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Cascades Firechase 10K Race Report
By James Moreland
Sterling, VA
May 28, 2011
For the Washington Running Report
Everyone expects a holiday weekend to be busy and running is still exploding. It takes a good course to bring back runners. This course doubles the dose as the race is two nearly identical circles around past the Lowes Island Community Center. It is summer thunderstorm weather and the night-before’s deluge certainly helped cool things a bit. Everyone knows Washington area is light on true spring and hurries quickly into humid summer. Just before the start the hundreds of racers huddled beneath the extended fire engine ladders. That would be the last bit of shade they would get.
Karsten Brown (left) was right there at the start. After racing a more than fifty races this year, including a fourth overall fifty miler last weekend and a two mile victory on Thursday, it seems as if he has not yet settled on a distance. When the gun sounded he determinedly pressed for the lead. His path took a roundabout left side approach to the first turn (right) and like the pied piper nearly everyone followed his lead. Brown had run the course before back in 2006, finishing sixth in 37:55 behind masters winner, Jean Christophe Arcaz, then 45, but he has come a long way since then.
His current 10K PR is 34:00 and no one has won with that time in the previous eight trips. Arcaz is coming off an excellent Kaiser Permanente Pike’s Peek 10K in 34:48. Just as Crocodile Dundee exclaimed, “You call that a knife. That’s no knife,” runners try to explain slower times with, “Well; this isn’t like Pike’s Peek.”
Brown does own 23 overall wins and has finished in the top three thirty times so year and had to be the consensus favorite. At the Credit Union Cherry Blossom 10 Mile this cooler spring, Arcaz, now fifty was nifty at 58:48 but Brown pulverized his own PR with an awesome 54:39.
The first time around the course adrenaline made the first mile seem easy. It was. The second mile was still not so bad with lots of crowd support but cresting the first real hill runners were already beginning to break into a walk. Around 2.5 miles into race runners plummeted down the fastest hill and were treated to a fifty foot plume of water from the fire truck by the side of the road. Then it was up the road again.
Brown knew the race was over by that time and even eased up in the second half so as to not get overheated. After more than a decade of battling with the likes of Ted Poulos, Arcaz is a determined racer. He did know he was not going to catch Brown but he also knew no one was going to catch him. In five tries at the race Arcaz has never finished lower than fifth with four masters wins.
Last year Jason Page, 66, set the event record in a scorching 40:35. This spring he only ran three races, though fast enough to make him the spring ranking’s champion. Now, he is suffering a bit of the old sciatica and his racing has been put on hold. Still, he was there today prouder than proud as his daughter Mary Smith (left) broke the tape in a very nice 42:34. Jim Noone, 66, took up the slack for Page, winning that division in a very nice 44:33. That was good enough for third grandmaster.
If you think heat affects the old folks nearly everyone fifty and older who ran Pike’s Peek was three to five minutes slower here. Of the top dozen male finishers half were teens, as well as 18 of the top fifty. The second loop is shorter but as the sun rose in the sky, the cheers did not produce as much adrenaline until the final quarter mile where runners could enjoy a Pike’s Peek-like descent to the ChronoTrack mats.
Natalie Wright, 18, was runner-up in 43:28. That was close to Christy Dannenberg 42:22 event record from 2004. Not too far behind her in fifth place was newly minted grandmaster Sushila Nanda. Nanda (below) ran a very nice 44:46 to earn a tie for the fourth best age graded performance with Bruce Halpin, 54, who ran 40:58.
This course has produced a couple of state records in past years and the grandmaster best - Chuck Moeser 34:04 and DeeDee Loughran 41:23 look pretty unbeatable. One former record holder returned to race this year. Pat Welch ran 54:37 in 2005 to set the 60-64 event record.
The race also featured a fun run that was well attended by the younger ones.
Awards Listing (No Duplicate Prizes)
OVERALL MALE (GUN TIME)
Place Num Name Lname Age City Time
===== ===== =================== === ===================== =======
1 621 Karsten Brown 37 Front Royal VA 35:07
2 399 Jean-Christophe Arc 50 Rockville MD 36:54
3 483 Matt Weber 20 Sterling VA 37:28
OVERALL FEMALE (GUN TIME)
Place Num Name Lname Age City Time
===== ===== =================== === ===================== =======
1 259 Mary Smith 29 Sterling VA 42:34
2 322 Natalie Wright 18 Sterling VA 43:28
3 605 Cassie Henry 31 Potomac Falls VA 44:11
MALE AGE GROUP: 1 - 19 (NET TIME)
1 202 Ethan Pacifico 15 Potomac Falls VA 37:51
2 657 Sai Korra 15 Sterling VA 38:08
3 60 Sam Coffman 17 Sterling VA 38:28
FEMALE AGE GROUP: 1 - 19 (NET TIME)
1 554 Ashley Sivek 15 Sterling VA 44:55
2 365 Sami Phillips 18 Sterling VA 49:36
3 214 Barbara Rion 18 Sterling VA 50:14
MALE AGE GROUP: 20 - 24 (NET TIME)
1 419 William Fastenau 24 Dupont WA 40:45
2 482 Nathaniel Middleton 23 Beltsville MD 41:04
3 30 Drew Mitnick 24 Potomac Falls VA 48:38
FEMALE AGE GROUP: 20 - 24 (NET TIME)
1 420 Lauren Cummings 22 Sterling VA 52:21
2 454 Emily Everett 24 Sterling VA 57:22
3 636 Whitney Russell 24 Burke VA 1:04:13
MALE AGE GROUP: 25 - 29 (NET TIME)
1 508 Matt Koetter 28 Ashburn VA 43:25
2 129 Mike Tosto 27 Sterling VA 44:58
3 672 Eli Bredbenner 27 Centreville VA 45:40
FEMALE AGE GROUP: 25 - 29 (NET TIME)
1 382 Jennifer Halkey 28 Ashburn VA 44:59
2 287 Katie Muething 25 Arlington VA 45:42
3 565 Kristina Keller 28 Cleveland OH 45:54
MALE AGE GROUP: 30 - 34 (NET TIME)
1 633 Gregory Stemberger 34 South Riding VA 38:26
2 617 Gregory Richards 34 Arlington VA 39:02
3 186 Andy Gingrich 31 Centreville VA 41:28
FEMALE AGE GROUP: 30 - 34 (NET TIME)
1 369 Kelly King 30 Leesburg VA 46:34
2 127 Helina Sleeth 32 Reston VA 50:47
3 311 Allison Cogbill 33 Sterling VA 52:37
MALE AGE GROUP: 35 - 39 (NET TIME)
1 493 Brian Szabos 37 South Riding VA 37:59
2 549 Rob Meadows 39 Lansdowne VA 38:11
3 298 Tom Kalka 38 Potomac Falls VA 40:13
FEMALE AGE GROUP: 35 - 39 (NET TIME)
1 510 Gillian Kalaris 35 Leesburg VA 44:10
2 213 Tatiana Sheptock 35 South Riding VA 46:10
3 206 Kristy Persons 35 Potomac Falls VA 46:36
MALE AGE GROUP: 40 - 44 (NET TIME)
1 233 Bin Mu 42 Reston VA 39:41
2 408 Ed Milenski 44 Potomac Falls VA 40:30
3 529 Richard Haylor 40 Martinsburg WV 41:18
FEMALE AGE GROUP: 40 - 44 (NET TIME)
1 467 Megan Mancuso 40 Potomac Falls VA 46:26
2 628 Karen Young 42 Boyds MD 48:12
3 234 Jie Zheng 40 Reston VA 48:36
MALE AGE GROUP: 45 - 49 (NET TIME)
1 564 Tom Steinbach 46 Potomac Falls VA 39:29
2 174 Robert Sichau 47 Alexandria VA 43:15
3 410 Ron Bryan 45 Herndon VA 43:27
FEMALE AGE GROUP: 45 - 49 (NET TIME)
1 512 Mandana Mortazavi 47 Leesburg VA 45:12
2 409 Laura Morrison 45 Springfield VA 51:26
3 360 Kathleen Kauffman 49 Fairfax VA 56:20
MALE AGE GROUP: 50 - 54 (NET TIME)
1 433 Bruce Halpin 54 Ashburn VA 40:55
2 431 Harry Linde 51 Sterling VA 42:10
3 416 Kevin Apsley 54 Herndon VA 46:37
FEMALE AGE GROUP: 50 - 54 (NET TIME)
1 289 Sushila Nanda 50 Arlington VA 44:45
2 602 Deb Lugar 52 Potomac Falls VA 54:57
3 581 Lauren Gould 50 Potomac Falls VA 55:09
MALE AGE GROUP: 55 - 59 (NET TIME)
1 223 Ken Krehbiel 57 Washington DC 45:28
2 376 Scott Shapero 55 Great Falls VA 47:30
3 513 Jonathan Roman 57 Great Falls VA 48:55
FEMALE AGE GROUP: 55 - 59 (NET TIME)
1 291 Carla Bourgeois 58 Delaplane VA 1:01:43
2 381 Nancy Dobes 57 Sterling VA 1:20:22
3 29 Heidi Mitnick 56 Potomac Falls VA 1:20:30
MALE AGE GROUP: 60 - 64 (NET TIME)
1 319 Bill Koetter 62 Ashburn VA 51:30
2 273 Kenneth Chisolm 63 Potomac Falls VA 59:06
3 91 George Nield 60 Potomac Falls VA 1:09:16
FEMALE AGE GROUP: 60 - 64 (NET TIME)
1 472 Leslie Stanfield 61 Reston VA 58:35
2 367 Jaine Summers 60 Annandale VA 1:06:37
3 140 Janet Roth 61 Potomac Falls VA 1:17:13
MALE AGE GROUP: 65 - 69 (NET TIME)
1 606 Jim Noone 66 Fairfax VA 44:27
2 296 Mike Golash 68 Washington DC 50:18
3 471 Patrick Brown 66 Reston VA 53:28
FEMALE AGE GROUP: 65 - 69 (NET TIME)
1 491 Pat Welch 66 Vienna VA 1:00:21
MALE AGE GROUP: 70 - 99 (NET TIME)
1 9 Chan Robbins 73 Arlington VA 54:48
2 308 Alan Rider 75 Reston VA 57:51
3 208 Louis Garczynski 71 Sterling VA 58:41
MALE FIRST TIME RACER: NET TIME - NET PACE 1 - 99
1 475 Trent Lancaster 15 M Sterling VA 46:06
FEMALE FIRST TIME RACER: NET TIME - NET PACE 1 - 99
1 334 Katya Dolecki 39 F Sterling VA 52:00
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