Hurricane Sandy couldn’t stop the natural force that is the RunnersConnect team this weekend! With 7 new personal bests totaling a whopping 112 minutes of improvement, this was one of the most successful weekends of running for the RunnersConnect team!
Angela Reid kicked off the weekend with a 42 minute marathon PR. Yes, you read that right, 42 minutes! Her time of 4:25 meant she skipped the entire 4:30-5:00 time gap and ran a phenomenal race. This was Angela’s third PR in the last 5 weeks. To say her training has been going phenomenal is an understatement. This training segment has totally changed her perception of what she can and can’t do with her running. We’re excited to see what winter and spring training can bring!
Bill Rotella made took huge steps to becoming the runner he knows he can be and crushing his Marathon goals this weekend at the Marine Corps Marathon. For some background, in 2010 Bill did not make the bridge (the cutoff point where they pull runners off the course) and last year he ran 6:24:06. This year, after working with RunnersConnect through the summer, Bill ran 4:55:09. More importantly, Bill was at 365 pounds 3 years ago, and today he weighs in at a mere 195 pounds. Congratulations to Bill for his incredible transformation. The journey isn’t over and we look forward to helping Bill break 4 hours soon!
Carl Mankowitz crushed his previous half marathon PR just two weeks after running a new Marathon PR. His time of 1:42: 01 was more than 17 seconds faster per mile than his previous marathon best, a 4-minute improvement!
Cathal Grant ran just off his personal best at the Dallas Race for the Cure. His time was 18:01 and netted him the senior title (and some prize $ for the mall)!
Cathal followed up his 5k performance with a half marathon PR the following week. His time of 1:24:40 was nearly 2 min faster than he ran the course last year and last year’s performance was his previous PR. Cathal is definitely on the right profile to obtain that sub 3 hour performance at CIM in December.
Kevin Kildea ran a personal best at the Dallas Race for the Cure. His time was 18:23. Kevin set this PR in the midst of heavy marathon training. Kevin is also preparing for CIM and looks on track to set a marathon PR.
More exciting for Coach Brian Schmidt was his 13 year old son finished right with Kevin in a 5k PR. His son is going to be catching him in no time at all!
Jonathan Tolksdorf ran The Wihan Kilometrit 100k last weekend recorded an incredible result. He finished in just under 9 hours with a time of 8:58:31, which netted him 3rd in the men’s category. The performance was a 69 minute improvement from his first 100k one year ago. Jonathan wrote us: “Thanks to the training plans by Coach Casey my pace has improved so much that running now at a comfortable pace is automatically going to be faster than one year ago :-)”. Great racing Jonathan, especially coming off a solid marathon performance just a few weeks ago. The sky is the limit!
Jennifer Sheely took to the streets for a training run 5k and surprised herself with a new 5k PR, breaking 21 minutes for the first time in her life. Just to add a little difficulty to the mix, Jennifer went on to finish her long run for the day after the race. The early preparations for the Boston Marathon are clearly going well!
Norman Speicher tackled the Marine Corps Marathon and walked away with a huge PR and his first Boston Qualifier – crushing his qualifying time by close to 10-minutes. Norman ran a patient and tough race, managing to hold strong over the difficult final miles. Not only was this a huge improvement for Norman, but training for MCM was by far his best training segment and the consistency and injury-free training will allow him to continue to crush his PRs this Spring.
