The Physical Therapy 8k in Brunswick, Maine went off this morning at 9:00. The weather was on the cool side, but it was a beautiful day for running. There were some breezes along the course, especially early in the race, but the headwinds were not too strong. There were 164 finishers.
Dirigo beat out PR Racing/Moose Milers by about 8 minutes, taking 4 of the top 5 in the race. Ethan Hemphill (25:36) and Josh Zolla (26:45) led the way for the entire race. TJ Hesler from PR Racing came in a solid 3rd place with a time of 28:08, followed by Rob Fast (28:26) and Blaine Moore (28:49). Marjorie Graff completed the scoring for Dirigo in 31:57, winning the women’s race by over a minute. Tiki Humphries (33:09) and Jessica Fortin (33:28) raced it out for 2nd and 3rd place.
PR Racing’s scoring was completed by Floyd Lavery (29:12), Carl Moulton (30:10), Tom Hathaway (30:38), and Mike Grant (31:27). The Maine Track Club and Bath Iron Works were also represented in the team scoring.
Tom Thoman of Cornish won the Physical Therapy and Physical Therapy Assistents class of the race in 31:34. Marjorie Graff was the second finisher.
The race was well run up until the last few miles. Registration was very easy, and the race was a very reasonable $10 for day of registration. They also split out the pre-registration fees into people who wanted a t-shirt and people who wanted to pay less, which I have never seen before. I think that that was a great idea.
There were good instructions at the start of the race, but it really fell apart in the last mile. They had somebody out by the road that was not giving very clear directions about where to go once you got back to Brunswick High School. I was told to follow the path and then go to the right of the building. What you actually supposed to do is follow the path until the road turns away from it, and then cut across the grass and follow the road. They did send a flagger out, but the top 10 or 15 people did not have the benefit of knowing where to go unless they had run the race before. I was not one of the people that went the right away. It did not affect the overall standings since everybody was spaced out pretty well.
The awards more than made up for the poor direction at the end, however. Race results were up very fast (and online very fast as well), and there was cash and gift certificates for almost everyone who placed overall, for a team, for the physical therapy class, and for their age group. There were also some great raffle prizes, including a pair of custom orthotics.
The pickings were a little slim for the food after the race, but there was plenty of bananas and yogurt left when I got done from running the course again and I may have just missed the majority of what was available. Runners were welcome to post race massages in the high school cafeteria. There were plenty of rest rooms available, as well as showers.
This race certainly gets a recommendation for next year.
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