2.4 miles - down Chalybesl November 29, 2008 8:30 am - 30 degrees, sunny, mercifully no wind |
Next Week: 2.4 miles up Chalybes - Season Finale |
First Win for Vanderheiden
Reibling returns
It was a crisp, clear morning. The field was a bit small, just two days after Thanksgiving. There were reports of 13 Thanksgiving day races in Fairfield County alone, so lots of people who sometimes run Roxbury were perhaps raced out.
Still, it was a strong field that set out as Amanda Deming shouted "Go!" Brian Vanderheiden already had a ten yard lead 200 yards into the race as we turned off West Apple Lane onto Rocky Mountain Road. A pack of four, Dave Harvey, Mike Abraham, Chuck Rocca and Joe Mendes, settled in behind Brian, waiting to scoop him up when he faltered.
But he never did falter. By the time we turned onto Chalybes, Brian had extended his lead to thirty yards, almost ten seconds, and when they reached the finish line, he had a 29 second lead on Roxbury Hall of Famer Dave Harvey. The rest of the pursuit group straggled in over the next 45 seconds or so, and Brian Vanderheiden had grabbed his first ever Roxbury Road Race victory.
He'd won once before in Roxbury, last year's Half Marathon, but that wasn't part of the series, so he got to celebrate a First Win for a second time.
As so often happens this year, Joe Mendes and the Fossil finished 5-6.
People
Dawn Riebling.
Pictures
Up top, we have this years Mid-Autumn Classic champions, Jeff Sheldon and Pam Quist standing in front of the rocks. We gave them a choice, a background of rocks and the playground or the outhouses, and they picked the rocks. Good taste, both of them.
Then we have Bruce Goulart, making it look easy. Then the foggy starting line at a race in August. Down the side, we have David Mariani, smiling as he sees the finish line, then Mandy Deming, the one who works the stopwatch and gets us accurate times every week. Below thatwe see Scott Benjamin, who ran the hill hard and then still had half a mile to the finish line. He's given it his all, hasn't he?
Farther down, Harry Ong (Dudley is around somewhere) beats Cindy Scannell by a couple of seconds. The last one there is a photo by Charlie Euston of a pack in the 7.3 mile race. You can see Ross Levy's legs in the back, and the corner of Brian Gildea's head behind Jeff Tindell.
A foggy start at the August 23 race of 8.2 miles
The Roxbury Races are now listed on the Internet both on RunningInTheUSA and on HiTekRacing.com. For information contact Bob Lewis at ctstaterunner (at) yahoo (dot) com, or at 203 240 0162.
Last week's results (3.52 miles - down Hemlock)
Next week (when available) (2.4 miles - up Chalybes - Season Finale)
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This week's results
Alternate Races
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A happy finisher
Amanda Deming, Princess of Stopwatch
Are you tired when you finish? |
Current points standings
Week 39
There was more action in the Top Ten this week. Lou Denaro's new job kept him away from Roxbury for another week, so David Mariani got enough points to jump over Lou and take over 7th place overall.
Scott Benjamin became the season's tenth, and maybe last Millennium Man. There's a chance that Mike Abraham will garner enough points in next week's Season Finale to join Scott on the top side of a thousand, but Scott's tenth place finish is probably secure.
In the table below, runners who have not missed a race yet this year are marked with a *. Rookies, those running their first Roxbury race of the season, are marked with an "R", and people reaching 100-point milestones are marked with a C. People whose ages were different this week than they were in our data base are marked with a B. If everything in the data base works perfectly, this means they had a birthday recently, but we know the data base isn't perfect.
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