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Runners go distance for any cause
By JOE SHAFRAN
I don’t know whether or not you saw him on TV earlier this week, but the veterinarian who worked on Barbaro’s broken leg used an analogy that I thought was interesting. When pressed by the news media to tell how long it might take for healing, he said, it’s not going to be real soon, but let me put it this way, its not going be a sprint. But more like a marathon, I was impressed by the tenacity of this race horse and in the last column, I had likened Derek Eckenrode’s spectacular 34 minute finish at the Bay Bridge run to Barbaro’s win at the Kentucky Derby the day before… both coming on in the stretch and finishing by 6 and a half lengths. Interestingly, on Saturday May 13th there was the run in Baltimore to kick off Preakness Week. This is the unusual annual race with the course following some of the neighborhood streets around the Pimlico track then bringing the runners inside and finishing up on the race track itself for the same distance that the horses in the Preakness would have run to the finish line of course without the 100,000 or so screaming spectators who were not in the screaming mode when Barbaro pulled up lame on Saturday.
For a change, I wasn’t at the MRE Bridge run across Spa Creek in Annapolis a couple Saturday’s ago, I was doing a run out of town. The one here that I had never missed since it began about 5 years ago. I like it because it’s the shortest sanctioned run in the world, 05K. Coming in eleventh was a woman who said she had no I. D., but proudly pulled a cell phone from her pocket at which point I took off thinking that she would call 911 and report a stalker. I say again, runners or walkers especially should carry some sort of I. D. I think they fear someone knowing where they live. I say, in most areas these days, medics won’t go through pockets looking for an I. D. They load someone needing help into the ambulance and list them as John or Jane Doe.
Charlie Boyle will appreciate this... Charlie is the indomitable Annapolis race walker, this past weekend I was back in my Western Pennsylvania home town to do a charity 5K run that also featured a 2 mile walk and spotting an old friend who was an Olympic race walker (68, 72 and 1974) and still at it, I bet him that I could run faster than he could walk. I lost the bet, thirty years after competing in the 1976 Olympics, he still beat me by a good 6 ½ lengths. I got Charlie in a little trouble by using preliminary results from the Strider website in the last column listing him as doing the Bay Bridge in 1:51. The official result show now shows Charlie, 82, doing the bridge 10K race walking in 1:14, number 2094 out of 2144 finishers.
This 5K run/2 mile walk was a memorial fund raiser for a very popular Doctor and avid runner who died of cancer. The proceeds from the run will go for the upkeep of a park in which he did a daily run and the park in which I started my running career many years ago. The town turns out for the event that last year netted something like $30,000. Seems that when prominent physicians pass on at an early age, the town comes out to pay homage. I liken it to the race they have here every year to recall very popular Doctor David Nagey. This one touches many hearts, because the Doctor in his 50’s collapsed and died while running this very race for Indian Creek School. He was world renowned in the Perinatal field. The run this year was back in April and working with others to make it a success is his widow and a fellow Capital columnist, Elaine Nagey and her family. Some of the results of that race follow in the words of Elaine…
Andrew Maddison crossed the finish line first with a time of 16:50 minutes followed by J. R. Spencer at 18:32 minutes. Jonathan Reddick carried the banner for Indian Creek alumni with a time of 23:36 minutes.
Trish Dunn led the women across the finish line at 23:39 minutes followed by Renee Farnham with a time of 23:47 minutes. Autumn Simmons was the first woman alum over the line at 36:14.
Medals were awarded to the top five runners under the age of fourteen and the top three for the older groups. The youngest runner, Alex Emery, was only two years old. George Wohlgemuth was the silver champion at age eighty one. Proceeds from the race support the Indian Creek School Parent Teacher Organization and the David A Nagey Foundation for Perinatal Outreach, Education and Research.
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