From Matthew Lacey:

Amidst the excitement of the return to Franklin Park for Mayor’s Cup XC, someone (Runner, Course Marshall, Lead Biker, Random Drifter) forgot how to tell their left hand from their right hand, and led many of the lead runners astray half way through the 8k course. Fortunately, due to the looping nature of the hallowed course, this merely led to confusion, not catastrophe, as those runners were able to complete an identical course in a different sequence (advantages debatable) and the final results remain unimpacted.

If you were to pick one CPTC XC runner to brazenly run off course, it would probably be Carlos Jamieson (well, maybe Polina if the race was in Van Cortland) however after previewing the course the day before, he watched the lead pack blunder, and continued on the righteous path, ultimately finishing in 17th place in a blazing time of 24:57, well over 2 minutes faster than his previous 8k XC endeavor at Paul Short earlier this year.

 Photo: Rod Hemingway

Running faster than Paul Short became a theme for the rest of the Orange as well. Jon Wetzel came next in 25:55, followed by Stan Berkow (26:04), Will Davis (26:14), and Joe Gilhuley (26:20) in rapid succession. Jon, Joe, and and Stan all ran faster than at Paul Short while Will equaled his career best 8k XC time.

Photo: Rod Hemingway

These 5 secured CPTC a 5th place finish out of 11 competitive club teams. In a pleasant race morning surprise, Coach John Kenworthy decided trek out to Boston from his base camp Upstate, and legged out a respectable 26:45. As for your faithful narrator…let’s just focus on the task at hand this Sunday.

After a week of focus on the roads in NYC, the XC Men return to action back in Franklin Park on Nov 10th, this time tackling the 10k distance