Beardless in Falmouth

A hirsute Tom Derderian does battle with Bill Rodgers at Falmouth in 1976

The Falmouth Road Race is a venerable New England tradition stretching back over 35 years, and competitors in this year's event were treated to a retrospective that included the above archival photo in the race program. Fortunately, full-facial hair coverage is no longer part of the Falmouth tradition. Our (mostly) clean-shaven team headed down to the Cape for the weekend and hoped for cool, dry weather. Several members of the team, in a thrifty move reminiscent of GBTC's glory days, pitched tents in a Falmouth campground the night before the big race.

Race day dawned sunny and not too humid, but temperatures rose quickly as the 10am race start approached. After spending our warm-up time trying to spot famous runners (Billy Rodgers was there once again, as were Meb Keflezighi and a slew of other elites from all over the world) we lined up right behind them in Woods Hole. After 3 miles of rolling hills with some shade, the course becomes completely exposed to the sun as it follows the shoreline, and at this point the race becomes a battle against the heat. Christy Bonstelle and Rod Hemingway reported that they managed to find 15 seconds of shade as the Hood blimp passed overheard.

Towards the finish we passed a few elite runners who had slowed to a walk, presumably having failed to gauge their effort correctly in the heat. In the end all GBTC's representatives acquitted themselves well, with Kipp Ortenburger leading our men's team in 69th place overall (59th male), while Sloan Siegrist, in a welcome return to racing, was 36th among women and GBTC's first female. Full GBTC results (and 1st place times) below. The race is 7.0 miles, but seems longer.
Complete results here.

Men (overall places)
1. Micah Kogo 00:31:53
69. Kipp Ortenburger 00:38:43
82. Kit Wells 00:39:39
84. Brad Kozel 00:39:47
93. Bruce Davie 00:40:20
134. Rod Hemingway 00:42:26
146. Pete Warrington 00:43:03
937. Norm Robbie 00:54:28


Women (gender places)
1. Catherine Ndereba 00:36:31
36. Sloan Siegrist 00:44:26
43. Laura Hayden 00:46:13
46. Katie Famous 00:46:43
64. Liz Ortenburger 00:48:27
77. Christy Bonstelle 00:49:01