Titus Van Rijn, Two Thousand Thirteen

Having Uli Steidl as your pacer is a bit like having Wolfgang Puck as your sous-chef. You don’t feel worthy of the honor, but still want to take full advantage while it lasts.

My latest attempt at the Titus Van Rijn one-hour track event came on May 25th at the Roosevelt High School track. I invited a few local running friends to join me; Uli was the only one to succumb to the temptation. He offered to pace me, I accepted, and off we went in pursuit of my goal of 11 “metric miles” (i.e., 44 laps of the 400-meter track).

At my request, Uli settled into a pace of about 82 seconds per lap, with a couple of slower lap times attributable to my consumption of Gatorade. We made it through 16 laps in 22:00 and 24 laps in 33:02, then picked up the pace slightly. We finished our 35th lap at 48:00, leaving exactly 12 minutes to cover the last 9 hoped-for laps. Uli locked onto the required 80-seconds-per-lap pace with his usual precision, and we ultimately completed lap 44 with 3 seconds to spare.

Our final distance was 17,615 meters. Thus, because of Uli, I was able to surpass my TVR distances from 2008 (17,420m) and 2001 (17,360m), though still falling short of my marks from 2006 (18,115m) and 2009 (17,920m). Not too bad for an old codger.

Thanks, Uli!