Club News
John Hayward Finishes Western States 100 Miler; Robin Oswald Posts 1:24 Half Marathon at Tupper Lake Half Tinman; Teams Set for Twilighter with Martin & Wadsworth as Captains; Patty Fulton Confronts Unruly Ostrich
New Members
Sandy Maynard, of Dupont Circle. A recent transplant from Rhode Island, Sandy is an ultra runner, having done a 50 miler back in New England. She is now back to running after a two year hiatus, and is looking for new running partners.
Bill Dunn, 22 of Alexandria. A Y2K graduate of Boston College and native of Fairfield CT , Bill is a pretty fair runner. Indeed he won the Bunny Boogie 5K in Darien back in April in 16:20. Bill works as a civilian in the Navy.
Shelagh Sayers of San Francisco. This past fall, Shelagh posted a 3:23 at Portland. Says Shelagh
“I’ll be in DC in September and will stay through next June. I currently run on the Impala racing team, an all women’s team here in SF. I’ll be living in Georgetown so if you know of anyone who likes to run in the morning and lives in that area, let me know.”
We welcome them all into our club
Race Results
Western States 100 Miler June 23-24, Auburn, CA
Our friend John Hayward who we have not heard from in a bit finished the Western States 100 Miler last month. Better yet, John broke 24 hours (82 out of 267 in 23:44), which is quite a feat. The race, which runs from Squaw valley CA to Auburn, CA, goes over mountains, through deserts, across river, and is the premier 100 mile race in the U.S.
More about the race on the Deadrunner Website
John Hayward finishing Western States
Tupper Lake Tinman Triathlon, Tupper Lake NY, June 30, 2001
Club members Jascha Fields and Robin Oswald ran the Tupper Lake Tinman (half a triathlon) last month. Robin took first in her age group in a time of 4:50:59, while Jascha was second in his age group, in a time of 4:46:32. Perhaps more impressivley, Robin achieved the fastest half marathon split by a woman in the race (1:24:08) Said Robin about the half marathon
“Just as the rain is letting up, I make the turn into the neighborhoods. About 3 miles to go, and I’m hurting. But I see more women ahead so I run faster. One of them is the woman who passed me in the first few miles! With about 2 miles to go I slowly catch one last woman, and I see out of the corner of my eye she is trying to gauge how tired I am. So I pick up the pace and leave her behind. I begin singing “I feel good, da dah da dah da dah, I knew that I would…” despite wanting to stop and lie down on someone’s soft grassy lawn. Finally I see a sign “1 mile to go”, and I get a second wind and cruise to the finish. in the last stretch across the grass I feel GREAT, and the huge smile plastered on my face shows it. I see the clock ticking 4:49.55…and sprint in. At the finish I’m trying to figure out my run split, but can’t do the math. 1:26…I think…which is a PR! A few minutes later the results are posted, and to my astonishment I ran a 1:24! I read the numbers 3 or 4 times, ask a half dozen people if the course was short, and stand around shaking my head. It can’t be! I finished 1st in my age group (I happened to luck out on that one!), but more importantly shaved 25 minutes of my time from last year and 3 1/2 minutes off my fastest 1/2 marathon. IM USA…BRING IT ON!!”
Robin, The Singing Tri-Athlete
Ultimate Runner Competition, Winston-Salem, NC, June 30, 2001
Word from Ron McGraw
“I competed in an event called the Ultimate Runner last Saturday night in Winston Salem, NC.. The events were done in the order shown. In the first three events there were nine heats so the rest period was however long it took to go through each heat. There were a lot of heats in the 100 because it was only a 6-lane track. Everyone ran the 5K together.”
Event Time Place
Mile 5:02 15
400 :55.0 3
800 2:15.1 6
100 12.17 2
5K 19:26 17
total 43
overall tied for 4th
Good going Ron
News of the Club
Twilighter Slated for this Saturday
We will be fielding two teams at Rockville Twilighter this Saturday. The two teams (called A and B, respectively – we are feeling nominally unimaginative this month) will have the following runners
WRC A
- Todd Martin, Captain
- Jim Hage
- Liz parks
- Kate Hudson
- Darcee O’Donnell
- Henry Grossman
- David Dietz
- Randy Lange
WRC B
- Jim Wadsworth, Captain
- David Keating
- Marie Sandrock
- Ali Lacika
- James Scarborough
- John Dix
- Liz White
We will be getting together after the race hang out, do race post mortems (not literally, we hope), quaff liquids and generally enjoy ourselves.
When Animals Attack
One of the curious things about our sport is that if you run long enough, you will invariably encounter a creature that acts in an irrationally confrontational fashion. This could range from a moose in Alaska (Steve Ward) to geese in Connecticut (Dave Keating) to SUVs on the road (everywhere)
We have word from Patty Fulton. Last year, while running in Africa on a trip for USDA, Patty was confronted by an angry ostrich. We kid you not. This particular ostrich, instead of putting its head in the sand, confronted our friend Patty and fellow USDA employee John Dunn. To quote from the USDA Newsletter:
One morning they went to a nature park on the outskirts of Pretoria for a workout. “I was preparing for an upcoming marathon and John likes to bike, so we decided to pace each other through the park,” Fulton said.
Dunn explained that this particular nature park accommodated hiking, jogging, and biking–unlike other geographic areas which are nature preserves, and where such human activities aren’t allowed. “This means that it wasn’t unusual for us to notice that all of us humans, who were exercising in this setting, were sharing the park with a number of different birds and animals, both two-legged and four-legged varieties,” he affirmed.
So they weren’t all that surprised to come upon an ostrich during the path of their workout. Nevertheless, Fulton decided that she wanted to “capture the moment” on film, so they both stopped and she got her camera out of Dunn’s backpack on his bike.The Ostrich, seconds before it started acting like Lizze Grubman
“As I was focusing my camera I heard the ostrich starting to hiss heavily at us,” she recalled. Then the creature turned toward Dunn, ran at him, and appeared to move into ‘attack mode.’ Dunn, who was straddling his bike at the time, purposely rolled over, lay on the ground, used the bike as a shield, and began kicking the ostrich with his heel in its sternum, a technique he had mastered while teaching, as a black-belt in karate.
“So I’m both frozen and transfixed, watching this unfold in front of me,” Fulton said. “And I’m thinking to myself, ‘Here I am, on the opposite side of the world from home, and I’m about to witness a colleague get killed by Big Bird!’”
But she recovered her senses and concluded it was time to trade in her camera for some rocks. “I grabbed some rocks and started throwing ’em at the ostrich,” she said. “And yes, I know, I was on its turf, not mine, and in a perfect world maybe I’d have thought of a kinder, gentler approach,” she added. “But I figured that my options were limited at that particular moment.”
The rock-throwing worked–sort of. The bird turned away from Dunn–and then began chasing Fulton.
“I started running down the hill, with the ostrich behind me,” she said. “John was yelling, ‘Down, Down!’ and I thought, ‘Hello?! I am going down–down this hill’.”
“And then I realized he meant that I should ‘Get Down’.”
At about that time Fulton looked around and saw the ostrich was two feet behind her and gaining. So she turned her body slightly, did a quick 180-degree turn, and the bird ran by her, grazing her with its feathers. She then ran back up the hill to where Dunn was now on his feet and armed with more rocks–although, as Dunn later quipped, “At this point, Patty was now more in danger from getting hit by one of my errant throws.”
The ostrich approached closer, slowed down, stared at them, and then ran off in the opposite direction.
“Are you okay?” she said.
“Are you okay?” he said.
“That thing was eight feet tall!” she said.
“No, it was fifteen feet tall!” he said.
“But we still had to get out of that park,” Fulton emphasized. “And, as we made tracks for the exit, every time we even saw a sparrow,” she quipped, “we’d jump”.