Run to Win

The 2006 Yarmouth Clam Festival official results are now available.

In a repeat of their victories at the Portland Sea Dogs Mother’s Day 5K, Ethan Hemphill, 34, of Freeport and Kristin Barry, 32, of Scarborough claimed top honors at the 25th annual Clam Festival Classic 5-Miler.

Hemphill overcame a challenge from Gorham’s Mike Downing, completing the course in 26 minutes, 15 seconds — nine seconds ahead of Downing. Yarmouth’s Christian Muentener, the 2003 champion, placed third in 26:32.

Barry’s time of 28:46 was good enough for a 31-second victory over Sheri Piers of Falmouth. Erica Jesseman, 17, of Scarborough rounded out the top three in 29:34.

See yesterday’s write-up for my own thoughts and memories of the Yarmouth Clam Festival Classic.

Ethan Hemphill won the 41^st running of the Yarmouth Clam Festival Classic. Yarmouth was covered in fog a few hours before the race, and it managed to burn off at just the perfect rate to have a nice and humid Clam Festival Classic 5 mile race. By the time we started our cool down, it had cooled off and was actually quite pleasant for running conditions. The official results are not online yet for the Yarmouth Clam Festival, but here is what I can remember off hand:

Last year, Matt Lane won the Clam Festival Classic in 23:48; nobody came even close this year. The times were not as top heavy for the fastest guys this year, and everyone came through much closer to one another than in the past few.
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This week last year was mostly about football news, with a little blood thrown in.

• An 88 year old man hit some cyclists with his car and disrupted their race, and a 16 year old German attacked the Australian cycling team and killed one of them.
• There was a lot of football news, with Terrell Owens comparing himself to god and giving his early warnings about how he was going to try to derail the Eagles’ season, and Tedy Bruschi announcing that he is sitting out the season following his stroke. Drew Rosenhaus also saved a boy from drowning last year.

We all know what happened to TO after his offseason antics, and cycling has not gotten a whole lot safer. These days, there are some guys in the UK driving up close and then pushing cyclists off of their bikes as they drive by.

VirtuRace.com is a neat website that I have recently discovered that aggregates all of the race results that they can find and attempts to associate each result with an individual. You can search on an athlete name, and they will present a list of possible matches based on name, age, gender, and location. Once you have created your own profile, you can claim races as yourself or disassociate yourself from races that are not you.
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Wes, over at a Code Geek’s Tail, asks what’s the difference between a treadmill and pavement? He has been running on a treadmill for about 5 years, but has not spent much time running outside. He is thinking of moving his running outdoors and wants to know what the differences are so that he can account for them. Here are a few differences that should be accounted for off of the top of my head:
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Whenever your muscles are feeling a bit sore or overworked, you should remember my motto, “Ice Early, Ice Often.” The first and easiest way to do that is to just grab a bag of ice and slap it on your sore spots. Leave the bag of ice on your leg or joint for 20 minutes, and then take it off for 20 minutes. Put a new bag of ice back on for another 20 minutes if necessary.
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In 21 Days to a Fitter You - Gym Gear over at Abandon Nest, there are a half dozen items that will make going to the gym a much more pleasant experience for a new weight lifter. I agree that having a duffel bag, combination lock, and exercise log are important, and that having a stop watch can make the difference between getting results and wasting your time. However, I disagree with the assertion that weight lifting gloves and a weight belt should be purchased, especially for inexperienced weight lifters. I believe that weight gloves, wrist straps and weight belts are bad for you and that they should be avoided except in limited circumstances.
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It has been a while since I’ve commented on the state of the website, which is a good thing. However, I felt that I should let you all know that I am looking towards getting the hosting problems resolved soon. This site is currently hosted at BlueHost, which served me very well for the first year or so that I was with them. For the last few months, however, they have been having a firewall problem that blocks access to this site 4 or 5 times a day for 30 to 60 minutes at a time. They have also been having power loss problems, which is rather strange as the original reason I went with them was because that sort of problem was not likely given their location.

If the problems persist, then I will be moving the hosting elsewhere. I am exploring the possibility of getting some direct hosting, but if that falls through then I will be sending this website over to DreamHost. I already have a few websites with them and have not had anywhere near the headaches that I have been having with BlueHost.

On another front, I have culled almost 11,000 spam messages from this website over the last few months. It seems to be getting popular. I guess that my audience is one that would like bad ringtones, random drugs, and strange pornographic fetishes. If that describes you, then I’m sorry I’m stopping the unwanted ads from getting to you. A few have slipped through my moderation queue for brief periods, but I get rid of them as soon as I notice them. Since I have myself emailed in two different places and follow the RSS feed, I usually notice pretty quickly.