2003 Roxbury Race #33

Luis and Nora Excel on Hills

    Luis Amaral continued his comeback with a strong race over last week's winner Ken Merrick.  Luis probably set a course record with his 29:50, but we haven't been very conscientious about keeping course records, so we're not sure. (see below)

    Anyway, a pack of seven, the same ones who finished in the top seven overall, went through the mile together.  At the mile mark, there was the monster downhill, and Luis took off like a teenager on a roller coaster, arms flailing, head back and smiling.  Abe kind of went with him, and Ken Merrick went down the hill like he was made of glass.  The other four kind of stayed together.

    After the reckless downhill came the first of the brutal climbs.  This was the short, steep one, where Ken caught back up to Luis, leaving Abe in no-man's-land ahead of the four spectators, fighting it out for fourth place.  That was pretty much how it was until Luis ground down Ken and broke away for a 44 second victory.

    Among the women, Nora Hulton, winner two weeks ago, vanquished last week's winner, Roxbury's own Gisela Boelhouwer by 62 seconds to take 16th place overall.

New Line

    Before today's race, Bob Lewis and Don Smith helped paint that brand new start-finish line we used today.  To make sure it was straight, they stretched a long piece of string across the road.  Straight though it may be, there's a rumor that the line is slightly slanted, so the end away from the phone pole is a little farther down hill than the other end.  Check it out.

    Also, there are new mile marks painted on some of the courses.  Watch for them next week.

News from Derringer

    We have new eMail from Keyless Bob Derringer.  He's planning to run the Hartford Marathon next week, as is Ken Merrick.  Quick, eMail him and try to talk him out of it!

Marathon Season

    It's the Fall Marathon Season now.  As we've noted, both Ken Merrick and Keyless Bob Derringer are planning to run the Hartford Marathon.  We know that Karl Hunt is off running a marathon somewhere, too, perhaps at this very moment, and others probably have similar plans.  Please keep us informed.  We'll try to get our acts together and announce results here.

Course Record Data

    We don't know for sure if Luis Amaral set a course record this week.  We have all the old data on a disk, but nobody has the time to comb through it and try to figure out what the course records are.  Age group records would be nice, too.  Unfortunately, some of the files are in rather obsolete file formats, like early versions of Excel.  It might take some "tickling" to make sense of it.

    Any volunteers?  See Ed Sandifer or Dave DeBoy.

Rookie of the Year and Most Improved

    Forms for making nominations on-line are now available by clicking here.  Each year, we give an award for the Most Improved Runner and to the Rookie of the Year.  It's not too early to think about candidates.  If you want to compare people's performances to last year, you can follow the link to the 2002 page at the bottom of the main Roxbury Page.  You can also use that to see if your candidate ran much last year and find out if he/she is a rookie.

    Our definition of "rookie" is a little fuzzy.  Basically, a rookie is someone who didn't run "much" last year.  If the person didn't run enough to be a rookie last year, then he/she's a rookie this year.  This makes Lou Denaro a rookie, with one race last year.  So are Mark Losacco, Mario Hasz and Marge Demarrais, but not Tom McNulty or Mark Andrejczyk.

Pictures

    Up top, we have a picture of one of the Mark's, on a sunnier day.  In the middle, we have a shot of Chris Powderly and Nora Hulton chatting before a race a few weeks ago, with Charlie Yagielski in the background.  Lower down, we have a picture of Charlie Yagielski, with a sunbeam on him because he was special.

The Roxbury Races are now listed on the Internet both on RunningInTheUSA and on HiTekRacing.com

This week's Roxbury results

Last modified: September 30, 2003