It wasn’t a race she ran that showed Walter Johnson coaches Tom Martin and Ashley St. Denis that Jenna Goldberg was serious about cross country.
It was a race she wasn’t going to be running. A JV runner her freshman year, Goldberg was not on the Walter Johnson roster for the state meet. But when the team made arrangements to go up to Hereford High School to practice on the course a week before the championships, Goldberg asked if she could come along.
In the past few years, Loudoun Valley has built tremendous depth with a large team that typically wins most, if not all, team titles at different invitationals – varsity and junior varsity. Kevin Carlson has seen that from the Vikings’ varsity team since 2016.
But with that depth come some tough calls when the numbers crunch for championship races, and that’s where the Vikings found themselves last November. With another Nike Cross Southeast title in hand, the harder task was figuring out who would represent the team as it went to defend its 2017 title. Carlson finished 113th overall that year — 7th for Loudoun Valley, but in the scoring five for all but three other teams.
When Arthur Scott celebrates his 60th birthday on Oct. 7, he’ll be gearing up to mark another milestone — his 25th consecutive Marine Corps Marathon.
The Washingtonian native, who now lives in Charlotte, has run every Marine Corps Marathon since 1995, despite vowing never to run a marathon, then to run only one, then to stop after his 20th… you get the idea.
Alazar Tegegnework entered seventh grade in a new school and dived into the lessons and homework. He excelled in the classroom, but one of his teachers at the Brightwood campus of Center City Public Charter Schools saw something more.
To hear Tom Brumlik tell it, Albert Velikonja approaches an August time trial with the same intensity as he does a state championship final.
“It was pretty evident from the first lap last year that he was going to be pretty good,” Brumlik said of the now-senior, who was trying cross country after a moderately successful sophomore track season.
Riley’s Rumble’s reputation is forged on its heat, hills and humidity. The annual half marathon in Germantown and Boyds, Md. markets itself as a masochists’ dream, with a roughly 170 foot climb in mile 12 to extinguish many runners’ hopes of a fast time. And, as part of the Montgomery County Road Runners’ Club’s series of low-key races, it is both budget-friendly and bereft of awards, Until now. This year, Race Director Ida-Lina Diak toyed with awarding giant novelty oversized checks to the winners of the half and 8k, only to have them made out for $0. In the end, she and assistant race director Melanie Mollica settled on the amount of 1 million Strava kudos, which, unfortunately, have a cash value of 1/1,000,000th of a cent.
A race medal is a symbol of achievement; a shiny token signifying a goal achieved. While these medals seem like a small part of an event, race teams put a lot of thought into them — everything from shape, design and ribbon color — to drive home the theme of the race and its significance in runners’ lives.
The Parks Half Marathon uses its medal as a marketing and branding opportunity, said Race Director Don Shulman. The Montgomery County race is often the first half marathon for a lot of its participants, so Shulman said the medal is vital because of the pride finishers have for it.
Danielle Siebert goes to races all the time. But she’s normally not the one racing.
On Oct. 27, the University of Maryland cross country and track coach plans to toe the starting line in Arlington with thousands of other runners at the Marine Corps Marathon.
Twenty-nine-time US champion Molly Huddle talks about her most recent title, her transition to the marathon, her future in competitive running and more.
As a gregarious extrovert, Roman Gurule met a number of his friends through happy hours and dinners during his time as a federal government employee. He joined his colleagues whenever they drank alcohol and Gurule went out about five times a week to relieve stress from work. It felt like a normal thing to do, even if he would wake up the next morning with a pounding headache and a scant memory of what happened the previous night.
He repeatedly told his friends he would cut back on his self-proclaimed “rockstar lifestyle” that he started after college, but then it would happen again the following weekend. And the next. “I think that nobody took me seriously,” Gurule says.