Tuesday, October 16, 2012

The A Team

It's one of the best weekends of the fall: Baltimore Running Festival and Ironman World Championships, two  events near and dear to my heart, and this year was no different. I already sent out the email with results, so I'll just highlight a few performances from the weekend.

Baltimore Marathon

I was most impressed with Brennan Feldhausen's 2:57:02 run, negative splitting (1:31-1:26) and covering his last 10k under 39 minutes. As we all know, Brennan's season typically does not favor fall races, and this year, with the Orioles advancing to the playoffs, he hardly had time to run at all, let alone do the work necessary to run a great marathon. He had some help out there from the likes of Barf, Conrad, and CTR, so props to those guys as well. (Here's Brennan, his sister Erin, their friend, and a Chick-Fil-A cow)



Baltimore Half Marathon

Nate Brigham is a beast. In the spring he got himself into 2:31 shape, and after a mostly chill summer, he is back and giving Philly a go next month. Along the way he intended to use the half as a test of his fitness. He won the race handily, running 1:11:39 on the difficult course. Joel Brusewitz raced a distance over 10 miles for the first time in many, many years, and Tim Parker recorded a course best for Baltimore.

The ladies field was a little faster this year than it's been, so Jackie Truncellito's (now Jackie Range) 1:24:21 was "only" good enough for 5th. But it's also only 8 seconds off her PR, set in 2009 at the flat B&A Trail Half.

Baltimore Relay

It was good to see a bunch of people at least competing in something out there, and while we only fielded one official Falls Road team, the ladies team known also as Great Dames Be Pimpin, they were victorious. Great efforts from Carly Page, Melissa Tanner, Fiana Kumm, and Meg McNew.



Ironman World Championship

As Alyssa Godesky is still unwinding from the race, hopefully we'll see a race report from her soon. In the meantime, I can say that based on all accounts of the day, the conditions were the toughest they've been in at least a decade. The infamous Kona Winds were strong, and led to slow swim, bike, and run splits. The respective men's and women's winners, Pete Jacobs and Leanda Cave, were 15-20 minutes slower than 2011 times, which were in near-perfect conditions (for Kona).

Alyssa had a solid swim, and handled the winds well on the bike. She was assessed a drafting penalty (4 minutes on the side of the road) after a guy passed her on a hill, then sat up. It was pretty bogus. Following the loss of momentum it was back on the roads, and into a strong headwind for the final 22 miles. Her bike split of 5:48 wasn't far off her best IM bike split, and on the tough day - she was pleased.

Heading into the run it was hot...really hot, but she got her legs under her and finished up strong at 11:06:08.

Other Weekend Action

There were some other events going on this weekend. Tom Stott took 6th at the Hagerstown Duathlon - his first multisport event in a long time. Liz Laseter and Rodney Taylor competed in the Waterman's Sprint Triathlon on Sunday. Liz was 2nd F overall and Rodney had just done the Baltimore Marathon the day before. Collin Anderson won the Dracula Dash for Hope 5k on some muddy grass.

Our Purple Drink Athlete of the Week went to Nate Brigham!

1 comment:

Dustin said...

When I first glanced at the picture of Brennan standing next to the Chick Fil A cow, I thought he was standing next to a Klansman donning the white robe and hood. Then, I noticed the black ears that had blended into the background.