Saori Imamura races for the win, while Mario Sanchez cheers. (SRN photo)
A big crowd of speedy women (and a few men) lined up in River Park this morning for the Buffalo Chips’ Susan B Anthony 5K.
The race, founded in 1976, is the region’s oldest women’s race.
Over the years, the times have waxed and waned, but this year the top times were pretty brisk.
St. Francis senior Peyton Bilo gets in a workout a few days before States. (SRN photo)
For most high school runners, simply qualifying for State Champs is the highlight of the year. A very few locals will shine on the big stage.
For the past couple of years, all eyes have been on Davis junior Fiona O’Keeffe, who has dominated the region’s distance running. This year, the pressure was on for her to take home the region’s first title in the 3200.
Alas, she was so close!
Don’t worry about age (or youth) slowing you down when you run Sacramento’s original age-graded 5 Km race.
The No Excuses 5K, threading through the tree-lined Land Park course, lets you relive your youthful glory on a fast, flat course.
Davis’s Joannie Siegler, 58, ran a 20:20 to beat all comers with an age-graded 14:35. Coming in next, in age-graded times, was last year’s champion Mo Bartley, 60, of Auburn, whose 20:58 age -graded to 14:41.
Finishing third in the age graded race was Sacramento’s Gary Blanco, 47, whose 16:26(!) age-graded to 14:48.
If we look at the non-age-graded times, which we cannot help doing, we see that Garrett Seawell, 23 of Roseville, was the first finisher in a legitimately speedy time of 15:13.
Your memory is unreliable.
Remember how awful your last terrible marathon was?
Remember how bad you felt at 25 miles, when you swore you’d never do another one?
Then why do you find yourself, a month or two later (or less), looking for another one to sign up for?
It turns out that your memory for how well you remember how bad you felt is pretty terrible.
It’s probably the same reason some women have more than one baby.
In a recent study, marathon finishers were interviewed immediately following a race and again three or six months later.
Rich Hanna running alone on the Gold Rush trail. (Photo courtesy Sean Dulany Freeplay Magazine)
By John Schumacher
Rich Hanna overcame a nasty fall to run away with the men’s title and Tracy Hoeg delivered a winning move along the second half of the course to win the women’s race Saturday in the Gold Rush 50k.
Hanna, a longtime race director and coach from Sacramento, finished the 31-mile course from Cronan Ranch Regional Trails Park in Pilot Hill to historic Folsom in an event record 3 hours, 52 minutes and 58 seconds.
Sacramento’s Matt Bachman finished second in 4:05:02, with Sacramento’s Rasmus Hoeg grabbing third in 4:14:48.
New questions have emerged regarding the Boston Marathon Dad who famously and publicly scolded his kids’ school principal over a letter concerning their absence from school so they could watch him run.
Apparently, his qualifying run at the Lehigh Valley Marathon was a bit of an outlier compared to all his other race results listed on results aggregator Athlinks, and the only photo of him from that race was taken as he crossed the finish line. (As is typical in a marathon, there were numerous photographers along the course and there are multiple photos of most other runners at different points along the race.)
Naturally, the sleuths at Letsrun are on the case!
Read more at Phillymag.com, who has been closely monitoring this important story.
The author running at wet Boston Marathon (Photo courtesy of Daniel Weintraub)
By Daniel Weintraub
Three days post-Boston, and my shoes are finally dry. I can walk down stairs without much trouble. I am feeling mostly recovered from the Marathon. But I am still not quite recovered from the post-Marathon partying. I had not trained for that. I partied hard Monday night (i.e. four or five drinks — that’s hard for me) with Jenny Hitchings, Galen Farris, Abe Weintraub, Stephanie Ward, and Angel and Steve Simpson, friends of mine from Michigan.
Most of what happens in Boston stays in Boston, but I can say I enjoyed watching Galen announcing Jenny’s first place age group triumph to everyone we met in the bars and then seeing the normally modest Jenny take selfies with her new fans and tell her story over and over. She was doing everything but signing autographs on people’s calves. I was proud of her.
I had no such hopes for glory in Boston this year. But I was on a mission of my own. A year ago I ran my first Boston Marathon in 3:01:15, narrowly missing my goal of breaking three hours. I was on track to break three last year until my quads, thrashed by the course’s persistent but underrated down hills, locked up in the final few miles and my pace slowed to a relative crawl.
Lloyd Levine
By Lloyd Levine
Derek Yorek ran and finished the 2015 Boston Marathon. He is not an elite athlete. Outside of his family and friends it is unlikely anyone had ever heard of him. But on Monday, April 20th, 2015, shortly after 10:00 a.m. (Eastern Time), he did something amazing, something incredibly improbable, something that makes road running the most democratic of sports.
On Monday, April 20th, 2015, shortly after 10:00 a.m. Derek Yorek LED the Boston Marathon for several minutes. Yorek ran with and in front of Wesley Korir, Lelisa Desisa, and Meb Keflezighi, the winners of the 2012, 2013, and 2014 Boston Marathons.
In what other sport could a “non-elite” line up and compete against the best the sport has to offer?
You’ve trained for months and got up at the crack of dawn for the big race. You waited in Folsom for the start, shivering in the dark, with thousands of your friends.
Now, 25 exhausting miles later, you can almost smell the finish line as you pound your way down L Street.
Suddenly, a half block ahead of you, lights flash and bells clang as the guards drop at the railroad crossing. “Can this really be happening?” you wonder. It is certainly possible.
At last year’s Sactown 10, this very thing happened, despite assurances from the railroad that it would not. Subsequently, race management made the prudent decision to re-route the course to avoid the crossing.
But the California International Marathon, finishing at the Capitol, has to cross these tracks. Without completely changing the 30-year old race, there is simply no other way to get from the start to the finish–and Sacramento has no railroad overpasses in Midtown.
Jane Kibii breaks the tape! (Photo courtesy of SRA)
By John Schumacher
After Timmy Brown and Angela House supplied the early energy for Sunday’s Credit Union SACTOWN Five- and Ten-Mile Run, Jordan Chipangama and Jane Kibii kept the momentum going by besting elite fields to win 10-mile individual titles.
Brown, a 5-year-old brain cancer survivor, ran in the Miracle Mile to start the festivities on a gorgeous day at the state Capitol.
House, a 13-year-old leukemia patient, sang the national anthem before the five-mile run.
