Courtesy of John AerniWhat does it take to be successful in a marathon? Practice, and in the case of Zac Freudenburg and John Aerni, times of 2:21:40 and 2:29:38, respectively.
These Washington University graduate students made their marks at the recent Boston and St. Louis marathons.
On April 15, Aerni finished second in St. Louis’ 26.2 mile road race. The assistant cross country coach studying African history was running only his second marathon. Four years ago, he won his rookie race, Cincinnati’s Flying Pig Marathon. He first began running in junior high and progressed to be an All-American in track and cross country at Grinnell College.
“I led the first 24 miles, but I died hard in the last four. By mile 11 or 12 I could tell this was not going to be the greatest race. I didn’t slow down that much, but it was enough to get caught,” said Aerni.
The following day, former Beloit All-American Freudenburg finished 19th in Boston. Only 7:27 behind Kenya’s Robert Cheruiyot, the world’s top marathoner, Freudenburg qualified for the November 3 US Olympic Marathon Trials which will select three representatives for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
More impressively, this was his first road marathon.
It was the idea of extreme marathons that first drew him into the sport and he scheduled himself to run in Antarctica’s marathon. When those plans fell through, someone mentioned a race at Pike’s Peak to him.
“The mountain marathon at Pike’s Peak was my first marathon,” he said. “There I qualified for the World Mountain Running Championships. I wanted to run another marathon in between to stay in shape.”
The former Midwest Conference rivals were surprised to find themselves together at Wash. U. After competing against each other, they were excited to run together again.
This time, however, they ran as training partners instead of foes.
“It was nice to have John here and get him excited about running again,” said Freudenburg.
“One of the nice things about running is you don’t have to hate the other person,” added Aerni.
In preparation for his race, Aerni ran 85-90 miles a week. This included a 20 mile stretch once a week. Freudenburg finds buildings to run stairs in order to train muscles for mountain running. Unfortunately, this does not help with altitude training.
After another successful marathon, Aerni thinks this may be his last. He will spend the summer doing research in Lesotho, a country in southern Africa, and plans on continuing to train for half marathons.
Freudenburg will instead spend the next several months training for his September mountain race in Switzerland and the Olympic trials. After finishing sixth among the Americans in Boston, finishing in the top three is not out of the question for Wash. U.’s own computer science student.