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

Repeating last year’s performance, Ed Muge led the way in 28:05, about 13 seconds behind last year’s time. 11 of those 13 seconds came from the first mile, which went out at only 4:23 this year and allowed for a lead pack of about 12 people to stick together for a few miles. Local favorite Ben True was a part of that pack but fell off the back side, only to pick up the pace and finish in the top 10 with a new Maine Record time of 29:11!

Speaking of Maine Records, Sheri Piers took down the Maine women’s record by 20 seconds with her 34:17 finish (also in the top 10!) Fantastic! That was just over 2 minutes behind Kenya’s Irene Limika, who won the race in 32:06.

There were 5613 finishers this morning, and I was not one of them. I broke my foot last week so I volunteered with the Atayne crew instead and cut D-Tags off of people’s shoes to recycle them with the help of my 11 year old niece. My nephew and my sister ran with the Sweep Crew picking up all of the trash that was left behind on the course, so hopefully we left things a little cleaner than they were before the race and got everything separated into recyclables, compostables and actual trash.

I’ll have another update probably tomorrow about the volunteer experience with the race, which certainly a different way to experience a large race like this.

(More Info: Full Results)

Ed Parrot won his debut weekly 5k appearance with a time of 17:20. Emily Durgin repeated her performance from 2 weeks ago, winning the women’s race in 18:36.

cutting 20 seconds off of her overall time on the leader board to 1:54:21. There weren’t any changes at the top of the men’s leader board, with me still leading the way in 1:45:59.

The leaderboard gained 5 new runners this week and now stands at 89 runners having run at least half of the 12 races so far. The list of folks who have run all 12 races is down 1 from last week to only 3 people.

Abbey Gosling may have come in second place last night with her 19:05 finish, but it was fast enough to drop her overall time down another 10 seconds to 1:54:10 (a 19:01 average.) I am still sitting at the top of the men’s leaderboard in 01:45:59, despite not running the past few weeks.

It’s also quite unlikely that I will run at any point in the next few weeks. My injury from last week has become much worse, and though I seem to be recovering relatively quickly I am not planning on trying to come back too fast. Maybe by September I’ll be able to run in the last few races.

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