Friday I stumbled onto a sub-four miler at Charlottesville High School. As I walked towards the track I saw Donald Cowart running very smoothly and quickly as he was running the first of three repeat miles at a sub 4:40 pace. I walked over to the person who was timing him to inquire about who the runner was since it was clear to me that this was no ordinary runner.
The track at UVa is reing rehabbed so Donnie was at CHS tuning up for the U.S. championships next week where he will compete in the steeplechase (his qualifying time is 8:31). I don't think I had ever witnessed a runner this good this close and certainly hadn't seen anybody ever do a workout like this. It was both inspirational and depressing.
Turns out that primarily through the efforts of the owners Charlottesville's well-established Ragged Mountain Running Shop there is now a program in Charlottesville for highly-talented and committed distance runners to train. Click on the title of this entry for a link to Ragged Mountain Racing.
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Donnie did a good job warming up the track for me--I had my best workout in a long time. I ran 11:41 for 1.5 miles and went through the first mile in about 7:54. I wasn't trying to run that fast but I guess seeing Donnie run stirred some muscle memory.
3 comments:
Please email Ragged Racing or Donnie himself to see about putting our feed onto their blog. Let them know that we are already advertising them on our blog via a feed. If someone clicks on one of the article summaries on our blog, it opens up their website in a new window. They are getting great international exposure through our popular blog.
Interesting blurb about meeting Donnie (or at least seeing him). I wonder what their meal budget is when they travel? About $3.50 at Ponderosa?
I watched the video of his recent sub-4 mile. Pretty impressive. Would be nice to see him make the team in the Steeplechase. I'm assuming this is his attempt to make the team for this summer's world championships.
I spoke with Donnie just a bit--seems like a very good guy. I spoke a lot more with his coach, Dan Murray. Dan was quite accomplished as a runner and still runs. You can find out more about Dan on the RMR website(www.raggedmountainracing.org/about-us/#ourCoaches).
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