The Life and Times of Sam Luna

Its 2010 and I needed a New Years Resolution! Not really, but I am a person that likes to check things off, so I put a new to-do on the list. The HARRA Spring Race Series looked a like good one! A couple of the races I have run before, the others are all new courses for me. I kicked off the season with the Buffalo Wallow 6k XC race . The temp was in the low 40's and the sun was out to warm the runners bodies. Lets face it, it was cold, and it rained all week so the course was muddy! The neat thing about this race is that it is very spectator friendly. It is a 3-2km loop course. So friends and family can set up right in the middle of the course and see the runners 6 times through out the race. I took it easy the first lap and got into a nice group of a couple others and settled in behind them. On the third loop I felt strong enough to push for a little while, so I picked the pace up a little bit, just enough to break from the group and closed the gap on a couple other runners. I fi...

I got an email from some Al Lawrence running friends who needed a 3rd person to run the 25k relay with them. So I decided I was up to running a 5.2 mile leg and could help them out. My best guess of my fitness was that I would run in the 6:40- 6:45 pace per mile. I ran a bit quicker to turn in a 33:25 split for my 3rd leg, avg. 6:25 pace. It was alot of fun watching and cheering on all the other ALRC runners and Congrats to all those who finished, it was a warm day. Full Results

I broke the race up into 3 parts, the first 5.5 miles to lower camp bird, the next 4.5 miles to the summit and then 7 miles downhill to the finish. The first 5.5 miles are at gradients of 8-15% steep. I was able to jog portions and walk the steeper inclines. I made it to the lower camp bird, mile 5.45 in about 1 hour. That’s an average pace of 12 minute miles.  The next 2.2 miles took me nearly 50 mins, I reached Upper Camp Bird, mile 7.65 in 1:52:50. Heading on towards the summit, the next 2.35 miles took me another 57:50, making my final time to summit 2:50:41. Yes, that is an avg pace of 25 minute miles for 4.5 miles. The Summit is at 13,114 ft of elevation.  I descended the final 7 miles in 1:09:45, an average pace of 10 minute miles. I finished in 4:00:27!  My thoughts about the course. Its hard, period. You are going up a mountain and altitude. Lets be realistic, its hard, really, really hard. The views are incredible, the mountain can be wonderful or down right...

So over the past month I have been busy! I raced in the Friday Night Rice All-Comers Meet June 19. I ran in the mile and ran a post college PR of 5:07, last year was 5:12 and the year before was 5:18. So steadily improving. I competed in the the Memorial Sugar Land Triathlon put on by Finish Line Sports . This is the same course as Try Andy's, but with a 300m pool swim instead of the 300m lake swim. I have stuck by my non-swim training technique and continued to rock climb to maintain my upper body fitness. I swam within 13 secs of my best swim for 300m, had a pretty fast T1 and then headed out on the bike. I have just been trying to ride consistently over the past month and haven't done any speed work on the bike, and it showed. I averaged 23.6 mph for the 10 mile course, hopefully by the time Try Andy's rolls around I will be closer to 24+mph. T2 was really fast thanks to using my platforms on the bike. My run was so-so. I have not done any brick workouts, but have been...

So my first tri of the 2009 season was a complete success, I hurt and had a lot of fun! It was great having my friends Father Mikey, Big Jim and Ali, Scott, Leah and her hubby Jimmy who I work with. Jimmy also had a great race, look for some more fast times this year! The swim was better than expected, I hoped for anything under 5 mins, so 4:21 was awesome. Out of transition and onto the bike. Since the course was 15 miles, I stuck to my 20 mile and under rule of biking in my running shoes with platforms. I have never noticed any loss of power and the time gains in T1 and T2 are great. Superman mount onto the bike went smooth as usual. The bike course was unknown to me. I wasn't familiar with the course, winds or how my body would feel and hold up. I actually raced with a bike computer, I haven't used a computer since 2003. I used it to keep a judge of reality. If I started to see 24mph+ and felt like I was pressing I backed off. With the wind my speed was 26-27mph and that wou...

Toby topping out a route A very busy Memorial Day weekend, Combat Triathlon, Astros Game and some fun in Austin Bouldering and catching up with friends. I have been bouldering for a couple years thanks to some friends in San Antonio, Joe and Jill. They coach endurance athletes and taught me how to climb. With a couple friends from Houston we headed up to Austin to climb at the North Austin Gym . It is set up primarily for bouldering. There are alot of good routes and great climbs. We got to meet up with my buddy Nick from San Antonio and Samir who got to climb for their first time. Some pics and a couple videos are here .

The 2009 Austin Muddy Buddy was awesome! A great race with great friends. The short story is it rained Saturday afternoon cooling off Austin. Temps Sunday morning were perfect in the low 60’s and overcast. The 6ish mile course was technical and muddy. I pushed the bike up quite a few hills! My partner Dee and I had a great time of 40 mins and some change which placed us first in the CO-ED 76-85 age group, combined age of 2 partners. Our friends from up North, Mark and his daughter Jenna had a great race also and cut 15 mins off their time from the Chicago race last year!! Jenna also trains people , "Buddies in training", for the Chicago Muddy Buddy at Elite Fitness and Racquet Clubs . Check it out if you live in the Milwaukee area. Check out some of our photos here . We have a short video from pre race below! The longer "Race" Video is kinda large and needs to be cut down, it will be up soon too! Race results and photos !