A look at the start before the runners lined up.
This race is an event. Wandering around the center you could easily see this event was fully prepared with food and drink, from Budweiser to Muscle Milk with a side of ice cold water in between. Some of the other events closed up shop with the record heat wave this week but Pacers knew that runners are a tenacious bunch.
In the Lea Gallardo photo above, Laura O’Hara powers to the win with top 40-44 winner Matteo Mainetti on her shoulder and racing legend Alisa Harvey a few strides behind.
Runners in this region say the best way to prepare mentally for a summer race is to expect the absolute worst. In that event, more than 1,500 runners who participated in Capital Running Company’s inaugural Let Freedom Run 5K only had to deal with conditions that were roughly par for a rolling course: Independence Day morning offered overcast skies, temperatures below 80 degrees, and a humidity level which – around here, anyway – would only qualify for the not-so-bad category.
Virginia Pons moves past the starting line at the first loop.
The Potomac River Twilight 4 mile race has built a solid reputation as a family event. While providing some of most competitive races at this less than common distance, the well attended mile fun run and all the entertainment after the event keep the race high in recidivism. While the classic rock band Dolley Sodds was warming up, event director Ray Pugsley was scurrying around filling a kid’s pool with ice to cool off the many different kinds of liquid refreshment awaiting the returning road warriors. Everyone knows that in this region June is really summer no matter what the calendar says. Pugsley was smiling as he said, “We dodged a bullet.” Indeed, after two record setting days in the last week, this year’s temperature in the low 80s seemed almost kind.
Year number ten for this runner friendly race featured the year’s nicest weather. Mother’s Day weekend is usually the busiest of the spring with more than fifty races scheduled in the region. This race was a dandy. Joining this lovely neighborhood was for this year’s continued renaissance was the indefatigable Chuck Moeser, 59, of Sterling, VA (left). Never timid and always bare-chested even on cold days, some have speculated that he does not like shirts at all. Not so, after the race he was sporting a tie dye cutoff from the sixties.
For this smallest race of around 200 finishers, even at 59, Moeser was the prohibitive favorite to win it all. After the race, he noted that he really enjoyed the downhill first mile. He had to do it all alone because by the first intersection, 200 meters in the race, he was gone. Though new to the course, there was no chance to get lost. The course meanders through the neighborhood streets, with a nary a moving vehicle to be found, but the signage was so clear even the novice runner could not get lost.
By Brenda Barrera with contribution from Dickson Mercer
It is an Irish blessing familiar to many, “May the road rise up to meet you, May the wind be always at your back, May the sun shine warm upon your face . . .”
In the photo below, the lead pack crosses the first ditch down the opening mile.
If you were a volunteer course marshal, the morning was brisk but just barely damp from the pleasantly unrequited promise of rain for the weekend. As a runner, missing the water at the first two ditches on the opening hill just meant that you were not muddy until the next mile. Most of the experienced runners were in shorts and by the last mile were hoping for rain to cool them off.