Boston Send-Off, Catherine Rooney’s (Trolley Square), April 16 at 6 PM.
Well, it’s that time of year again! Spring has sprung (kind of) and the Boston Marathon is right around the corner!! This year we will be celebrating those that are going to Boston by holding our annual Boston Send-Off Party on Wednesday, April 16th from 6:00- 9:00pm at Catherine Rooney’s in Trolley Square. No need to RSVP, just drop by anytime between 6 and 9 to congratulate those running the 118th Boston Marathon!
As always the club will provide the food, but the drinks are on you! Come on out and send the runners off in style!
“Track night” update
Changes have come to Coach Fisher’s track nights. They have permanently relocated to St. Mark’s High School track. For the springtime (until mid – May), we are meeting on Wednesday evenings at 5:45 for warm-up, followed by our usual choice of workouts under the guidance of Coach Fisher.
PCVRC Speaker Series, March 31 at 7 PM
Our next speaker in the Pike Creek Valley Running Club speaker series will be Bob Kleszics from Harvest Market. Bob has invited us to the store for a tour and talk “Nutrition on the Run!” on March 31st at 7 PM. Space is limited, so it’s very important to RSVP to Paula Jermyn at . The talk and tour will begin after the store closes and we look forward to seeing good support for one of our own club members and sponsors!
Race Results and accomplishments:
Here’s what’s been sent in…
Kellys Logan House 5k, March 8
Andrea Ladany, 22:19 (1st Female Masters, 2nd overall female)
Kelly Jones, 22:26 (1st in AG, 3rd overall female)
Reminder to all of you wonderful runners to send in your times, your PRs, your “firsts” – any results you want published. Please send the name of the race/run, the date and your time and any significance (PR, BQ, up to 3rd place in AG, 1st time at that distance).
USATF
The 2014 USATF road racing season kicked off Saturday March 15th with the Adrenaline 5k in Haddonfield NJ. This 5k typically has one of the largest and fastest fields in the region and the 9th annual running of this race was no exception. The top nine finishers were under 15 minutes, and the top 75 runners completed the course in 18 minutes or less.
A light mist greeted the 17 PCVRC members during our pre-race warm-ups. Thankfully the clouds cleared and gave way to a light breeze and sunshine just before gun time. With the sound of the starting horn, 916 runners began the long spring down the Haddonfield’s main street and through the adjacent neighborhoods. The race course is predominantly flat for the first mile, followed by a short downhill then a gradual uphill to mile two. It returns to the main street for a final 800m kick to the finish.
The PCVRC running team had numerous outstanding performances. Led our newest club members, Andy Weaver (4th overall), and Dan Feeney (14th overall) and capped by a DE Age Group record by Kirsten Belair, (1st female master) and also Greg Cauller (3rd male master), it took an age graded score greater than 83% to count towards our team score. Additional age group awards: Dave Wiechecki (1st), Theresa Cannon (3rd), Tom Steenkamer (1st), Epi Camacho (2nd), Carole Feole (1st), Beth Howlett (2nd), Dan Simmons (2nd). Special note – Carole Feole missed setting an age group record by a mere 4 seconds. Congratulations to all!
– – – – – – – – – – – – – -Overall
min
secs
AG
Cauller
Gregory
61
17
32
86.882
Weaver
Andrew
4
14
52
86.771
Steenkamer
Thomas
74
17
49
86.249
Wiechecki
David
64
17
36
85.133
Feeney
Daniel
14
15
21
84.039
Belair
Kirsten
88
18
20
83.909
Camacho
Epi
132
19
24
81.271
Rusk
Sarah
105
18
53
78.729
Simmons
Daniel
215
21
31
78.699
Knothe
Lynn
120
19
7
78.466
Kauffman
William Lee
154
19
58
77.629
Howlett
Beth
358
24
41
77.515
Sweigart
Sheri
217
21
37
72.783
Cannon
Theresa
328
24
6
70.401
Herman
Gerald
626
30
41
57.469
Schultz
John
827
37
51
56.935
In the club competition PCVRC finished in 2nd place just 1.5 points behind Bryn Mawr and 1.4 points ahead of South Jersey AC.
USATF MID-ATLANTIC 2014 GRAND PRIX – CLUB CHALLENGE
CLUB STANDINGS
CLUB – – – – ADR
Bryn Mawr Running Club
430.448
Pike Creek Valley Running Club
428.944
South Jersey Athletic Club
427.539
Greater Philadelphia Track Club
421.055
Downingtown Running Club
397.305
Pineland Striders
375.488
Moorestown Distance Running Project
355.829
TNT International Racing Club
327.227
No break! The second USATF race was the 51st annual Caesar Rodney Half Marathon yesterday. Results to follow.
Take a look at the MidAtlantic USATF quarterly newsletter that recaps the end of the 2013 season and other events. Numerous PCVRC members are recognized for their accomplishments. http://www.mausatf.org/association/newsletters/Newsletter-2014-February.pdf
Races/results for the Grand Prix Circuit can be found at http://www.mausatf.org/htmlldr/grandprix.htm
Races/results for the Off-Road Series can be found at http://www.mausatf.org/htmlldr/offroad.htm
Race Review (Mark DeNio) – Two Rivers Marathon, Lackawaxen, PA
David McCorquodale and I headed up on Friday morning, shortly before noon, hoping to avoid rush hour traffic since most of our route was on I476. That plan worked and we saw very little traffic the whole way. The most “traffic” we saw was a train that stopped us for more than ten minutes (more later on that).
It was a very picturesque drive, going through the Poconos and lots of wooded country. Once we got off I476 it was a lot more two-lane roads and such but traffic was never an issue. In the town of Tobyhanna we had to cross some railroad tracks. That’s where we got stuck. We were the first car in line so we had a front-row seat. The train was offloading some propane storage cars. To do this it had to pull back, offload, pull forward, switch tracks, pull back, offload, rinse, repeat. The timestamps on my pictures showed we were sitting there for 12 minutes, just watching the ballet.
I learned a new term for propane: “Liquified Petroleum Gas”. I thought all petroleum gas was liquified so I wondered why they had to specify liquified. David spotted a propane storage tank nearby so we figured that was it.
Once on our way it wasn’t more than a half-hour to the motel. On the motel’s website it’s listed as being in Lake Ariel, PA. Google Maps has it in Sterling. Inside the lobby the info card said it was located in Hamlin/Newfoundland! (I guess being in Newfoundland explains why a Canadian flag was flying along with the American and (I assume) Pennsylvania flags.) We found our room (luckily on the first floor) and unloaded.
After a short break we hit the road again to find the race site and drive the route. On the way we passed a historical marker for Horace Greeley’s Sylvania Colony. I never realized Horace Greeley was from or lived in PA so I had to get a picture of the marker. Unfortunately doing this turned us around so it took a minute to get back on the main road. (We also discovered a second marker saying the exact same thing so I didn’t need to take a picture of the first one. Having two markers makes the location of the colony uncertain.)
We found the park where the race was to finish but packet pickup wasn’t set up yet. We also wondered how the race would work since a good deal of the park was iced over. Drove the course in reverse (no, not THAT way) from near the half-marathon turn-around to the start. We realized that the video the guy made while driving at 40 mph glossed over a lot of the hills. David knew he’d have to play it conservative to make sure he could finish. Even then he wound up walking the last couple miles once he found out the course was short.
We got back to the park and packet pickup was now in swing in the volunteer fire station parking lot. The organizer had boxes of shirts and socks spread out on the ground
Lackwaxen turns out to have housed the Western writer Zane Grey from 1905-1918. He met and married a lady from the area and they (and his mother-in-law) lived just around the corner from the race finish. There is also the Roebling Bridge, a one-lane bridge built by the guy who built the Brooklyn Bridge. I drove over that and back the next day.
We had dinner at The Inn at Lackawaxen, a nice little place with a bar, a dining room and several suites for overnight stays. We were the only dinner guests and asked how they stayed in business. The waitress assured us the summers were full to overflowing. We questioned where people could park and she showed us a parking lot to the side of the restaurant. It turned out the building had three levels and we were on the third. We came in on the ground floor and went out the back on the third! 🙂
After that, we headed back and I turned in pretty early. The next morning we got up at 5:30 and went to breakfast. There we met some nice people who were also doing the race. We sat with a guy named Jim from Ithaca, NY. We mentioned winter training and he said they just got ANOTHER FOOT of snow the week before! It had melted down to an inch of slush then the new snow froze the slush and made getting around slippery. He did very well in the marathon but I got to the finish before he did.
The race was disappointing from the beginning. There was no visible organization for the pre-race shuttle to the starting line. (This was a point-to-point race. David and I opted to park at the finish so we could head out right after.) It was only people’s honor that had them pay for the shuttle. They could have jumped on the bus and the kid left in charge would never have known. The starting line was near the Woodloch Pines Resort, a place so swanky their race special was $165 per person per night!
The resort let us use their theater to stay out of the elements and use the facilities until race time. We had been told there would be a “bag check” so people could have their gear taken back to the finish. Nobody knew where it was except “there was a truck in the parking lot”. We eventually found the race organizer’s trailer and guessed that was it. Luckily David had a name tag on his bag because the supplies the organizer mentioned were nowhere to be found.
The race started and was a jumble because only one short mat had been set out. There was a crowd of people who had gone past it and came back to make sure they crossed mixing with us in the back of the pack who were just trying to get going. Once we crossed I was quickly alone. If a group of four ladies hadn’t gotten lost I wouldn’t have seen anyone else (outside of the water stops) until the finish line. As it turned out, I finished second from last but I don’t know how that happened.
The real race fiasco happened at the first turn, 1.8 miles into the race. There were two high-school kids encouraging me and walking toward the corner. I wondered why they were out there then guessed they had worked the water stop. Sure enough, .2 miles later I approached the water stop table. Not only was there no water or Gatorade but the stop didn’t even look like it had been used! There were several empty trash bags and a couple stacks of cups but no used trash bags or smashed cups on the ground. I kept going figuring there would be water at the next stop, two miles away. (There were supposed to be stops every two miles.)
I was wrong. There were signs of previous use but still no water at the four- or six-mile stops. Then, oddly, there was a stop at 7.5 miles. THIS stop was my joy. They had plenty of water and Gatorade and a very nice family working it. (I assume they lived at the house the stop was in front of because one of the kids was jumping on a trampoline in the front yard.) I called the family my heroes of the day and took their picture. It turns out (I think) the mom was the “official” race photographer because my in-race picture was taken as I approached that stop. I didn’t notice the lady having a camera so maybe the photographer was another person but either way it was nice someone stuck around waiting for me to come by.
Before I got to the water stop the second of the four ladies came by. They had gotten lost and went three miles out of their way. (They must be the only ladies who did the full race distance.) I complained about the lack of water stops and she suggested I grab handfuls of snow. That was a very good idea so I did that for the next 4+ miles. Good thing, too, since there was no water stop at all until the 12th mile.
Got past the 12-mile water stop and quickly encountered the half-marathon turnaround! I knew it was in the wrong spot due to the video and my own mapping but I figured maybe they had re-measured the course. I could see they had moved the finish line so maybe the turnaround point was accurate. It wasn’t. I’d given the organizer too much credit for diligence. (I should have known by that point given the water stops but it takes me a while to learn lessons sometimes.)
I went ahead and turned around and finished. Jogged what I thought would be the last tenth but that was short too. Since they moved the finish line they didn’t re-measure the 5k or 10k marks either. Finished and, instead of the BBQ or various foods that had been mentioned, plastic Costco tubs of cheese balls, tubs of mints and bags of tortilla chips awaited. They had a water jug that quickly ran out because people were using it to fill their water bottles, not caring other people were still out on the course. It had also been mentioned we would be able to use the fire station to clean up a little and get out of the cold. No such luck.
Once David came in we kept walking so he could make sure to do the full 26.2 distance. I suggested going by the Zane Grey Museum so I could get some pictures. We did that and David still had 0.3 to go. He went to find out about the volunteer fire station and I waited near the car. We went back to the Inn at Lackawaxen and had a basic lunch. I got a sub so big the waitress cut it and wrapped up half before I even started eating. Neither David nor I had much of an appetite but we knew we wanted to get something before hitting the road.
The night before David found a better route to head back that kept us on expressways so we did that. Much nicer to go around Scranton a little then hit I476 for a very long stretch. Scranton is really only two hours or so away so if I ever get ideas about races it will be easier to get to. We also passed an exit for Jim Thorpe, PA, and I would like to go visit. Good to know I could make a day trip out of it.
In summary, a fun trip! David was very good company and very helpful in keeping me going, both in driving and in racing. Neither of us will do a FastFinishes.net race ever again but we’re glad for the experience!