Track and Field Blogs - Patrick Rizzo

I must have mistaken another sign for the last mile marker. No way, that was a 5:05 on the fifth mile. Wait! Was that last mile a 4:59!?! We STILL are only six miles into a recovery twelve miler. Is this how the group got so good? Can I hack it here on a daily basis if this is a “recovery” day pace? I have to surge right now or I am going to get dropped pretty decisively. Surge? On an easy day? Listen to me! I have been here for three days and I have yet to speak a… more »

Momentum is great to have on your side going into a marathon. Here we stand two weeks out from Chicago and not a hitch has come in our way of training. The segment started out after our 4th of July downtime ended and has just clicked for all three of us. Melissa is on fire right now; Carol is looking incredibly strong. As for me, I have been in this perfect bubble where my pacing has been dead on for everything we have done. Pace and rhythm dictate success in a marathon and sometimes it takes a little time to… more »

Attitude is contagious. It spreads to your performance as well as to others around you, so you have to be careful with whom you surround yourself. My college coach used to tell us religiously, “whatever you surround yourself with, you will become.” It is ultimately true. If you look at groups who spend a lot of time together, they assimilate to one another and take on the group’s identity and personality as much as—if not more than—their individual traits. A large reason for my initial interest in joining the Hansons-Brooks Original Distance Project stemmed from the success of one athlete—and… more »

When I went back home to Schaumburg after the Boston Marathon this year, I had one person I had to see right away. At 3:00 on the first afternoon I was home, I drove over to the high school to watch the track team run their last workout before the conference meet and to gain insight from the man I would credit with transitioning me from wrestler to runner, my high school coach, Jim Macnider. “Mac” is one of the most inspirational yet realistic people I know all wrapped into one. He has never been one to give somebody false… more »

I have to start out by thanking everybody for the immense amount of support I have gotten leading into and since the Boston Marathon. I have been very fortunate to have a great support base coming from my family, my college teammates, my high school teammates, and even some old teachers (their memories must not be strong enough to remember me well). People say it a lot, but I mean it: I would not be where I am without the support of everybody. When I come home and it is 100 degrees and I have a workout, there is always… more »

Ever since I was a little kid, I've been obsessed with the desert. I remember watching the Roadrunner and Coyote cartoons and asking my dad if that was a real place when the Coyote fell off of a mountain bluff (presumably in Sedona). Last year was the first time I actually went to the desert. After Boston, I got ahold of some friends that live in Phoenix and we agreed that it was time to pay them a visit, so I got a plane ticket and left on one 30* May morning from Detroit and set out to Phoenix, where… more »

It is no secret that 2008 was a pretty rough year for me. January started off as a good training month. I ran the Disney World Half-Marathon and ran a (albeit not stellar) PR. February started fantastic and I set my goal for Boston at 2:15. With the training we did in Florida and with how my fitness was looking at the end of last year, this seemed realistic. Enter the impact of a Jeep Wrangler to my training. I blogged on here about my accident. Nick and I were getting our last couple of miles in on a run… more »

Since Boston ended, I knew that a "speed segment" would come to follow it. I knew that I would need to work on getting more comfortable in faster paces before I try to run those faster paces in a marathon. Now, although I am not shooting to qualify for the trials 10,000 or anything on the track, I need to get some sharper tools in my box again. Heck, a lot of my current teammates probably believe that I'm pretty darn slow given how I've run since coming here...but I am not convinced of it.
Back when I was… more »

I'm sure by now that everyone has seen how I finished at Boston, so I'm just going to give a real short recap. My stomach was giving me trouble that morning, but nothing too serious. I wasn't throwing up or anything. I was actually bound more than anything. The gun went off and I got settled into where I thought I should be in the race. After the first 2 fluid stations, I still hadn't taken very much fluid, but I felt just fine and thought nothing much of it. Approaching halfway, I saw Kevin and told him that I… more »

I want to start out by expressing that Yolanda is full of crap. Winter is FAR from over here in Michigan. Sure, we've gotten a whole 2 days of sunlight since November, but that doesn't make it spring. There is still snow in the forecast and last I checked, we haven't had a morning run over 32 since some time around men's trials. It's probably going to be this way until after women's trials too and we just have to deal with it.
Moving on, many of you read last month that I got hit by a car while… more »

Last week was the scariest experience ever for me...and I'm sure it was no better for Nick. Last Monday as we were out for a 14 mile run, Nick and I split off to head down 25 Mile Rd. to add 2 more miles while our roommates had only 12 on the schedule. Of course, this was my idea to take this route. Black ice was covering the road most of the way, but we didn't have any close calls or anything, so we weren't too worried.
As the two of us turned down 25, we saw a silver… more »

This month a few of us went to Orlando for the Disney Half-marathon. While there, I got wind that Jim Ryun, my all-time hero of running, was going to be speaking right after us at the expo. Obviously, I decided to stay around and listen in hopes of affirming that he is all of the awesomeness that I've always perceived him to be. He was! Afterward, I stayed and got his autograph on one of his books and wished him well on his next run to regain his seat in the US Congress. I was like a kid in a… more »