Weekend of Racing
It must be spring! Not only am I sneezing every 30-seconds, it seems as though we were overwhelmed with races and tasty results to report on.
In track and field, Stanford was host to the 2011 Payton Jordan Cardinal Invitational, where the Hornets’ Lea Wallace turned out the 2nd fastest Division I 1500 of the year. Wallace, in her first 1500 of the season, ran 4:11.31. The only collegiate athlete ahead of her is Jordan Hasay (Oregon), who ran 4:10.28 in the same race this weekend. Letsrun.com has an excellent write-up about the event.
Up in Oregon on Sunday, Sacramento’s Jenny Hitchings ran a PR 2:46:10 in the Eugene Marathon–just 11 seconds shy of the Women’s Olympic Trials Marathon qualifying time. Hitchings was 5th woman overall, and 2nd masters behind Bend’s Kami “The Machine” Semick.
Speaking of close calls, at the Quicksilver 50K in San Jose, Jen Pfeifer, of El Dorado (former of Folsom), was reportedly in the lead until the final mile of the race where she went off course and picked up several extra minutes. While lost, Pfeifer was passed by a more attentive Adona Ramos, of San Jose. Ramos took the win with only about 15-seconds to spare.
Also in the ultrarunning scene, at the PCTR’s Diablo Trail marathon, Davis’ Caren Spore took the overall win in 4:33. Sacramento’s Galen Farris was the men’s winner, but second overall in 5:07. Galen says the run was very hard. Results are here. (PDF)
Rich Hanna, in costume, gets ready to start the kids race.
At the Fair Oaks Sun Run, the Worthen family was conspiring to collect as much hardware as possible, with Stacey winning the 5-mile race in 32:18, and Chad taking 3rd in the men’s race with a 28:09. Chad and Stacey had a similar finishing strategy at last month’s Zoo Zoom, where Stacey won the 5K and Chad took 2nd in the 10K! Other than the Worthen family, the other top women were Janice Kesterson (35:25) and Sheri Kidwell (35:51). The top-two men were Anthony Fagundes (27:42) and Aaron Dilts (27:56).
Finally, I overlooked last weekend’s Zippy 5K in San Francisco, where Sacramento’s Iain Mickle reportedly set a new 50-59 age division course record of ran the second fastest time for the 50-59 age group with a 16:34. (Update: It turns out that Brian Pilcher ran a 16:30 in 2008 at the age of 51.)