Very motivational; it makes me want to go outside and run right now. (Not that I usually need very much to make me want to do that, heheh…)

Here’s the video:

(Hat Tip: David Hananburg)

Here’s a video with her world record toss:

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(More Info: Back Porch Fan House – Hat Tip: Pete Magill)

Curtis Wheeler (01:42:14) brought his overall time down by almost 2 minutes with his win in 17:49 today, which left him in a solid lead for the free shoes this year.

Abbey Gosling (01:54:10) was not present this evening, but nobody even came close to beating her in the series standing.

The win for the women tonight went to Nan Lobo, who ran 20:16 and completed 2 races this season.

The community spirit award went to Craig Whiten (02:19:56), who ran all but 2 of the races this season.

For myself, tonight was the first time that I have run in 45 days. I went out a bit quicker than I needed to but quickly settled into a more appropriate pace. My foot felt fine, which is good, although I am going to come back very slow and easy so that I don’t have to worry about injuring myself again.

I have no plans for my running until January, and have canceled everything I had had scheduled for the rest of the year so I can concentrate on getting better and building back my base.

I’d like to thank Stu Palmer, John Rogers, and Diane Fournier for all the work that they do throughout the Summer to put this series on. Without them, these races couldn’t happen.

I’d also like to thank Colin Ingram and Mizuno for their support, as well as Portland Trails and the Maine Track Club.

This year, we had 2864 finishers from 1203 runners, which is over a 30% increase over 2008. There was 1 person who ran every single week, Richard Dawson (02:26:47). There were 157 people who ran 6 races and found a place on the leaderboard, which is 37 more than last year and 104 more than in 2007. 23 people ran at least 13 of the races.

I hope to see everybody again next May when the 2010 series starts! Thank you for coming out.

(More Info: Full Results – Leader Board – Complete Runner’s List – Photos)

Shawn Rumery led the way tonight, winning the race in 17:08. Jocelyn Olsen clocked 20:57 for her win in the women’s race.

The top of the leaderboard hasn’t changed since yesterday, but it is now 147 runners deep who have all run at least 6 of the races this year.

There are still 2 runners who have run every single race so far, and only have one more to run to have made all 18 on the year.

Don’t forget that next week is the last week of the race series.

(More Info: Full Results – Leader Board – Complete Runner’s List – Photos)

"After last week in Berlin, I had so much confidence.

I really felt like I belonged there."

(Video Source: FloTrack)

Cutting 20.3 seconds off of his personal best (set at the USA Outdoor Championships in 2006), he followed right on the heels of Kenenisa Bekele’s 12:52.32 and Edwin Cheruiyot Soi’s 12:55.03 to become only the 3^rd American to run under 13 minutes in the 5k with his new American Record of 12:56.27.

Bob Kennedy’s American record of 12:58.21 had stood for 15 years. Ritzenhein finished 6^th just over a week ago at the world championships in the 10000m, running 27:22.28, and was the first American in 11^th place in the Olympic Marathon last Summer. His 3^rd place finish was his first trip to the podium on the world track stage.

Congratulations, Dathan! Great run tonight!

(More Info: Men’s Results – Photo Credit: Jean-Pierre)

It doesn’t appear so. This evening at Weltklasse Zurich, the 5^th of 6 meets in the Golden League track series, he outran his closest competitor (Edwin Cheruiyot Soi) by about 2½ seconds to win the race in 12:52.32. That’s almost 4 seconds faster than his world-leading time of 12:56.25 that he ran in Rome earlier this year.

His win means that he’s only 1 race away from splitting a $1 million jackpot for anybody that can dominate their event in the Golden League series. Kerron Stewart is out of the running after her 0.18 second loss to Carmelita Jeter (who won in 10.86 seconds), but Sanya Richards in the 400 (48.94 seconds) and Yelena Isinbayeva in the pole vault (5.06m) are both still dominating their events and could potentially split the jackpot.

Kenenisa has now won 16 straight 5000 meter races. His last loss was to Bernard Lagat by 0.82 seconds at the Norwich Union London Grand Prix on July 28, 2006. In the past week or so he won both the 5000m and 10000m races at the world championships.

His next 5000m race is scheduled for 1 week from tonight on September 4, 2009. He’ll be running in the final meet of the Golden League at the Van Damme Memorial in Brussels.

(More Info: Men’s Results – Women’s Results – Photo Credit: André Zehetbauer)

The race was led by a couple of first time runners on the season, with Jason Scott leading the way in 18:09 and Jennifer Sporzynski winning the women’s race in 22:19.

Curtis Wheeler (01:44:06) and Abbey Gosling (01:54:10) both retain their comfortable leads in the overall standings. We’re now up to 131 runners on the leader board who have run at least 6 races.

There are still 2 runners who have run every single race so far. Hopefully they can make it to the last 3 races. For that matter, hopefully I’ll be able to run at least one more of them before the end of the season…

(More Info: Full Results – Leader Board – Complete Runner’s List – Photos)

There have been 6 different winners in the past 3 weeks since my last update. Emily Durgin (19:10) and Curtis Wheeler (16:56) won on August 8^th. Matt Lunt (17:20) and Kristen Sweeney (20:24) won on August 12^th. Kurt Wente (17:40) and Marita Stressenger won on August 19^th.

Curtis Wheeler has (not surprisingly) taken over the leaderboard with a cumulative time of 1:44:06, 47 seconds ahead of Scott Gorneau. Abbey Gosling has only run once in the past 3 weeks and did not drop her cumulative time of 1:54:10 at all, but she still maintains a comfortable 13 minute lead.

Only 2 people remain who have run every single race so far this year.

I have not gotten to the race at all in the past 3 weeks, nor have I been running. My foot is getting better, but is not well enough to run on yet.

Results:Week 13 – Week 14 – Week 15 – Leader Board – Complete Runner’s List
Photos: Week 13 – Week 15

Fortunately for me, that meant that I was able to volunteer and see the race from a different perspective.

I decided to volunteer with the folks from Atayne at the finish line for 3 reasons:

1. I like Atayne’s environmental philosophy and thought it would be good to help them out.
2. My 11 year-old niece was already signed up to help out at the finish line and this allowed me to spend more time with her (and coincidentally simplified our pre-race travel arrangements.)
3. I had a broken foot and if I was able to run with the trash runners behind the race I probably would have just competed in the actual race!

Surprisingly, the morning started out pretty well, with my niece and both nephews not needing too much coaxing to wake up and get moving. We were out the door around the time I wanted to be leaving and arrived in plenty of time at Fort Williams Park, where I hobbled around on my crutch with Morgan.

We met up with Becca Darr from Atayne, who filled us in on what we would be expected to do today:

Our job was to collect the D-Tags off of people’s shoes. The D-Tags were replacing the ChampionChips that have been used in the past. They are more accurate, easier to put on your shoe, and are disposable, which saves on the effort of having to collect them at the finish line.

Just because they were disposable, though, didn’t mean that they should be destined for a landfill. For most of the morning, I wasn’t sure exactly how they got recycled, but then I met Bruce Rayner from Athlete’s For a Fit Planet, who works with ChronoTrack to recycle the tags. Apparently, they incinerate them and then use the metal ash to create new chips:

Setting up to collect the chips was interesting, because we had no bins to collect them in and no set place to be.

We thought about collecting chips after folks had a chance to get some water, but we were kicked out of that spot in short order because the finish area wasn’t designed for us to collect chips there. Of course, it was designed almost exactly the same as it had been last year when chips were collected, except without the ropes to keep people from getting away with their chip, but we moved anyway.

Instead, my niece and I set up shop in the field with the food tents, about 20 feet away from the Maine Running Company and Atayne tents. Of course, I only saw a few people from the Reach the Beacon training program despite being near the tent, since I spent most of the morning down on my knee cutting the tags off of shoes.

We were supposed to have bins to collect the tags, but they never got provided to us so instead I was given a trash barrel. Unfortunately, that meant that I had to continually fish trash out of it because people thought that it was a trash barrel.

About an hour after the finishers started coming through I finally managed to get an actual trash barrel and a box for compostables and a bag for recyclables, which helped.

Listening to the race over the loudspeakers was pretty fun. I considered watching at the finish line and then heading back to my spot, but my foot was aching from wandering around on it all morning so I stayed put and just listened.

Of course, they stopped announcing the progress of the race once the runners entered the park and the media truck was no longer right in front of them, so I never found out who won until the awards ceremony a few hours later.

I was kept pretty busy collecting the tags, and every once in a while somebody would say my name and I’d glance up and get to see somebody I knew. I started the morning cutting tags with my pocket knife, but eventually I took the scissors from my niece and just had her direct people over to me. I managed to only cut my finger once, and that was with the scissors, I think.

We really should have had a few extra people to collect chips, and along with the special bins for it we should have had a sign. I probably only got about 1000 or 1200 tags at the very most, out of 6000 runners. Nobody knew that we’d be collecting the tags, I don’t think.

Once the awards started the crowd had thinned quite a bit, so I was able to stop and chat with folks that I knew as they walked by and hear how they ran.

My sister and my nephew came by, sporting their new Atayne shirts and with big smiles on their faces.

They’d had a great time running behind everybody picking up all the trash as they went.

There were a few jogging strollers with trash bags hanging off the sides, one of which actually had kids in it and the other that was solely used as a rolling trash can. I think about a half dozen people total ran.

After that, I collected up my family, said good bye to everybody, and my wife and I went to the beach for a few hours to frolic in the water and lay in the sand.

Given the whole broken foot thing, we spent more time laying in the sand than playing in the water, although it did feel good.

Further Reading if you want more information:

• Atayne
• Athletes for a Fit Planet
• Beach to Beacon