Run to Win

The 4^th Weekly Back Cove race was last evening, and the photos are already online. I especially enjoyed the photo of the guy pretending to be my logo in front of the banner!

All of the fast guys were out last night, which almost made me regret my decision to run slow this week. (Almost.)

Matt Lane led the way to this season’s first sub-16 race in the series, winning in 15:53. He seems to have gotten a little more training in during his second year of law school than he did during his first year. Christian Muentener was 15 seconds behind him, followed by another 3 sub-18 minute performances. Elise Moody-Roberts led the women through the finish with a time of 20:20.

I actually ran about 3 minutes faster than I was expecting to. My wife did not have class last night so I ran with her, and she warned me that she wanted to run slow since she did speed work on Tuesday night. Early in the race, she was having trouble figuring out why she was so out of breath until I pointed out to her that we were running faster than I’ve run with her at any point this season. She slowed down enough to catch her breath, but I let her set the pace and she quickly picked it back up again. We ran through in about the mid-25s, just over 5:00/km and 3 minutes faster than she ran a couple of weeks ago when she was working harder. It’s nice to see her making big gains like that.

Unfortunately, she wore last year’s bib number to the race, so her name got recorded as somebody else in the results and that had to be fixed. She keeps her number in her glove box and didn’t realize that there were 2 bibs in there. She had trouble figuring out why the safety pins had already rusted, but it didn’t occur to her that her number was more than twice as high as it was supposed to be (159 instead of 76.) Once we figured out why her name wasn’t in the original results, I made her throw last year’s bib number out.

Only 2 weeks left until the initial series standings begin to take shape.

(Full Results – Photo Credit: David Colby Young)

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.

The Irish Road Rover 5k was yesterday morning in Portland, and the weather was fantastic. It was a very fast race for a season opener in Maine, with a winning time of 15:44 by Ethan Hemphill. Two other folk made it under 16 minutes, Kevin Tilton and Chris Muentener. There were also 5 other people under 17 minutes; this bodes for a fast season all around. As about average for most races in Maine, despite some fast time there were only two men in their 20s in the top 10.

Christine Snow-Reaser won the women’s race in 19 minutes and 22 seconds. Mid-Coast Multisport won the corporate race.