PUEBLO, Colo. - Competitive runners across the world employ
different training strategies to get in shape for marathons and
races. Some run until their toes bleed, while others enter into
high-nutrition regimens that ensure the most optimum health for
long distance races.
CSU-Pueblo senior cross country standout Lauren Dunsmoor prefers to
watch "Rachael Ray."
It sounds wacky, but right now, it's the training regimen of a
possible champion.
Dunsmoor is among the favorites to claim a regional championship
Saturday at the NCAA North Central Regional Championships, to be
held at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion, S.D.
"My training is very, well, non-traditional," Dunsmoor quipped.
Weekly, Dunsmoor gets on the treadmill or the elliptical machine,
sets it up right in front of the television, and runs no more than
35 miles per week. At the same time, she is even able to learn good
techniques to cook a kid-friendly fish stick parmesan or a perhaps
some chorizo and shrimp quesadillas with smoky guacamole dip.
Or maybe not.
"Right now, I'm a much better runner than I am a cook," Dunsmoor
said.
Dunsmoor adopted the at-home training schedule before this season.
It has worked, to say the least. In the four meets in which she has
competed this season, she has won three of them, and finished
second at the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Championships on
Oct. 20. She crossed the finish line just .46 seconds behind the
champion, Adams State's Brittany Somers, the beneficiary of a late
surge. Dunsmoor had led practically the entire race. The race was
so close, CSU-Pueblo cross country coach Chad Perry was giddy for
about ten minutes after the race, thinking Lauren had won, until
she revealed the dire news to her coach.
"It was funny, because he had no idea," Dunsmoor said. "But it's
not that important to me anyway. I'm not really running to win
titles or anything. I run because it's fun, and I feel like I have
an opportunity of a lifetime, and I'm just going to give it my best
shot."
Fun or not, Dunsmoor is making the lives of her competitors not so
enjoyable. The cross country landscape in the RMAC is ruled by
Adams State and Western State, who are annually considered the top
two Division II programs in the entire country, let alone the
conference. The runners at those schools aren't used to runners
from CSU-Pueblo giving them a run for their money.
On Oct. 18, Dunsmoor accomplished something that was unheard of for
a CSU-Pueblo runner - she was named RMAC's Runner of the Week, an
honor that seemed to be permanently bequeathed to an Adams State
runner. At the conference championships, Dunsmoor proved that the
award was no fluke, winning nearly every step of the race except
for the final few.
The kicker - she was battling a violent respiratory infection that
was at its apex during that race.
Now, with the confidence - and the health - that she can beat the
best in the RMAC, which are also considered the best in the region,
as well, she feels a regional title isn't out of the question.
Despite her performance, she does wear "CSU-Pueblo" on her jersey,
and is therefore considered an underdog.
"I have this wonderful opportunity to do something that has never
been done at CSU-Pueblo," Dunsmoor said. "We are not an established
program, and everybody expects Adams and Western to have the top
runners. But it's one of those things where I'm not putting
pressure on myself. I like being the underdog, and I wouldn't have
it any other way."
Dunsmoor's achievements this season, though, shouldn't be taken
lightly. The CSU-Pueblo cross country program is only in its third
season of existence, and even that fact is a bit of a small
miracle. The program's coach during its maiden season, Craig
Binkley, left abruptly before the beginning of the 2006 season.
CSU-Pueblo professor George Dallam held the program together as the
interim coach during Dunsmoor's first season on the team. This
year, the program now has a chance to flourish thanks to the
efforts of Perry, who also will serve as the women's track and
field coach next season when that program restarts. Perry has
gotten help from local distance-running guru, Joe Arrazola, who
kept the chief's seat warm before Perry's hire in mid-September.
But the current coaching staff is working, especially for
Dunsmoor.
"Joe and Chad are positive and encouraging," Dunsmoor said. "They
aren't the type of coaches who say you have to win this race, to
pick up your time or anything. They just show support for what
training works for me. It's unlike any other coaching experience
I've had."
Her current training style has been an evolution, one that has
withstood a variety of bumps in the road, to say the least. In
fact, her journey to her current status as a top runner was more
than just a simple ‘bump in the road' - it was nearly a
miracle.
A graduate of Pueblo West High School, Dunsmoor had gone on to play
volleyball and basketball at the University of New Mexico. That
opportunity, though, was eaten up by her own competitive drive,
resulting in being diagnosed with the ‘female athlete triad,'
a competitive disorder that arrives from pushing too hard to
achieve athletic success, resulting in disordered eating,
amenorrhea, and osteoporosis.
At UNM, her workouts weakened her body instead of strengthening it,
resulting in a herniated and fragmented disc in her back. Stubborn,
she got on with the University of Northern Colorado to run on their
track team, but suffered stress fractures in her legs as a result
of the disorder.
"I had gotten down to 103 pounds, and I would be running at 2 a.m.
or 5 a.m., pretty much all day long," Dunsmoor said. "I wanted to
be an elite athlete, I watched what I ate, and worked out all the
time. And it wasn't good for me."
In 2006, she came back home to Pueblo to finish her education and
be closer with her family, paying extra close attention to
offsetting the effects of the female athlete triad. But she still
kept up a training regimen that was normal to her at the time -
running up to 80 miles a week, and pushing herself to her athletic
limit. Though she finished high - often in the top 10, and a 24th
place finish at the conference championships - she felt something
was missing and something had to change.
Coming into this season, she was planning on running, but she was
more focused on her health, not wins. But she had read a story in
Runners' World magazine that stuck to the principle that
"less is more." She googled more about the story's author, studying
the philosophy and methodology, and came up with her own regimen.
Sticking to that, she worked out on machines with the incline set
very steep, and has not run more than 35 miles a week this season,
doing all her training indoors. The results are obvious.
"It has been wonderful," Dunsmoor said, happy as she has ever been.
"This whole season has been really eye-opening for me. It has
helped me to realize and stay focused and count my blessings that
I'm here, let alone able to run."
