2003 Roxbury Race #36

Abe and Nora Repeat

    We didn't run this course for a while, but we seem to have gotten right back in to a routine.  Just like last week, our Men's winner was New Milford social studies teacher Mike Abraham, and for the Women, we had Cornwall florist Nora Hulton.  Abe was a little slower this week, and Nora was a little faster.  (See the table at the bottom of the page.)

    Abe went out fast, with Ken Merrick on his heels.  Ken is just two weeks off a fine marathon.  He felt like Abe pulled away at the end, but in fact his own legs were falling off, and the pack pursuing him closed about half a minute on him in the last mile and a half.

    The race was for third.  With 3/4 mile to go, a group of the Fossil, Lou Denaro and Mike Candito were all together, with Mark Andrejczyk close behind.  Mike won the four-way duel, and the other three finished in order Lou - Fossil - Mark A, exactly backwards from last week's order.

    For the women, Nora beat Roxbury resident Gisela Boelhouwer by just 43 seconds, but there was a big group of people right there, so where Nora finished 13th overall, Gisela was back in 17th.

Welcome back

    Jeff Field has been missing for a year.  We found him in 12th place this week, just one second ahead of Nora.  It turns out he's been in Germany for a year.  He did a little racing over there, but not much.  He claims he got a slow start this week because he's so used to listening to German that he didn't react well to start commands in English.

New to Roxbury

    Roxbury resident Christina Clark ran her first ever Roxbury this week.  She lives on River Road, just past where we turn off to come up the Jeep Trail.  If you've run past her house, you were lost.  She often trains with her young son Jackson in a stroller.  It's appropriate that, when she runs along South Street, she's running along the banks of Little Jack's Brook.  Welcome to the races, Christina.

Winning isn't the most important thing

    Even though he won the race, winning Roxbury probably wasn't the best part of Mike Abraham's day.  He, along with occasional Roxbury racer Chris Bacich, coaches the New Milford Boys' Cross Country Team.  On Saturday afternoon, they won the Class LL State Championships by a wide margin, 32 - 62 over powerhouse Manchester.  Danbury was third with 102 points.  Most of the team has run at Roxbury one time or another, so we're all happy for their success.

    Next stop - State Open.

Unknown

    Who was that in 23rd place in 33:22, between Carl Hunt and Carl Myhill?  Web guy couldn't read it in the results.

This Week vs Last Time

    Thanks to the magic of spreadsheets, we can compare how people ran this week with their times on the same course last week.  The data is at the bottom of the page. Most Improved goes to Ken Merrick.  Last week he'd only had a week to recover from his marathon.  His legs still aren't completely reattached, but a week makes a difference (unless you're Carl Hunt.)  On the other extreme, Charlie Greystone took it easy this week and was more than five minutes slower than he was last week.  Gisela Boelhouwer gets the Consistency award, two seconds slower this week than she was last week.  On the average, we were 30 seconds slower this week, probably because of the cold weather, and ten out of the nineteen people for whom we have times were slower this week.

    All this data is incomplete.  Last week we had a little trouble with the stopwatch and didn't get times for three people runners.

Marathons

    The Fall Marathon season is at its peak.  Web Guy decided to put all the Roxbury times in one place, so you can find them either by clicking on the Marathon button on the main Roxbury page, or by following this link.  If you've done marathons not on the list, please email WebGuy at esandifer@earthlink.net.  We know that lots of times and marathons are missing.  Let's try to make it more or less complete.

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. Nominations will be closing soon, and we will have the election itself during the middle of November.  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, Scott Benjamin or Mark Andrejczyk.

    We already have a number of nominations.  For most improved: Ken Merrick, Bob Lewis, Katie Neils, Mark Andrejczyk, Bill Gillen, Paul Teixeira.  For rookie, Lou Denaro, Mario Hasz and Mark Losacco.  If you have more ideas, use the nomination form above, or talk to Bob Lewis or to WebGuy himself.

Pictures

    Up top we have Al Curtis, on a warmer day, with other people you may recognize in the backkground.  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.  After that we have Mario Hasz motoring towards the finish line.  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

This week vs Last week

Last modified: October 26, 2003