Published by the DAILY RECORD of Morris
County, New Jersey
On Sunday, July 28, 2013
Copyright, Madeline Bost, 2013
When you’re looking at race results some things will stand
out and ask for an explanation. Most often
it’s a person finishing in a time that they have never done before. Last year at the Horace Ashenfelter 8km on
Thanksgiving morning there were a few runners who were credited with quite
unbelievable times.
The course takes the runners past the finish line at about
three and a half miles and sends them off to do a small loop to come back to
the finish. It turned out that the fast
times were caused by the super sensitivity of the computers at the finish. They picked up the runners as they went past
on their way out to the turnaround loop.
Sometimes a fast time is the result of man wearing his wife’s
bib, or some other switch where the faster runner in a family or in the car
pool is wearing the slower runner’s bib.
That is usually easily fixed.
Sometimes the fast time is attributable to someone just
plain cutting the course. In those instances
it is usually done out of innocence and ignorance. On an out-and-back course it is easy for a
tired runner to say, “Ah heck, I’m turning around now.” That was the case last week at the Verizon
Wireless race that wasn’t a race. People
were hot and tired and cut off a small part of the course. It didn’t matter since it was just a fun run
and no one was being timed.
When people are being timed though, then it becomes a
problem to sort out. If the unexpected
person is winning or placing high in an age group they will be queried about
their time. “Did you run the full course? Were you wearing your own bib?” Usually that will solve the problem.
At the Downtown Westfield 5K this past Wednesday the race
was packed with fast young runners. Chris Heibell, 26, of Hillsborough won the
race in 15:13 with Chris Croft, 24, of Summit hot on his heels in 15:16. The next thirteen men were no older than 25 except
for Mike Anis of Highland Park, an ancient 31 years of age.
Well not quite that ancient if you compare him to the
seventeenth finisher. Fifty year old Andrew
Green of Scotch Plains finished in 17:08.
That’s a 5:30 per mile pace and he scored an 86.07% that topped the age
grading charts.
Had to be a mistake.
Never heard of Andrew Green. You
can go to the bottom of the CompuScore home page and type in a person’s name
and if he or she has run in any CompuScore races that name will appear along
with the data from each race that was run.
Andrew Green of Scotch Plains wasn’t there.
How about Athlinks?
Nope. No Andrew Green of Scotch
Plains. CompuScore did the timing of the
Westfield race and they had a camera on the runners as they came in. No mistake, Green was there.
Super sleuth Gene Gugliotta of North Plainfield cracked the
case. Searching past the border of New Jersey and the United
States, Gugliotta found Andrew Green in the United Kingdom and Green is the
genuine article. He has an M50 PB [personal
best, aka personal record] of 32:59 for a 10K that he ran on May 12, 2013. He was written up in the local club news.
No wrong bib, no cutting the course. Had Gary Leaman of Hardwick or Rodrigo
Caceres of Elizabeth been at the race on Wednesday those M50 division New
Jersey stars would have kept Green from standing out and raising
questions.
It was the crowd of young runners Wednesday that made things
interesting. One more item of note. Green was the first master, first over age 40
to finish, and he was followed by Kevin Higgins, 54, of Randolph in 18:17,
Robert Penn, 52, of Westfield in 18:33 and in 53rd place overall
Beau Atwater, 55, of Bernardsville in 18:38.
It was the M50, M55 divisions leading all other masters men to the
finish line.
In a race with 2,433 finishers it can’t get any stranger
than that. The first woman to finish was
teenager Kerry Dyke, 16, of Perth Amboy in 18:32. Nora Cary, 58, of Morristown topped the age
graded chart for women with her 21:51 that scored 85.11% PLP.
SUMMER IS SLOW NOW UNTIL SEPTEMBER
The Westfield race was the last big race in northern New
Jersey until September. The Morris
County Strider summer series 5K is still going on at Johanson Field in
Boonton. This Tuesday will be race
number three and the last race of the series is on August 6th.
##
A calendar of USATF sanctioned events can be found at www.usatfnj.org or at www.raceforum.com for running and tri and
biathlon events.
Contact Madeline Bost at madelinebost@verizon.net.
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