!). This time even though it was hot I wanted to engage a little earlier, while not trying to be too aggressive. I had three athletes I wanted to key off from, including my masters rival who is tall and wearing a light blue singlet–easy to pick out–and a couple other friendly competitors who I have raced against many times in previous years, and we are pretty even.

My age group rival already had 40 meters on me before we even crested the hill at 0.4 miles, and I figured he was gone. But I was right with the other two and actually not feeling too bad. The street has some big trees along it and the shade was ample. I felt in control and the heat was not bothering me.

By a half mile I could see that my age group rival was not pulling away, and if anything his cadence was slowing! At the mile he was 8 seconds ahead but was slowing. Maybe I had a chance, but I put that out of my head for the moment and just focused on running.

By about 2 km I caught him and passed him, and I just looked ahead trying to keep up with my other competitors as one by one we picked off some of the faster starters. Last year I really slowed down at the slight uphill just before the turn around and 2 mile marker. I stayed more focused this time and was 10 seconds faster than in 2025. It’s a long stretch, about 1.5 miles, on the same street and if not for the tall shade trees along the route you would be able to see the downtown buildings. I felt pretty strong through about 2.5 miles but some doubts the heat, my breathing, and ability to maintain this effort for another 8-9 minutes. I dropped off a little, my friend pulled away by about 5 seconds and I was kind of falling into survival mode. Fortunately, the blocks through the residential neighborhood went by quickly and we passed three miles. I was slower than last year but had not really lost much ground. I knew it was just a matter of holding on until that final 0.4 mile downhill. One km of grind as we approached the downtown area. The streets actually came up quickly and I could see where we would turn!

I was extremely surprised to see two of my teammates about ready to make the turn. They had been out of sight since the first half mile of the race and I figured the would be 60-90 seconds ahead (like they had been last year). But here they were, and slowing down. I passed them both just after the turn, gave some encouragement, and focused on striding out, accelerating each block, and getting to that finish line!

I crossed 18 seconds slower than last year, but was elated to win my age group, as unexpected as that may have seemed only 15 or 20 minutes prior. My two teammates rolled in within 15 or 20 seconds, but with me the back up as second runner it was obvious that we would not win the team title. My age group competitors whom I thought I would be either behind or battling to the finish would finish 1.5 and 2 minutes later.

A lot of runners really struggled in the heat, and for injury or health reasons, but I only slowed 4.5 seconds per mile compared to last year. I’ll take that as a win, and will go so far as to say that this was my best result since the USATF 10K in Massachusetts back in April 2025.