This past weekend was a busy one for RkR and I’ll start by apologizing for anyone or race that I will surely miss.
Kicking the weekend off right on Friday at the Geneseo Track and Field Friday Knight 5k, Mark Streb won in a time of 16:23. Teammate Josh Williams finished in a new PR of 17:32 to finish 4th overall. Full Results
Next up was the Finish Strong 5k / 15k on Saturday. Matthew Roberts won the 5k handily with time of 16:52. His winning margin was 1 minute and 3 seconds! In the 15k, Kenny Goodfellow cruised to a 51:02 second place finish, also beating the next racer by more than 1 minute!
Rounding out the weekend was Andy Penner and myself out in Buffalo for the Lou Reuter Memorial Scholarship Run 5k. I was able to finally knock out a good solo effort by winning in my fastest time since not running due to injury from May 9 – August 9. Starting at a 17:01 on September 7th, down to 16:55 on October 4th, way down to a 16:15 win on October 19th. Needless to say I am quite pleased with my progress and feel that there is a lot more gas in the tank. Andy finished second in a time of 17:29, not a bad result as he has been fighting some serious respiratory illness since McQuaid. Full Results
All-in-all, not a bad weekend of racing for Roadkill Racing!
Early August marks the unofficial start to the Cross Country season with the Bergen 5k. This race serves as the USAF Niagara 5k Championship and race director Eric Boyce pulls no stops with putting together one of the fastest races in New York. The top-60 finishers ALL BROKE 17 MINUTES! This is nearly unheard of for a smallish (365 finishers) local road 5k. So how did the Roadkill racers fair?
The Women
The Bergen 5k was the ladies first scored team outing since formation, and boy was it a great debut! Not only were they able to field two complete teams (3-5 runners with the top 3 scoring), nearly everyone ran a PR! No small feat for an individual let alone an entire team. Leading the way was Molly Romano (20:09) followed by Erin Mahoney (21:42), Ashlie Roberts (21:43), Lisa Perks (21:45) and Lindsay Rynders (22:51) rounding out the first team. Team #2 was lead by newcomer Monique Golossi (22:13) followed by Lynn Gottfried (23:39), Lauryn Recchia (24:11), and Heather Ostrander (26:28). Congratulations to all the ladies on a successful debut!
The Men
Similar to the women’s team, the men had outstanding performances all around. The teams for the men are comprised of 5-8 runners with the top 5 scoring. Missing from the group due to injury were Kenny Goodfellow and David Rappleyea, as well as Brett Smith with illness and Mark Streb who had a prior engagement. These gaps were filled well by some new and young RkR members. Lead by Buffalonian and new member Dan Snitzer (16:08) the men finished 4th overall. The remaining top-5 of veteran Josh Perks (16:17), Mathew Roberts (16:25), newcomers Pete Gratien (16:34) and Adam Staveski (16:34) packed it in nicely fo a team average of 16:24. Andrew Caffrey (18:24) and Joe Williams (18:30) rounded out the team. The newest member, Andy Penner (17:08), finished well running his fastest 5k in quite sometime.
Looking forward to Cross Country as both teams seem poised for success!
The Medved 5k To Cure ALS was this past Sunday, and the annual Father’s Day race lived up to its history as one of the more competitive 5k’s in Rochester. It was great to see Kenny and Brett out on the roads again. For Kenny it had been just a brief 1 month absence while he did some teaching in Ghana, but Brett had been missing in action for over 6 months. The race also marked Mark’s first Roadkill road race, and aside from a bit of mix-up during the prerace cheer he did quite well.
For future reference, the Roadkill prerace cheer goes thusly.
Josh “Roadkill”
Team “Racing”
Josh “Roadkill”
Team “Racing”
Josh “Roadkill”
Team “Splat”
Roadkill overall had a solid day, but I know Brett and Kenny are itching to get back into race shape. I would guess their Bergen 5k times will be close to a minute faster for each of them.
When you have been running and racing for as long as I have you don’t often get to celebrate a new personal record. That goes double for the distance your race most often, in my case the 5k. On October 26th 2003 I ran the Ghostly Gallop 5k in 16:06, here are a list of things I’ve done since that date.
Lived in Poughkeepsie
Lived in Austin
Lived in Pittsford
Lived in Fairport
Got engaged
Got married
Had a daughter
Had another daughter
Got my BA
Got my M.Ed
Worked at a summer camp
Worked at Dell
Worked at Best Buy
Worked at Pizza Hut
Worked at BOCES
Bought a house
Got a cat
lost a cat
Got another cat
Got another
Lost a cat
Got another cat
Ran 20,000 miles (give or take a few miles)
Ran 50+ 5k’s
In short, it has been awhile. For years I’ve been telling myself I was on the verge of not only running a new 5k PR but of finally breaking 16 minutes. So many times I was sure one or both of those things was going to happen. In the last few years I’ve run under 16:30 a dozen times but I’ve never gotten under 16:15. Staring 40 in the face, I was beginning to think 16:06 was as good as it would ever get for me.
That is until Sunday when Lisa and I ran the Fairport Foundation 5k, a small first year 5k in the village less than a mile from our house.
Going into this race I hadn’t done a speed workout in almost a month, and my most recent race was 3 weeks earlier at the Finish Strong 5k where I ran a very average 16:27. Like all the 5k’s I’ve run in the last few years I crashed and burned in the last mile of the Finish Strong after feeling great the first 8 or 9 minutes. No matter how well my training has been going I can’t seem to find that finishing gear when it counts. I decided a few weeks ago to stop wearing a watch during my training runs, and I carried that over into this race. Knowing my pace doesn’t really seem to do me any good, I just spend my mental energy during the latter half a race thinking about time instead of thinking about running. My goal for the Fairport 5k was to stay relaxed the whole way and not obsess over my time. I figured with my lack of workouts I would either be very rested or very flat.
My plan to not obsess about time was thrown off a bit by someone giving out mile splits. 5:05, which is what I usually run the first mile of a 5k and normally I feel pretty good running that pace, this race was no exception. I tried my best not to dwell on my split and just focused on keeping a quick cadence and tried to think light and fast thoughts during the long out and back stretch along the canal. The way the course setup the 1 mile and 2 mile markers were only 30 meters apart, so not only did I get my 1 mile split but I heard the 2 mile split as well- 10:20. My normal reaction to hearing my 2 mile split is “shit now I’ve got to run a 5:xx to break 16:00 minutes” but on this occasion I thought “wow, that is the easiest 10:20 I’ve ever run.”
The last mile, a minute in the lead and closing in on a PR. This is when not having a watch really paid off. For some stupid reason during the last mile of a race I’ll start looking at my watch. I say stupid, because I never race with a GPS watch so what do I expect my watch to tell me? If I look down and the watch says 14:26, who cares, it isn’t like I know exactly how much distance I have left to the finish, but for some reason I can’t stop looking and worrying about the time. On Sunday I had no such issues, I just hammered home as hard as I could.
As I turned into the park and ran the final dash across the grass to the finish I could see the clock and knew I was going to run a PR, and I thought just maybe I would break 16 minutes as well. As I hit the line the clock showed 16:01 but the official time had me at 16:03. I know what some of you may be thinking… I must be so pissed that I didn’t break 16 minutes. Well, the truth is I’m really not. After 10 years 1 week and 6 days I was thrilled to have broken through with a new 5k PR. Sub 16 might come someday, but for today I am happy to know that I still have some gas left in the tank and on the right day can still run as fast as ever.
As I mentioned earlier Lisa also ran this race. Trying to squeeze in training with her busy work/life schedule isn’t easy but she has been getting a few runs in a week fairly consistently since early summer and ran a great time on Sunday. You can see her hammering past the 3rd place woman to seal her top 3 finish.
