The Chris Lundstrom I Know

Dakotah Lindwurm coming in third and securing her spot for the 2024 Olympics in Paris was one of the feel good stories to come out of the US Olympic Marathon Trials. You can read about her modest high school beginnings, her collegiate career at Division II Northern State in South Dakota, and her six years as a professional runner training with the Minnesota Distance Elite, elsewhere. This blog is about her coach, Chris Lundstrom.

Most of Chris’ notable achievements are listed in his bio on the Minnesota Distance Elite webpage. This blog is about special things I have the privilege of knowing about Chris, that may not have previously made the internet.

Chris ran in high school at Northfield High School in Minnesota. Pat Foley coached him in cross country. Chris competed at the state cross country meet three times and earned all-state twice, with a best finish of third place. His junior year, the team qualified for the state championships. This was the first Northfield cross country team to make it to state. He was all-conference all four years, won one conference championship, and still holds the school record for cross country 5K with a time of 15:30. In track, he was a state qualifier in the mile.

From Northfield he walked-on to the team at Stanford. Through hard (but smart) training, he went from running mostly with the women’s team to being an alternate on Stanford’s NCAA Championship team. The eighth runner on Stanford’s team was probably still one of the fastest runners in the country, but Chris will simply tell you he was a JV college runner.

Post-collegiately, Chris stayed in the Bay Area and was tearing it up on the Pacific Association grand prix racing scene, running for the Hoy’s Excelsior Running Club. In winter 2000, I put out a call via the Hoy’s Excelsior weekly email newsletter, asking if anyone was interested in helping me coach at Sacred Heart Cathedral (SHC). Chris contacted me saying he was interested, we met for lunch, and a friendship was born.

What I love about Chris is his genuine care for people, his humble nature, his intellectual curiosity, and his sense of humor. A great story from his high school coach demonstrates what a great teammate he is. One of their team activities was bowling with different ways of getting the ball down the lane; e.g. releasing the ball between your legs, standing backwards, etc. “Chris was the number one ranked high school runner in Minnesota and, there he was lying on his stomach rolling the ball down the lane. He was not afraid to be a little goofy. It was a good message for the other runners.”

Chris coached three seasons at SHC from 2000-2001. One season he drove a van full of teenagers to Los Angeles so they could cheer for our star 800 runner at the California State Meet. In cross country, one of my favorite pictures of all-time is him kneeling down to talk to, and give advice to, our Varsity Girls team before the Central Coast Section (CCS) Championship race. (I call that picture, “Story time with Chris,” and the girls are sitting enraptured with what he is saying). He delayed his move to Minnesota in June 2001 by a week so he could stick around when that 800 star returned to the State Meet as a junior and came home with the State championship. The 800 star in the story is Shannon Rowbury, who would go on to be an American record holder and 3-time Olympian. Dakotah is just the latest Olympian, Chris has had a hand in coaching.

At some point while he was coaching at SHC in this era, Chris suggested I come up with a staple workout for the distance runners – something we would do both in cross country and during the track & field season. It would be a litmus test-type workout and the kids would be able to measure their progress from year to year and season to season. He suggested either 5 X 1000 or 6 X 800. I picked 6 X 800 (any SHC runners who dread this bi-annual workout can blame Chris). We are in the twenty fourth year of doing 6 X 800. The pdf with each season’s workout is now 57 pages long. When Chris and I went for lunch in Eugene during the 2022 World Championships, I asked him if he remembered giving me that workout suggestion. He said he did.

While coaching at SHC, Chris squeezed in runs between the heats at day long track meets. He ran whatever pace and distance the kids needed so he could help coach them. Frequently he would run to practice or have me drop him off before I got to his home so he could tack on a few more miles. He was a shining example to the team of finding a way to get the work done, no matter the circumstances.

Chris impacted all of us so that even after he left SHC we kept cheering for him. We were all so proud when he took third at the 2001 New York City Marathon. In February 2004, I flew out to Birmingham, Alabama to watch Chris run at the US Olympic Marathon Trials. It was almost exactly twenty years later that Dakotah cemented another US Olympic Marathon Trials memory for Chris.

Chris set his marathon PR of 2:17:34 at the Twin Cities Marathon in 2006. During his years as a competitive runner, he finished third (2001) and then fourth (2006) in the USA Marathon Championships, was a three-time qualifier for the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials (2004, 2008, 2012), and represented the U.S. in the 2007 Pan-American Games marathon and in the 2010 World Mountain Running Championships, where the team won the silver medal.

Chris was one of the inaugural members of Team USA Minnesota when he joined them in 2001. That group changed its name to Minnesota Distance Elite in 2020. And Chris has gone from being a runner on the team to being the team’s coach.

Chris combines tremendous knowledge about training from an exercise physiology perspective with his ability to work with individual people. When asked about her start with Minnesota Distance Elite, Dakotah said Chris told her that if she showed up to practice he would coach her, and that she had a big vision for herself that came true because Chris bought into her and her dream first.  

Chris is far from “just” a coach. He has a PhD in kinesiology and is married with kids. He juggles coaching Minnesota Distance Elite with teaching classes at the University of Minnesota and coaching at the high school level. He co-wrote a chapter in the Oxford Textbook of Children’s Sport and Exercise Medicine. In his Tedx Talk he displays all the traits and characteristics that make him such a great coach and person. Here he talks about how running teaches you to find balance and perspective, to be mindful and in the moment, and to have a sense of humility in the face of either success or defeat.

In the moments immediately following Dakotah’s third place finish, Chris displayed all the traits that make him a special person. In an interview with LetsRun you could hear he had a scratchy voice from cheering. He joked about possibly breaking some laws while riding a bike around the course trying to get to a spot to cheer. Of course, he was humble, giving all the credit to the runner. In total Chris fashion, his Instagram post celebrates Dakotah, laughs at himself for breaking his phone while riding around the course, and gives a shoutout to all his other runners who poured their hearts into the race that day.

That’s Chris Lundstrom in a nutshell, not looking for the spotlight himself and genuinely caring about ALL his runners.

Well, the spotlight is going to shine on you a little bit for the next several months, Chris….all the way to Paris. Soak it up and enjoy it, because you deserve it!

Weekend in Birmingham

    

Raymond Yu (Tower) and I spent the weekend of February 6-8, 2004 in Birmingham, Alabama.  Why?  Because for this weekend at least, Birmingham was the running capital of the United States.  On Saturday the city played host to the US Men’s Olympic Marathon Trials and on Sunday, the city would host nearly 3500 participants in the Mercedes Marathon and Half Marathon.  Birmingham got the bid to host the Marathon Trials because of their pledge to provide great hospitality, a spectator friendly course, fast times and the See One/Do One theme (the concept of piggy-backing the Trials with the community race the next day to get more attention for both events).  From my observations of the weekend, Birmingham succeeded in their promises.

     We were drawn to go to Birmingham because a friend of ours (fellow SHC coach Chris Lundstrom) was one of just 104 Americans to run a qualifying time of 2:22 or better to be invited to the Trials.  Also in attendance in the Lundstrom Cheering Section were his fiancé, physical therapist, father, step mother and high school coach.  Chris was able to secure us Family credentials which meant we were treated like VIP’s.  We caught a crowded shuttle to the start line with other nervous wives, girlfriends, parents and friends.  While the athletes warmed up in the 35 degree weather with 15 mph winds, us VIP’s drank coffee and ate Krispy Kremes in a warm hospitality tent.  Finally it was race time.  86 runners toed the line…America’s best and brightest in the Marathon event.  The energy and excitement was amazing as the gun went off.

     From the start, the runners ran 9 miles into town.  At that point they entered the “downtown loop”, which was 5.43 miles long.  They would run this loop 3 times and then head to the finish line.  Once we got dropped off by the shuttle in the downtown loop, Tower and I began to use our rental car to catch as much of the action as we could.  It was non-stop for the next hour as we would run from one block to another and then to the car, drive a mile, hop out, cheer, back in the car, drive, hop out, cheer, run to the next spot, etc.  In total we saw Chris 12 times in the loop.  And we were certainly not the only ones doing this.  Everywhere you looked you saw fans sprinting from spot to spot.  Someone in the lead truck would get the crowd cheering wildly as the runners approached.  There was live radio coverage so we were constantly able to hear updates on the leaders, their splits, the gap to the main pack, etc.  The water stops were particularly interesting.  At many major marathons you see “elite tables” where the elite runners in the race can have their own water bottles placed for in-race pick-up.  But since everyone in the field was elite, how would this work?  The answer: 13 elite water bottle tables with 5 or 6 water bottles on each. 

     The race unfolded in dramatic fashion.  The Big Three favorites were Alan Culpepper (2:09:41), Meb Keflezighi (2:10:03) and Dan Browne (2:11:35).  But early on Teddy Mitchell would take it out hard opening up a 125 meter lead.  He had such a big lead that the media truck chose to drive between Mitchell and the main pack so they could monitor both.  ’00 Olympian Rod DeHaven said on the radio he thought it was rather strange to go out that hard in the rather harsh conditions.  By mile 7 we had a new leader.  It was youngster Brian Sell who’s only previous marathon was a 2:19 effort just to qualify.  Sell received a huge ovation as he entered the downtown loop with a big lead.  Meanwhile our hero, Chris, was hanging tough with the main front pack but at 10 miles he began to cramp in his quads and was forced to ease off the pace after a 52:05 for the first 10 miles.  It became apparent Chris was having one of those off days but he was determined to finish what he started .  Like so many of us have done before, he fought through some difficult miles in the middle to get to that finish line at 26.2.  At mile 18, we caught up enough to see the leaders.  Young Brian had a 44 second lead and Tower and I began to speculate that he looked good and maybe could pull off a huge upset.  Just a few minutes later, though, we heard that the Big Three (Culpepper, Meb and Browne) were moving up on the kid, apparently the three agreed to work together to reel in Sell.  We listened on the radio to hear that the lead had shrunk to 15 seconds at mile 21.  By mile 22 the Big Three caught and passed him.  At this point Tower and I decided to cheer for Chris one more time and then sprint to the finish.  We found a parking lot overlooking the finish line and headed for the 2nd level for a better vantage point.  At the same time some small snow flurries began to fall.  It may have been cold and dreary out but none of the thousand of spectators at the finish were complaining.  The anticipation grew as first the media truck, then police cars arrived at the finish.  Then a roar came from the crowd as Culpepper and Meb came into view.  Culpepper would win in 2:11:40, with Meb 2nd in 2:11:45.  Clinching the 3rd and final berth on the US Marathon squad to Athens for the 2004 Olympics was Browne in 2:12:01.  The leaders ran 67 minutes for their first half and 64 minutes for the 2nd half.  Amazing.  Chris came in 54th in 2:26:59.

     After this we realized just how valuable the family credential was.  We warmed up after being outside for the past 2 hours plus with some hot food in the VIP tent at the finish.  Then we got 30% off our merchandise at the marathon expo.  Later that afternoon we attended the Awards Ceremony where the top 15 runners were recognized.  Amongst them included, 43 year old Eddy Hellebuyck (8th), Cal-Berkeley grad Peter Gilmore (9th) and the hometown hero Scott Strand (who helped design the course) in 15^th place.  But the loudest ovation was not for any of these or for the Big Three but rather for young Brian Sell who showed so much guts and courage in leading this race for 15 miles.  It was very exciting to be around such a knowledgeable crowd of running fans who really appreciated how hard this kid pushed the Big Three.  And once again, the race officials fed us, this time free beer along with appetizers.

     Saturday night, we ate at a local Fish House.  Chris was re-fueling, while myself and Chris’ high school coach, Pat, were getting our pre-race meal in.  Pat and I would run the Half Marathon the next day.

     Sunday morning I rose at 5:50am (3:50am if your body is still on west coast time) and jogged to the race start line.  The temperature on the bank clock I ran by said 27 degrees.  At the start I met a guy named Eric who was also running the half marathon and had a friend who ran the Trials Marathon.  Remarkably we also had in common pretty similar race pace goals.  We ran together for 5 miles before we hit the hills.  At this point Eric pulled ahead of me and I began to focus my attention on things like my hamstrings that felt like cramping, the hills (I thought all of the south was flat), opening a packet of Gu, and my gloves, which were soaked from spilling water.  As the course neared its final 3 miles it flattened out enough for me to try to go hard again.  I was also encouraged by the distractions on the course – I broke through the BE&K Construction Wall at mile 8, then almost slipped on the “red carpet” at the Royal Mile (mile 9).  Mile 11 was supposed to be the Elvis mile but the King never appeared to cheer me home.  Instead I had the always supportive Tower to take my picture and offer encouragement.  In the end I finished in 1:21:38, 45th overall out of 2049 runners.  Better yet, that same credential got us out of the cold and into a warm hospitality tent where I drank a mimosa for the 2nd straight morning and re-fueled with salmon, bread pudding, and assorted other goodies.

     After a shower and a nap, we met up with Pat (Chris’ high school coach) and headed to the post-race celebration (Jim ‘N Nick’s Bar-B-Q Post Race Party) at the Boutwell Auditorium.  More free food –this time BBQ sandwiches, cole slaw and ice cream as well as a live band, free massages and kegs of Michelob.  And even though we didn’t win the Mercedes M-Class, we still had a great time.

     All in all it was a terrific weekend of running that only a running junkie could truly appreciate.  Thank you, Birmingham!