Run to Win

The New Bedford Half Marathon in Massachusetts was this morning. It is the first of seven races in the USATF New England grand prix racing series. The temperature was in the high 30s with some strong wind but not as strong as in years past. It was much stronger at 9:30 in the morning than it was at race time.

The course is pretty flat, with some hills in the first few miles and one decent sized hill over the last mile of the race. There are 4 or 5 miles of (mostly) gentle downgrade in the middle of the course. Those miles correspond with when the wind is at your back, but it comes straight into your face from mile 9 through most of the rest of the run.

There were 1666 runners this year. Derese Deniboba won with a time of 66:29, almost 2 minutes ahead of New Balance Boston’s Ryan Carrara.

Ethan Hemphill led the Dirigo runners, outsprinting a few competitors to finish 11^th in 69:45. I rounded out the scoring for our team as the 5^th man in 76:31.

Heidi Westerling led the women’s race, finishing 65^th overall and winning with a time of 74:30. She passed me about 4 or 5 miles into the race. Molly Taber came through in 5^th for the women with a time of 77:16 for her warmup for the Olympic Trials in April. She ran the majority of the middle miles with me, but decided not to let me break the wind for her in the back stretch and fell back a little.

The Boston Athletic Association dominated in the team race, winning the men’s race with a combined time of 5:47:57 and the women’s race in 3:49:47. Scores are the aggregate time of the first 5 runners on a team for the men’s race and the first 3 runners on a team for the women’s race. The men’s team won by about 9 minutes and the women’s team won by about 5 minutes.

Dirigo finished 5^th overall, following the Merrimack Valley Striders by only 30 seconds. Our combined time was 6:02:28.

(Full Results)

A couple of months ago, I wrote about an opportunity to run a race blindfolded. It was too late for me to join up, but I might look into running it next year. The Vision 5k went off and was a great success last month, with over 500 finishers, 10% of whom were blind or blind folded. The race raised over $285,000 for various vision-related charities, and was won by a blind runner, Gonzalo Moises Berista. His winning time was 17:08. The women’s race was won by Molly Taber in 17:53.

A few race facts show just how remarkable the day was:

• 28 blind runners competed
• 28 sighted runners and walkers took the Blindfold Challenge
• 3 blind men finished in the top 5 overall, including the winner
• 5 blind men finished the 3.1 mile course in under 20 minutes
• More than 800 runners and walkers participated
• Over 1,000 people came out to enjoy the day

I look forward to seeing whether or not I can fit the race into my schedule next year; the tough part will be fitting into my schedule the mandatory training sessions for those who opt to run blind folded. I am not sure that I would travel there just to run; I would want to see whether I could race without my eyes or not. I have done it before, but not quickly. With a guide, I wager that I could do it quickly.

(Vision 5k – Results – Photos)