Happy Thursday! Today I’m excited to introduce Dusty. If you’re familiar with the Western Canada tri scene, his name will ring a bell. He has rock star status in Central Alberta. Not only does Dusty clock some wicked times, he is so humble about his feats. Yup… he will leave you in the dust …. 🙂
Name: Dusty Spiller
Age: 25
City: Red Deer
Profession: Retail
Runner Since: 2000
1. Why did you start running? What pushes you to keep going?
Originally it was for cross country in grade 5. Stopped for a couple years after high school, then signed up for a half marathon to get back into shape. Now I do it to be competitive.
2. What is your running/fitness routine for a typical week?
If I get 20-40km of running in during a week I’m happy. Typically I’ll do one hilly run and one faster tempo run a week. A lot of my running is done on the treadmill. I find it helps with recovery running on the softer surface and I can get a lot more quality work in. Plus it’s great for increasing my turnover!
Cycling right now through the winter is all done on the bike trainer. I’ll get in 5-7 rides a week ranging from 1-2 hours. These rides can get boring but it makes riding outside when the snow melts all that much better.
Swimming right now through the next few months is the main focus for me. I swim six days a week and try to get in seven swim workouts. One day will be a double swim day where one workout I work solely on drills and form. Most swim workouts are 3-4.5 km.
Through the winter months I do 2-3 strength workouts a week. Although when life gets busy these workouts will be the first ones to get cut before a swim, bike or run do.
3. What is your favourite distance to run? Why?
Without a doubt the half marathon is my favourite distance. It is my strongest distance. There can be more tactics and surging in a half compared to a 10k or shorter distances where it’s just full on right from the start.
4. Best running memory?
My best running memory is winning the Woody’s Half Marathon a couple years ago. After the first few hundred meters it was clear that there were three of us going to be running for first including Robert Renman who is a great runner from Camrose that I’ve raced a lot over the past few years. More often than not he has beaten me. On an out and back in the first mile of the course the whole sea of runners were coming towards us and being from Red Deer I had lots of local people cheering me on. Very motivating for sure, making it hard not to break away from our little group of three only a mile into the race. The pace all day felt very easy and after 12km one of the guys in our lead pack dropped off the pace a bit and I became very excited with the thought that I might actually be able to win. I kept the pace the same until about 15km and made my surge. I surged on a section with a lot of curves so that if I could get more than 5 seconds ahead, Robert would not be able to see me and mentally that might slow him down a little bit. I was running almost anaerobic the last few kilometres but I was scared with having Robert right behind me. I yelled to someone I knew off the course on a long straightaway how many seconds I had on Robert. They told me that they couldn’t even see him, so I knew with a mile to go I was going to win the race. The last mile was very exciting and finishing was a very happy moment knowing I won and ran a big personal best by over two minutes.
5. Do you run solo or with a group?
I like to do most of my training by myself with the exception of riding outside.
6. What is your dream race?
I’d love to be able to compete in the Hawaii Ironman one day.
7. How many medals do you own? Where are they displayed (if applicable)?
Probably close to 100 over the past 15 years. Most of them are in a box.
8. Do you have any current running goals?
Mostly just to maintain my current running fitness into next year’s race season. I have a lot more cycling and swimming goals as that’s where my biggest gains are to be made.
9. What is your worst running moment?
Probably my 2nd ever marathon. It was in Kelowna and I had a massive blow up. I went out much too fast and bonked badly with more than 5km to go. I must have lost more than 2min/mile over the last half hr and ended up running more than 10min slower than I would have liked.
10. If you could tell your younger (less experienced) running self something, what would you say?
Be patient. Results will come and the biggest thing is consistency. You will miss workouts, nobody is perfect and it happens. Don’t dwell on it and don’t try to make it up. Nothing good happens once you try to start stacking missed workouts on top of each other. Always re-evaluate and go from there.
Connect with Dusty on Twitter.