- Three Loudoun Valley relay teams won national championships over the weekend, with two setting national indoor records.
- Distance Medley Relay: 9:54.41 (national record): Jacob Hunter (1200 in 3:01.331) Akere Simms (400 in 50.908) Connor Wells (800 in 1:55.96) and Sam Affolder (1600 in 4:06.205)
- 4xMile: 17:01.81 (national record): Kevin Carlson (4:22.26), Connor Wells (4L21.456), Sam Affolder (4:06.192) and Jacob Hunter (4:11.901). Loudoun Valley also had two other relay teams in the top eight.
- 4×800 7:40.49: Jacob Windle (1:57.453), Connor Wells (1:57.046), Sam Affolder (1:51.368) and Jacob Hunter (1:54.619).
- At the NCAA Division I Indoor Track and Field Championships, Heritage alumna Weini Kelati (New Mexico) finished second in the 5,000 meters and third in the 3,000 meters, the Georgetown distance medley relay team of Jack Salisbury, Lawrence Leake, Ruach Padhal and Nick Wareham finished third; Patriot alumna Rachel McArthur ran on the Villanova distance medley relay team that finished fourth and Georgetown’s Joe White finished fifth in the 800 meters.
- Montgomery County Parks Natural Surface Trail Manager Bob Turnbull was named “Trail Builder of the Year” by Mid-Atlantic Off Road Enthusiasts, a mountain bike riding and trail building organization.
Dan Sullivan, the national sales manager for men’s performance at Skechers, takes us through his career from college football player and coach to running retail enthusiast and career at Saucony to his latest stop in the industry.
Name: Brad Byrnes
Self-described age group: Pre-Masters (almost 40)
Residence: Alexandria
Occupation: Federal Police Officer and former head XC coach at Bishop Ireton HS
Volunteer roles in the running world: I’m one of the few that can claim membership in the old Pacers Ambassador program. That was a long time ago and I haven’t volunteered a lot since then…that needs to change. I did coach the Boys on the Run program at the Grace Episcopal Elementary School for 5+ years which was a lot of fun.
Why you run: Mostly to race and compete against others but I’m always challenging myself as well. As we get older, beating our old selves becomes more and more of an obsession. Running is also my time to decompress and escape for a bit.
When did you get started running: I tried every sport in the book but nothing really caught on. A high school friend suggested I come out for the track team so I did that my sophomore year. I ran my first XC season that fall of my junior year and the rest is history.
Have you taken a break from running: My first two years of college I really didn’t run much at all and instead spent more time with weights in the gym and playing rugby. The rugby guys liked me because I had endurance and didn’t drink which meant there was at least one sober player at our matches.
Less than a week ago, Patrick Reaves was on the starting line – and on the list of “Olympic hopefuls” – for an eight-mile race in Atlanta. This was a special event held to preview the course for the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials, now less than a year away.
Reaves’s result will tell you that he ran 42:14, 5:09 pace, to finish 33rd, and that he lives in Portland, Ore. What it will not tell you is that the 34-year-old runner was actually racing in his hometown, the city where he ran his first marathon as a 19-year-old club runner at the University of Maryland.
Post-race
Reaves sprained his left ankle inthe second mile and ran the rest of the race uncertain of whether it was broken. He finished 140th in 2:30:25.
And while his result indicated — and Reaves himself will confirm it — that a fellow Nike athlete, and three-time national cross country champion, Chris Derrick, tagged along doing a tempo, it will not tell you that Reaves is a professional in the more traditional sense. He’s not paid to run; instead, he’s paid to guide Nike’s social impact strategy, a position that connected him to Bowerman Track Club’s elite corporate team when he and his wife, Valerie, moved to Portland in 2014.
Reaves’s result also will not tell you how he earned the opportunity to be on the starting line: how, in December, at the California International Marathon (CIM), his half marathon split of 1:08:47 was a personal best. He then nearly PRed again, covering the back half only six seconds slower.
This is how Reaves chopped approximately six minutes from his personal best to clock 2:17:40 and beat the sub-2:19 men’s qualifying standard for the trials. Now he’s a year away from competing in the event back in his hometown where his marathon journey began.
I get asked a lot how I can run for so many hours and hours … and hours. My answer is always the same: I love my trail running friends. So much.
They are the reason I drag myself out of bed before dawn to shiver through freezing temperatures, pouring rain or miserable heat. Sometimes we run extra long because we need a little more time to catch up. Sometime we cut it short because the post-run parking lot party is just too tempting.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my decade of trail running, it’s that crazy travels in packs, and there’s nothing like mutual suffering to forever bond you with a bunch of stinky weirdos.
In 1967, college student Doug Edwards fired the gun to start a race at a track meet for the first time.
“My track coach at the time handed me a gun… and a box of shells and said you can earn $5 starting a track meet down at the local high school,” Edwards said. “And I thought that was like dying and going to heaven. And so I did. And it just sort of always stuck with me.”
After a break from officiating that included graduating from college, serving in the Army, getting married and having children, Edwards, now 72, has been starting races at track meets since the late 1980s.
Name: Ambyr
Self-described age group: 35-39
Residence: Alexandria
Occupation: Special Education Teacher
Volunteer roles in the running world: I love being a Race Pacer for marathons, half marathons, 10k’s and 5k’s.I have paced as many races as I have raced. I also love to be on the course volunteer for races.
Why you run: I run for a lot of reasons. I started as a way to keep in shape, I continued to run because it kept me even keeled during stressful times, and I will continue to do it because I love the people it brings into my life. It is an ingrained part of who I am at this point.
A lot can go wrong with race pacing. Going out too fast could lead to an almost-certain wall-hitting, crash-and-burn scenario. Going out too slow could lead to a goal finish time slipping out of grasp. Pacing correctly can seem like a perfect science — and luckily there are some runners who work to master it and lead others to reach their goals.
Many pace group leaders around the region work hard to put other runners’ needs before their own and see that participants are set up for success.
“We have a chance to help someone achieve a goal — really, how precious is that, right?” said Lara Mish, a pace group leader who has worked at races around the region for the last seven years. Mish will lead a pace group at the Rock ‘n’ Roll Half Marathon in Washington, D.C., this month.
