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Just the Patrol

But Mousie, thou art no thy-lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!

No big post today, but check out my previous ones if you haven’t! There’s a couple that never made the front page. I should really automate the blog deployment, eh?

Mileage Today: 2.4 (4x400 + 3:30 jog)
Mileage This Week: 18.3
Mileage on Lake Patrol: 46.2
Mileage To Date: A lot.

Hey everyone! I’m John Christensen, the top-ranked non-finisher at the 2025 Never Summer 60k. I’ll be running the 2026 Grandma’s Marathon in support of the American Cancer Society, a nationwide non-profit in operation since 1913 dedicated to eliminating cancer.

The “Lake Patrol” blog will catalog my training and some of my pontifications and bloviations. I intend to use this as a form of self-coaching, as well as a record of my state of mind that I might appreciate re-reading one day.

If you enjoy the blog, consider making a donation to the ACS on my personal page, directly to the ACS, or to a charity of your choice.

12/03: The Formula Part III

Understanding the Formula (Part III)

There is no chance, no destiny, no fate, 
that can circumvent or hinder or control 
the firm resolve of a determined soul.

Intrinsic motivation is the second basic ingredient of running success. Extrinsic motivation is much easier to fathom. I’ll give an example: my ultra-marathon in Colorado included a 3ish-mile climb with sections of 15-20%-ish grade. Diamond Peak. This started at about mile 23, so you summitted around the marathon. Approaching the summit, there were no switchbacks, and it was just a pure grind uphill. I looked around and my fellow runners were leaning on their trekking poles, crawling on their hands and knees, and one person was crying a little. This is the only time in all of my official races I’ve thought seriously about just calling it quits, no injury, just throwing in the towel and saying “this is just too hard”! I stood around (if I sat down it would be all over) and thought to myself, wait a minute…if I give up now, I still have to walk down the mountain anyway…

I resorted to counting my steps until I got to the top. Eight-hundred-and-ninety-seven, but who knows if that’s accurate. A race marshal was standing at the top with a “easy button” that you could click to trigger a cheery disembodied voice to announce “That was easy!”.

Intrinsic motivation is harder to wrap my head around. Am I intrinsically motivated to run Grandma’s? Who knows.

As for that ultra, I ended up getting medically ejected. I took a fall a couple hours later. As for why I signed up? A friend asked me if I would do it, and it sounded like fun. Extrinsic again. But, I’ll copy a note I wrote myself in my diary on July 22, 2025, a day or so before my ultra, entitled “Why am I running the ultra marathon?”.

At first, I had decided that I don’t know why I’m running the ultra-marathon, but that isn’t quite right. It think something closer to the truth is that I’m running the ultra arbitrarily. It is an end in and of itself. Although I do intend to challenge myself, do intend to enjoy the natural beauty of the course, and do intend to have a capstone to my training, when taken as purposes, they ring hollow to me. I will enjoy all these things, but not primarily. Primarily, I intend to blank my mind, go through the motions, and whatever happens will happen.

That’s not quite right either, since I intend to finish. An earnest attempt should be made at the race. So I’ll be treating the terrain and elevation, and the knowledge of my own limits, with a healthy respect. I do care about finishing, but it’s just not the purpose.

So I’m not just trying to see what will happen, but to the run the best race possible, for me, on the day.

Mileage Today: 2.7 (tempo)
Mileage This Week: 15.9
Mileage on Lake Patrol: 43.8
Mileage To Date: A lot.

About Me

If you enjoy the blog, consider making a donation to the ACS on my personal page, directly to the ACS, or to a charity of your choice.

12/02: The Formula Part II

Understanding the Formula (Part II)

I have been entertaining dealings
with a foreign count. Very old line
of nobility. Very old and eccentric.

The first and foremost ingredient for running success according to Daniels is inherent ability. You heard it here first, some folks are just built different. If a coach actually said that to me, I think I’d run away screaming. Since I’m coaching myself, I have no choice but to face the curse of my bloodline head-on.

To give Daniels some credit, there are a couple things to note straight away:

Daniels primarily concerns himself with the maximum performance of elite runners, which is neither me nor most folks.
Daniels implies a person’s transient race-day physiological, bio-mechanical, and psychological state is part of this category (e.g., an injured runner will probably not put up their best time).

So the whole thing reads a little more Harrison Bergeron, perhaps, than Dracula; it is a sober view aimed at promoting patience in development of performance to avoid injury.

On the other hand, I’m sure you have heard, no doubt, of the appalling superstition of the Vampyr, and their unimaginable strength and speed. Perhaps if one were to find a Karnstein moldering, say, fascinate oneself with the engrossing vehemence of the sanguine, and run the marathon under the light of that odylic and magnetic moon…

Excuse me.

Speaking of blood, though, the second worst time I put forth in competitive 5K running was a day after I donated blood. A worthy cause, but I saw myriad brillances and nearly passed out. Incidentally the worst time I put up in the 5K was when I took a fall early in the race and (technical term incoming) f’ed up my hips, but I continued to run, and as a result bought myself several weeks of dates with the physical therapist. It would have been wise to drop out of both races, and had I spent more time thinking about my inherent limitations, maybe I would have.

In any event, by and large my “inherent ability” has been carefully cultivated by loving family and coaches with my best interests at heart for many years…certainly worthy of its own post later this week. As for my abilities now, I’ve chosen a 3:30 goal time as I think it is realistically achievable for me given my high mileage training for ultra-marathons, general mile times during training, and current good health.

Daniels’s first basic law of running is that every runner has unique strengths and weaknesses, and so training should focus on taking advantage of those strengths and improving the weaknesses. One of my strengths, I learned from “ultra-running”, is that I can tolerate high mileage programs and generally avoid injury running 5-6 times a week. I know I’ve also got the guts to hit the infamous wall and survive…although I’ve never competed at marathon distance, I ran about six marathons training for my two ultras this year. A weakness I have is a tendency to disdain running fast. Christensens are built for comfort, not speed. On repeat, interval, and tempo run days, I’ll have to make sure I’m focused up.

As the old adage goes, run your own race.

P.S.: Some of the prose paraphrased from Carmilla, who charms in most particulars.

P.P.S: I ran my 4ish mile route today, but I forgot to hit the patrol button on my watch. It’s like it never even happened…a good day for birds, saw tons of geese and ducks, and five swans, which doesn’t happen every day. One of the lakes was frozen, and the adjacent one connected by a tiny canal was not…their border had this strange undulating ice sheet where the surface hadn’t totally frozen. Pretty cool.

Mileage Today: 4.0 (estimated)
Mileage This Week: 13.2
Mileage on Lake Patrol: 41.1
Mileage To Date: A lot.

About Me

If you enjoy the blog, consider making a donation to the ACS on my personal page, directly to the ACS, or to a charity of your choice.

12/01: The Formula Part I

Understanding The Formula (Part I)

Everyone should take advantage
of the abilities they have.

As I’ve briefly mentioned, I am “progeny” of the Jack Daniels school of running coaches. Now that I’m coaching myself, blathering on about the tenets the great doctor is serving as a focus mechanism as I’m assessing my progress and adjusting my training as race day creeps ever closer.

Daniels identifies four “basic ingredients” of running success, each of which I will distress myself with in turn:

Inherent Ability
Intrinsic Motivation
Opportunity
Direction

Those wishing to further excruciate themselves may also commit the 12 Daniels’s Basic Laws of Running to memory, as well! I’m giving these lists a bit of grief, and while Daniels is far from the only game in town, I’ve gotten good results out of his stuff before and think there’s some value in picking a coaching style and sticking with it.

Without further ado, we’ll address each of the ingredients in turn…next time, on Lake Patrol!

Mileage Today: 5.1
Mileage This Week: 9.2
Mileage on Lake Patrol: 37.1
Mileage To Date: A lot.

About Me

If you enjoy the blog, consider making a donation to the ACS on my personal page, directly to the ACS, or to a charity of your choice.

11/29: Double Feature

Double Feature!

I'm late! I'm late!
For a very important date...

November 29 was my “long” run, about 10 miles at an easy pace. The thing about long runs is that they take a long time (go figure), and you’d think that this would offer ample opportunity for the inner monologue to generate soliloquies (and blog posts) the world over. This is often the case, but not always.

My route took me along the Red River through a string of parks I’ve frequented probably hundreds of times, in all seasons, alone and with dozens of acquaintances, friends, crushes, rivals, mentors, coaches, family, and others in between. That familiarity left me awash with all kinds of memories, so many that I entered a somewhat blank and plodding trance, putting one foot in front of the other focusing on nothing much in particular. This is not an altogether undesirable state to be in on a long run; in fact, sometimes it’s quite welcome to escape into an incoherent inner world.

My attempts at entering full dream-state were interrupted by the insistent recollection of a lunch date planned with a good friend and his wife later in the day; probably a good thing, since I was going too slow and had to cut the run short to make it on time (worth it, it was lovely catching up). Saw some intermittent people of interest: a cross-country ski team for one, and some fellow runners. Got some smiles out of them! It was cold enough that my eyelashes and parts of my beard were covered in frost, which makes me look like, dare I say, quite the winter warrior.

My run on November 30 was similarly uneventful. I rounded out the month with a jog around my digs in the cities again. Got some smiles (and some other funny looks) because I was jogging with my grocery bags…ended the run with a shopping spree.

Mileage November 29: 8.5
Mileage November 30: 4.1
Mileage Week 1: 27.9
Mileage This Week: 4.1
Mileage on Lake Patrol: 32.0
Mileage To Date: A lot.

About Me

If you enjoy the blog, consider making a donation to the ACS on my personal page, directly to the ACS, or to a charity of your choice.

11/28: Buffalo River

Trail Run

You are not LaBeouf.

Today the fiancée and I trekked out to Buffalo River State Park for my run, a nice and easy 45 minute jog. Eventually, I’m sure the snowfall will render the trails impassable (or at least difficult beyond my enjoying them), but for now, the difficulty of the terrain is still in the “fun” stage.

When I originally took to trail running, it was as a recovering speedster. I had worked my way to a 90-minute half-marathon my freshman year of college in Colorado, and, at the height of my training, promptly took about two years off of running seriously. Naturally, when I started up again, I’d take every run out at the “glory days” pace of 6-7 minutes a mile. Points for consistency!

A combination of frustration at my lost speed and a desire to get out to the mountains more spawned a project in the summer of 2019 to run like crazy all over the Boulder area Green Mountain and Flatiron trail complexes. I really took to it, so added the NCAR trail system and Bear Peak to my list. Taking on some elevation as a “career” road runner was an exercise in humility; any “need” to run quickly was annihilated by the slow going.

Thus was born my love for trail running. Regardless, Buffalo River has a bit of sentimental value for me, so I hardly need an excuse to go out. The park is an annual field trip destination for elementary school age children, where I recollect getting to partake in the perennially cute pastime of frolicking on the prairie. Buffalo River is also the only place I demonstrated my ham radio accreditation in anger (RK0RKQ has long since signed off, and his license is extremely expired).

Today was a nice day…not particularly cold or windy. It was mostly cloudy, so the sun was mostly obscured. When it did poke out, enough wispy clouds dulled its radiance such that if you stole a glance its way, it looked like a perfect gray circle. Sections of the river were covered in misshapen ice sheets, sort of like loosely connected lily pads (though I’m sure not so hospitable to enterprising frogs). The tall grasses still poke out of the snow, brown with splashes of muted red. Quite quiet, save for a few birds, and a low-frequency rumble for about 20 minutes. My beloved told me it was a train.

My fine lady saw a deer. We both saw four turkeys. I’m sure if they know what holiday they just survived, they are filled with bravado and confidence.

Mileage Today: 3.4
Mileage This Week: 19.4
Mileage on Lake Patrol: 19.4
Mileage To Date: A lot.

About Me

If you enjoy the blog, consider making a donation to the ACS on my personal page, directly to the ACS, or to a charity of your choice.

11/27: Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I urge you to please notice when you are happy, 
and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 
‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.'

I hope I quoted Mr. Vonnegut correctly.

In any event, it was a happy Thanksgiving. I spent the day with family back in Fargo, and everyone was in good spirits eating great food. Nice indeed.

Today’s workout was four 400-m repeats with about a three-minute jog between. On a tip from my dad, my fiancée and I decided to check out the ice rink next to the gymnastics center, since it has a 200-m track around the perimeter; no dice, closed for the holiday. This was probably appreciated by the staff, and plus, I got to reminisce about my cartwheeling days.

So, off to the park. Trails were well-groomed, but I got to play hero and catch my beloved a couple of times, since there were patches of ice. Hack for winter training: microspikes, or screws in the shoes for MacGyver types. It was a pretty day…very blue sky, and mostly undisturbed snow a few inches deep. The river had ice only very near to the shore. Saw some squirrels and a vulture (no turkeys…they know what today is about). I wonder if they think winter really, really sucks.

After the final 400, I triumphantly cut through the snow to rejoin my lady dearest. As I was running over, I imagined myself cutting a somewhat rugged figure, as a literal trailblazer, after all. The damsel deemed that no photographic record was warranted. I’ll have to resort to other charms, it seems.

Mileage Today: 2.3 (4x400 at 1:34, 1:34, 1:30, 1:31)
Mileage This Week: 16.0
Mileage on Lake Patrol: 16.0
Mileage To Date: A lot.

About Me

If you enjoy the blog, consider making a donation to the ACS on my personal page, directly to the ACS, or to a charity of your choice.

11/26: Pick Up The Tempo

Pick Up The Tempo

Time will take care of itself, so just leave time alone
And pick up the tempo just a little and take it on home

Ah, the first “tempo” run of the training plan. That particular adjective can strike fear into the heart many a former high school cross-country runner, and this member of the cross-country-to-marathon pipeline is no different. A tempo run is silly name for a workout where you run “quite hard but not too hard”…a pace you can keep up for about 3–4 miles without feeling too bad.

As big a fan of etymological investigations as I am, the origins of the name are a mystery to me. I picked up the name from my high school coaches while they attempted to make me into a merciless 5K machine, while I, on the other hand, considered if I had any angles with my most captivating friend Amanda (that question was left forever unanswered when she crossed that unfathomable gulf between the heavens and earth known as transferring schools). Perhaps if I were not so blessedly lovestruck I would be able to posit with evidence that my coaches got the name from the (Doctor) Jack Daniels’ Running Formula T-pace Threshold workout, one of many carefully designed workouts for runners published in the late 90s. You’ll be glad to know the book also has drinking advice, but we’ll get to that later.

In any event, yesteryear’s program was a Formula program, which I learned after consulting the Formula to inform my Grandma’s running and drinking plans. Based on desired goal time in a target race, the Formula prescribes various training paces and weekly mileages to (hopefully) achieve the goal result. My goal time for Grandma’s is 3:30, which means I have to run roughly 8-minute miles on average for the duration of the race. My T pace is around 7:30 per mile.

A goal time is a great thing to have when coaching yourself; if you don’t put the work in, you ain’t gonna get the time. Christensens such as myself, however, are famously built for comfort rather than speed. It’s helpful to keep Willie and Waylon in mind, too, and leave time alone…some…times…

Mileage Today: 2.6 (20m at tempo)
Mileage This Week: 13.7
Mileage on Lake Patrol: 13.7
Mileage To Date: A lot.

P.S.: for those of you that were waiting with bated breath for the weather report, there was a bit of snow…and even two sets of tracks before mine (presuming someone wasn’t trying to “come play with us Danny” this “here’s Johnny”).

About Me

If you enjoy the blog, consider making a donation to the ACS on my personal page, directly to the ACS, or to a charity of your choice.

11/25: The Mist

The Mist

Something in the mist took John Lee!

Today I ran around Lake of the Isles. According to intrepid meteorologists serving the Twin Cities, we are scheduled for up to six inches of snow today. The temperature during the day is warm, though, so we can expect rain in the afternoon before the snowfall.

I ran fast enough to beat the most of rain. For a minute or two, the lake is pockmarked by little droplets, but running at speed, they are barely noticeable. A fog lies over Lake of the Isles, thick enough that you cannot see to the other bank, but not so thick as to obscure the eponymous islands, nor obstruct visibility. Minneapolis is decidedly in the “brown” part of the fall, so the islands in fog appear with a certain air of dread mystery, barren trees adorned with the occasional foreboding crow. With a little imagination, a person can pretend the islands are an urban Isla Nublar.

Other curiosities on display are the usual waterfowl. The season for boating is over and the wind is calm, so once the rain subsides the lake is placid. The little wakes of the swimming birds as they dive are particularly noticeable. The sky is a uniform gray, like an off-white canvas…I have a friend that once had a project to paint the various streetlamps of the Cities, taking down their particular latitudes and longitudes with each one. On a day like today, I can see the appeal of such a project; they cast a striking image.

There are not many people out on the lake today. A couple out of earshot stands by a weeping willow; a woman in a long jacket and a scarf walks alone; a group of friends chats in the grass with some pastries. I spy a few of them stopping to take pictures of the lake…it seems I’m not the only one who finds the view moving today. The fog all around gives everyone a certain wistful and fantastic aura, like we all characters in some dusty Gothic novel. No eagles seen today to complete the seaside fantasy, though. Regardless, the shutterbugs have me thinking I’m not the only one waxing poetic about the weather.

As a final amusement, part of the dock has been towed into the lake and is serving as a barge with two benches on it. It is far enough from shore there would be no illusions of jumping out to it. What a funny scene it would make to see people sitting out there, especially if they were dry with no boat. Now that might have me thinking of the ghosts and specters of Poe and Jackson, eh?

Mileage Today: 3.4
Mileage This Week: 11.1
Mileage on Lake Patrol: 11.1
Mileage To Date: A lot.

About Me

If you enjoy the blog, consider making a donation to the ACS on my personal page, directly to the ACS, or to a charity of your choice.

11/24: Mr. Balboa

Mr. Balboa

You're gonna eat lightning,
and you're gonna crap thunder!

Today was an easy (conversational) five-miler. To a seasoned ultra-marathon non-finisher such as myself, this really should feel easy. So easy, in fact, that the inner monologue can start feeding me some real delusions of grandeur.

Yeah, I was running my easy pace, and then the inner monologue starts humming “Gonna Fly Now.” From there, it’s only a matter of time before it’s all over. It starts with the visions of doing one-armed push ups, goes through the whole training montage from Rocky IV, you switch movies and imagine yourself running up those steps with half of Philadelphia behind you, and finally you catch yourself shadowboxing and running about a minute per mile faster than planned. Not a bad attitude, but a little too fast for an “easy day.”

Luckily, still felt good, so no need to over-intellectualize a fast training day. Guess the rest paid off. Call me in about 200 days to see if I still feel like a contender.

Mileage Today: 5.5
Mileage This Week: 7.8
Mileage on Lake Patrol: 7.8
Mileage To Date: A lot.

About Me

If you enjoy the blog, consider making a donation to the ACS on my personal page, directly to the ACS, or to a charity of your choice.

11/23: In Fact, I'll Start Tomorrow

In Fact I’ll Start Tomorrow

Procrastination is my sin.
It brings me endless sorrow.
I really must stop doing it,
in fact, I'll start tomorrow...

Today’s run was supposed to be an “easy long run”. Some might imagine this a contradiction in terms, and, ex falso quodlibet, I might just say anything now. My pricey education compels me to wave my hands, pay oblique lip service to Wittgenstein’s language games, declare quod scripsi, scripsi, and tell you not to worry ’bout a thing lest I spill the banks of English once more.

I digress.

In this circumstance, an “easy long run” is a run at conversational pace (a pace where one can chat on and on about epistemology, for instance) for a long distance (a large proportion of one’s weekly mileage). In my case, a “long” distance for this week was 11 miles.

I ran two miles and called it a day, because my legs felt icky.

This may raise a couple questions. Is the best way to train for a marathon to give up early and often? Can I run the marathon over the course of a week instead of at one time?

More on the latter question later, but suffice to say, the marathon is a thousand-mile race the final few miles of which are on race day. As for giving up early and often, if you’re having an off day (as I was today), it can be prudent to give yourself a break. Certainly on race day, I might wish to tap into some primal instinct and push myself the likes of which I never have before; but, if there is any glory to be found in marathoning (there is and there isn’t) it is definitely not to be found in punishing yourself when you’re not feeling great.

What’s that they say? It’s a marathon, not a sprint?

Mileage Today: 2.3
Mileage This Week: 2.3
Mileage on Lake Patrol: 2.3
Mileage To Date: A lot.

About Me

If you enjoy the blog, consider making a donation to the ACS on my personal page, directly to the ACS, or to a charity of your choice.

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