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Who will have a leg up? With two-time defending champ Solof out of the men's race, three others are expected to contend By TIM TROWER There might be a plus to what is a very notable subtraction in the 26th annual Pear Blossom Run Saturday. First, the minus: Two-time defending champion Ian Solof, who last year matched the 10-mile course record and later proved his mettle in the New York City Marathon, will not participate because he's recuperating from an injury. Without Solof, however, an air of suspense is added to the equation. Those he vanquished a year ago - specifically runner-up Bill Raitter and fourth-place Damian Baldovino - now move into the role of favorites, along with Tim Julian, who won the race the only two times he entered. Solof ran away from the field a year ago and clocked a time of 49 minutes, 49 seconds, to equal Matt Cato's 1990 mark. The strong finish by the former Ashland High runner, who now is an assistant track and cross country coach at the University of Portland, allowed him to beat Raitter by more than two minutes. In the NYC Marathon in November, he was the 24th fastest American male and was 49th overall in 2:27:49. But he tweaked a knee during the latter stages and has since been nursing it back to health. Solof is disappointed he won't return to the Pear this year. Cato has the most victories, three, but they weren't in succession. "Since I won the last two titles, I would like to try for three in a row," he says. "But that's how it works out." That leaves Julian, Raitter and Baldovino in the spotlight. The three are not strangers and recently ran at the same venue, if not at the same distance, in the Shamrock Run in mid-March in Portland. Baldovino and Raitter both entered the 8-kilometer race with designs on gauging their speed, a dimension neither had worked on much over the winter. Baldovino won in 24:44, and Raitter was second in 25:17. Julian has struggled to find training time in recent months and was fifth in the 5K in 15:25. "Basically, I got my butt kicked," says Julian, who concedes he's more of an endurance runner and that the speed of a 5K is not his forte. "I was not ready to race, but I decided to jump in there, anyway." Still, Julian has two Pear victories to his credit, in 1995 and '98, and he ran a 4:58-mile pace in the Shamrock, one second faster than Baldovino did in the longer race. Julian, an operating room assistant, and his partner, Kristin, recently had their first child, 5-month-old Charlotte. He's been working two jobs and squeezing in only one run a day. "Those guys are probably fitter than me right now," he says, "but I don't like to lose." Indeed, Baldovino, who was on the same Hood-To-Coast Relay team as Solof and Julian, won't overlook the latter, also a former Ashland High runner. "Tim is always tough," he says. "He's consistent and he always runs hard." Baldovino didn't do too badly himself in the Shamrock, which he considers his crowning achievement in road racing. The 1985 Medford High graduate, who now lives in Lakeview, has joined Solof on the Nike Portland team and took the opportunity to pick his colleague's brain. A metamorphosis resulted. "I didn't go to college and never had a coach after high school," says Baldovino. "I've just been winging it and doing whatever seems to work. It's nice to get with somebody who has had success like Ian and find out what they've done and what works for them." The crux of the tutelage: Run more. Solof, as with many elite runners, runs about 100 miles per week. Baldovino took stock of his own training and realized he averaged only about 40 miles per week and was inconsistent to boot. "I thought, 'Wow, that's a pretty big difference,'" he says. He's gradually worked his miles up to more than 80 per week and believes recent performances are testament that it's working. In addition to winning the Shamrock, the week before he won a 5K in Portland in 15:28, and on Feb. 9, he placed 59th in the U.S. Cross Country Championships. "I don't run a whole lot of fast stuff," he says, "but the amount of time I'm spending on the road is making my legs stronger, and I've automatically picked up speed." It will be curious to see how that translates to the 10-mile Pear. Though Baldovino outran Raitter most recently, it was the latter who beat him handily here last year. Raitter, from Bend, was timed in 51:53 in the Pear to Baldovino's 53:35. They were sandwiched around Michael Lynes (52:03) of Tacoma, Wash., who had not entered as of midweek. Raitter's Shamrock finish to the contrary, his goal this year is to quit being the bridesmaid. He's training for a National Guard marathon in Lincoln, Neb., next month, a race he also was second in last year. "I want to quit being runner-up this year," he says. "This is my year of not being runner-up ... or first loser." Raitter and Baldovino each believe they have this race figured out: Don't go out too strong because Hanley Hill, just before the turnaround point, takes too much out of the impatient. "I know the course," says Raitter, who was third two years ago. "That might help me. I'd like to run around a 5:10-mile pace or under, see how long I can do it, then kick it at the black chicken (the Blackbird store landmark)." The second half of the race, despite a gradual decline, was "torturous" last year for Baldovino. "If they go out fast," he says, "I'm not going to blow up with them. Anything under a 5-minute pace for the first few miles is a little too fast. That hill will eat your lunch." Which means there could be some subtraction. Reach sports editor Tim Trower at 776-4479, or e-mail [email protected] Gutierrez is back to challenge perennial champion O'Neil in what could be the featured duel By TIM TROWER Rosa Gutierrez and Deanna O'Neil are linked through the pages of time. Literally. Look in the Who's Who in Oregon Track and Field, and you'll find them in the records section. Look in the University of Oregon media guide, and there they are again in various photos of NCAA championship teams. Look in newspaper archives, and you'll find their names splattered throughout road race results, from the Pear to the Pioneer to the Providence to the Shamrock to the Stagecoach to you name it. So it will be a familiar treat when they line up on Saturday as arguably the featured attraction in the 26th annual Pear Blossom Run. Sarah Raitter, who finished second as O'Neil claimed her record eighth victory in last year's event, figures she was bumped a notch with the inclusion of Gutierrez. "Most likely, I'll be looking for third place," says the Bend runner, who finished 1 minute, 15 seconds behind O'Neil's time of 59:28 in 2001. "I've never beaten either of those two. They're usually quite a ways ahead." The two favorites each turned in a projected time of 59 minutes. Gutierrez was a three-time Class 2A state champion in cross country for Glendale from 1978-80. O'Neil came along and won the next two titles while running for Kennedy. They followed the same path to national powerhouse Oregon and continued the winning tradition. "We've raced each other since high school," says O'Neil, who lives in Canby. "We both went to small schools in Oregon, and both Rosa and I ran at the University of Oregon. We've always been friends and always competed against each other." This will be only the second time they've run the Pear Blossom together, and Gutierrez is responsible for one of the few defeats O'Neil has had in her 11 Pear Blossom races. In 1999, the former fended off repeated challenges to pass by perennial champion O'Neil and won with a time of 58:14.4. O'Neil came in at 58:31.7. The marks were well off O'Neil's course-record time of 57:07, set in 1995. In the three years since they squared off, Gutierrez - who was out of racing for nearly five years after college because of a serious hamstring injury - has made her mark in other Rogue Valley races and last fall performed exceptionally well at the international level. In November, she was the seventh fastest American woman in the New York City Marathon, finishing 19th overall and qualifying for the Olympic marathon trials. A week later, she set a course record in the Pioneer Run at Phoenix High School, running 5 kilometers in 18:29. It was one of several records she set locally in the past 11/2 years, others being in the Shamrock Run in Central Point, going 10K in 35:21; and the Stagecoach Run in Jacksonville, covering 10K in 35:31. Gutierrez, who lives in Glendale again after residing for years in San Jose, Calif., also won the Fourth of July Run in Ashland last year and the Applegate Run in 1999, when she was believed to be the first woman to win outright a local 10K race that had a significant number of runners, in this case 54. Gutierrez could not be reached this week, but Raitter believes she must be training for a marathon, possibly the Boston, if she's entered again in the Pear Blossom. "She might have good strength and might be just a little ahead of Deanna," Raitter says. "I think it'll be a fast race no matter what." O'Neil has hardly been idle. In addition to running a half-marathon recently, she placed second in the popular Shamrock Run in Portland March 17 - behind only Olympic hero Marla Runyan, the legally blind runner from Eugene who finished eighth in the 1,500 in the 2000 Games at Sydney, Australia. O'Neil wasn't close to Runyan's 15K time of 52:20, but no one else came closer than 35 seconds to O'Neil's time of 55:43. "I'm coming down to the Pear Blossom to try to break an hour," says O'Neil. "I should be able to tackle that." The presence of Gutierrez should only help in that regard and won't change her mind-set. "I always would go down to run my best and try to win," says O'Neil, "so that strategy hasn't changed. Running is pretty cut and dried. You run what you can run. "I welcome the competition. I'm a very competitive person. Competition is fun for me." O'Neil concedes that 10 miles is slightly out of her comfort zone, so she'll try to be patient and have something left for the end. At that point, she'll likely still be linked to Gutierrez. Reach sports editor Tim Trower at 776-4479, or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.