Run to Win

Women and Tri-for-a-Cure participants have an opportunity tomorrow night (Thursday, June 4^th) to run with Joan Benoit Samuelson along the 5k running course from the race:

This Thursday evening, June 4th at 6pm, women runners and “Tri For A Cure” participants can “Run With Joanie” (as in Benoit-Samuelson) and preview the 5K course route on the Southern Maine Community College campus, in South Portland, for the 2nd Annual Tri For A Cure Triathlon on August 9th. Cost is $25 with all proceeds going to the Maine Cancer Foundation. The first 100 women will receive a Nike (of course) tech tee.

If you are looking for a preview of the course or just want an opportunity to chat with Maine’s favorite runner, then you can sign up by clicking here.

(More Info: Maine Today – Tri-for-a-Cure)

As part of their Second Tuesday Speakers Club, the Freeport Performing Arts Center will be hosting a presentation by Joan Benoit Samuelson, the first female Olympic Marathon gold medalist and the creator of the Beach to Beacon 10k. Joanie will discuss the experiences that she has had throughout her life and will take questions from the audience.

Admission is free and the program begins at 7:15 p.m. next Tuesday, October 14^th. The presentation should run through about 8:30 p.m. The Freeport Performing Arts Center is located at 30 Holbrook Street, next to the high school, in Freeport, Maine.

The Second Tuesday Speakers Club (2ndTSC) program is modeled on the 19th century Chatauqua speakers who went from town to town for a dollar and a free dinner to speak in a lecture hall before moving on.

Such lectures helped persons to broaden their views of life by being exposed to the experiences and thinking of others, …and so we hope will happen here in this fascinating series.

About a year ago, I discussed the environmental impact of running and offered some suggestions about how you can lessen the damage that you personally cause by running. This year, I’d like to revisit the topic by focusing specifically on the impact caused by marathons.

The Problems

Photo by Don FulanoThe vast majority of marathons are not very environmentally conscious. Even race directors that are environmentally aware have an uphill battle getting their hordes of volunteers to cooperate with their initiatives. Trash and recyclables do not get separated at the source, making it an impossible task to separate the trash later and leading to it all being thrown into a dumpster or two (or more.) It can be extremely time consuming to separate the white cups from the gatorade cups from the cardboard from the plastic jugs from the general trash left behind at an aid station.

Aid stations aren’t the only problem. Most runners will think nothing of tossing their trash off of the side of the road as they are running, rather than carrying their empty gel packets or water bottles until they reach an aid station with a trash can.

“Each year I drive my truck the entire length of the course at 10mph and stop a million times to pickup those **ing packets and stray cups,” said Erik Boucher, the water stop coordinator for the Maine Marathon.
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Olympic 5,000 and 10,000 meter runner Kara Goucher has announced that she is going to make her marathon debut at New York City this year, and that she has been planning on running it since she rode in the media vehicle during last year’s race.

“Last year when I watched the race first hand, I decided I wanted to run in New York,” said Goucher. “The ING New York City Marathon is one of the most prestigious, and the course is challenging, so I’m excited for my first marathon to be this one. I have a strong emotional connection to New York, as it is where I was born, where my family lives, and where my father passed away. This one will be personal for me and my family.”

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Topics this week last year were dominated by the Beach to Beacon.

• I started the week off by offering 4 ways to determine the length of a pool in response to a reader question on the matter.
• Maine Running Company hosted a talk by John L Parker, Jr. where he discussed his history as a runner and as a speaker. He read the first chapter of his as yet unpublished sequel to Once a Runner.
• The rest of the week was all about the B2B. First, it was announced that everybody would have a chance to run with the elites at the Back Cove race following the Beach to Beacon. There was also an interview between Joan Samuelson and Dave McGillivray published on the B2B site that offered some insights into the founding of the race. I offered up a few tips about running the race and provided a breakdown of the results after it was over.
• This week two years ago, I discussed why it is important to hydrate yourself after a race as well as before and during the race and I went into quite a bit of detail after being asked, “What is a taper?” I wrote a review of the movie Running on the Sun, about the Badwater ultramarathon.

The 10^th annual TD Banknorth Beach to Beacon 10k was this morning in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. As always, it was a closely contested race that is great for spectating. While the temperature was not very high during the race, it was quite humid. Unlike last year, the fog never burned off so that combined with a low tide caused the race to not quite lead up to it’s reputation as one of the more scenic New England races.

Leading the way was Ed Muge of Kenya, who had to battle it out with Maregu Zewdie of Ethiopia to earn his 0.6 second win in 27:52.4. Duncan Kibet fell back to 4^th place in 28:21 this year.

The women’s race was also pretty exciting, despite there being a slightly larger lead. The race was won by masters runner Edith Masai of Kenya in 31:55.6, followed by Liudmila Biktasheva of Russia (although she now resides in New York, I believe.)

The Maine race was won by 22 year old Ben True in 31:01.8, over 40 seconds ahead of a pack of Mainers that all came in right under 32 minutes. Women’s winner Kristin Barry set the Maine record, dropping it by over 6 seconds to 34:37.1. She was working hard for that win, and you can see how much pain she was in at the finish line in the news video, but she regained her composure by the time I turned to see her come through the finishing chute.

There were a total of 5248 finishers, the first time that the race has cracked 5000 finishers in it’s 11 year history. That the race sold out in about a day this year is just a small testament to the popularity of what Joan Samuelson has brought to her hometown.

My race went pretty well; I just barely run negative splits (17:05/17:03) to finish in 34:08.1, getting outsprinted by PR Racing’s TJ Hesler to the finishing line. I felt really good, though, and I know that I need to have a lead on TJ at the end of a race if I am going to beat him. He is especially hard to edge out when he has a downhill finish.

WCSH6 has full video coverage of the race, including 5 minute videos that show everybody coming across the line. I picked out my wife’s finish and you can clearly see her disgust with her time after she crosses the line and checked her watch.

Congratulations to everybody that ran this morning and thank you to everybody that came out to support or cheer at the race. Almost everybody that I spoke with ran well today and enjoyed themselves and the crowd support was as good as it normally was. The race also requires a large number of volunteers who are all kept extremely busy from hours before the race to hours after, and we appreciate the hard work that goes into putting this event on.

(Official Results – Full Results w/better formatting – Race Photos – Photos Source: Home Page)

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It was a good night for a race. It was relatively warm, but nowhere near as humid as it has been. This led to the gravel path around the Back Cove being nice and dusty, leaving a fine layer of grit on everybody’s legs.

Matt Lane won the race in an easy 17:12, almost 80 seconds behind his performance in week 4.

The real excitement came in the women’s race, though, as the course record has now been broken twice in the same season. This time, Joan Benoit Samuelson took the lead after deciding to drive down from Freeport 40 minutes before the race was supposed to start. She was jogging over to the starting line from the parking lot as everybody was lining up. Joanie cut 30 seconds off of Heather Pagano’s previous record, finishing in 18:11.
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Jeanne Hackett interviewed Sheri Piers and Kristin Barry this evening at Peak Performance Multisport as part of her “A Running Conversation” lecture series.

The talk went for about 50 minutes, with a little better than half of that time devoted to Kristin and Sheri answering Jeanne’s questions and the rest of the time devoted to answering audience questions. The topics centered mostly around the Olympic Marathon Trials this past April in Boston, including the training and discipline that it took to get there.

This year’s Olympic Marathon Trials was the 7^th running for the women, and was the second time that 4 women from Maine competed. (For the trivia buffs, the other time was in 1996.) The evening began with a quick background on all 4 ladies and the stories that they brought with them to the Trials.

The Stories

Emily LeVan was the top Maine qualifier, having run extremely well in Boston in 2005 and 2006. She had the 12^th fastest qualifying time for any of the competitors who ran. She was also dealt a large emotional blow last November when she discovered that her 4 year old daughter had Leukemia. Emily and her daughter Maddie started the Two Trials website in order to raise money for the Maine Children’s Cancer Program, and they far exceeded their goals to raise a total of over $77,000 to date. (Click here to listen to an interview with Emily.)

Joan Benoit Samuelson won the first women’s Olympic Marathon in 1984, and has qualified for every Trials since then. She has competed in all but 2 of them. She was the oldest runner in the field at 1 week shy of 51 years old, and set an age group record for the marathon on her way to beating her goal of running a sub-2:50. She has a long and storied history with the Boston Marathon, and she wanted to finish her competitive marathon career in the city where it all began.

Kristin and Sheri’s stories are intertwined, because the two of them train and race together constantly. After months of training, they both went to run in the Philadelphia Marathon and crossed the line together with Trials qualifying times. Both women are in their mid-30s, both women work, and both of them managed to fit in their training around caring for their children.
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