Brian profile

Runner's Profile: Carl Legleiter
By Joe Howell and Jim Kornell

Carl Legleiter is the only grad student I've ever met who is entirely self-supported. The normal life for a grad student is to work on grants secured by your dissertation advisor. Writing your own grants is good; writing all of your own grants is more than uncommon. Carl published five peer-reviewed papers as an undergrad, including a sole-author paper. If not entirely unheard-of, that is also very rare. His algorithm for determining streambed morphology from remote-sensing images is potentially a basic change in how that problem is solved (and how it's solved matters to planners, builders, ecologists, and anyone else who needs to understand how water flows in riverbeds.) He's also a really nice guy, and not nearly the academic monk you might think from the above.

Shoot, with Annie as his fiancee, his life is just about perfect, even if he does have to write grant proposals.

Field work on Soda Butte Creek, Yellowstone National Park

Name: Carl Legleiter
Age: 26
Nicknames: Lifter, Legs, Lance Leglifter, Dude, Bruce, the Jackal
Hometown: I was born in Hays, Kansas, but moved to Colorado when I was less than a year old. We moved around Colorado a bit while I was growing up, and I went to grade school in Colorado Springs and high school in Denver.
Employment: I'm a graduate student in Geography at UCSB. I study river channels and I am currently working on a salmon habitat restoration project on the Merced River in the Central Valley.
Family: I'm engaged to Annie Toth (better known as the Bonecrusher). My father Floyd looks just like Fabio and investigates white collar crime, saving the world from financial ruin one bank statement at a time. My mother Joan, who doesn't look anything like Fabio, is a med tech and enjoys playing the stock market. My brother Kyle lives in Hollywood, enjoys death marches in the San Gabriels, and has devoted his life to finding the ultimate burrito. My sister Erica, better known as Sweet Pea, works at the NIH in Maryland and loves the rain.

Other sports, hobbies, interests, etc.: Gymnastics, ice skating, and motocross. Actually, that's a lie - those all fall in the class of "non-Carl" activities. I enjoy hiking, baseball, and stuffed animals. I used to think they didn't have feelings, but they do.
Favorite Food: Oats.
My friends describe me as: A stinkin' intellectual.
My trademark expression is: Yup. You might expect something more intelligent than that, but you'd be wrong.
If money were not a consideration, I would love to: Do what I'm doing now without applying for grants or looking for ways to fund my research.
In the next 5 years, I hope to: Beat my dad to retirement.
In the next 10 years, I hope to: Mow the grass at a minor league ballpark. With my dad, of course. [Ed note: the reader may wish to check fiancee Annie's ten-year plans for an entertaining contrast.]
Accomplishments: I'm engaged to a beautiful young woman who crushes bones, I eat oats every day, and I'm in a position to make a difference for something that is very important to me: free-flowing rivers.

Favorite Distance and PR (post collegiate): Half-marathon - 1:12:58 at SB Half in 2002.
Best Race and Why: Lewis and Clark Half-Marathon in Bozeman, Montana, where I went to college. I ran 1:15 on a challenging, largely off-road course - the first race I'd ever won.
Worst Race and Why: Tom Gage Classic my freshman year of college - 5,000 windy, lonely meters of agony. I'd trained really hard all year, but as a red-shirt I had only one chance to race, in a dinky meet on a lousy day.
Average Weekly Mileage (last 12 months): around 70, but I often suffer from "academic injuries," including field work.

Favorite Local Race: Orchard to Ocean
Most Memorable Running Experience: Training for cross-country over the summer with my best friend and teammate Jason Schlarb. We traveled all over southwestern Montana to run on forest roads and trails and soak in a stream afterward.
Favorite place ot run: Cottonwood Trail outside Bozeman.
Glory Days PR: 20:28 4-mile Turkey Trot in Denver my freshman year in college (1997).

Realistic Running Goals for this Year: 33:33 for 10K, 54:59 for ten miles, and top five for our MSU Alumni team at the Hood-to-Coast relay in Oregon.
Wildly Optimistic Running Goals for this year: 8:59 at Vicki's, 1:09 at the SB half.
Lifetime Running Goals: Beat Jim Kornell's marathon PR (2:34); then I could die happy.

Local Running Heroes & Why: Gregg Horner is a very bad man, but there are a lot of candidates. I admire Wally Marantette and John Brennand for their efforts putting on races. Aaron Gillen is a class act, too.
Personal Training Tips: Patience is critical, and so is self-awareness. One of the harder lessons for me to learn has been how to deal with my zeal. I've come to realize that it's important to give yourself somewhere to go during your base training and to build up steadily so that you feel like you're improving rather than maintaining when you want to race well.
Why I Run: Because running is simple, pure, and beautifully primitive.

I love runners who: Cheer for others during races.
I don't care for runners who: Run on treadmills when it's a beautiful day outside.
Suggestions for local races: I'd like to see a race on either More Mesa or the Ellwood Bluffs, if we ever get permission. A relay race would be nice, too.
Suggestions for SBAA: Keep up the good work. The SBAA has been one of the best parts of living in Santa Barbara.

My views on: Life - keep your moral standards high and your living standards low and you will be happy and free.
Add anything: If you live on Earth, geomorphology matters to you.
Favorite Quote: "The mark of an educated man is to entertain a thought without accepting it." - Socrates.

SBAA Member since 2002