This year’s Bronx 10-Mile and Staten Island Half Marathon offered welcome reminders that the swampy days of summer do end. We proved our strength on the roads in both races, but especially at Staten Island, which we handily won. 

This further secures our third-place status for 2018, with 114 points to Urban’s 117. With one race dropped, we are still in third, but we’ve got two races left in the year. Can we gain three points to surpass our friendly rivals? I think it’s more than possible. 

Bronx 10 — Our 50+ Phenoms Take Top Spots

We took third place at the Bronx 10, just 2 minutes and 43 seconds behind Urban Athletics. Our top scorers included Brad Kelley and Mark Lindrud, both from the M50 team, who ran 57:29 and 57:33, respectively. Eduardo Ribeiro Ferreira was third, in 58:56.

Brad, always modest about his achievements, says he’d begun thinking this summer that he was on the precipice of the “sharp decline” runners often talk about hitting in their mid-50s. “I delayed it for one race,” he says, noting that he ran 40 seconds faster than he did in 2016 under similar conditions. “I don’t think I will ever beat this time.”

Brad describes the race as “a total effort, close to the red zone the entire way.” He attempted to hang with some other CPTC guys but at the mile had to let them go and “ran in no man’s land” the rest of the way. Describing himself as a “horrible uphill runner but decent on the downhills,” Brad says his final mile was “crazy.” He decided to begin his final push at about the start line, approximately 400m to the final turn to the finish line at the bottom of “that nutty downhill.”

Brad adds that both he and Mark Lindrud bested the old CPTC 50+ record for 10 miles, and that Mark even ran faster than the current 15K record for the same division, though of course we’ll have to wait and see him break that record for real at the Ted Corbitt 15K. 

Finishing just seconds later, Mark says he “really enjoyed the course and felt comfortable through six miles,” and after that was spurred along by “lots of cheering from Coach Tony, Sue Pearsall, and Armando Oliveira, among others.” He says that Armando’s encouragement, in particular, “helped wake me up around mile 7,” when his pace began to suffer. He lagged for the next two miles until Brad surged past him with nearly a mile left in the race, and Mark followed as best he could on tired legs. 

Thierry Soudee, who ran his first Bronx 10M this year in a very respectable 1:01:06, describes it as a “perfect time in the season” and “a great distance.” “You can push but you still need to think endurance,” he says. Thierry started with a pack of CPTC teammates at a comfortable 6:10 pace, faster than his original plan, but he felt good so he went with it. “Heavy training in past five weeks has paid off,” he says. “I actually ran this faster than my 10K PR!”

Joe Oleary ran a PR of almost a minute, in 64:07. “I love this race and it’s my favorite NYRR course,” he says. His plan to take in more fluid than he thought he would need, attack the inclines, and run a negative split all came together. He needed this redemption, he says. “After a clunker last year I knew wanted to run strong, but the PR was unexpected.” The summer training paid off, he says, and he’s going into the New York City Marathon “feeling extremely confident.” 

Staten Island Half — Cary Segall Leads With a PR

Two weeks later, after a brief but much-deserved rest, we took first place at the Staten Island Half, led by Cary Segall in 1:15:57, followed by Mark Lindrud in 1:17:32, and Eduardo Ribeiro Ferreira in 1:19:49. The fall temps and net downhill in the first half led to fast times all around, as numerous other performances proved. 

Cary PR’d by 55 seconds, hitting his A-goal of breaking 1:16 for the first time. He decided to settle in at a high-5:40s pace, and before the first mile John Paulett from the men’s open team came up from behind and they talked through their race strategy. “We ran shoulder-to-shoulder through mile 11,” Cary says, at which point John said he wanted to pick up the pace about 15 seconds per mile. “I knew that wasn’t in the cards for me but maintained my pace through mile 12 and the next half-mile before struggling a bit in the last 800m of the race,” Cary says, noting those “two sneaky hills to the finish.” 

Cary’s main target this fall is the Philadelphia Marathon, where he hopes to run sub-2:40. 

In the meantime, we have the New York City Marathon. Best of luck to everyone in their final two weeks of training, and we’ll see you out there — either on the course or on the sidelines. It’s the best day of the year!

Daniel Ifcher Cup — Soon to be Renamed

We are just two races away from renaming the Daniel Ifcher Cup! Right now it looks very likely that it will be known as the Osvaldo Martinez Cup as of 2019, but we’ll know for sure after Ted Corbitt. This is an abbreviated list of those of us who’ve run at least four points races this year; if you have also run at least that many and aren’t on the list, please let me know. 

Osvaldo Martinez — 8

Mohammed Lahseni — 6

Gerd Zeibig — 5

David Alm — 5

Duncan McVerry — 4

Thierry Soudee — 4

Vincent Corso — 4

Brenn Jones — 4

Cary Segall — 4