As I sit down with Coach Lundo I jump right into a pressing matter of the summer - how to acclimate to the heat. He shares a tip he's had his runners in Minnesota use to do a winter to summer acclimation as well as how long he usually sees it take for real heat acclimation to occur.

I ask him about how he came to running and he tells me about revelations he had as a kid about where his talents lay versus where his dreams wanted to take him.

We then talk about his transition from shorter endurance races to post collegiate competition in the marathon resulting in his 3 olympic trial appearances.

I pose to him a simple question: if sprinting is largely genetic, is long distance running also genetic or is it more trainable?

In the middle of my talk with Coach Lundo I ask him about his work as head coach of Team USA Minnesota - how does he recruit athletes and what are their daily lives like?

In an effort to help feel better about my own collegiate career being constantly sidetracked by injuries I ask Chris whether his time at Stanford was derailed at all by injury - his answer was at least a little comical.

I ask him about one of his graduate research studies where he hoped to figure out how to accurately predict an athlete's marathon time through shorter distance testing.

In the last segment of my talk with Coach Lundo I ask him about another study he conducted where he tested to see if there were any significant effects of using plyometrics for recreational runners training for a marathon.

We talk a little about the problems with athletic studies - the shortfalls that are somewhat necessary and errors he sees in other studies that occur.

A new study he's helping facilitate with a grad student seeks to verify data that's not easily attributed, but often cited from hillrunner.com

As our talk winds down Chris shares a short, but funny story about adventures in modifying the default setup of a treadmill to accommodate marathon training for hilly courses.

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