Sacramento Running News

Mo Bartley takes home a sweet, sweet plaque for her effort. (SRN photo)

On Saturday, several hundred runners kicked off the Memorial Day weekend with a run of the No Excuses 5K, Sacramento’s long-standing, age-graded race.

The key to winning this event is to be unusually fast for your age, and this year it was Mo Bartley, 59, of Auburn, who hit that sweet-spot and trounced all comers with a 20:44 finish that age-graded to 14:11.

Finishing in second place was Janice Kesterson, 60, of Oakdale, with a 21:07 that age-grades to a 14:15.

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Top Women. Left to right: Tomory, Laird, Guijarro. (SRN photo)

Taking advantage of beautiful conditions, Joel Frost-Tift, 25, of Los Angeles, bested the field of more than 800 runners at the 35th running of the American River 50 Mile Endurance Run in 6:26:52.

In a pretty close 2nd place, Matthew Morales, 24, of Visalia, made it to the finish line at the American River Overlook in 6:30:40.

Coming in 3rd overall was Thomas Reiss, 46, of San Luis Obispo, with 6:39:59. Reiss was also the top male masters finisher.

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Hanna (left) and Pommier lead the pack. (Photo by Joe McCladdie)

There is a certain appeal that has kept one of the regions oldest ultras going year after year. While some races tout scenic or difficult routes, the Jed Smith Ultra Classic, hosted by the Buffalo Chips, is where ultrarunners go to be fast.

The race features two ultra distance races–50 mile and 50 km–as well as a 30 km and new 13.1 mile “fun run.” All of these are run on a 4.9 mile loop course along the American River, between Watt Avenue and the Guy West Bridge at CSUS.

This year, despite being early February, the weather was more like fine spring day, which made for pleasant running, spectating, and volunteering.

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The River City Rebels masters men’s team ended up on top of the team standings in the 2013 PAUSATF Road Grand Prix!

That’s an impressive feat in this competitive grand prix. Rumor has it that West Valley Track Club will be gunning for the Rebels in next year’s competition.

Complete team results for the Road Grand Prix are here.

In cross-country, the Rebels also took top honors in both men and women’s senior (50+) standings!

Complete team results for the XC Grand Prix are here.

There is a magic place, up on the top of California, where majestic giant redwoods tip-toe down the hillsides to peek at the Eel River as she lifts her skirts and dances out to the Pacific Ocean.

And every year, Northern California’s finest runners, and a bunch of the rest of us, line up there under the canopy of redwoods for the Humboldt Redwoods Marathon and Half Marathon.

The half marathon is part of the PAUSATF road grand prix, so many of Northern California’s top road racers make the long trek up to the great green north for this out-of-the-way event.

If you make the drive to the Humboldt Marathon and Half Marathon, or its spring-time sister race, the Avenue of the Giants, don’t expect cheering crowds or convenient lodging. But you can expect a fast and scenic run through one of the most beautiful places on Earth.

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Huh?

Some years ago, I was at an awards ceremony after a local ten-mile race when they called up the winner of the men’s 20-25 division. He’d run the race in 72 minutes. Not a terrible time, but hardly a prize-worthy one, considering the masters runners (40+) were running significantly faster.

As the runner went up to collect his prize, a 50-year old friend sitting nearby turned to me and said, “When I was his age, I ran 55-minutes at this race and didn’t get squat!”

My 50-year-old friend isn’t the only one noticing this change.

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Laura Matz hams it up for the camera. (Photo by Abe Underwood)

Braving unseasonably warm weather–some might even say it was hot–several hundred runners gathered for the 39th annual Buffalo Stampede and the 18th annual Parrott Migration, this past Sunday.

The Stampede is the race and the Migration is a fun-run, which starts an hour earlier to give the slower runners more time to finish the course.

Starting and finishing at Rio American High School, the flat, ten-mile course winds through one of the region’s better neighborhoods, and includes some short out-and-back sections where you can see who’s in front and who’s behind you.

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Iain Mickle (#241) leads the Masters Men’s race. (Photo courtesy of Sean Dulany/Freeplay Magazine)

In Saturday’s first Pacific Association race–the women’s 5K–Lindsay Tollefson made it three years in a row with her win at Rebel’s XC Challenge, at Granite Park.

Tollefson, 28, of Roseville, took first with a 17:34 over Tanya Ferreira, 24, of Watsonville, who finished second in 17:58.

The third woman finisher was Madeline Kramer, 26, of Oakland, who brought it home in 18:00.

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Plan to age like these guys: Ronald Gross (R) and Gary Hollinger were 1st & 2nd in the M 75-79 division at the Fab 40s 5K. (SRN photo)

A recent nationwide study of seniors showed a striking disconnect between people’s expectations of health and what they are doing about it.

When asked: “How confident are you in your ability to maintain a high quality of life throughout your senior years?” Eighty-six percent of seniors (60+) nationally and 90% of seniors in Los Angeles replied “somewhat or very confident.”

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Kevin Cimini gets chased to the finish by Carol Parise. (SRN photo)

As I sat through the long awards ceremony after the Fab 40s 5K, the question that kept running through my mind was “Where are all these fast people coming from?”

For a 5K in flat-as-a-pancake Sacramento, it’s a somewhat challenging course–not just because it starts and finishes on the highest hill in Sacramento.

There are deceptive, rolling hills on that East Sac course, and yet, Saturday’s times were still quite fast.

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