Run to Win

Last night was the Maine Track Club annual banquet, celebrating the club’s 30^th birthday. The evening was a lot of fun, with plenty of folks attending, plenty of good food, plenty of door prizes, and a plethora of awards.

The club honored it’s founder, Brian “Ziggy” Gillespie (who was the coach for “Run to Win” when I first moved to Maine and provided the inspiration for this site’s name) for his contributions to Maine running since the 1960s. Ziggy is (as far as I know) the only person that appears in both the Maine Running Hall of Fame as well as the Maine Baseball Hall of Fame. He has coached numerous successful teams throughout the years, put on more races than I could count, and helped make the Maine Track Club what it is today when he started it back in the 1970s.

The table that I was sitting at did pretty well with the awards. We had two folks win gift certificates as door prizes, we had 3 age group awards (myself, Floyd Lavery, and Amy Lilley), I won the Outstanding Contributions award, Martha Lippa received recognition for having run her first marathon, and Carry Buterbaugh won Runner of the Year.

I’d also like to mention the two volunteers of the year, David Colby Young and Don Penta, who do an outstanding job photographing the majority of the races throughout the state. It did make things a little interesting while they were receiving their awards, though, as the folks who had the cameras handed to them then had to figure out how to use them.

David took video of the evening and has a few photographs up on his site, Maine Running Photos.com. Don’s photos will probably appear on the site within the next week or two.

Don Penta and David Colby Young’s photos and videos are now all online for this year’s Safe Passage 5k.

You can view them over at Maine Running Photos.

Here are the links:

• Photo Set 1: Pre-Race & Starting Line
• Photo Set 2: Finish Line (First Half)
• Photo Set 3: Finish Line (Second Half)
• Video 1: Interviews & Starting Line
• Video 2: Awards Ceremony

As mentioned earlier, you can also preview Beth Rand’s photographs of the race if you are interested in purchasing any of the ones that she has taken.

(Photo Credit: Don Penta)

This past weekend was the Cape Elizabeth Mid-Winter 10 Mile Classic, which I wrote about previously. As is usually the case when there is a race in Maine, the Maine Track Club has a collection of photos for your viewing pleasure courtesy of David Colby Young’s website.

Here are the photographers who contributed pictures:

1. David Colby Young
2. Lisa Despres
3. Beth Rand
4. Don Penta

The Portland Trails 10k, aka the Tukey Trot 10k, aka the Trail to Ale, was run this morning. It also played host to the Maine Senior Games. It was rather warm with temperatures near 90º, but a constant breeze kept the course feeling a little cooler. Michael Slinsky won the race in 32:38, followed by Jason Cakouros in 33:15. Christin Doneski won women’s race in 38:20.

Tom Ryan won the Maine Senior Games in 35:52, which was run as part of the same race. He finished almost 10 minutes of second place David Colby Young.
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Don Penta has pictures of the Beach to Beacon finish line available over at David Colby Young’s web journal. The pictures begin around 37 minutes into the race, and include the awards ceremony. In total, there are 660 pictures.

The official pictures from the race have not been released yet.

Update: Official Beach to Beacon photos