2004 Roxbury Race #8

Kathy and Ken

    This week's winners have the same initials as last week's did, but only  half the winners are the same people.  Kathy Kost, with her second win in three attempts this season, replaces Katie Kellogg atop the women's results, but Ken Merrick remains in first place in the men's results, with his fourth win of the year.

    Both races were exciting.  Kathy Kost and Kara Fisher were close together for the first mile or so, as they went up and over the hill on Hemlock.  As things sorted themselves out along Rt. 67, Kathy pulled away to win by 22 seconds.

    Among the men, it was a two-man battle.  For two and a half miles, Ken Merrick held a scant lead over New Milford veteran Luis Amaral.  Luis is one of the smartest runners in the area, and he knew that Ken's time last week had been only 21:04, a 5:56 pace, and he knew they were tearing along at a 5:35 pace.  He expected Ken to crack, and he pushed the pace as they came down South Street.

    Luis didn't know that Ken had run a hard 30k race (18.6 miles) two weeks ago, and his legs were still sore last week, so as he slowly built up a 15 yard lead, he was sure he would be winning the race.

    But when the finish line came in to view, with about 150 meters to go, Ken reached deep into the training he's been doing for next week's Boston Marathon, and he pulled out a mighty kick, just enough to win.  at the finish line, the margin was less than a second.  The watch gave the times as 19:45.12 for Ken and 19:46.05 for Luis, just 0.93 seconds apart.  What a race!

This week vs Last week

    More than half of this week's field, 32 runners, also ran last week.  People were very consistent, but slightly slower, averaging six seconds slower this week than last week.  Sinead Blevio had the big improvement, 1:51 faster this week, followed by Bob Lewis.  Bob was trying a new "go out a little slower" strategy this week, and it worked for him, getting him to the finish line 1:23 faster.  Winner Ken Merrick improved by 1:19.

    Kyle Knight was most consistent, improving by one second, while Roxbury's Christina Clark was most average, running the prescribed six seconds slower.  Peg Molina, who may already be tapering for her Boston Marathon in nine days, was more than four minutes slower this week.

Combined results

    We've run this same course four weeks in a row now.  Through the magic of computers, we can combine all four races into one big race.  The big race would have 212 runners in it, with four clones of some people there.  Combined results are way down at the bottom of the page.

    In the combined results, we see that Dominic Gillen's 19:32 on March 20 is the fastest time overall, and that this week's winner, Dangerous Ken Merrick occupies four of the top eight places.  

    There are lots of things to see in these results.  For example, Mark Zerbe's four races vary only by 10 seconds, between 23:23 and 23:33.  Paul Teixeira has only a 12 second span for his four races.  Chris Childs is less consistent, with a 23 second gap, but his times are all consecutive on the list, ranging from 91st to 94th overall.

Rivalries

    If yourace Roxbury long enough, you'll start to notice some of the rivalries.  One of the oldest is Bob Lewis vs Scott Benjamin, a rivalry that spans decades.  This year is off to a hot start. Only nine points separate them in the prestigious points race, and head-to-head, each has won four times.  Tom McNulty also sits 4-4 against Scott Benjamin, but leads Bob Lewis 5-3.

    Charlie Greystone leads Mark Zerbe 4-3 when they go head to head, but Charlie missed one race, so Mark leads in the points.  Likewise, the Fossil leads Paul Teixeira 4-3, but trails in the points for the same reason.

 Pictures

    Up top we have Kyle Knight, smiling last year.  Below that are Peg Molina, Mike Abraham and Bob Lewis.  Then we have Flying Tom McNulty at the finish line.  Farther down we have a castle in Slovenia (what a beautiful country!).  Down by the "Last week vs This week" results, we have a Slovenian dragon, and by the combined results we have Ken Merrick stretching.  Way down at the bottom, Karl Hunt watches Harry Ong stretching.  Karl ran a 100 mile race last week, and so he was kind of stiff this week.

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

This week's results

This week vs Last week

Combined results

  Last modified: April 10, 2004