Time of the Season

Many tremendous performances this weekend, here's the highlights:

Ocean City Half Marathon: Tom and Patty ran big PRs. Tom's previous best was a shade over 1:25 and Patty's was 1:55. Tom finished 3rd here at 1:21:39 and Patty ran 1:51:08.

Delaware Trail Marathon/10k for Shelter: Alyssa took 4th in her training run marathon (she ran 5 miles before the race started at 7:50am). All districts are not reporting results yet so I don't have official time but she says 4h31m. There was a big stream crossing and some really tough trails. In the 10k, Melissa ran a medium effort and took 1st in 46:35. Pretty sweet considering the late night Friday and snap decision on Saturday morning!

Kentucky Derby Mini Marathon: Julia Rudd took 4th here, didn't run as fast as I'm sure she was hoping, but 1:24:06 is still good in my book.

Various Bike Races: Alex 19th in the Farmersville 4/5 race, Tank crashed out (he's okay, banged up pretty good though) of the 2/3 race and Dr. K took 2nd (!!) in the Pro1/2 race at Claymon Classic.

Pike's Peek 10k: Really, really, really fast race. And close - top 8 were separated by about 5 or 6 seconds. Dave Berdan raced here, taking 15th with a 30:21. Amazing how competitive this event is, because 30:21 almost anywhere else will normally win by about 3 minutes. Denise raced to a 16 place finish in 40:14.

Port to Fort 6k: Kyle, shut out of HoCo Half, went for the gold here and got it. 19:50 is not as fast as his best here (19:08) but he won by a minute so we'll let it slide. Mellow Mike was 10th in 22:34 and Brian Desmond was 31st in 24:17.

Howard County Life Festival Half: Kip led Izzy for most of the race, but then a vicious lockup of his vital systems caused his life function to cease. He still finished 2nd and took home a thousand bucks, so I'm sure he doesn't mind that much.

Women's 5k by the Bay: Diane took it to the house, going head to head against a college rival of hers. They battled to a sprint finish, 18:11 to 18:12 (Diane was 2nd, and that was a 26sec PR!). She snatched some dollars and 3rd place was a million miles away.

National Duathlon Championships: Spider has not been able to run much in the last 8 months due to an injury, but never lets that stop him from racing. A few weeks ago he won the Hammer Duathlon in Tennessee and came to Richmond to see if he could earn a spot to Worlds in Scotland. He ran 17:08 and 17:24 for his two 5k's, which is slow for him, but used his improved bike split to propel himself into 17th overall and 7th in his age group (amazing that at 17th overall he was 7th in his old man age group). This was good enough to qualify for Worlds!

That leaves our Purple Drink Athlete of the Week, and with 3 PRs, 2 W's and a World Championship event qualifier, it was another tough decision, but ultimately I side with the WC qualifier. Congrats Spider!