That's Rank

So obviously we had mad winning going on over the weekend. Lee DiPietro, Julia Rudd, Joel Gladfelter, Dustin Meeker and Eric Benjamin all won races they competed in. Particularly impressive was Joel's win, redeeming his runner-up status from his other Dru Hill 5k earlier this year, and Eric's first ultramarathon (50k) and win there. As such, Eric earned this week's Purple Drink Athlete of the Week.

Washington Running Report's Summer Rankings came out, and as you may have seen over on the GRC blog, there were many familiar names, including Dave Berdan (8th), Ryan Pauling (9th), Ryan Stasiowski (11th), Ed Aramayo (23rd), Alex Battaglino (32nd) and Ben Ingram (36th, his age). The summer ranking period is pretty long, and I was interested to see that Stas was ranked at all being that he mostly did BRRC races and is also still in college, and Ryan Pauling, as I thought he only raced at Survivor 7 (38:45). Berardi was ranked in his old man age group.

On the women's side, Pam Maldeis was 13th with Meg McNew at 14th and Meg DiGregorio at 25th. Suzanne Hurst was 12th in the 35-39 group. Cynthia Evans was 5th in the 55-59 group.

Tonight, as you know, is the RM Classic 5k. Basically it just means you are running a 5k as the workout tonight at track, but since I will be timing it, it counts as a race. Same time as usual, warmup around 6:30pm and race starts at 7:00pm.

Also I've added a new poll to the sidebar. For those not in the know, perpetual Subway spokesperson, Jared Fogel (or Fogle, I forget), is running the NYC Marathon. Then we found out that one of the recently rescued Chilean miners, Edison Pena, is running as well. While he was trapped, he ran 3-6 miles per day in the dark mine. Our poll is: who will run faster. Voting closes Saturday night. GET OUT AND VOTE for this important issue!

RM Memorial 5k

In full disclosure I'm typing this while watching Michael Jordan's greatest piece of work: Space Jam...

There were tons of results this weekend but rather than type up each one I will let you read the email and the results on the right hand side. This post will largely be about the RM Memorial 5k which was held on Saturday between rains, on the track at Goucher College. We had 20 runners or so, split into two heats and it was very competitive.

Heat #1: Barf took off at the gun, but after about 200m Mellow, Kristen Till and Eileen had worked back up to him. They ran together for the first mile (5:43) and then Eileen went to work. She had a small advantage over Kristen at 2 miles (11:33), and powered to the finish in 18:08. It was as impressive a race as I've ever seen her run. Kristen was 10 seconds back at 18:18. Mellow came through in 18:51, and not much after that Diane finished strong in 19:12 - her fastest time since college. At 19:39 and 19:55, Alex and Barf finished, respectively, and shortly after that Lisa and Lauren came through at 20:15 and 20:34. Both ran great considering they were thinking they'd run slower than that. Chrissie was just jogging in preparation of her race the next day, which she killed. So she ran 22:02 and Little Claire, in advance celebration of her birthday, ran 22:09. Alix Ruth was running a solo effort for 3.1 miles and managed a 30 second PR! Her time of 23:49 was pretty awesome.

Heat #2: This was the baller heat, with a couple 2:20 something marathoners (including one who ran at US Olympic Trials). I was pretty excited that the stars aligned and we were fortunate to have Karl Dusen, Kyle Smits, Jeff Gaudette, Mike Smith and our very own Ben Ingram out there racing. The pace seemed pedestrian at the 400m (74-75) but then it dropped from there. Karl, Kyle and Jeff came through the 1600 in 4:48-4:50 with Ben and Mike a few seconds back. Jeff's calf had been giving him trouble since the previous weekend's Knights of Columbus 10k, so he wisely dropped after the mile. Kyle and Karl continued, trading the lead for the majority of the race, before Karl opened a small gap with 600m to go. He held Kyle off, sprinting across the line in 15:06 to Kyle's 15:14. Mike Smith had a real strong last mile and ran 15:35, and Ben faded but stayed tough, running 15:52. Jake Marren had the unenviable task of running a solo 16:41 effort, and Brusewitz had to get real tough to squeak under 17 (16:57). Jeff Rumbaugh ran 17:48 and John Blatz came through in 18:14. Dave Berardi ran the whole thing, which I didn't realize he was doing so I didn't time him, and Tank ran a 21:5x.

It was really a great event and worth the suffering sitting in the car to come down for it. So much thanks to my dad for driving me down and back in the course of 12 hours. Thanks to the folks that showed up to help out or spectate: Arjun, Melissa, Ella, Mr. and Mrs. Marren, Kristen Till's husband and kids, Marty (Lisa's boyfriend), OJ, Anna, Justin, Beth, and anyone else I may have missed. We'll come back in 2010 with the RM Classic 5k.

Here's a little note from my dad:

It was so great to see everyone whom I had met before and to meet those for the first time...although I feel like I know all of you as Ryan speaks of you all the time. Do I have everyone memorized? Of course not, but will work on it. For some reason however, "Mellow Mike" is an easy one to recall. I am glad we got down to the Baltimore area. You are all so fortunate to have this remarkable friendship. Never forget its importance.

So there were a bunch of other races, as I mentioned, including Chrissie's great half marathon, and a few triathlons as well.

But there can only be one Purple Drink Athlete of the Week and, while we could just give it to Chrissie everytime she toes the line, this week we're going to honor Alix Ruth for her 30 second improvement over 5k. That's really impressive considering she's just started really running this year. Hope to see great things from her this weekend at PDR!

TNT this week: we'll have two workouts. One is longer in nature for those of you doing longer races, and one will be shorter but will be based on the same amount of time so everyone can run together. Workout #1 - 5x1600m with 2:30 recovery. Run them quick. Workout #2 - 5x(800-400). Start the 800 with those doing the miles, and then take a lap off. When they go past for their last lap wait a few seconds and then go, run your 400. Then you'll have 2:30 off before your next set.

RM 5k @ Goucher Coll Now

Sorry for the late notice. I emailed a bunch of people yesterday letting them know but we are not able to use the track at Towson, so we are moving the race to Goucher College. I am only hopeful that there is nothing going on at the track because I wasn't able to get a hold of anyone that could tell me whether there would be or not.

But since God hates me and is making the weather shitty, my hopes are not high.

The deal:

9:00am: "Registration"
9:30am: Heat 1 (ladies and dudes who don't feel like getting lapped in the seeded heat more than twice)
10:00am: Heat 2 (dudes)

I'm keeping my fingers crossed for good conditions. We have some guests coming up from other clubs so be nice.

Try not to call me to ask me dumb things tomorrow. If you aren't running and want to come help out, that's great. We'll need some help with timing (so bring a stopwatch) and lap counting. It would also be great to have people cheering for the athletes as this is going to be a pretty low key event.

We won't have water so bring your own. And it looks like I'll have to head back to NJ following the race so if people want to organize a post-race thing somewhere, discuss at the race. I had suggested Kisling's last week only because it's a good place for a group of people to go, eat some wings and drink some beers and they're very friendly to us.

Cash Dem Chex

It was a relatively quiet weekend, with no major super races on the schedule, and since you can all read you can just look at the results on the right or in the email.

I will say that Collin Anderson backed into his first Purple Drink Athlete of the Week award of the year by virtue of his 10k on Friday. He learned a valuable lesson on pacing. If you go out in nearly your 5k PR and you still have 5k to run, you're going to hurt. Collin's blog explains it all (in one, long, singular paragraph).

Here's our Tuesday Night Track workout for the week:

3 sets of 1200-800-400. I'm psyched that everyone's running so fast, but starting to get concerned about the pacing of the workouts. It's fun to run fast but not when you're running 800s with +:06 splits on the back half. This week it's all about negative splitting, and you can be sure that I will be checking!

More importantly, this past weekend gave us an opportunity to celebrate our boy T. Baptiste. T has been running with us since 2006, and has been an invaluable member of our team during that time. I challenge you to find anyone who loves BBQ sauce more than he does. T's farewell tour continues this week as he will be at Tuesday's workout, so if you're there make sure you say something nice to him.

NEW EVENT!!

As I mentioned in the email, we are going to host a replacement race for Bay Cafe 5k. Unfortunately, due to the increased cost of permits, it would be about $50 per person to put on the race. That's just too much, and there's no point in moving it somewhere like Patterson Park or Druid Hill where it is just not as fast.

So we're going to host a track 5000m which will serve as the Maryland State 5k Championships. The date is Saturday, September 12th. For now I'm planning on holding it at Hopkins, but I'm also going to set up backup plans - including maybe seeing if we could hold it at UMD's track. It won't be super early in the morning, and we will hold multiple heats. Low key, no shirts, probably hand-timed with popsicle sticks instead of bibs. I want to spread the word to as many people as we can to get some sick competition.

If you want to run in this race, you'll need to send me an email at runbaltimore@gmail.com with your name, age, current state and seed time. And I will be checking times to make sure I seed the races properly.