We Run the Merrimack Valley
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GLRR Results at the 2008 New Bedford Half-Marathon

March 16, 2008
New Bedford, MA

We had 19 runners brave a pretty much typical New Bedford March day.  Actually it turned out to be not as bad as expected, it didn't rain (thank goodness).  But we did have the usual wind.

We had a number of outstanding performances, as you can see from the results list below.  But before I mention those "guys".  I have to thank the ladies.  We were not able to field a team last year, and have had problems in the past.  This year had six ladies compete.  The field was led by the fast improving Krista Byam.  Krista ran a terrific 1:40, but let me put that in perspective for you.  On Saturday she trained 20 miles on the Boston Course with Amy Molloy and MaryBeth McKinney.  To come back the next day and turn in a performance like this was very impressive.  Following Krista were our ever reliable (and fun) ladies of the north: Patty Foltz and Moira Durnin.  They both earned the "*" of exceeding the USATF age-group standard, and they'll both be on the leader board when the Grand Prix leaders are posted.  Combined Krista, Patty and Moira brought GLRR to 15th against much younger competition and besting 15 other clubs.  Diane Geehan ran a nice 1:45 and replacing Krista on the Master's results (sorry Krista - you're not old enough), brought GLRR to 8th.

I also want to welcome Ally Maslowski to GLRR and the GP race scene.  Yup, Ally is Sue's daughter.  Ally is training for Boston.  Her debut half was Hamptons (in Feb) running 1:49, but today she PR'd that by better than 5 minutes to finish in 1:45.  Nice job.

On the men's side, as some of you know Mark Coddaire has created a new elite open men's team.  This new team allows the top guys to get more gear the show companies than we could provide.  It was felt that it is in the best interest of some of our guys (Eric, Ben, Titus) to take advantage of that.  So that leaves us thin at the top.  Also we are still suffering horrible injury luck at the master's level.

But, as has been the case the last few years, we are stacked and getting stackeder at the Senior's level.  We welcome addition of Ken Jacobson, who made an immediate impact this weekend.

So with the intro - on to the men's performances:

We were led be a trio of * (you know exceeds) efforts from Mark Reeder (1:14), Dave Oliver (1:16) and the ageless Bill Dixon (1:20).  All of these guys will be on the GP leader board.  Bill won his division by an astounding 10 minutes.  Too bad the scoring doesn't consider that.  So Bill heads to Nashua with a lead of one point over Sumner Brown.  Dave is one point down to Norm Larson.

As the team level, the Senior's avenged last year's loss to Gate City (we lost by 23s).  This time led by Dave and Bill and newcomer Ken Jacobson's 1:25 we smoked the field by more than 6 minutes.  So it was a good start to defending our Seniors' Championship.

Mark Reeder led our open and master's scoring.  You need 5 guys to score on those teams, so the question was who'd be the 4th senior (and thus move up to fill the void).  It was a close competition with Jeff Haas, Glenn and Chip Mann all finishing under 1:30 separated only by 22s.  It was Jeff who had the most and stepped up to help carry the open team to 13th (besting 16 teams) and 5th on the master list (beating 14 teams).

Thanks to all who ran!

glenn

* EXCEEDS USATF AGE-GROUP PERFORMANCE STANDARD