Kerri Gallagher will tell you 10 miles isn’t her specialty. And she has a point.
Last year, Gallagher was fifth in the 1500 meter run at the USA Track and Field Championships.
[button-red url=”https://www.armytenmiler.com/results/default.aspx?event=24297″ target=”_self” position=”left”] Results [/button-red]Well, on the side, Gallagher this morning became the first runner in the Army Ten-Miler’s 30-year history to win three straight overall titles, while also lowering her event record by six seconds to 54:50.
Marianne Dickerson won the first two ATMs, in 1985 and 1986, then won again in 1988. Next year, if Gallagher can make it a four-peat, she’ll tie Alisa Harvey for the most overall female titles.
After the race today, Gallagher remembered how her first ATM, in 2011, came as a bit of a shock. “I was surprised, because I wasn’t expecting to race it, and then he told me I was racing it,” she said, referring to her then-new coach, Matt Centrowitz.
If you train under Centrowitz, chances are ATM is on your schedule. Gallagher, who was a recent graduate of Fordham University with a degree in math and a school record for 800 meters, just didn’t know it at the time.
“I wasn’t quite strong enough to run 10, but I ran it,” she said, recalling her sub-60-minute debut, which put her more than three minutes behind the winner, Tezata Dengersa. The next year, though, even if 10 miles still wasn’t Gallagher’s favorite distance, she was ready: claiming her first victory in 56:09.
A three-year member of the Pacers-New Balance team, Gallagher recently became represented by Oiselle. By now, though, ATM is locked into Gallagher’s schedule. It’s a tradition. And she’ll be back next year for a shot at four titles.
“The energy is always so great here,” she said.
Gallagher was challenged in the early miles by U.S. Army Specialist Caroline Jepleting, who shares Gallagher’s background in middle distances. Jepleting was second in 56:34, putting her well ahead of Caitlin Bullock, of Durham, N.C., who was third in 57:17.
Born in Kenya, Jepleting came to the United States in 2008 to attend college. She was a 12-time national junior college All-American prior to transferring to Texas Tech, where she won a Big 12 cross country title.
Since coming to the United States, “I have always wanted to be in the military,” said Jepleting, who joined the Army about a year and a half ago and is now stationed in Germany. “It also is a way to celebrate the scholarship I got.”
Jepleting wasn’t sure if she would be able to continue running in the Army. “But I had that in mind: given a chance, I’d go for it,” she said.
She qualified to represent her unit’s team today by running a 61-minute qualifier in late June. Today, she easily exceeded her goal to break 60, and is already looking forward to next year.
“I think that is the greatest motivation,” she said of the 900 soldiers and civilians who support the event, as well as the spectators lining the course. “No matter how tired I was, I just kept moving.”
***
An hour before the first cannon fired this morning, members of the Brazilian Army team smiled while posing for a photo.
“Do you have the same team as last year?” the same team that swept the first three spots in 2013, a reporter asked.
“Yes,” a coach said. “Same team.”
You could not see Solonei Da Silva, Paulo Paula and Frank Almeida on the first row of the starting line. And in the opening mile, as an amateur runner sprinted out to a lead he would sustain for perhaps two minutes, the tall Da Silva, last year’s winner, ran fluidly with his teammates and let others set the pace.
The U.S. Army team, Aron Rono, Augustus Maiyo, Hillary Bor, and others – all athletes coached by Olympian and three-time ATM winner Dan Browne – had a similar strategy: run as a team, keep the group together as long as possible.
“We had decided we were going to take it really slow and try to bring the team together all the way towards the end,” Rono said.
As Siraw Gelaw opened up an early lead and passed through the mile in an honest 4:50, a huge mass of runners followed roughly 15 seconds back. Over the next few miles, a chase pack of 15 reeled him in, and Gelaw gladly settled back into the group.
Singlets – yellow for Brazil, gray camouflage for the Army, blue belonging to the U.S. Air Force and Frenchman Sebastien Beltran – stretched across Independence Avenue.
With a mile to go, one U.S. Army journalist captured the moment perfectly, saying, “Fifteen dudes have a shot.”
Chris Kwiatkowski, of Pacers New-Balance, was in the thick of it, just like last year. Ben Payne, of the U.S. Air Force, was often at the front and center of things. Two-time champion, Tesfaye Sendeku, Gelaw’s teammate, was there, too. Maiyo, former Marine Corps Marathon champion, was in the back, mostly hidden from sight.
“The last mile, I was a little disappointed, mainly because I was pushing the pace and the Brazilian team was really strong,” Rono said. When he surged, they surged back as if it were a game of speed-play.
There they were, sprinting towards the tape, with Da Silva defending his title in 48:28, just a second ahead of Paula. Almeida, in 48:45, edged out Rono, who moved up a spot from last year to fourth.
***
Thirty years ago, the first ATM had 1,379 runners. Today, there were 35,000 registered runners, 720 registered teams, and 11 shadow runs held all over the world. Retired Col. Lewis Goldberg was back for his 30th race, making him the only person to run in every ATM.
As runners filtered into the starting area for several wave starts on a chilly, sunny morning, the parachutes of the Army’s Golden Knights floated down from the sky. And about ten minutes before the first wave went off at 8 a.m., over 85 Wounded Warriors and wheelchair athletes – the heart and soul of ATM – were the first to cross the starting line.
One was Col. Greg Gadson, joined by five other handcyclists representing a team supported by America’s Fund. He has been competing in races on a handcycle – “an upside-down bicycle,” he said – since 2009.
Growing up, Gadson’s favorite sport was football. It was his skills as an outside linebacker that drew the attention of the United States Military Academy, and earned him a scholarship to play at West Point, leading him to a career as a soldier.
Gadson drew on that background after May 7, 2007. That day, in Baghdad, Iraq, Gadson was in a vehicle that was struck by a roadside bomb. His arm was badly injured; both of his legs had to be amputated above the knee.
“I think as a football player we always talk about getting knocked down and getting back up,” he said. “It’s a metaphor, but I think mentally that’s what you have to do.”
Gadson’s first Marine Corps Marathon as a handcyclist was hard, he said: “I thought I would never do it again.” Gadson has done three more marathons since.
After his injury, Gadson continued to serve in the military. He directed the Army’s Wounded Warrior program, he said, and, prior to retiring at the end of last year, was garrison commander for Fort Belvoir.
He is seeking out his next chapter in life, he said. Maybe he will even do more acting.
He also hopes, though, that he’ll have a little more time to get out on his hand-cycle through his neighborhood in Fairfax County and along the Mount Vernon trail.
“I want to keep a good cadence, keep a good rhythm,” he said. “Regardless of whether I am going uphill or downhill, I just try to find the right gear and keep that grind.”
Cue an early scene from “Karate Kid.”
The kid himself walks into Cobra Kai dojo and discovers that his nemesis is the top student. If that wasn’t intimidating enough, the kid also encounters a meathead instructor, or sensei, as he’s laying out some raw facts.
“Pain does not exist in this dojo,” the sensei yells out, “does it!”
“No sensei!”
And so on.
Dan Reeks believes in running. He knows what running did for him, and knows what running can do for others.
He started coaching in Montgomery County 43 years ago, during his early 20s. Back then he was a volunteer assistant for Paint Branch High School, and not necessarily volunteering by choice, either. Reeks, then a national-class runner, said he was concerned about an Amateur Athletic Union rule limiting how much money one could earn through coaching.
This was 1971. A year later, Frank Shorter would win gold in Munich, igniting the first running boom. Reeks — now heading into his 13th season with Sherwood High School — has not missed a Montgomery County cross country season since.
During his first decade of coaching, Reeks not only led Northwood High School’s girls cross country team to three state championships, but launched girls running in the county with the help of fellow coaches Kerry Ward and Greg Dunston.
Ward had guided Reeks while he was a senior at American University, and coached in the county for decades, leading Bethesda-Chevy Chase and Walt Whitman high schools to numerous state championships. Ward, while at BCC, also hosted the county’s first official girls cross country meet.
Dunston started coaching in the county in 1971, as well. The Georgetown Prep Coach, who previously coached at Walter Johnson, described their support for girls cross country thusly: “It was more a matter of thinking that you want equal rights for everyone.”
Dunston and Reeks got in the habit of bashing out Sunday long runs together. These days, they go for bike rides instead. The point is, these two have spent countless hours — many decades, even — talking shop, and fine-tuning a common approach to coaching.
“We want [our athletes] to have fun,” Dunston said, “and realize this is a sport you can do for a long time after high school.”
An interviewer described Reeks’ coaching streak as “amazing.”
“But it’s not,” Reeks said, “because, one thing, it’s fun. … I look forward to going to practice. I just like being around the kids.” He added: “It’s great to see them mature.”
At the end of each season, the Sherwood coach asks his junior and seniors for feedback on his coaching.
“And while it might be a benevolent dictatorship,” Reeks said, “the dictator does listen.”
Making the Team
Heading into his junior year, Reeks transferred to Palos Verdes Peninsula High School in Los Angeles County, where he quickly made friends with members of the track team.
Reeks tried out for the team, and was cut. Senior year, he tried to change that.
“I trained and trained,” he said. A few days a week, he said, he would run from his house up a big hill to the main road and meet up with a friend for training runs, an experience that taught him the value of group training.
Reeks made varsity cross country, “and that was it.” He knew what his passion was.
At Los Angeles Harbor Community College, Reeks started running twice a day to improve, following the lead of a teammate who had won Los Angeles’ city championship.
“He’d run, golly, I think he’d run in the high 9:30s [for two miles], and he got me to train with the coach who had coached him … and that got me down to 9:20 and 4:20 [for the mile],” Reeks said.
Those performances helped Reeks earn a scholarship to American University.
And as Reeks immersed himself in the sport, he quickly developed an interest in coaching.
“In college I liked supporting my teammates, and watching them, and just trying to figure out [what they were doing],” he said.
During his junior year at AU, Reeks mostly coached himself.
“I just followed the workouts I did the year before,” he said, “because I kept a training diary.” Then, as a senior, he met and was coached by Ward, who, like his first high school coach and others, had a big influence on Reeks’ coaching philosophy.
“I still use a few of those workouts,” he said. “I don’t make my athletes run 10 miles on the track, though.”
Years of Coaching
Reeks and his wife, Barbara, have been married for 40 years, and have two children, David and Emily.
His second coaching job, after Northwood, was at Eastern Middle School. From 1983 to 1998, he coached at Montgomery College — or “the MC,” as he calls it — where he started the indoor track program and each year qualified athletes for the NJCAA championships. He coached 17 junior college All-Americans.
Los Angeles Harbor Community College had enabled Reeks, who had only been running for one year at that point, to develop in athletics and academics and earn a scholarship to AU.
At Montgomery College, he saw his job as helping others do the same: to balance work, training and school. He takes pride in knowing that many of his athletes transitioned successfully to four-year colleges.
From the fall of 1999 through Spring 2002, Reeks coached at Winston Churchill. In his last cross country season there, the boys and girls teams both finished third in the state meet.
The decision to leave Winston Churchill was difficult. Reeks cried while breaking the news to the team.
But he also taught social studies in the county for 39 years – mostly at Wheaton – and wanted to close out his career coaching and teaching at the same school to reduce his commute. He was able to do that at Sherwood, where, at that time, the boys hadn’t won a dual meet in outdoor track in more than five years and the girls cross country team was at a low point.
This was the fall of the sniper shootings. John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo shot at people indiscriminately, causing widespread fear. Training was missed; many meets were canceled.
Still, that fall, two girls and two boys represented Sherwood at the state meet. That spring, the boys track team broke its losing streak.
Since then, in cross country, both teams have qualified for the state meet almost every year. In 2003, the Sherwood boys cross country team was second in the county, first in the regional meet, and won a state championship.
Reeks “always puts together competitive cross country teams,” said Kevin Milsted, the founder of MoCo Running, which chronicles the county’s high school running scene. “He has the technical knowledge to develop runners of all body types, and he has the personality and dry humor to engage athletes of all backgrounds.”
It has worked for junior Gary Confrey. As his mother Jackie put it, his motivation was lacking in areas where he did not already show skill. That changed after one talk with Reeks.
“He told him that if you want to do well, you have to put in the work,” she said. “It was simple but it flicked a switch. Now he doesn’t want to miss school if he’s sick because it means he can’t go to practice.” The first day of the school year, she said, “kids line up to see him and give him a hug.”
Reeks understands his athletes have a lot on their plate. They are focused not only on excelling at running and academics, but perfecting SAT scores and college applications. “You have to get as much as you can out of them during practice,” he said, “and remind them that life is short.” (Dunston said almost the exact same thing.)
Reeks puts team captains in charge of summer training, assigning mileage goals for each class. To that end, early in the summer, the captains choose a location for team members to meet up each morning for runs, said senior captain Courtney Nakamura.
“He just cares a lot about the team and each individual person. It makes us all want to work harder,” Nakamura said.
Early in the season, they start with general workouts before gradually branching off into different training groups. A computer program called Running Trax, packed with performance charts, helps him individualize workouts.
“I have always written [out the workouts], printed them, and given them to the kids,” he said
A staple workout for Sherwood is a tempo followed by 12 200-meter intervals. To prepare for the state championship at the punishing Hereford course, the team goes to Lake Needwood and practices in an area known as “the dip.”
“His biggest priority,” said Ariel Mahlman, who graduated from Sherwood in 2013, “is definitely to provide his athletes with an understanding and passion for the sport … He is very easy to talk to and always offers great advice whenever you ask a question.”
Reeks’ athletes describe him as “silly,” as a “character,” as someone who makes them laugh with “cheesy puns.”
When athletes ask him how they can improve, though, Reeks gets down to business.
“You got to work,” he said. “Distance running, I always tell the kids, and I have for years, is the Puritan work ethic. You get better because you train.”
The MoCo Scene
One day in the late 2000s, Reeks was at his desk, grading papers, when, as he remembered it, “this exceptionally good-looking couple is at my doorway with a security guy who says, ‘This guy wants to come to Sherwood and run.'”
This guy was Solomon Haile, who in 2009 would win the Foot Locker Cross Country Championship. Haile had been training in his native Ethiopia, and had come to the United States for two reasons: to run and go to school.
“He was always centered, he had a goal, and he was smart,” Reeks said.
Asked to recollect highlights from 43 years of coaching, Reeks mentioned Haile setting the national record in the 5,000. He mentioned Northwood winning its first state cross country title in 1975. He mentioned, in 2003, the Sherwood principal running up to him on the Hereford hill and exclaiming, “We’ve won!”
But Reeks is well known and respected by Montgomery County coaches and runners for others reasons.
“I always thought it was really cool how supportive he was of me, even though I ran at a rival school,” said Sean O’Leary, who ran for Walter Johnson.
O’Leary got to know Reeks through the Concord Retreat Cross Country Camp, which Reeks has run for 30 years.
“Bottom line,” O’Leary said, “it doesn’t matter if you’re Solomon Haile gunning for the Footlocker National Championship or a freshman wearing basketball shoes running for a different team — Coach Reeks wants you to be successful.”
When Kyle Gaffney, a committed runner at Blake High School, needed coaching and training partners, Reeks – thinking of his own experiences running at AU – provided it.
Reeks is matter-of-fact about it.
“You just do that,” he said, “because you want to see the sport grow and you want to see kids run and do well.”
All the while, Coach Reeks’ legend in Montgomery County — whether he realizes it or not — grows with it.
“I have never seen anyone yell louder than him at meets,” said Owen Miller, Sherwood’s boys cross country captain. “He is incredibly enthusiastic.”
The Crystal City Twilighter 5k‘s seventh running was a who’s who of the regional running scene.
Area running clubs emptied their stables. The course was new – faster, with fewer turns. And conditions, while not good for racing, exactly, were about as good as they get for late July in downtown Arlington. No 98 degrees (2011) or downpours (2013).
[button-red url=”http://www.zippyraceresults.com/search.php?ID=4127″ target=”_self” position=”left”] 5k Results [/button-red]All told, 28 men broke 16 minutes, with Chris Kwiatkowski, RunWashington’s top-ranked runner in 2013, breaking the tape in 14:37. Kwiatkowski, 25, also led his Pacers/New Balance team to victory in the co-ed club team competition, a squad that included women’s winner Kerri Gallagher, who came through in 17:22. (In the women’s race, by the way, the top 23 broke 20 minutes, with 11 going under 19.)
“It’s a great atmosphere,” Kwiatkowski, who ran close-to-even 4:40 miles, said. “This was my first time doing this. I have been a part of this for four years – coming to watch, helping out – but never to race. So it was an excellent day to come out and compete and have some fun.”
Kwiatkowski was followed by Pacers-New Balance teammates Landon Peacock (14:47), Leoule Degfae (14:50), and Frank Devar (14:51). Kevin McNab, in 14:55, was the fifth and final runner under 15 minutes, leading Georgetown Running Club to second in the team standings. GRC was followed by DC Road Runners Club, Northern Virginia Running Club, and Capital Area Runners.
Last year, Claire Hallissey led Gallagher through a too-quick first mile. Gallagher faded to third, she recalled.
This year she had a very different strategy. “The plan,” Gallagher’s roommate and training partner, Amy Laskowske, said, “was that she could help me through the first mile. And then I kept telling her to go, and she wouldn’t go.”
At the three-mile mark, Gallagher finally gave in, while Laskowske still finished just three seconds back. Lindsay O’Brien, of Georgetown Running Club, was third in 17:56.
“It was really good to kind of go in with a better plan and be a little more conservative,” Gallagher said.
Kwiatkowski and Gallagher each earned $200 for their efforts. The top three teams each received $250.
In the masters division, Patrick Kuhlmann, 43, won in 16:12. Shannon Smith, 48, was top female master in 21:20.
“I’m the old guy,” the unassuming Kuhlmann, said, as a way of identifying himself at the award’s stage. He took the same honor last weekend at the Rockville Twilight.
***
If you think racing in the summer can be tough, try two in one day. That’s what Mike Cannon, 56, of Fairfax Station, did as part of his quest to run more than 100 races in 2014.
Asked how his race went, Cannon said, “I ran a 5k up in Baltimore this morning so I didn’t have the legs for it.”
Andrew Gray and Alan Bornbusch, two Arlington runners and members of one of Pacers’ Tuesday night running groups, enjoyed the race, they said, though perhaps for slightly different reasons.
Bornbusch, 53, said his 22:39 finish served him well in training for his first half marathon this fall.
“It’s a nice little piece of speed work,” he said.
For Gray, 31, who came in just a few seconds shy of breaking 20 minutes, the race was more like a piece of cake, even if a head cold made it difficult.
“It’s a good way to spend my birthday,” he said. “That way I can make room for brunch tomorrow.”
***
He finally had it.
After years of trying, Arlington’s Matt Deters broke 16 minutes by a clump of hairs – 15:58. He confirmed his time at a laptop at the registration table.
“When I was in high school, if you ran under 16 you were a god,” he said. “I didn’t think I’d be able to do it, after a torn Achilles and knee surgery.”
He was close on the fourth of July, running 16:06 at the Firecracker 5k in Reston.
At Crystal City, he split 4:49 and 10:03 before hanging on as the heat, and the hurt, turned up.
***
Look out for Thomas Edison High School’s cross country team.
The Edison Club won its second-straight title in the high school team competition. Gonzaga, Annandale, Wilson, and J.E.B. Stuart also fielded clubs.
The Walt Whitman Club won in the high school girls division, followed by Annandale, Lake Braddock, Wilson, and Georgetown Visitation.
Brandon Rockers, a rising senior at Edison who was third for his club in 17:47, said running the Crystal City Twilighter has become a team tradition. “The race has always been before a running camp” members of the team attend, Rockers said.
In the high school results, Aviad Gebrehiwot, 17, of Annandale High School, was top male in 16:44. Sonya Butseva, 16, and teammate Kate Murphy, 14, both running for Lake Braddock Club, were the top females, both finishing in 20:49.
Look out, as well, in the 11 to 14 age group.
Madalyn Wright, 11, was 3rd in the female division behind Murphy and Angelica Gaughran, also 14. Her time was 22:57.
Wright was wearing a tutu, and said she has now run about half-a-dozen races between 5k and 10k.
“I love running,” said Madalyn, whose mother, Myra Wright, ran in high school and is a longtime runner.
Madalyn was 6 when she ran her first race. “I kept saying,” Myra Wright recalled, as they ran together that first time, “the tortoise wins: slow and steady finishes the race. And she kept saying, ‘Mom, I want to go faster.’ So at two and a half I said, ‘Madalyn, ‘Go!’ and she just took off.’
That’s how it has been ever since, said Wright, who had a finishing time of 24:16 on her watch.
“I tell you, it motivates me to run faster when you know your little girl is up there.”
This map tracks assaults on people running or on popular running routes in the Washington, D.C., region going back to 2010. Each description includes a link to an article or press release about the incident.
The map is incomplete and relies mostly on media reports. If you have an incident to report, email [email protected].
She took to running for its simplicity.
One foot in front of the other. No need for a gym membership. Plenty of bike paths and trails. Her only real goal was to stay in shape; as incentive, she signed up for a 5k.
One of her favorite loops took her to Arlington’s Marine Corps War Memorial, or Iwo Jima Memorial. She typically ran through the dark of early morning, and usually alone (at this point, she was reluctant to join a group, worrying she’d be too slow). Meanwhile, she always saw plenty of other runners and pedestrians.
She was wearing headphones, but still heard someone coming up from behind her.
A passing runner?
About as soon as she could tell something wasn’t quite right, a man grabbed her around her waist and pulled her to the side of the path.
What happened next probably only lasted a few seconds, though it “seemed like an eternity,” said the runner, who wished to remain anonymous.
She fought back, got herself loose, and yelled out for help.
When he ran away, she ran in the opposite direction. She asked someone to borrow their cell phone and called the police. The report, however, was difficult to file: she didn’t get a good look at her attacker.
That day on the path, as a result of the incident, she met another runner who invited her to join a twice-a-week morning running group. Several days later, still shaken from what happened, she returned to running by joining her new friend for her first group run. These days, she rarely runs alone, and always carries a cell phone.
For a time, a runner coming up behind her would cause her body to recoil. A couple years later, she thinks about the incident less and less. At the same time, her experience made it clear to her that, when out running, women face another layer of risk that men give little thought to.
“That’s the way of things,” she said. “I don’t have to like it. I resent it. But because I am a woman I do have to have this extra check list.”
For another local runner, Meghan Ridgley, early morning hours – her typical training window – limit her route options, even in suburban Virginia. Runners who train in the dark are typically advised to wear reflective or bright clothing to make themselves more visible to drivers. But because Ridgely finds it difficult to vary where she runs, she does the opposite, preferring instead to keep a low profile.
She often runs loops “over and over again” near her home, where she knows the traffic patterns and her safety zones.
“I am always in an area where I can run to safety if need be,” she said.
Shawn McIntosh, of Catonsville, Md., works for the American Public Health Association, through which she supports the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Community Transformation Grants program.
Nationwide, there are many areas, she said, where it is not safe to be physically active due to issues like crumbling sidewalks or bad lighting. And these are some of the issues that McIntosh is trying to address through the Community Transformation Grants program, which provides funding to a variety of initiatives aimed at creating healthier communities.
But while pedestrian paths lower the chances of being struck by a vehicle, McIntosh, who recently returned to running after a long break and is training for a half marathon, prefers not to run on them by herself, or with her typical training partner: her four-year-old in a stroller.
In these instances, she would rather stick to runs in her neighborhood – like Ridgely, close to home.
Meanwhile, Washington’s Celia Riley prefers the paths of Rock Creek Park, a nearly 3,000-acre park bisecting northwest Washington, D.C. She typically runs alone and in the early morning, comforted by the sight of another runner every few minutes.
She runs at an hour when her visibility is good and wears a bracelet with identification. For weekend long runs, she takes a phone and Metro card, in case she were to injure herself.
Recently, Riley strayed from her routine, heading into Rock Creek Park on a Saturday night.
She knew right away it was a mistake. Though armed with a headlamp and pepper spray, she was scared, felt unsafe and fixated on the possibility of an attack.
She wrote on her blog, “All the alerts and reminders I see on news feeds and Twitter for runners to be cautious flashed through my mind and I thought, ‘I’m going to be another headline.’”
Riley’s only run-ins that night were with deer. But she learned her lesson.
“I absolutely will not do it again solo,” Riley said, who offered that having a running partner might have raised her comfort level.
Keep in mind, Rock Creek Park is only open during daylight hours.
Fighting Back
Laurie Porsch’s self defense teachings stress the importance of avoiding dangerous scenarios but also not avoiding the fact that one can do everything right and still get attacked.
The active-duty U.S. Marine Corps Sergeant (she has served two deployments) teaches martial arts – including Muay Thai and Brazilian jiu-jitsu – at BETA Academy in Washington, D.C. She also teaches self defense classes upon request, applying her martial arts training to teaching her students how to fend off an attacker.
Porsch’s self defense philosophy is heavily influenced by an essay called “On Violence,” whose author, Sam Harris, puts forth three principals: avoid dangerous people and dangerous places; do not defend your property; respond immediately and escape.
“[Attacks] happen really quickly,” she said. “Even though you know you are going to be surprised, know what you are going to do. Know that you won’t freeze up.”
If attacked, she said, respond violently and immediately. Focus on the eyes, the throat, the knees – on taking away their ability to see, walk, or breathe.
The next step is to run away.
“You’re not there to give them an educational beatdown,” she said. “You don’t want to risk it. Your goal is escape.”
The Drivers
Thirteen years ago, Rebecca Samson, then a teenager living in Ellicott City, Md., was running one evening through a neighborhood close to her home. Suddenly, a car pulled up beside her and slowed down, and the driver, a male, asked her if she wanted to get in.
When Samson turned down his request, he aimed the car at her, she said. She took off running as fast as she could, while the car turned around and sped off.
After that, Samson started carrying mace while she ran. She started varying her routes and the time of day she did her runs.
The South Riding, Va., resident and two-time marathoner no longer carries mace. But she does prefer to do her early-morning runs with friends. If she runs alone, she wears a reflective vest so she can be seen and a headlamp so she can see others. She lets her husband know her route, and keeps a tag on her shoe with contact information.
Running brings Samson joy. A run-in with a creep, on the other hand, illuminated the need to be careful.
Same for Meg Ashton, of Quantico, who likes to drive up to Lake Ridge, Va., to her do long runs. Her parents live near there, she said, and don’t mind watching her 9-month-old son while she trains.
This spring, Ashton was putting in a 16-miler, mostly on a path running along Prince Williams Parkway, before the Marine Corps Historic Half.
At a certain point, she noticed a man in a car passing her four or five times, she said, every time he had a way to turn around. “The next time I noticed him,” she added, “he had pulled off to the side of the road and parked” about 100 yards away from her.
Ever since her son was born, Ashton started carrying a phone with her when she ran: mostly in case she needed to be reached in the event of an emergency, not in the event she was in an emergency.
She held the phone up to her ear, as if she was about to make a call, and watched the man drive away. Lacking a license plate number, she did not report the incident. She did, however, finish the run – more uneasy and alert than she’d ever felt.
Ashton now makes sure to stick to busy routes and tell her mom or husband where she plans to run.
Reston’s Holly Kearl, a runner and the founder of a nonprofit organization called Stop Street Harassment, points out that women are mostly well aware of the best ways to avoid a potential attacker or harasser. But that doesn’t mean it’s entirely avoidable: Every run has its risks.
For Kearl, being harassed while running was a big influence on her decision to make street harassment the focus of her master’s thesis at George Washington University. Back then she lived in Fairfax on Lee Highway. Mostly, she explained, it was honks, whistles, and comments yelled from windows. Another time, in Leesburg, she was chased through a park at dusk, she said.
Kearl, whose favorite race distance is 10K, has had fewer problems in Fairfax. What has helped, she said, was that she and her husband bought a home near a track and trails. Some might say trails offer more risks, but Kearl said she prefers them to “men in cars.”
While Stop Street Harassment has global aims, its partner organization, Collective Action for Safe Spaces, is focusing on building a community free from public sexual harassment and assault in Washington, D.C.
Julia Strange, the all-volunteer’s staff’s director of policy and programs, said, for runners who encounter harassment, “there is no wrong way to respond.” She added, “you really just have to do a gut check to decide what you are comfortable doing.” And in some cases, responding might simply not be safe.
Runners who observe other runners being mistreated might be in a better position to step in and say something, Strange said.
Running on
Ashton’s frightening encounter on Prince William Parkway has made her more cautious about where and when she trains, but it hasn’t dulled her tenacity.
At the Lehigh Valley Health Network Via Marathon last month, she ran 3:13, a 16-minute personal best.
The runner who was attacked on her run to Iwo Jima?
Passing by the spot on a run triggers the memory. But at this point, what she thinks about is how fortunate she was and how much worse it could have been.
She has been running now for two and a half years. Her weekly training mileage continues to climb.
“I knew in my head,” she said, “that if I let this incident really become a big thing, then maybe I would not run at all.”
In October 2013, she finished her fourth marathon in Chicago.
This first appeared in the November/December 2013 issue of RunWashington.
The fourth try was the charm for Christine Ramsey, who broke the tape at the Pike’s Peek 10k Sunday morning in 34:43.
The Baltimore runner debuted here in 2008, finishing 5th in 36:19. Four years later, she returned, running more than 90 seconds faster but finishing two spots lower. Last year, another solid showing got her 11th.
Enter 2014. This morning, two miles in, Ramsey, 31, found herself in the lead pack with about half a dozen women all running well under six minutes per mile. “I felt pretty strong, so I picked it up,” she said. “They were still pretty close behind me, but nobody went with me.”
[button-red url=”https://www.mcrrc.org/pikes-peek-10k-8″ target=”_self” position=”left”] 10k Results [/button-red] At mile 4, Ramsey surged again, holding onto a slim lead over Alexandria’s Lindsay O’Brien, on the way to a new personal best of 34:43 and a $500 pay day. “It was great because we pushed each other,” she said of her competitors.
Ramsey, as of late, has been more focused on reaching the finish line of her PhD program than on trying to win races. She recently turned in her dissertation; the defense is in two weeks. “So it felt good to have a good race,” said Ramsey, who will move to New Haven, Conn., soon to start a post-doctoral position.
All but 70 seconds separated Ramsey from Selamawit Lemma in 5th. O’Brien was 2nd; it was her second-straight sub-35-minute showing here. Columbia’s Julia Roman-Duval was 3rd in 35:05, followed by Loring Crowley of Winston Salem, N.C., in 35:23. Kensington’s Cindy Conant, 53, was the top master in 38:08.
On the men’s side, Nahom Mesfin, running his first Pike’s Peek, took the lead early and never looked back. He was all alone, pumping his arms on the long downhill to the finish line and waving to the crowd, winning in a net time 28:28, 22 seconds off Julius Kogo‘s event record set in 2011.
Mesfin, a former Olympic steeplechaser, is living in Alexandria, and is transitioning to longer races, he said. To that end, he recently returned from a four-month training trip to his native Ethiopia.
Early in the race, Mesfin questioned the feedback he was getting from his watch, he said. He was seeing kilometer splits in the low 2:30s, but the pace felt a slower than that, he said. “I was not in a good mood.”
Less than a half hour later, his mood had changed.
“I am so excited, and so happy,” said Mesfin, who had been disappointed with his performance at the Cherry Blossom Ten Mile Run earlier this month.
Baisa Moleta, also of Alexandria, was 2nd in 29:04, followed by Dereje Deme of Silver Spring in 29:09. Gurmessa Megerssa, a Washington, D.C., resident via Ethiopia who reigned supreme over the local roads in 2006 and 2007, closed hard down the final straight to clock 29:19. Getachew Asfaw of Silver Spring rounded out the top five.
Bethesda’s Conrad Laskowski, 7th in 30:12, ran with the lead pack early on alongside Gaithersburg’s Chris Sloane, 8th in 30:33.
“I was trying to run under 30,” Laskowski said. “Came up a little short, but I am happy with it. It’s a PR.”
Philippe Rolly, 41, of McLean, was top master in 31:37.
Downhill, fast, and cool
For Pike’s Peek, runners start on Redland Road near the Shady Grove Metro station, make a quick left on Route 355 and bee-line it south past the White Flint station, where a big downhill covers the last .2 miles. “It is probably the fastest 10k you can get without going on the track,” Ramsey said.
That, as it happens, is only part of its appeal. In addition to professional-level competition, former race director Jean Arthur can only remember two years when this Montgomery County Roads Runners event had bad weather. This year, the temperature was cool, and the way the finish line banner was flapping, you knew the wind was at runners’ backs.
“I ran it for the first time last year, and I thought it was so good I came back again,” said Brian Carlson, a nine-time marathoner who started running in 1988. The Reston Runners member, who is 67, likes the net-downhill course. Plus, he said, “It’s a very well-run race.”
“You know it’s net downhill, so you know you’re going to get a pretty good time,” said Jody Gil, who came close to achieving her goal of breaking 53 minutes.
Gil ran with her longtime friend Jared Sher for six-plus miles. “He turned on the guns at the end,” she said.
Leland Hao ran the race with his son, Kelvin Hao, 11. It was Kelvin’s first 10k, and the smile on his face afterward suggested he’ll have no problem finishing the Disneyland 10k in late August.
When Kelvin’s younger sister was hospitalized for cephalitis, he met other kids his age fighting a rare childhood disease called ataxia-telangiectasia, also referred to as Louis-Bar syndrome, Leland Hao said. In Anaheim, Calif., Kelvin’s race will raise money for the A-T Children’s Project, which seeks a cure.
The race had a wave start to accommodate about 2,500 participants, and for the first time offered pacing teams. Bethesda’s Danny George, typically a 36-minute 10k runner, helped about 10 runners meet their goal of breaking 45 minutes.
“I just wanted to stay even and give them a little head start,” George said. “That way, once they got to the top of the hill, they could just coast right in.”
Here comes your shirt.
You are at an expo; and after you say your size, a volunteer picks it out of a mini-mountain of them and hands it to you, after which you stuff it in your token plastic bag, or maybe you hold it out in front of you with two hands, size it up like a painting, then decide in seconds whether it’s a keeper, a rag, or ironic.
It could be short sleeve, long sleeve, cotton, “technical,” designed by a budding 10-year-old artist, or be pure retina-burning color. But that’s not the point.
The point is that some runners say you are better off crossing paths with a black cat than putting on that shirt at any time before you cross that finish line.
But, it’s just a shirt, you say? How can a shirt wipe out all those miles run, all those lung-searing intervals, all those perfect simple-carb meals?
Ask Dave Nemetz, 47.
On two occasions, Nemetz has tried on his shirt before the gun fired.
In 2009, he tried it on the night before the Philadelphia Distance Run and the next day strained his calf and dropped out.
In 2010, before a summer race in Dewey Beach, Del., he picked up the shirt on race day, walked to the start, and, since he did not have anywhere to put the shirt, wore it. This time, Nemetz strained his calf after only one tenth of a mile.
The Reston resident has been running for four years and has done about 35 races. (“I keep all of my (race) shirts,” he says, “until I can’t get the sweat smell out of them anymore.”)
Since Dewey, though, Nemetz, under no circumstance, will try on a race shirt at any point before the start. Since then, coincidentally, or maybe not, he has never pulled out of a race with a calf issue.
Could dehydration be the real culprit? Nemetz, who now has two more years of running under his belt, more or less admits as much.
But he’s not about to swear off his superstition, either.
Runners, no doubt, are a superstitious lot. We have this tendency to assign luck – both good and bad – to articles of clothing, to food, and more.
Sometimes we call them rituals. Sometime we call them quirks.
Sometimes we say running is all mental.
I suppose we’ll do anything to calm down our nerves, anything to keep those negative thoughts from creeping in.
Thank you, Dave Nemetz, for sharing with us your superstition. Thank you, as well, to the local runners – whose stories are below – for lifting up the curtain on race day, and for giving us a glimpse of that weird intangible factor the more sophisticated among us sometimes call the mind-body-spirit.
It’s all about the shoes
Brandon Hirsch rotates each racing flat clockwise – twice – before he puts them on. He counts to 30, takes each shoe off, and rotates them again – this time counterclockwise – before putting them on for real.
The technology lawyer’s singlet goes on inside-out. After his warm-up, he takes it off and flips it.
There are 20 minutes until race time. And somewhere deep inside his nervous mind, someone is pumping quarters into a jukebox and choosing Don McLean’s “American Pie” – again and again and again.
The third verse, in particular, seems to be playing on loop:
Helter skelter in a summer swelter
The birds flew off with a fallout shelter Eight miles high and falling fast.
Next comes the playing of the national anthem. After that comes the surreal scene where Hirsch, 42, of Rockville, unties and ties his shoes. And after that, the race is finally on, and Hirsch can just run.
For Hirsch, superstitions are a kind of coping mechanism to deal with high levels of pre-race nerves. In his 20s, he ran the Boston Marathon in 2:38:12. He then suffered a string of injuries, had his priorities shift towards other things, then spent the next 14 years jogging.
He returned to racing in 2009, this spring clocking 36:29 at the Pike’s Peek 10k. Meanwhile, since returning to racing, Hirsch has found that today’s scene hardly mirrors the one he remembers from his 20s. In short, today’s more festive pre-race atmosphere kind of freaks him out. And to be fair, Hirsch’s rotating of his shoes and his singing of “American Pie” – the lyrics for which he used to scribble in his notebooks in grade school when a teacher stressed him out – isn’t entirely random, either.
Hirsch grew up playing basketball, even played in college. One summer, the great UCLA basketball coach John Wooden visited his camp. And get this: Wooden’s first drill with these young basketball players addressed the proper way to put on your shoes and socks.
Hirsch recalls, “He said, ‘Hey, I showed Bill Walton how to do this.’”
The Learned Routine
Before her high school track races, Miriam Becker-Cohen always had to read a motivational letter written to her by an older teammate. It didn’t matter that the letter really wasn’t that motivational. Reading it was a superstition. And back then, Becker-Cohen, now 25, had an assortment of similar superstitions she turned to on race day.
But Becker-Cohen has since left the majority of those superstitions behind. Today, the habits the Washington, D.C. resident and DC Road Runners Club member relies on to race her best could alternatively be described as rituals or a routine.
She lays out all of her clothes the night before the race, pins her bib to her shirt.
Race mornings she has two slices of toast, some Gatorade, and about two liters of water. And lately, right before the race, she downs a Powerbar Gel Blast – 10 measly strawberry-banana calories that let her brain and legs know the time is now.
“It has a lot to do with the fact that running is so mental, and having some sort of routine can mentally prepare you in a way that puts you at ease,” she says.
One of the more frustrating parts of the marathon, for example, is that months of great training have the potential to be unraveled by an alarm clock that fails to go off or by eating the wrong breakfast – by race day logistics, essentially.
So part of the reason that Becker-Cohen is so serious about doing things the same way over and over is that, ultimately, this is what makes her feel more prepared and less rushed on race day.
She likes to be at the start earlier than a lot of people.
Why? Before the Philadelphia Marathon one year she had to sprint to the starting line to be there before the gun went off. She got flustered, went out too hard, had a “terrible” race.
She would rather have things go down the way they did in October at the Steamtown Marathon, where, in her fourth attempt to do so, she qualified for the Boston Marathon.
“There is only so much training you can do, and there are good days and bad days,” she says. “But if you have things that work for you in the past, it does become sort of like a superstition.”
Something to Chew on
Shortly before the 2012 Disney World Marathon, Matthew Lofton realized that his gum had fallen out of his pocket.
No big deal, right?
Actually, for Lofton, it was a huge deal.
Oh my gosh. This is off to a bad start, he thought.
Panicking, the 33-year-old Winchester, Va. resident started asking race volunteers if they could spare some. (Lofton, lucky for him, doesn’t need a lot of gum: One piece can last him three or four hours, he says, and he doesn’t even necessarily need to chew on it the whole time.)
After scrounging up that stick of gum, the photographer and running coach went on to run 2:46, roughly an hour faster than his debut couch-to- marathon effort just four years prior.
Lofton will make sure to pack his gum when he heads to Boston this fall. In the meantime, while he trains for it, he will make sure to have a stick in his car, a stick in his running bag, and plenty of extra packs at home – anything to prevent having to run gum-free.
Lofton describes himself as “slightly OCD.”
For example, he has eaten at Burger King – ordering the same meal – every Saturday going on six years. But many of his habits – or streaks, if you will – like wearing the same socks for races, do in time fade away (the socks, for instance, wore out).
Not gum.
“I don’t see myself ever running without gum,” he says. “That seems really weird to me to run without it.”
Got Beer
Kim Kruse, 48, of Arlington had a habit of swearing off alcohol for two months before a marathon.
How disciplined and smart.
But one night before a triathlon several years ago, Kruse was at a restaurant and got into a conversation about the effect alcohol had on racing.
Her friend was pretty sure beer drinking was no good. Kruse, in turn, was pretty sure having a beer couldn’t possibly hurt.
So, a bet was placed, and Kruse ordered a beer. The next day she had a great race, and won the bet: a six-pack of her choice.
Kruse now has a beer before every race.
“It’s important to me because I have travelled to some very cool places for racing and I like to drink local beers,” she says.
In fact, Kruse, a member of DC Road Runners Club, placed third in her age group at the National Long Course Championship triathlon, qualifying her to represent Team USA at the 2013 Long Course World Championship in France.
If she were a pro athlete, she figures, and racing was her true “bread and butter,” she might second-guess this pre- race ritual.
“But I am not a pro,” she says, “and my beer goes well with bread and butter.”
A Kiss for Good Luck
In 2007, Glenn Sewell of Arlington watched from the sidelines as his wife, Jenny Goransson, ran the Marine Corps Marathon. He was joined that day by Goransson’s mother, who made sure they saw Goransson at as many mile markers as they could.
Afterward, Sewell was exhausted, and he joked to his wife that perhaps running it would be easier. So, he took up running. And two years later, he really did finish MCM, the first of his three marathons.
Sewell has yet to catch up to his wife, who last year finished the Shamrock Sportsfest Marathon in 3:19. But they generally run the same races, from 5K to marathons.
So what does Sewell always need right before the race starts? A kiss, of course.
“She’s much faster than I am, so I always hope it will give me a boost of her speed,” he says.
As Sewell has improved, the meaning of the kiss has shifted. At first, it was a kiss meaning, “good luck getting to the finish.” These days, it means, “good lucking trying to snag a PR.”
Regardless, without that pre-race smooch from Jenny, Sewell, 47, says he struggles to bring his A game.
“I am not sure if I miss it I think I am inviting bad luck. But I do know that it affects me mentally.”
In college, Jack McMahon ran a personal best of 4:34 in the mile.
It was the 1950s. And after graduating with his engineering degree from the University of Pittsburgh, McMahon – like most college runners of the era – promptly quit the sport. McMahon started a career. He and his wife had 10 children. McMahon’s second running life started in his 40s when he began coaching and training with a
high school team. He then connected with a DC Road Runners program called Run For Your Life, he said, and has been racing ever since.
On Dec. 1, McMahon was ranked second in the men’s 80-and-up division of RunWashington’s runner rankings, having run eight local races between 5k and 10k. He’s 83 and lives with his wife in a retirement home in Montgomery County.
“I’m running more towards the back now,” he said, “but I’m racing.”
In the world at large, birthdays after a certain age are both celebrated and feared. But in the running world, 40 – the year one can start competing as a master – is worth getting excited about. A new decade – or a new five-year age division – can mark a fresh start. It can just as easily motivate a new runner to train seriously and find out what they’re capable of as it can re-focus someone who has already been running for decades.
In his late 20s and early 30s, Philippe Rolly, of McLean, Va., broke 2:20 in the marathon and 66 minutes in the half marathon. His goal was to break 2:15. This happened shortly after Rolly moved to the United States from his native France. He had recently married Joanne Moak, and worked part time while earning a license in
physical therapy. “Back then,” Rolly said, “I had plenty of time to train.”
He had less time, though, after starting a full-time job at Medstar Georgetown University Hospital – and even less after he and Moak had their first of three children, who are now 10, eight and six.
“I certainly lost motivation to train hard for several years,” Rolly, now 41 years old, said of his break from competitive racing and a few years during which he squeezed in roughly five runs per week.
At the end of his 30s, Rolly – intent on reinventing himself as a master – re-focused his training.
In August, he finished second in the one-mile national masters championships, clocking 4:30. This fall, he was top master at the Rock ‘n’ Roll Philadelphia Half Marathon in 1:08:59 and second master at the Bank of America Chicago Marathon in 2:27:59.
“Now my goal is to be one of the best masters (runners) in the U.S.,” he said.
There are times, and then are performances.
Mick Slonaker, for example, ran his best 10k time in his late 40s. Now 64, the Columbia, Md., runner recently won his age group at the Veterans Day 10k in Washington, D.C., in 39:18, a time nearly three minutes
slower than his personal best.
But his recent performance ranks higher on an age-graded calculator.
“Age is relative, and don’t think that just because you are 45 or 62 you can’t do something,” he said. “Because once you say it, you can’t do it.”
While Slonaker recently retired from the U.S. Department of State, don’t expect to see him sneaking in extra workouts anytime soon.
“I always advise people not to overtrain,” he said.
Slonaker, who has had success at everything from 5k to the marathon, advises instead to train consistently.
The longtime Howard County Striders member does track work on Tuesday, tempos on Thursday, and long runs on Saturday. For a marathon, rather than increase his base mileage, he changes his bread-and-butter workouts.
He runs a little less than he used to in his 40s and 50s; these days he logs about 40 to 45 miles per week. He’s more careful not to overdo his workouts, takes Fridays off, and is not afraid to take extra rest days when he is
tired or something feels off.
Slonaker ran in high school and for one year of college before picking it back up at 42. After training alone for a year, he went to a Striders “bagel run,” he said, and started benefiting from group training. A few years later, Slonaker broke three hours in the marathon. A decade later, he did it again. In his 60s, while stationed overseas, Slonaker ran 3:07:20 on a hot day at the Berlin Marathon.
Like Slonaker, Alan Pemberton, a lawyer and founder of a training group called the Dojo of Pain, is proof that consistent training can lead to consistently solid results. In 2013, at age 60, Pemberton ran 3:03:29 at the Marine Corps Marathon, winning his age group by about 12 minutes. Earlier in the year, he won his age group at the Boston Marathon, running 2:57:52.
Pemberton, of Silver Spring, first tried running in the late 1970s, while in law school. He tried to take on too much too soon, he said, and got injured. After turning 30, he started running in his neighborhood after his children went to sleep, putting in slow, easy miles that “toughened up my legs,” he said.
The Dojo, he said, started as an early morning running group but has evolved into a marathon training group. Putting together training plans based on the methods espoused by the Hansons-Brooks elite running project, members of the Dojo take in a steady diet of marathon-specific workouts – from fast intervals at increasing distances around Hains Point to the Hansons’ 26.2k marathon simulator a month before a goal race.
“It’s a supportive group and we’ve got a sense for what each person’s goals and potential are,” Pemberton said.
And while performances might ultimately be relative, the age runners start to slow down is hardly set in stone.
Cindy Conant, 52, started running for fitness during college. In the mid-1990s, though, she and her husband moved to Kensington, Md., along the course for the town’s namesake 8k, which piqued her interest in the local racing scene.
Conant does speed work on Tuesdays, tempos on Thursdays, and races most weekends, saying she prefers low-key events organized by Montgomery County Road Runners. She runs at least two marathons a year.
In 2013, Conant ran PRs for 5k (18:57) and 8k (31:08). Six days after running 3:23 in the Boston Marathon, Conant – feeling both angry and sad after the bombing – ran a 10k personal best of 38:40 at Pikes Peek, describing it as a “redeeming race.”
Her goal in 2014 is to run faster from 5k to the marathon. “I am all about the time,” Conant said. “I don’t really care about my place.”
Leslie Minnix-Wolfe shares Conant’s competitive spirit, but started running at an earlier age. The 52-year-old Reston resident ran cross country on the boys team at the former Lexington High School in Virginia and later at The College of William and Mary. Minnix-Wolfe, however, was usually injured, thus unable to reach her potential.
After college, her coach, Mark Hunter, reduced her mileage, Minnix-Wolfe said, and slowly built her back up, putting her on a path to running 2:47 in the marathon and qualifying for the 1996 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials.
On her 40th birthday, Minnix-Wolfe was not only poised to be an exceptional masters runner; she was still running personal bests. Yet her low resting heart rate and blood pressure – related to her dedicated training
– also caused her problems. At her desk, working in the computer software industry – and in other situations, too – Minnix-Wolfe would sometimes pass out.
In her early 40s, she was fitted with a pacemaker to treat an arrhythmia. Her doctor encouraged her to continue running, but Minnix-Wolfe, who is fiercely competitive, knew she had a choice to make: run for the love of running, or continue to push herself and risk injury.
She chose the latter.
“I basically have gotten to a point where now it is more important for me to be able to run and stay healthy,” she said.
Minnix-Wolfe still runs upwards of 60 miles per week, she said. But she no longer does intense workouts or races, knowing that putting a 10k or marathon on the calendar would lead her to over-train. She and her husband, Jeff Wolfe, enjoy watching their youngest daughter run cross country and track for Herndon High School and volunteering for Reston Runners’ Youth in Motion summer running program.
“It’s another way to deal with the aging process,” Minnix-Wolfe said. “I really enjoy sharing my experience, and seeing the improvement of the kids that are running now.”
It comes back, it seems, to really knowing yourself.
Even when McMahon was 40 years younger, he didn’t like running high mileage (“30-35 miles a week tops,” he said) or long races (20k was his longest).
The one time McMahon thought he wanted to run a marathon and started increasing his mileage, right away he noticed two things: he “started to dread it, and things began to hurt.”
McMahon runs about 15 miles per week, running every other day. He has kept a record of his age-graded performances since his 70s; it presents solid proof that he’s performing best at 10k. But McMahon’s heart remains with the distance he first contested during the Truman administration. In March, at the US Track and Field Master’s Indoor Championships, McMahon made his move in the mile on the back stretch of the last lap, winning a national title in 8 minutes flat.
“Often towards the end of a race, I really start running hard,” he said. “The reason I can do it is because of the work I put into it – and that’s a mighty good feeling.”
Season after season, on the track, on the roads – at one national championship after another – Aaron Braun has been in the mix, establishing himself as one of the top distance runners in the country.
Braun, 26, broke through to the top this morning on the streets of Alexandria – taking firm control at the 10k mark of the .US National Road Racing Championships to win his first national title. Results
The inaugural championship race capped the 2013 USA Running Circuit (USARC), a road racing series that includes national championships for races ranging from the mile to the marathon. The first 10 U.S. runners in these races earn points, with 15 awarded for a win.
The .US National Road Racing Championships, however, offered triple points, not to mention $100,000 in prize money. And it was contested at the uncommon distance of 12k, an unfamiliar distance serving as something of a middle ground for 5k specialists and marathoners.
What made today’s race interesting, though, was not so much the unique race distance; it was the time of year the race was held. Some of the pros entered in today’s race had run marathons the month prior. Some had been racing relentlessly since January (and coming off a marathon), thus operating on fumes. Others, like Braun, came in focused and fresh.
The lead pack was at least a dozen strong through 5k. But Braun – from the very beginning on Union Street – seemed to be the one tugging the strings, injecting fresh pace at mile marks or surging off some of the course’s tight and even 180-degree turns.
The opening pace through the first few mostly-flat miles was about 4:40. Spectators lined the intersections to cheer, and Abdi Abdirahman and Shadrack Biwott at times moved out into the lead.
Pre-race favorites Matt Tegenkamp, leading the USARC standings, and Chris Solinsky tucked into the group. Solinsky, who dropped out, started to fall off first, shortly around 5k. Tegenkamp started slipping back closer to a turnaround near five miles.
“Coming off the marathon, I was just locked into those 4:50s, 4:55, five-minute miles,” said Tegenkamp, an Olympian who debuted in the marathon Oct. 13 in Chicago, clocking 2:12:28. “Trying to run any faster than that for a sustained amount of time, there was just never a comfort zone.”
Tegenkamp fought through a tough day to finish eighth.
Braun, meanwhile, lowered the pace into the 4:30s. He said he knew dropping the field wouldn’t happen and focused instead on staying aggressive: “… I just had to keep my foot on the pedal and keep it nice and steady, be able to hold that pace all the way to the finish.”
Braun’s time, 34:28, was two seconds shy of Steve Spence’s American record. Maybe if Braun had not looked back in the closing stretch and waved to the crowd and enjoyed the moment … maybe then the record could have been his.
But the Englewood, Colo.-based runner was not the least bit concerned about that. His only goal, he said, was to win: “It’s just so great to finally cross the line and be U.S. champion.”
Braun recently returned to a former coach and his native Colorado, where he also attended running powerhouse Adams State College. He made the change, he said, out of concern that his performances had leveled off.
“To keep in this sport,” Braun said, “you have to keep getting better – because everyone else is getting better, too. So if you’re staying the same, you’re getting passed. I am just determined to keep getting better year after year.”
Sensing Braun was on his game, Shadrock Biwott – second in the standings – focused on not letting him get too far away.
Biwott has been racing without a break since January, he said. Six weeks ago he finished third in the national marathon championships – and afterward took just two days off. (“I’m exhausted,” he said. “My legs are tired right now. I have never been so tired in the race.”)
His near-breaking point came while heading up the bridge between miles five and six. There was a tight turn to make at its end – and Biwott, entering his rough patch, said his focus was further thrown by seeing Abdirahman take a hard fall there that ended his race.
But Biwott successfully re-grouped to hold on for second, seven seconds behind Braun – a result that earned him the USARC series title.
Next in the 12k was Tyler Pennel, 25, of Blowing Rock, N.C., finishing third in 34:37.
It was Pennel’s first race since Peachtree in July, and his first race in a new season he hopes will peak in January at the national half marathon championships.
“It kind of validates the training I am doing with my coach,” he said. “I know I can compete with these guys. I can go out here and run toe to toe with them.”
Local Connections
Chris Kwiatkowski of Washington, D.C., recently finished fourth at the Army Ten-Miler in a new personal best of 48:17. He is coached by Matt Centrowitz and runs for the Pacers-New Balance team.
Kwiatkowski ran confidently this morning in the thick of the lead pack. He started to lose contact around five miles but held on to finish 12th.
“It’s a different world the way these guys race,” he said. “You got to be strong; you got to stay relaxed. So I’m working on it, and it was a good learning experience.”
Matt Llano trains in Flagstaff, Ariz., but attended Broadneck High School in Annapolis and competed for the University of Richmond.
He finished seventh today in 34:49, matching his place at the national 20K championship in September and continuing his recovery from an injury that sidelined him for most of 2012. His parents, sister, college teammates and even his former college coach were there to see him race.
Llano hoped to crack the top five, but “I’m just confident that my fitness is still coming along,” he said.
Thomas Jefferson High School graduate Christopher Landry, who now trains in Ann Arbor, Mich., finished fourth to cap a USARC season that also included top five finishes in the national championships for the marathon and 25k.
The College of William and Mary graduate wasn’t sure how he would fare at 12k six weeks after a marathon. But today’s race – “a homecoming,” he said, with his family there supporting him – wasn’t one he wanted to miss.
“This exceeded all my expectations,” he said.
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RunWashington’s story on women’s race.
The 2013 USA Running Circuit (USARC) will culminate tomorrow morning on the streets of Alexandria, where some of America’s best distance runners will compete for $100,000 in prize money, including $20,000 for the winners. The inaugural .US National Road Racing Championships – USA Track and Field’s first wholly owned-and-operated road race – will take runners of all abilities on a 12k journey starting and finishing near Oronoco Bay Park, a spot local runners know well.
How it works: The road racing series includes national championships for races ranging from a mile to the marathon. The first 10 U.S. runners at each race earn points, with 15 points awarded for 1st, 12 for 2nd, and 10 for third. Tomorrow the top 10 finishers will earn triple points, which provides extra incentive for runners farther down on the leaderboard.
The top three on the men’s side – Matt Tegenkamp (60 points), Shadrack Biwott (52), and Josphat Boit (50) – are entered. Among the top three women in the standings – Mattie Suver (47), Janet Bawcom (45), and Annie Bersagel (30) – only Bawcom is not entered.
As for tomorrow’s favorites, keep an eye out for Shalane Flanagan (15) and Molly Huddle (15). On the men’s side, Tegenkamp will be joined by training partner Chris Solinsky. Both fields are deep.
Brian Pilcher of Ross, Calif., and Kathryn Martin of Northport, N.Y., rank among the top entrants in the national masters championship.
Not Your Average Distance
Quick question for everyone running tomorrow: What’s your 12k PR?
Exactly.
So how do you approach such an unfamiliar race distance?
Do you – as was suggested in a question to Huddle at a press conference this morning – race 10K and try to hang on for two more?
“More or less,” said Huddle, who won the national 5k championships in September and the NYRR Dash to the Finish 5k two weeks ago (Flanagan was 3rd).
“This is pretty long for me,” she said, “but I am excited to see what I can do over 12k and I think it is a pretty interesting distance for everyone else to try.”
Asked to share his advice for taking on the 12k, Solinsky said to “find that comfortable rhythm that you are very confident you could do 10K or more at.” If you feel good at halfway, go for it.
“Through the training,” Tegenkamp said, “you have learned what you can handle in terms of pace.” Late in the race, though, when things get tough, turn on the competitive switch. “That’s what racing is all about,” he said.
Flanagan won a national title this summer at 10,000 meters and went on to finish 8th in the world in Moscow. Tomorrow marks her debut at 12k.
“I am in the same boat as they are,” said Flanagan, referring to the many runners who will race 12k for the first time tomorrow.
“It’s a distance that I’ve never done. It’s a brand new PR – so you have to just embrace it for the fun factor.”
Flanagan’s plan is similar to Tegenkamp’s and Solinsky’s: “I try to be smart the first half and then I switch over to being competitive – and that usually helps me pull out all the extra energy I have.”
USATF spokesperson Jill Geer said 12k allows 5K specialists and marathoners to “compete on relatively even footing.” But it’s also a great distance for an event designed to celebrate both our sport’s best runners and the many participants of all ages, levels of seriousness, and talent.
If you haven’t run a 12k before, it’s hard to cross the finish line, see the clock, and be disappointed. Take it from the first American to ever break 27 minutes for 10,000 meters.
“I’ve never run a 12k before so I know I’m going to get a PR tomorrow,” Solinsky said.
Details
The women’s championship race starts at 7:15 a.m. The men’s championship, master’s championship, and open race (also being referred to as the “community race”) starts 10 minutes later. A 5k race starts at 7; a half-mile “Kids’ Fun Run” starts at 9:30.
The 5K will include about 30 girls from the local Mount Vernon Woods Elementary School. The girls trained together for the race and Olympian Deena Kastor said she plans to meet them at the starting line for a pre-race pep talk. (“I think our greatest job as elite runners,” she said at the press conference, “is to be able to inspire the Olympians of tomorrow.”)
The race will be streamed live at USATF.TV.
RunWashington will cover both the men’s and women’s races.
