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 (4th 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
Back Cove 5k Series Overrall Winners 2007 Carol Fanning and Blaine Moore

2007 Male Leaders

Place   Time   Average   Name
  01:42:29    00:17:04    Blaine Moore 
  01:42:35    00:17:05    Chris Gatchell 
  01:43:03    00:17:10    Scott Gorneau 
  01:45:41    00:17:36    Eric Neutz 
  01:55:22    00:19:13    Nick Brazier 
2007 Female Leaders

Place   Time   Average   Name
  02:05:36    00:20:56    Carol Fanning 
  02:11:02    00:21:50    Emily Hickey 
  02:13:05    00:22:10    Marissa Sowles 
  02:24:06    00:24:01    Coreen Lauren 
  02:30:05    00:25:00    Elania Pfaff 
 

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 16th (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!)