Run to Win

The Back Cove Weekly Series is now down to the final 2 weeks with the conclusion of tonight’s race. It was a rather warm 82 degrees and sunny out this evening, although it cooled off fast as the sun went down after the race. The air was pretty dry, which led to a lot of stone dust getting kicked up on the trail, even by the dogs that were trotting along.

The University of Southern Maine sent it’s entire compliment of runners to the race this evening, which led to a much larger field up front than we usually see. There were 7 people under 17 minutes, and over 30 people under 19 minutes. They should send those guys out more often during the Summer, is my thinking! Tonight’s race had 123 finishers total.

Tyler Jasud (01:39:33) finished right behind Dan Franek, both clocking 16:22. As far as I can tell, 3 of the top 10 were Dirigo runners and the rest were USM runners.

The field was so deep tonight that it pushed the first place woman back to 49^th place. Lauren Lohmeyer won the race in 21:22, 62 seconds ahead of Carol Fanning.

There was not a whole lot of movement at the top of the leader board this week, and I don’t expect there to be for the rest of the season. There were 5 new additions to the board, bringing the total number of runners who have competed in at least 6 of the races to 109.

I was running a little late getting out of work since I wanted to finish what I was working on, but that didn’t leave me much time to get to the starting line. I went out at a warm up pace for a short time, but my warmup basically turned into a tempo run as I got to the Back Cove about 6 minutes faster than usual. I didn’t think it would be worth running intervals as a result and just extended the tempo run to 8 miles to include the race. With all of the USM runners, though, it would have been a great night to do intervals and have people to chase.

(Full Results - Leader Board)

The Back Cove 5k Race Series concluded tonight with some great competition. Mark Goettel led three other runners to sub-17 times in a blazing 16:37.

For the past few weeks, people have been making fun of me for worrying about who might place first in the overall series since I had a pretty comfortable lead. I knew that Scott Gorneau (4^th in 16:57) and Chris Gatchell both had a chance to catch me, and I knew that they were going to go for it. Chris came in right behind Mark to take second place in 16:39, and was only 6 seconds behind me in the overall standings with a cumulative time of 01:42:35.

Carol Fanning and myself took the series wins. Carol had a more comfortable 1 minute lead over second place than I did. We are pictured below with Colin Ingram, the New England Mizuno representative, who came to Portland from New Hampshire to present us with our gift certificates and to watch the race. The final standings are available by clicking on the picture, and the series race leaders are listed below the picture.

2007 Back Cove 5k Winners

I would like to thank everybody for coming out for the series this year. There were almost 900 runners this year who ran at least one race, and 54 runners who ran at least 6 races. There were 3 races with more than 100 people, and other than May 16^th (with 17 people) there were at least 49 people racing every week! Taken as a group, each race averaged over 73 finishers, with 1,315 people crossing the line this year.

A very special thanks needs to be given to Stu Palmer for all of the hard work that he has done making sure that the event went off without a hitch every week, and to all of the sponsors who made the race possible. That includes John Rogers of the Maine Running Company, Portland Trails, and Mizuno running shoes.

(Photo credit goes to Stu Palmer!)

Tonight was the 16^th Back Cove Weekly 5k. The number of people who ran dropped off a bit from recent weeks, despite excellent running weather, but 58 people got to enjoy the race.

There are only 2 races left in the series, and I recommend getting out there for at least one of them. They will both be on Wednesday night at 6:00 pm over the next two weeks.

It came a bit late, but I finally implemented a feature that will allow you to look up a runner’s race history throughout the series. Just click on their name in the weekly results. I still need to update the series standings to also link to the history pages.

The standings for the race shoes is anything but decided on the men’s side, although Carol Fanning has a full 1 minute lead over Emily Hickey.

For the men, Blaine Moore (your ever-so-modest author!) is currently in the lead and has been for a few weeks now. For the past two weeks I have been running in the high 16-minute range, bringing my cumulative time down by over 3 minutes in the past 4 weeks. Unfortunately, with a 50k in a week and a half, my time is not likely to improve too much.

Scott Gorneau has moved into 2^nd place with his first week on the leader board, and he has a few slow races to drop off from early in the season now that he has the required 6 races under his belt. He is currently only a minute and a half back from taking first place.

Scott will have his work cut out for him, though, because Chris Gatchell is poised right now to win the entire thing despite not appearing on the leader board. He is required to run the last two races in order to be eligible for the year’s supply of shoes from Mizuno, but his average race time is only 1 second behind mine.

Eric Neutz is currently in 3^rd place. He led the leader board for most of the Summer, but he will have his work cut out for him to run fast races over the next two weeks now that his cross country season has started again. In fact, I think that it would be silly of him to try.

So, I hope to see any local readers next week or the week after for a last jaunt around the Boulevard in downtown Portland, Maine. Don’t forget that the Portland Trails “Trail to Ale” 10k is the weekend following the last race, and runs part of the race along the Back Cove 5k course.