2009-10-14
Results from DDC 15K, Hartford Marathon, Mohawk Hudson Valley
Delaware Distance Classic 15K recap and results
Pike Creek Valley Running Club put on its signature race on Sunday, the Delaware Distance Classic 15K, beginning at Frawley Stadium on the Christiana Riverfront in Wilmington. Blessed with an morning temperature in the mid-forties, a light breeze, and sunny skies, none of the 268 finishers had to endure temperatures above 60 degrees before the race's end. With race registration over 290, the event had its best attendance since 2004.
The weather helped participants runs some fast times. Joe Dare (49:49), Mark Vilardo (50:07) and Matthew Sandercock (50:55) were the top three men's finsihers. Sandercock was also the first male master with former Distance Classic winner and masters runner Greg Watson (51:40) having to settle for a fourth place as 1st male 40-44.
Female winner Molly Pritz, 21, of Williamsport, PA. was fifth overall. Her time of 51:46 was only 22 seconds off of the all-time female state record set by Wilma Vanonna in 1992 when world class runners were offered bonus money for meeting certain time standards in addition to the regular prize money. Masters women Doureen McCoubrie (58:07) and Julie Hankin (1:01:16) were second and third finishers with McCoubrie also collecting the first master award.
Notable among the finishers was former Olympian Vic Zwolak, who continued his assault on the 70-74 age group state records. His time of 1:08:52 bested the time of club member Don Monagle by several minutes. This is now the third age-group in which Vic hold the 15K state record.
With this race being held in Delaware, where everyone is only one or two steps removed from knowing everyone else, the race was attended by Delaware Attorney General and possible U.S. Senate candidate Beau Biden (1:04:50) and Hallie Biden (1:10:06, 2nd 35-39). Many runners might like to know the secret of maintaining the fitness to run under a seven mile/mile pace since AG Biden spent the last year on a tour of duty in the Green Zone in Baghdad, Iraq.
The Delaware Distance Classic 15K was designated the state championship event for the distance by Mid-Atlantic USA Track and Field and Pike Creek Valley Running Club proudly displayed the banner which proclaimed that. Many of the runners came from the various running clubs which participate in the MA-USATF race series.
Here is a link to pictures of finishers: http://picasaweb.google.com/dedave2/2009DDC15k. Club member Stew Whisenant also took pictures, some of which will be posted on the club website, http://pcvrc.com/, once our webmaster has a chance to deal with them.
PCVRC members who participated for the club in the event as USATF members are listed below with their times and age grades. The club had the third best total for its top five finishers in the race among the clubs. More importantly, PCVRC gained 16 points on fourth place team Greater Philadelphia Track Club, which had closed to being than 15 points behind PCVRC. Participation in the last few events is important because a fourth place overall team finish means the club won't be awarded any money. The next event is the Radnor Five Miler on Sunday, October 25 in Radnor, PA. Go to: http://www.mausatf.org/ and see Grand Prix information for details.
DAVID JAMES NEWARK DE 25
59 32 83.427
EPI CAMACHO WILMINGTON DE 16
57 37 83.280
AUSTIN GEE PHILADELPHIA PA 11
55 23 74.300
KELLY HOROWITZ WILMINGTON DE 38 1 3 5 73.765
DEAN COFFIN CLAYMONT DE 44 1 3 30 70.735
BRUCE HUBBARD NEWARK DE 133 1 16 54 68.205
DIRK SWEIGART NEWARK DE 70 1 8 27 67.787
ROBERT BENNETT NEWARK DE 165 1 21 43 66.673
DAVID McCORQUODALE WILMINGTON DE 160 1 21 8 65.879
JACK HOROWITZ WILMINGTON DE 80 1 9 44 64.914
JOHN SCHULTZ WILMINGTON DE 262 1 46 57 58.407
CLAIRE NEILAN NEWARK DE 172 1 22 47 56.614
Other club finishers and notable achievements:
Epi Camacho - 1st 50-54
David James - 1st 55-59
Kelly Horowitz - 1st 30-34
Dave McSherry - 1:10:37
Bruce Hubbard - 3rd 60-64
Lori Culnane - 1:22:35
Tony Chelpaty - 1:23:24
Rudy Antonini - 1:28:38
Sharon Miner - 1:44:33
Margie Hughes completed a grueling 50 mile trail run in Oil Creek State Park near Titusville, PA. in a time of 11:45:15.
Mohawk Hudson Valley Marathon results:
John Hand - 4:28:04
Paul Isaac - 6:21:44
Paul reports that is a good event at which to try to qualify for the Boston Marathon and this editor concurs.
Cape Henlopen Duathlon (1.5 mi. run, 14 mi. bike, 3.1 mi. run):
Theresa Kauffman - 1:22:04 , 3rd overall female
Theresa recommends this event as a way for runners to begin cross-training by cycling and competing in an event of fairly short distances.
Hartford Marathon - Club members run in CT
Hartford Marathon Results:
Wes Stafford - 3:18:51 Boston Qualifier
Rich Szymanski - 4:02:26
Tricia Szymanski - 4:45:55
See Tricia's story below:
the good, the bad and the ugly........~
Actually, it was really all good ....only the 26.2 was bad and ugly!
Despite some rain off and on, it was a really nice drive up to Hartford on Friday. We arrived at our hotel, went up to our room and the view was beautiful! It was a lovely view of the capitol building located at Bushnell Park - also the start/finish of the marathon. It was really great being, literally, across the street from the start/finish of the marathon.
We walked to the Expo (a mere two blocks from our hotel!) and it was so cool to see Barbara and Tony[Chelpaty] with their "made for medals" booth as soon as we went in! The Expo was small but nice~ easy to get around and plenty of volunteers so no long lines for anything. We got AWESOME shirts!! I did pay for the upgraded shirts and it was well worth it. Navy Blue/ Orange long sleeve tech shirts ~ definitely the nicest marathon shirt I've seen :-). Cool race bags too..they are made of some sort of recyclable material (Hartford is touted as a "green" marathon).
We walked back to the hotel and rested up a bit before meeting for dinner. Jack's[Horowitz] sister, Amy lives in Hartford so she picked the restaurant and we all met up for dinner. Again, close enough that we were able to walk to restaurant! Besides Amy & Steve (her boyfriend), myself and Rich, Wes and "Mu" met up with us as well and we had a great pre-race dinner. Amy needed to carb up too as she was running the half marathon and Steve was doing the 5K (in hindsight, Steve had the right idea!!).
And by the way, the city of Hartford is really, really nice ~ tons of restaurants, brew pubs, and cool shops~!
Marathon morning, up early to log on and check the weather.....90% humidity and 61 degrees at 5:00 AM~~ Yikes!!! Well, at least it was easy to determine if you needed throw aways or not (NOT!). Eating breakfast by 5:30 and had loads of time to hang out before walking over to the start.
Plenty of portalets (yup...apparently in Ct, there's no such thing as a port-a-port, it's a portalet!!) and lines were not bad AT ALL - now given that we literally were across the street, ya wouldn't think I'd be visiting the ole portalets - but, well.....I just had to check them out :-).
So...(ok...it's coming "the bad and the ugly part"). Rich and I walk to the start line (yes, he did not disappear - we hung out the whole time pre marathon) and I went to the 4:15 pace group sign. Well, folks, it was a 4:15 sign - yup - no actual pace leader - just the sign (and that ladies and gentleman should have been my SIGN (omen or whatever you want to call it!). Besides singing the National Anthem, we had an invocation - which I thought was very nice - a first time I have heard that. For supposedly, 10,000 people (1/2 and full started together) it was only a few minutes after I crossed the start line from the initial gun start. Oh, and the pace leader did not show up - but guess who did - oh, yeah..Mr. Sun!! Ugh... And don't ask me why the sun & humidity bothered me so much when we trained all summer in the heat - but somehow this was different. It was pretty crowded running at first and the sun seemed especially hot (??) and I was asking if the course had shady part before I hit mile 1 - so I was getting concerned early.
Ok...because we didn't have a pace leader, I stayed w/ two girls who were standing at the 4:15 sign too. One had a GPS watch and was announcing our times, 9:00/ mile, 8:50/mile....I'm like..hmm....uh.....I can't keep doing this. But, I hung w/ them until Mile 5 or so and actually felt OK but knew it wasn't smart to stay w/ them ~ and I was stopping for water each time and they weren't so I had to run to catch back up w/ them each time. After mile 5, I slowed down to where I thought was a reasonable pace to finish out the race. I saw Rich around mile 9 for me and probably 11/12 for him. I was looking for him in his bright yellow Pike Creek Jersey - but he was shirtless (yeh..it was a tad warm) but I did see him and yelled and he just looked up, frowned and put his thumbs down~I laughed and said "me too". I knew that early, that it must might be a struggle for me. I could hardly wait until 13.1 but also knew when I got to that point that if it was tough to reach the 13.1 mark, 26.2 was probably not going to be a "cake walk". I can't tell you what went wrong but it did. I kept telling myself, you had great training runs, this is NO different, and would re-adjust, in my head, my "finish time". Well, I can tell you, at some point, I'm like, I don't care when I finish, I just want to FINISH. I was holding off using my iPod until Mile 20 thinking I would only need a bit of music for the last 6...cripe..I needed a bit of everything and anything for the last 13! I put my iPod on at mile 19 and just tried to get from water stop to water stop. The course, which was flat for the most part and went thru some very pretty areas, had some hills, the last 10K or so -which, if I hadn't felt so bad, wouldn't have been so bad -but as I was approaching them, I was like UGH.
Okay, the finish line was lined w/ beautiful "mums" down the entire middle of the road - it was really very nice - well, it had to be nice, 'cause I barely noticed anything by that point. Rich was waiting for me at mile 26 and was yelling for me to give him a kiss~ ok....he's adorable and I love him..but I just waved him off ~ I know a measly .2 miles to go but I swear, if I would have stopped for a kiss, I would have not finished. I crossed the finish line and did get an awesome medal!!! I was a bit emotional when I finished, jeez...it wasn't so much my time 4:45 but that I felt awful - like I'd done 50 miles instead ~ if it was a 'fun" 4:45, that would have been a whole different story. One more "ugly"....they ran out of beer! Ok....so that just added insult to injury - no beer for the slackers :-(
Ok..the bad and ugly parts are done. Now, I have to tell you, this was a great marathon actually! There were SO many volunteers at each and every stop. Not only did they give out gu's at the designated stops, but volunteers were riding along on bikes giving out gu's to the runners!! How nice is that?! It was extremely well organized and I would highly recommend it~.
It was nice to just walk a few minutes to our hotel, shower and change and then walk a few blocks up to this brewery for beer and burgers!!
I know, we get caught up in times etc, but we both are grateful to be blessed with the good health to run 26.2 at all.....
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Run, Race, Enjoy!
