On Sunday, November 4, we ran the fourth race of the Pete Glavin Cross Country series on our “home” course for the year at Taughannock Falls State Park. A flat 6K that’s roughly similar to the 5K done as part of the Cayuga Lake Triathlon or the 5K Chili Challenge, the course wound around the fields by the lake before heading up to the falls and back. The weather was superlative, the leaves were gorgeous, and our out-of-town competitors were wowed. We made sure to mention repeatedly that Ithaca is always flat, dry, and sunny. :-)
Thanks to a tremendous turnout from Ithaca-area runners, this was the largest PGXC race in history, with 234 finishers. The High Noon men fielded a record seven teams, including two teams in both the Open and Masters divisions, plus a historic first Ultra Vet team of 70+ runners (David Keifer, Jim Miner, and Cory Byard). And the FLRC women contributed a slate of four teams from Open to Super Vets.
Our teams ran well too, with Adam Pacheck winning the race overall for his first victory in the series. Deb Bliss continued her dominance of the women’s Ultra Vet individual category with yet another win, Adam Engst was second in the Vets category, followed by Casey Carlstrom in third, and Eric Sambolec took third in the Masters category. Thanks to some newcomers to the series, the High Noon Masters team notched its second win of the season and with only one exception, all local teams placed third or higher. Full results are available here.
Along with the High Noon Masters win, there were a number of other strong team performances. Led by Adam Pacheck’s first place, the High Noon Open I team placed second behind a powerful Syracuse Track Club, and our Open II team took fourth.
The High Noon Masters I team benefited from the addition of Ian Golden and our strategy of stacking the Masters team with some of our top Vets. GVH once again tried the same strategy but weren’t able to field a deep enough team to compete with our fourth and fifth runners. Plus our Masters II team took fourth, only four points behind Checkers.
Even with our two top runners running down to Masters, the High Noon Vets team placed a strong second to GVH, led by Casey Carlstrom’s breakout race of the season.
The Super Vet category has become tight this year. The High Noon team managed a fourth against a deep Syracuse Track Club, which took advantage of the absence of GVH’s top runner to win.
Finally, our new High Noon Ultra Vet team ran well, but were competing against a strong GVH team and took second.
On the women’s side, the FLRC Open team took third (and if we’re not mistaken, the race was won by the daughter of ex-Ithacan Katie Durrant, Sarah Danner, running for Checkers).
The FLRC Masters team also took third. Despite missing three of their top runners, the FLRC Vets team were led by Caitlin Loehr’s fourth place finish and took second, missing first by just one point. And finally, the FLRC Super Vets rounded out the day with another third.
The fifth and final race of the 2018 Pete Glavin XC Series will be November 18 at Drumlin’s Golf Course in Syracuse.