Penn Relays

The weather was not looking good this morning, but it appears to have turned into fairly decent distance-running conditions for those competing at THE Penn Relays. Here's how some of our locals fared:

Saturday: University of Maryland women took 6th in the women's 4x800 Championship of America; Penn State men won the men's 4x800, anchored by Glenelg grad Robby Creese in 1:48.9. In the College Championship heat, Loyola TF women ran 9:32.50.

In Thurs late night action, Sam Luff was Fire on the Track as he blazed the 10,000m in 29:37.12.  Not only is this one of the FASTEST performance of anyone I've ever known personally, the way he ran it was absolutely perfect. Through the 5k in 14:57, Sam then went Captain Insan-O on the race, negative splitting to the tune of a 14:40 back half. Consider that just two weeks ago Sam ran a 5k at Mason and went 14:22. That kind of race is B-A-N-A-N-A-S. Also in the 10k field was Max Robinson of Hopkins, who ran an incredible 31:07 - an awesome result for the program!

In the women's race, our friend Darcy McDonald zoomed around the track 25 times faster than any of the other OD women, running 34:29.45 for the win. Andrea Garvue of GRC ran 35:46.79.

Friday night was the Corporate Distance Medley Relay, where Amy Horst and her General Electric teammates innovated their way to the top spot in 11:01.16, ahead of defense specialists Lockheed Martin and pharmaceutical pioneer Merck.

Hannah Eckstein set a new Johns Hopkins 5000m outdoor record, running 16:50.64 (7th) in the Olympic Development heat. Teammate Holly Clarke also broke the 17 minute barrier, running 16:57.40. The Hopkins women's 4x400m team also won the Centennial/MAC section (3:58.98).

Gabrielle Cocco of Loyola University set a school record in the 3000m, running 9:49.03 in the College 3000m Championship.

Maura Carroll of the Georgetown Running Company ran 17:34.45 in the Women's OD 5000m, and Ryans Witter and Hanson each ran great races. Witter ran an incredible 14:40.41 to finish 10th, while Hanson finished at 15:19.03. Steve Hallinan of Pacers was 2nd overall at 14:21.51, and Clyde's 10k winner Kyle Stanton ran 14:51.06.