Ask Melani Hom to recount how April 15, 2013 unfolded through her eyes and she still gets emotional a year later.
The date – if it hasn’t been engrained in runners’ memories – was last year’s Boston Marathon, where scenes of rescue workers attending to bloody finish line bystanders overtook those of happy, finisher medal-wearing runners.
As Washington-area residents have learned this year, if you don’t like the weather, wait a while.
[button-red url=”http://www.runwashington.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CB-2014.pdf” target=”_self” position=”left”] Results [/button-red]A week after sleet, hail and snow pelted anyone who went outside, runners at the Cherry Blossom Ten Mile enjoyed nearly-perfect conditions. The only complaint many had was with the late-looming cherry trees. But that didn’t stop more than 17,747 10-mile runners. The 5k drew 2,143.
Chasing Greg Meyer’s American record put Christo Landry in contention at the Cherry Blossom Ten Mile, and though he fell short of the 46:13 standard, the Falls Church native came away with his first national championship in 46:41. His finish put him sixth overall.
Now a professional runner for Mizuno living in Ann Arbor, he came home to the D.C. area to tune up for the 10k at the Peyton Jordan invitational next month at Stanford University and ended up lobbing off a chunk from his previous 10 mile time, a racing distance of relative obscurity away from the east coast.
Janet Bawcom weighed her effort at the Cherry Blossom Ten Mile on going for the overall win and although she ran out of room to catch Ethiopian Mamitu Daska, she still came away with another national title and 52:12 finish that lopped 1:16 off the American Record she set last year, when she finished fourth.
[button-red url=”http://www.runwashington.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CB-2014.pdf” target=”_self” position=”left”] Results [/button-red]”I just wanted to run hard and be competitive in the race as long as I could. It worked out. Last year, I was alone on that straightaway from mile six to seven, running into the wind,” she said. “This year, I told myself that no matter what I did, I couldn’t be alone out there. If it meant hurting to catch up to someone else, it would be better than hurting on my own later. It’s going to be the same amount of pain, so I might as well hurt more early and run faster.”
Update: As of May 2016, Ed Kelleher is up to 117 counties and independent cities.
Running bucket lists, in some form or another, seem to come naturally to runners. Races they want to do, parks they want to run in, athletes they want to meet. The 50 States Marathon Club has quite a following; it even has a website for its hundreds of aspiring members. But one Alexandria man is working on a running goal that is at the same time simpler and more ambitious.
Registering for a marathon is speculation. Runners slap down their entry fees and play the averages, hoping for a good day months away. When a few hundred signed up for the Runners Marathon of Reston, forcing a sellout two months in advance, they bet that the late March race date would keep it out of the reach of winter weather.
No dice.
Trudging up and down numerous rolling hills isn’t exactly how many of the third annual Run Rogue 5k participants hundreds spend their Sunday mornings. But when it’s for a good cause, like raising money to fight cancer, participants couldn’t have been happier to be spending their morning that way.
More than 350 runners — including three athletes of the wheelchair division — came together on a chilly Sunday morning to conquer the 3.1-mile course in Fairfax Corner and also raise funds for Life with Cancer and Accelerate Brain Cancer Cure.
When she toed the line at the Nike Cross Nationals (NXN) Southeast Regional Championship in Cary, North Carolina in November, Nora McUmber, a junior from Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School, had never broken 18 minutes in a cross country 5k race before. She had run a great season, no doubt about it, but she was disappointed in her second place performance 3 weeks earlier in the Girls’ 4A race at the Maryland state meet.
“You can’t have good races everyday,” Nora sighed.
Despite meeting just two weeks ago, Andrew Brodeur and Landon Peacock have established quite the rivalry. The Pacers-New Balance teammates participated in last week’s St. Patrick’s Day 8k, where Brodeur edged Peacock to claim a first-place finish (24:30).
Saturday’s Four Courts Four Miler yielded similar results for the two as Brodeur once again bested Peacock to earn first-place honors in the fifth annual St. Patty’s Day weekend race.
The leaders at the Rock ’n’ Roll USA Marathon left no doubts. Across the board, between the half marathon and the full 26.2 miles, both the men’s and women’s races held little suspense. Local runners represented the area well in the top groups of finishers, and after an endless winter, runners rejoiced for sunshine and warm temperatures on race day.
HALF MARATHON