Thursday, September 30, 2010

Athlete of the Week - Cody Pelliccioni

The AotW for September 20-26 is Cody Pelliccioni of Morgantown High School. The '08 AAA XC champ won the Oatlands Invitational, for the second consecutive year, in 16:10. Cody is a senior and one of the favorites to win the AAA crown this year. Next stop for Mr. Pelliccioni is the Great American Cross Country Festival, in Cary, NC this weekend. Best of luck.

Saturday, September 25, 2010

Athlete of the Week - Jacob Burcham


The AotW for September 13-19 is Jacob Burcham of Cabell Midland High School. Mr. Burcham ran 15:19 at the Trinity/Valkyrie Invitational (5K) for third place. He led his team over a very fast course to a fifth place finish. This is one of the biggest meets in Kentucky and draws several of the nation's best teams. Outstanding finish, and best of luck through the rest of the season.

Monday, September 13, 2010

Athlete of the Week - Clara Grandt

Race is here.

The AotW for September 6th-12th is Clara Grandt. Clara finished fourth at the USA 20km Championship in a time of 1:09:02 (5:34 pace). I could not figure out how to embed her race, but it's linked above at runnerspace. Great race for Ms. Grandt, and a real breakthrough into the road racing circuit. Best of luck to Clara in her long awaited marathon debut later this Fall.

Saturday, September 11, 2010

Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads.


What's the best way to fight terrorism on 9/11? You can either scam Libyan terrorists with a bomb casing full of used pinball machine parts... or you can driving six hours through three states to watch four races! Here's a righteous recap of W and JS's trip to the 2010 Red, White and Blue Invitational and the 2010 Chic-Fil-A Invitational. Soundtrack is here.

We left my fortified compound in Morgantown at 6:30am and drove directly to McDonalds to pick up a Bacon, Egg and Cheese McGriddle and a large coffee (both were essential). We got up to Schenley Park in Pittsburgh around 8:00, in plenty of time for the guys race to go off at 8:50. The race was run on what was essentially a loop course. The start is at the end of a field on the top of a hill, the runners run across the field, down a short hill, across a road and then waaaaaaaay down a packed limestone hill. The hill they have to descend/climb is very long. If you hustle, you can catch the start and then make it to the bottom of the hill and see ~2000m mark. After the runner reach the bottom of this hill, they stay on the crushed limestone path and start their ascent. Again, if you hustle, you can make it from the bottom of the hill, over the top and catch a last section of their run up the hill. The path ends up at the field they started on. They then run one big loop, still on crushed limestone, around the field and finish. The loop at the end is very long, maybe 1,000m. You can watch almost the entire last 1,000m pretty easily. There is no admission fee and no concession stand.

This meet is huge, with almost 300 runners in the varsity guys race alone. The gun went off for the guys race and we ran down the hill to the ~2000m mark. The only WV team in the race was Morgantown, so that's who we were watching. Cody Pelliccioni came through around 8th, at the back of a pack of seven. The leader at this point would later fade back pretty far, if I recall correctly. Cam Greza came through in the 30s and then we had to start running up the hill to catch the finish. By the top of the hill, Cody's pack was down to about four guys and the eventual winner was a couple strides ahead of the other three. As they went around the long loop at the top, the winner stretched out his lead and Cody fought off the third guy, finishing in 15:23. Cam hung tough, finishing 34th.

The girls race went off promptly after the guys had finished. At the bottom of the hill, Sydney Pineault was around 12th and in a long string of girls. Brynn Harshbarger was moving up the field, back in the 30s. At the top of the hill, Sydney had picked off quite a few girls and was up to 9th, Brynn had charged up the field and was around 18th with a large pack of nine girls in front of her. On the long loop at the top, Sydney pulled out Old Painless and put a couple girls out of their misery, getting up to 6th in 19:06. Brynn worked her way into 16th at 19:29. The team managed 6th place out of 32 teams.

Immediately following the finish of the girls race, we jumped into the car. It was 9:50 and the AAA race at Chic-Fil-A started at 12:40. We pulled onto the interstate, got up to 88 miles per hour and blew through the state of Ohio. Then we got mildly lost in Mineral Wells, which is odd in a town with no stoplights.

The course at Mineral Wells is basically loops in fields, cutting in and out of some woods. Mostly flat, it can be very fast. We positioned ourselves at the one mile mark and could then jog to the two mile mark and the finish line. Both mile marks had clocks. The weather was great, with cloud cover setting in right before the gun first went off for the AAA races. There was a $4 Student/$5 Adult admission fee and a Chic-Fil-A (of course) concession stand.

The guys race started about ten minutes after we rolled into the parking lot. We were standing at the mile mark and Dayton McVicker came through in 4:57 with a large lead over Joe Kirtner of Winfield. Dayton came through two miles at 9:59 and won in 16:14. He denied that he stopped for a delicious chicken sandwich during that last mile. Kirtner got second by a pretty large margin over third place, in 16:52. Unbelievably, the Chic-Fil-A concession stand then starting selling chicken sandwiches two for one. Needless to say, we missed the start of the girls race.

Alyssa Scherich had such a large lead at the first mile that initially I thought she was lost and had cut the course. She maintained that lead for the duration of the race (19:37), while Emma Harrison got away from Erica Voreh for second. Parkersburg crushed all comers for both team titles.

All in all, it was a beautiful day and pretty fun to catch both meets. I think I used up my meet-watching quota for the rest of the month, so I probably won't make it out again until Times. I would encourage other WV teams to go up and give the Red, White and Blue Invite a shot at some point in the future. The competition is pretty intense, it's a well-run meet and it's early enough in the day that you can do other things. Chic-Fil-A was a good show, as usual, even though we missed all the early action. Would have been nice to have seen McCauley v. Harris, but we would have needed a time machine.

Sunday, September 5, 2010

Athlete of the Week - Brandon Doughty

The AotW for August 30th to September 5th is Brandon Doughty of Jefferson High School. Mr. Doughty won the Interstate Classic in a course record time of 15:44, also leading his team to a dominating win. Brandon is a senior and one of the "Big Four" competing for the AAA state title. As his team proved at Knight Night, and again this weekend, they are also in a dead-heat for the AAA team title.
Special hat tip to Jacob Burcham for his course record at GEICO, to Letitia Propst for her victory at GEICO, and to Jason Pyles and Maria Busienei for their victories at the Charleston Distance Run.
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I've noticed that the Ogden 20k has changed to a half-marathon, and now the CDR has eliminated prize money and is in discussions to move to the 13.1 distance as well. Whatever the motivations, and I have to be a little disappointed with the loss of history, I think these standardizations presents an interesting opportunity. In the Parkersburg half results, they show the combined times of the Parkersburg and Ogden finishers. For 2010, WV could now have a perfectly spread out half marathon schedule, in the geographical and calendar sense. January - Run to Read in Fairmont, May - Ogden in Wheeling, June - Decker's Creek in Morgantown, August - Sentinel in Parkersburg, September - CDR in Charleston, October - Beckley Half in Beckley and Freedom's Run in Shepardstown, November - Marshall Half in Huntington. Basically every area of population in WV would be covered, spaced out rather evenly over the course of the year.

My thought is that this is a perfect setup for some sort of half marathon series. Maybe total time for a runner's best three races, maybe total runners beat, maybe age-graded total time for best three races, maybe some sort of bonus system for competing in more than the minimum, maybe some sort of cash prize, certainly an award for running every race. At any rate, the mechanics would be up to the race directors. If we sacrifice some of our WV road racing history by standardize into the half marathon distance, maybe we should use this as an opportunity to start a new chapter in that history.