T Y L E R  U D L A N D  | R2M 09

w e e k 5 > This week of training went pretty well. Monday, I did an easy 9-mile distance run. Tuesday, I did a 10k tempo run, a new loop. Normally we do our tempos on a road in the reservation, but for the next month on Tuesdays and Thursdays there is a deer hunt so we had to find another loop. The tempo went well though. Tuesday night into Wednesday we got a lot of snow, then freezing rain, which left a layer of ice on all of the roads. So, Wednesday I couldn’t run outside and had to run on the treadmill. Last time I did that it didn’t go very well, but this time I had a little more luck and was able to make my full 12 mile run on the treadmill. Thursday, it was still very icy out but we ran on the roads anyway and did 10 miles. Amazingly, nobody went down the whole run. On Friday I did a 7-mile run first, then did 8x35 second sprints with my brother Blake. We were supposed to do 8x200, but the track was still covered in ice so we had to go to a road near the school and do it based off of time instead. Saturday, I just did a 5-mile recovery run. Sunday, I increased my long to 17 miles. This was the longest run I have done up to this point. It was a little rough, but it was nice to do a good long run. I ended my week with 74 miles. Next Saturday, I have my next race.  Friday night I went to the Millrose Games to see all of the races, which was a lot of fun. I went with a bunch of my teammates and my dad and one of my teammate’s parents. I really enjoyed watching the men’s pole vault, which was getting started when we arrived. Hooker really put on a show. The high school races were really the reason I was there though. The girls’ mile was the first of the high school races after all of the 4x400s. Jill Smith ran a smart and great race as always. She is a lot of fun to watch. Next was the highly anticipated border clash 4x800. I was hoping that it would have been a little closer between Albemarle and Morris Hills, but it was still a good race. and Albemarle really ran well. I know they will have a great rematch later in the year. Next was the men’s 600 yards, featuring Clayton Parros; he was incredible. I know that he said he wanted to compete and not just run the race, but with the field that was assembled I didn’t really know what he would be able to do. He proved me wrong; it was amazing how he fought in the race, coming in third in the final 100m and only a second back off first place. That was an amazing race to watch. The next high school race was the one I was looking forward to the most, the Boys’ High School Mile. I was a little bit surprised that it went out so slow and was such a tactical race, but it made it really exciting. I am proud to say New Jersey represented! I was really excited when it was Robby and Brett neck and neck with one lap to go. Robby just turned on the jets and pulled away in the last lap to win. Great race, Robby! The last race of the night was the Wanamaker Mile. Bernard Lagat won, AGAIN! Willis gave him a race, but Lagat’s kick was no match for him. All the races were great and a lot of to watch. On the way home we had a little bit of time before our train, so I got to stop in Hudson News and get the best gummy worms ever. I get them every time I’m in Penn Station. That capped off a great night at the Garden for me.  Sunday, after my long run, I went over to my friend Graham Salmun’s house to watch the Super Bowl. It was one of the best games I’ve seen in a while. It may even have been a better game than last year’s Super Bowl. However, I’m a Giants fan so I don’t think anything will top that game for me. It was truly an enjoyable game to watch though.  Well, this is the last time I’ll be writing for this blog. I have really enjoyed writing once a week and letting everyone know what it going on in my world. I want to thank John Nepolitan for giving me the opportunity to participate in this great Dyestat feature. I hope everybody has enjoyed reading what I have to say and I hope it was interesting enough. Well, for one final time, I hope every one is well and good luck with your upcoming training and races. Tyler Udland

w e e k 4> I had another good week of training. I hit 71 miles this week and feel like I am starting to get into a good rhythm of training. My week looked a lot like last week as far as training (my winter training pretty much has a template that I use every week). Monday, I did a 10-mile distance run. Tuesday, I did a workout. Instead of doing a tempo like last week, I did 800 repeats on a new hill circuit that we have never used before. It was really tough, but the loop is good and I think we are going to incorporate it again in future training. Wednesday, I did my midweek long run of 12 miles, which went well. I did another 10-mile distance run on Thursday. Friday, I did a seven-mile distance run, then came back to the school and did 8x200 meter ins and outs. Friday was nice because it was a break from the cold weather we have been experiencing lately. It got up to 47 degrees, but it felt like 60 or 65 to me. I did my whole run in split shorts and a t-shirt; it was so nice. The warmer weather was also nice because we were able to do our 200s on the track, which had been covered with snow the whole week. Fortunately, it was warm enough to melt just 200m of it, so we could do our workout. I hear we could be getting more snow this week, which is very disappointing to hear (I hate the snow). Saturday, I did an easy 5-mile recovery run after I got out of the SATs, which are much longer than I thought (they were not fun!). Sunday, I had my county meet. I ran the mile again, and I didn’t run the time I wanted to but it was a step in the right direction. At least this time I could close a little bit quicker, which was good. The whole time I was very comfortable, which I think is part of the reason why I didn’t run what I wanted to. Although I am not quite where I was hoping to be at this point in the mile, I am not too discouraged. I knew coming into the winter that it is a base building period for me, and that I probably wouldn’t be getting results right away, especially in the mile. I know that this base period will pay off when it matters (the spring), even if I am not running the times I want to be right now. Even with all of this in mind I still wasn’t very happy after the race, so I went and hammered a 10-mile run after which made me feel better. Besides, I needed to get in the mileage because I couldn’t do a true long run this Sunday with the race.  On a different note, Millrose is this Friday and I cannot wait to go watch of all the races. I went with a couple of teammates last year and had a blast, so I am really looking forward to going again. The High School Mile should be a really good race. I am really looking forward to seeing what Brett and Robby are going to run. Robby is clearly ready to rip a fast one as he showed with his 1:52 split this weekend, and Brett is always ready to run fast. With all of the great runners in that field it should be a really good and competitive race. I am also really looking forward to the Wanamaker Mile. I can’t wait to see if German Fernandez’s WORLD LEADING time will hold up. It probably won’t, but the fact that he ran 3:56.50 in his first race of the season and his first indoor race ever is just unbelievable. He is truly in a league of his own. It should be a really fun night of races; I can’t wait.  I hope everyone is well, and good luck in your training and racing. w e e k 3 > This was a pretty good week for me as far as training goes. It was one of those weeks that really made me feel good looking back at it. Monday was just a simple distance day. Tuesday, I did my second tempo of the season; it went really well, and I felt really strong the whole way through. I hadn’t felt that good on a tempo run since the middle of cross country. Wednesday was my midweek long run. Thursday was another distance run where I felt particularly good. Friday was the day that really made me feel like this was the week that got me back into solid training again. Going into Friday’s workout, I didn’t expect anything good because it was so cold. At the time of our run the temperature with the wind chill was around 4 or 5 degrees. I did 6x30 second sprints up a very big hill we have in town. I felt really strong doing them, then continued on to complete my nine-mile run after the workout. Except for the fact that I thought I might lose my fingers (I have really bad circulation in my hands), the weather wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be on Friday. After the running part of my workout on Friday, I had what I consider to be my best session in the weight room ever. I spent an hour and a half in the weight room doing our leg routine, core, stretching, our hip exercises and upper body lifting. Friday was a very good day of training and left me feeling very good about where I am in my training. Saturday was an easy recovery day, and I finished up the week with a 15-mile long run with my teammate Brian Robinson on Sunday. The long run wasn’t as fast as it usually is because some of the roads were in pretty bad shape after the little snow we got the previous night, but it was a good run to end the week regardless. I ended the week with 72 miles, which I was happy about getting around where I need to be. Other than the training, not much happened this week. I did happen to realize that I am taking the SATs this Saturday. And I haven’t looked at any of the stuff yet; I kind of dropped the ball on that one. Oh well, we’ll see how it goes; for some reason, I have a good feeling about it. Also, I have midterms in two weeks, which is really dreadful. That means all of my teachers are going to try to give their last tests before the exams, so this week of school is going to stink. I do have a race coming up next week, so that should be a little fun, and I’ll get to forget about school stuff for a little while. Sorry I didn’t really have anything interesting to talk about this week, but it was a pretty dull one. As always, race well and be safe. w e e k 2 > My road to running in the Millrose Games came to an end on Saturday. I ran at the Hispanic Games and had less than a bad effort. I would at least tell you how the race unfolded a little, but I was too far back to even tell how it went. The race was disappointing, but not all that surprising to me, I have never been a runner who is able to pop a good race early in the season. With increasing mileage each week and only three workouts, I was on tired legs, and it showed at the race. Nothing was in place to race well on Saturday, and I knew that going in. But as one of my favorite sayings goes, “What’re you going to do?” The trip to the Armory was not a total disappointment. It was nice to get to see some people I hadn’t seen in a little while and catch up with them. I got to see Philip Wood, Melanie Thompson, Brett Johnson, Robby Andrews, among others and I even got to talk to the famous Joe Lanzalotto (at least famous to the hardcore DyeStat-ers). I did my warm up with Brett and Robby, and as many of you know the weather was very bad with the snow. The warm up was in all the snow and obviously it was very slippery on the roads and the park that we ran in. Now, Brett and Robby are going to try to turn the joke on me, but let me tell my side of the story. So, we were just having a nice normal warm up when we came to the first sharp turn, and I went down. Fortunately, I wasn’t hurt at all, but Brett and Robby kept making fun of me, saying how they were going to write it in their blog. I thought it was going to be an unavoidably embarrassing situation for me, but just before our warm up was over, Robby went down. Now, it’s understandable for the first person to go down because, they are not expecting it. Robby saw it happen, still slipped and fell (sorry Robby, but you knew I was going to think of a way to bring you down with me on this one). So, other than the race, the trip to the Armory was an enjoyable one. Just one more off topic issue, I hate the Giants. That was the most frustrating game ever to watch. Eli played horribly and we just couldn’t score, so much for another Super Bowl victory by the Giants. Now, back to running stuff. This past week’s training went pretty well. The only workout out I did was 6x200m ins and outs again. Those went pretty well, and I felt pretty good doing them. I didn’t get quite as high of mileage as I would have liked this week, because I was unable to do my long run on Sunday. The roads were still too icy from the previous night’s storm, so I had to go to a friend’s house to run on the treadmill. I came to the conclusion that running on the treadmill is the worst thing ever. I went with the intention of trying to run 9 miles but was only able to do 7. That ended my week at 63 miles. Hopefully, the weather will cooperate a little more in the coming weeks and I will be able to get up to the mileage I am supposed to. My next race will be at my county meet in two weeks. Good luck to everyone in their upcoming races, and for those of you in the Northeast, stay warm! w e e k 1>My cross country season exceeded all my expectations, but after running poorly at Foot Locker, there was still something to be desired. As a whole, the Foot Locker experience was the greatest of my life. I made several new friends, and they treated us like royalty. It was truly an experience of a lifetime. Now that all that is over, I turn my attention towards the indoor track season. This indoor season I will be running strictly the 1600/mile. Normally I focus on the two mile, but this winter I want to try to work on my speed and try to PR in the mile. Obviously, one of my goals for this indoor season is to try and qualify for the Millrose High School Mile, or else I wouldn’t be writing this blog. After cross I took a week off to rest a little. During that week off I didn’t do anything except on that Wednesday I ran the Coach Kaye Memorial Mile. Let me explain: every year after the cross country season is over our team runs an all out mile just to see what we can do. It is named after our coach, Jeff Kaye (who is actually still alive, and still our coach). Since my cross season went much later than in years past, nobody else on my team ran it because they were already into indoor training so I ran it by myself. I ran 4:28 and it sucked. Considering I was fried from a long season and was already in a break mindset it wasn’t too bad. I was just happy to keep the tradition going and it was just a fun thing to do. Other than that though, the week break was much needed and I was glad I took the time off. By the end of my week off, however, I was itching to get back in to training. My first week back to training was a pretty easy week. I just did easy distance running the whole week, capped off with a 12 mile long run on Sunday for a total of 51 miles. Last week was still pretty easy training; however I did add two light workouts. On Tuesday I did my first tempo run of the year and it was…well, it was a first tempo run. I did 4 miles and it wasn’t a great workout, but it was the first of the year and it got the job done. On Friday I did 6x200m ins and outs. I did those in about 32 seconds per 200 and then an easy 200 meter jog. These felt pretty good, and it was nice to get back in touch with something a little faster on the track. I ended the week with a 15 mile long run on Sunday, making the week’s total 63. Although I am focusing on racing the mile indoors, I am not training for the mile. The winter is a base-building period for me so I will be doing mostly tempo runs and the 200m ins and outs to keep in touch with my speed. I will be running 70-75+ mile weeks for pretty much the whole winter. This Saturday I will be racing the mile at the Hispanic Games to try to qualify for Millrose. Normally, I don’t get nervous before races, but in this case I am a little bit nervous. I’m nervous because the Hispanic Games is the only race that I am going to be running to try to qualify, it’s my one shot. It is also my first race of the season and only three weeks after my training started, not to mention I’ll only have three workouts under my belt at that point. My friend Matt Sonnefeldt seems to think I can do it though, so we’ll see (thought you’d appreciate the shoutout, Matt). I know there’ll be a lot of good competition in the race, so I think this will push me and hopefully help me run a fast enough time to qualify. I hope everyone had a nice break and happy holidays. Good luck with all of your training and racing. R2M 09 INDEX