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Gunn Coach Ernest Lee on Ruth Graham's 4:57

1600 in Dual Meet

We asked Ernest to pass on some comments on

Ruth's super dual meet running earlier this week

and he did below - Thanks!!!

 The Los Gatos-Gunn dual meet has always produced exceptional marks. Our league, especially in the girls, is very competitive, so much so that in recent years we've reduced the number of
invitationals we run since many of the dual meets are "invitational" quality. This year, we knew that the Los Gatos girls were very strong, so we decided not to push for the dual meet win and focus our girls on single events. For Ruth, we are planning on running the mile at Stanford and have her anchor our DMR at Arcadia. Thus, we wanted her to run a good, hard mile this week to see where she is at. From her recent workouts, we figured she could go after a PR (previous PR of 5:07.6 for a full mile run at last year's Los Gatos-Gunn dual meet).
So the plan for Ruth was to go out in 74/74 for the first two laps and to see what happens. We figured that Los Gatos would run Ashley Caldwell and Michelle Beritzhoff in the 1600 (as they did last year and they did again), so the competition would potentially be there as well.
Realistically, I figured that after a 2:28 first 800, Ruth would slow a bit and probably run in the 5:03-5:05 range, but we were hoping that either of the Los Gatos girls would be with her to give her a race (last year's mile came down to a kick against Caldwell and Ruth barely held her off).
Well, the weather was pleasant with just a slight breeze. The Los Gatos facility is top-notch and is used by our section for numerous invitationals. Also, they even set up their FinishLynx for our dual meet so we got FAT times. Ruth set the pace from the gun. Afterwards, she was a little mad at herself for going out so fast (70), but she did say that it didn't feel fast. Her eyes got big when she heard the time at the first 400 and she seemed to purposely slow down a bit. Through 800 in 2:28, I was a little afraid that the first lap would take it's toll. Although the two Los Gatos girls were well back, you can never count out Caldwell's kick. But Ruth held on strong and even put in a solid kick to finish in 4:57.27 (FAT). Caldwell ran 5:09.12 and Beritzhoff finished in 5:24.59.
As I mentioned earlier, the overall plan is to run the mile at Stanford and the DMR at Arcadia. One of the goals for this season is to have Ruth run more shorter races to work on her speed. She typically hasn't run many hard 2 miles early in the season as we like to keep her racing load
pretty light (hence only one race at both Stanford and Arcadia). The original plan was to focus on the 3200 at the end of the season, but we were never expecting such a fast 1600 this early. Ultimately, it's her decision on what events she wants to concentrate on, so we'll just have to see how things go from here.
A lot of the credit for Ruth's progression needs to go to our distance coach, Craig Blockhus (a former standout runner for Mountain View High and Cal). He plans her workouts and is especially good at getting our runners "race ready".