The results from Sunday’s meet are up at:
http://fingerlakesrunners.org/race/january-indoor-track-meet-2017/
It was one for the record books, with well over 300 registrants and 267 finishers across five events. It was also our longest meet ever because of having so many runners — we didn’t finish until 2 PM, thanks to needing 19 heats of the 60m, 23 heats of the 400m, and 9 heats of the mile. And some of those 400m and mile heats were twice as large as we’d normally run!
There were numerous great performances as well, with Ben Ericksen of Norwich winning an exciting 5000m in 17:00. He held off Dave Cook of Auburn in 17:07 and Nate Bowers of Owego Free Academy in 17:09. On the women’s side, Kylee O’Hara won in 20:27, with Ithaca High alumna Julia Sinton second in 20:58.
We worked our way up through the 19 heats of the 60m to culminate with Damoy Allen’s 7.25, a hair ahead of Noah Bosket’s 7.27 and Peter Sigona’s 7.33. Elinor Kops of Ithaca took the women’s crown, with an 8.78 that beat out Leila Vargas of Team PREFO’s 8.96 and Maia Wright of Owego Free Academy’s 9.03.
In the 400m, Leon Atkins of the Auburn Pulsars continued his dominance of the event at FLRC meets with 50.59, well ahead of Clayton Wolfe of Owego Free Academy, who still ran an impressive 54.53. Elizabeth Lucason of the Syracuse Track Club took the women’s race in 1:07.6, beating out Katie Laris’s 1:08.09 and Laurel Vargas of Team PREFO’s 1:08.93. The 400m was the most popular event of the day, with 142 finishers.
In the mile, which is the first installment in FLRC’s MITHACAL MILE SERIES, Camden Zaidel of Corning-Painted Post West ran a 4:49.4, outkicking perennial masters champion Jim Derick by 1 second. Nathan Lawson of Corning-Painted Post West was close behind in 4:54.3. Elizabeth Lucason of the Syracuse Track Club doubled her wins for the day, taking the women’s mile in 5:24.2, ahead of Alyssa Walker of Team PREFO in 5:28.7 and her sister Morgan Lucason in 5:49.6. Watch the Lucason sisters — they’re going places!
We’ll be working on the MITHACAL MILE SERIES results soon, since masters runners get to add to their best four race tally at the upcoming Hartshorne Masters Mile. Non-masters runners will have to wait until the February FLRC meet to post another time for the series. Remember, the runners with the best four mile times across all FLRC track meets in 2017 — broken out by age groups, of course! — will win prizes in a special end-of-summer award ceremony.
None of this would have been possible without outstanding performance from our volunteers as well. Alex Colvin stepped in to act as head timer, Tom Rishel took over as starter, Steve Shaum recorded finisher numbers, Tonya Engst and Carl Franck herded the cats as clerks of course, Nancy Kleinrock kept registration moving and did backup timing, Ved Gund manned the computer for race seeding and results entry, David Keifer helped with setup and lots more, Jullien Flynn did backup timing and results entry, Ruth Sproul managed the lap counter, Jesse Koenecke and Mike Stewart helped with results entry, and Alan Evans and Sara Sparling provided additional backup timing help. Thanks to all of you!
Finally, we know some people had to leave before their races because the meet went so long. Sorry! For future meets, I’ll be posting estimated event start times on the FLRC Web site, mailing list, and Facebook page the day before the meet so pre-registered runners can come later in the meet and pick up their bib numbers a reasonable amount of time before their race.