Just a quick summary of Sunday's Caumsett Park 50k. Michael Wardian captured his second consecutive Caumsett Park 50k and USA Track and Field National Championship with an impressive 2:56:36 finish, a full 10 minutes ahead of 2nd place finisher Justin Fyffe (3:06:49). Wardian again set his sights on the 50k road national championship record, but weather conditions worked slightly against him in his attempt. Ben Nephew (3:21:04) took third place. Good friend Dave James finished 10th overall with a time of 3:34:45.
The women's side, several elite ultra runners participated. Kami Semik took top honors and finished 7th overall with a time of 3:29:20. Jill Perry (3:41:21) finished in 2nd place (12th overall). Ultra newcomer Amanda Stickel (3:46:30) was impressive in finishing 3rd (13th overall), after holding 2nd position for much of the race. 4th and 5th place honors were taken by Annette Bednosky (3:47:59) and Connie Gardner (3:58:48) respectively. For complete results, click HERE.
I ran this event as a training run to see how the legs are just 3 weeks out of Rocky Raccoon 100. The first 17 or so miles were run with my good friend Kristen. She is training for an upcoming marathon where I will pace her to her first sub-4 hour finish. We ran very steady 10 - 10:30 minute miles for the first 17 miles, focusing on fueling (and trying out some new products). Kristen would be putting in 20 miles this day, so at mile 17 we split and I used the next 5 or 6 miles to push the pace. It would be an easy pace the rest of the way. My time was 5:17:31, a bit less than 20 minutes slower then my best performance here.
Lots of friendly faces were at the event. Congrats to everyone on great performances, especially good friends Doug Vaughn (4:35:09; 31st place overall), Susan Warren (4:47:14; 38th place overall); Emmy Stocker (4:54:18), Ira Zaroff (5:30:15), Tom Triumph (5:50:02), and Steven Tursi (6:47:34; PR !)
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