Race of the Month
Vermont City Marathon,
The CRC had entered three teams and one marathoner for this traditional
Memorial Day Week-end event. I strongly encourage everyone to participate
in events like this one, as it provides an opportunity to
see fellow club members in a more social setting.
Photos of the weekend...
Bruce Davie's take on the relay...
As captain of the mixed open A team and also organizer of the relay weekend,
I went into the weekend feeling quietly confident. We had enough hotel rooms
booked, we had a dinner reservation for pre-race night, we had a post-race
cook-out strategy, our pool practice at Flat Top Johnny's had been
excellent - the only uncertainty was: how would the running go? And how many
runners would drop out due to injury before Sunday?
Well, we managed to field 3 full teams, with only one runner (Christy
Muldoon) being called upon to run twice, replacing the injured
Diane. The
overall results were, I think, a tribute to the depth and esprit de corps of
CRC. Our mixed teams took first and 5th places out of 275 teams, and our
womens' team took 7th out of 63. This last result was even more amazing when
considering that 80% of the runners on that team had excellent excuses for
running slow: Dana had a freshly re-sprained ankle that almost kept her out
of the race; Beth was in the second week of post-marathon recovery; Jodi was
last spotted at a track workout sometime in the last millenium; and Christy
was running her second leg of the day.
As for the mixed team that I captained, it was one of those rare days when
everything exceeded our best expectations. While it is challenging to
determine your place in the field (due to lack of any marking or color
coding to distinguish mixed, men's and women's teams) we were pretty
confident that we were in first place from the first leg onwards. By the
time I took the handoff from Jeff at the 20.6 mile mark, we were 7th overall
and no woman had been seen on any team close to us, so we were pretty
confident of our lead in the mixed division.
I set out on my 5.6 mile leg feeling relieved not to be chasing Erin
Sullivan (as I had done without success last year) and proceeded to catch a
couple of marathon runners. I took my mile splits and found them to be in
the 5:45 range which seemed about right. I was quite surprised when a
marathon runner caught up with me and threatened to pass - he was obviously
having a strong finish. (I did manage to get ahead of him as I picked up my
pace with 2 miles to go but it was hardly a fair contest.) Coming into the
park I kicked hard to ensure that no team would pass me, and was once again
astonished to find just how far you have to go beyond the finish line as you
loop around the park and then come back to the finish. But I held it
together and reached the line in 2:30:26, an improvement of more than 2
minutes over CRC's previous record for this course (and a time that would
have won last year). That's 5:44 per mile as a team average. After a few
tense minutes caused by an erroneous announcement of a mixed open team
finishing ahead of us, we were greatly relieved to find that not only had we
finished first but that the winning margin was 10 minutes. In all, an
excellent warmup for the serious part of the weekend - the post-race party
and pool tournament.
Results from the captain for the women's team Beth Bolyn:
The CRC women's team performed very well. You could say that we were the
racing wounded with participants suffering various complaints such as
returning from a 3 month trip to India where running was impossible, a
twisted ankle, very little recent training, marathon recovery, and a second
time racer (Christy), having run an earlier leg for the Suicide 5. Dana
ran a strong first leg (3.3 miles) at a much faster than expected pace.
The only challenge was finding her in the crowd of people and volunteers
yelling at us to get back. I ran the second leg and felt good, considering
my marathon recovery. I was able to cheer Christy during my leg as she ran
back toward the exchange, but missed Drew running for our CRC A team.
Again, it was a challenge to find our leg 3 runner, Shelley in the crowd,
but there she was, much to my relief to take on leg three and the huge
uphill finish. Dana and I counted all the women teams ahead of us at the
3/4 exchange point and realized we were not doing nearly so badly as we
thought. Shelley finished strong as she flew up the hill and passed off to
Jody, who also performed at a much faster pace than she expected.
Anticipating a finish around the 3:30 mark (adjusted from our original
3:40), Shelley and I completely missed Christy's 3:22ish strong finish,
which placed us 7th in our division of more than 60 women's teams! CRC
women rock!
Finally, from our lone marathoner: Mark P. Smith
As the club's sole full marathoner, I posted a PR by 8 minutes in
this, my third marathon, but still undershot my goal by a substantial
margin. Unlike my run last year, when the close to 90 degree weather
made just finishing a victory, this year we had near perfect running
conditions. How they made those hills bigger this time around is still
a mystery to me! So my goal of running close to, if not under, 4
hours, still eludes me with this 4:22. I ran the first half on pace,
but ran out of steam shortly thereafter and just had to hang on until
the finish. Unfortunately, my results are motivating me to train that
much harder for my fall marathon (unfortunate only because I am
imagining all those long training runs). I will say that this is still
one of my favorite races with great runner support, a fun host City and
beautiful surrounding countryside. Many thanks to Bruce and Missy for
waiting long after their own finishes to see me cross the finish line.
