A big weekend locally for the 180 Energy Runners.
First, Zac Freudenburg edged Big River Running rival Karl Gilpin in the St. Louis Track Club Half-Marathon. Freudenburg’s time of 1 hour, 8 minutes, 21 seconds was 25 seconds faster than Gilpin, two-time winner of the GO! St. Louis Marathon.
180 team captain Jeff Bockhorn reports that Freudenburg, who finished ahead of Gilpin in this year’s GO! Marathon,  took a big lead after two miles, through the streets of Clayton. Gilpin, who prefers to start slow and make up ground, picked up his pace through Forest Park.
Freudenburg told Bockhorn that Gilpin had closed to about 20 feet, to the point, “I could hear footsteps.”
But Freudenburgh pushed the pace on a hill near the Muny parking lot and opened the lead in the final mile, near Clayton High School.
Freudenburg had a bit of extra motivation because he had to withdraw because of illness a month ago from the World Long Distance Mountain Championships in Austria.
His next goal is quirky and ambitious: he hopes to set world record for pushing a stroller in a marathon, in the Route 66 marathon on Nov. 22 in Tulsa. The most recent prep race for Freudenburg and his 10-month-old son Liam was the the O’Fallon YMCA 15K, in which the pair finished first - ahead of all the non-stroller-pushers.
On Saturday, Whalen took first place and set a course record in the Frankenstein 50K Endurance Run held, appropriately, in Frankenstein, MO.