July Track Meet: Blazing Times and Tons of Kid Heats

FLRC’s July track meet is in the books, once again showcasing some of the area’s fastest runners and introducing lots of youngsters to running, thanks to the Ithaca Youth Bureau, Lansing Lightning, Auburn Pulsars, and Team PREFO clubs. We had 133 finishers total, nearly 40 percent of whom were under age 10.

The meet led off with the 3000m, which Joshua Derrick took out hard and won handily in 8:59, outpacing Dave Cook’s 9:34. 46-year-old Mary Bushallow won for the women in 13:33.

More exciting was the 200m, with the early heats suffering some timing chaos as the “littles,” as they came to be called, had trouble staying in their lanes. In the last of 15 heats, though, Leon Atkins of the Auburn Pulsars ran a 23.67, outleaning Christopher Simmons, who came through in 23.84, Isaiah Smith, in 24.45. For the women, 19-year-old Maddie Schattinger had no significant competition, winning in 32.77, well ahead of 11-year-old Elena Ruffer’s 34.97.

In the mile, 21-year-old Andrew Davis went out fast but couldn’t hold off Cornell grad student Adam Pacheck, who took time out from volunteering at the meet to run an impressive 4:28, just 4 seconds off his PR, followed by Davis’s 4:42. In his second race of the night, Joshua Derrick was third in 4:48. Also notable were some fast times from High Noon runners Mike Stewart (5:17), Alex Colvin (5:18), and Scott Dawson (5:21). For the women, 52-year-old Michelle Rohl showed the kids how it’s done, looking super smooth while running a 5:45 for the win. She reportedly has the 5th fastest 800m time in the country this year for her age group. 12-year-old Elizabeth Baroody of the Auburn Pulsars was second in 6:12.

Remember, FLRC is running the MITHACAL MILE SERIES and at FLRC’s Annual Picnic on August 25th, we’ll be giving age-group–based awards to those who have the fastest mile races across four of our seven meets, plus the Ithaca Festival Mile. Check your standings!

The final individual event of the night was 10 heats of the 400m, and Leon Atkins upped the excitement for the final by predicting that he’d run under 50 seconds. Alas, he came up short, sort of, recording a time of exactly 50.00 seconds for the win. Christopher Simmons was second in 53.69. Continuing the trend of older women taking the crown, 67-year-old Coreen Steinbach of the Athena Track Club won in 1:18.64, just ahead of 12-year-old Annoura Stewart of the Lansing Lightning in 1:20.19.

Huge thanks once again to our dedicated volunteers. Josh Brockner stepped in as head timer, Bruce Roebal started the races, Becca Lovenheim and Carl Franck juggled the heats as clerks-of-course, Jullien Flynn untangled our spaghetti results with help from Casey Carlstrom, Tonya Engst and David Keifer handled registration, Adam Pacheck, Ally Salce, Tom Rishel, and Sandy Gregorich managed lap counting, backup timing, result reading, and numerous other tasks. And, finally, a fond farewell to Julie Quinn, who has recorded finishers at FLRC track meets for years, but is now heading off to a new job at the University of Virginia.