Sacramento Running News

You are probably by now aware that the Olympic Marathon trials were held in Houston this past Saturday.

During your long run this morning, you may have asked your running buddies something like, “I wonder how that woman from our club did? I think her name is Susan. Or maybe it’s Suzanne. I’m not quite sure but, you know, she’s has kind of brown hair and is kind of skinny? You know who I’m talking about?”

No. I don’t know, but I did look through the results and tried to pick out as many locals as I could find and collected their results here.

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Austin Weaver with a comfortable lead before the levee road (SRN photo)

Around 5,000 runners converged on Land Park this morning for the 7th annual running of the Urban Cow Half Marathon and 5Km.

Sacramento’s Austin Weaver took advantage of the cooler weather to put the hurt on all comers, getting the win and a course record with a 1:07:47 finish.

Chad Worthen, also of Sacramento, was the next in at 1:14:37, followed by Carmichael’s Mason Myers in 1:15:24.

Myers was the top masters runner for the men.

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Alberto Zanelli of Italy running the 3rd leg of the 4x100 relay.

After a 10-day run, the curtain has come down on the 2011 World Masters Athletics Championships.

Was it worth the hype? Was Sacramento a worthy host? Was it fun?

Yes, yes, and yes!

What About the Weather?

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Kirsten Schneider finishes 3rd at the Women's Fitness 5K. Photo courtesy of Randy Wehner.

There has been a lot of racing going on around here! With all the rain and mud we’ve been slogging through, it’s hard to believe that this is the beginning of the summer, short-distance race season–but it is.

At Sunday’s Kaiser Permanente Women’s Fitness Festival 5K, Caroline Kirui, of Auburn (by way of Kenya), smoked all comers with a 16:26. This was surely one of the fastest women’s 5K times we’ve seen in town lately.

Rounding out the rest of the top-three were two of Sacramento’s top masters talents–Mary Coordt, of Elk Grove, was the second finisher in 17:45, and Kirsten Schneider, of Sacramento, was third in 18:24.

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If one were thinking of running a half marathon and wondering where one might find a race to place well (AKA “cherry picking”), one might think that a trip to the little valley town of Lodi might do the trick.

You could imagine the pleasant farming folk setting down their hoes, or parking their combine harvesters for the morning, lacing up some jogging shoes and trotting out an easy 13.1 miles. Then they might gather around a jug of fresh squeezed lemonade to chat about the new livestock auctioneer they’d seen at the county fair last summer. Or something like that.

Then you might actually run Lodi’s Avenue of the Vines Half-Marathon, or just look at the results, and notice that local running impresario Rich Hanna ran a 1:13:29 and still finished over four minutes behind winner Jose Morales, of Turlock, who ran 1:09:17!

To put that in perspective, imagine that you were running a 5:37/mile pace. Even if you were running that pace, the winner (i.e., Jose Morales) would be done and sipping on some of that fresh-squeezed lemonade and you would still have over a half-mile to run.

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Kevin Pool wins at Run to Feed the Hungry (Photo by Hector Amezcua, Sacramento Bee)

On an icy Thanksgiving morning, thousands of runners who were not me lined up on J Street for Sacramento’s annual Run to Feed the Hungry.

While there is no longer big prize money drawing runners from across the country and around the world (especially Africa), there were some impressive times and this race easily remains Sacramento’s premier 10 Km road race. (In 2008, there were four finishers under 30-minutes.)

Kevin Pool, of Folsom, took the overall win with a spectacular 31:15. Brad Poore of Auburn and Alan Jackson of Sacramento finished 2nd and 3rd in 31:22 and 31:26.

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