Sunday, November 23, 2008

Short recap of JFK 50 miler

Tammy along the Appalachian Trail about mile 15
Tammy and Cindy (my sister: the BEST crew ever!). Also the best pacer ever, but this year due to recent foot surgery could only run bits and pieces of the race with me.


Tammy and the mile 46 horse. I think this might have been the horse that bit me last year, thus you will notice I am not that close to the fence or putting my hand too close to the horses mouth



Tammy getting her medal!


Post race...I really think the person who designed this race course is sick, you finish right next to a cemetary!!! I guess it's easier for the race director to just abandon runners who have used every ounce of energy right in the cemetary (by the way this photo nearly killed me...well getting up after it did, but I guess I'll do anything for a humourous photo!)

Saturday I ran my 4th JFK 50 miler. It is my favorite 50 miler! It is a challenging course that starts with about 17 miles on the Appalachian Trail, continues with 26 miles on the C&O canal and finishes with 8 miles along backcountry roads in Western Maryland.

This year, my sister crewed from me and Tristan (my husband) ran the race. I started at the 5 a.m. early start, while Tristan took the normal 7 a.m. start. Tristan beat me by 20 minutes in 11 hours and 20 minutes, while I PR'd with a time of 11 hours and 40 minutes. It was a bitterly cold day (for runners, crew, volunteers and anyone outside), but at least there was no rain and the entire course was dry (although there was a dusting of snow on the Appalachian Trail at points).

I had a great race and am looking forward to sending in my check next year!

7 comments:

Jamie Donaldson said...

Congrats on the PR Tammy! Congrats to Tristan too for running! I laughed at your horse story! I am glad you stayed far away! Rest up and Happy Thanksgiving!

Trip Stocker said...

Tammy --I looked for you and Tristan all day!!!
I must have passed 200 early start runners and NO TAMMY -so knew you were having a good day. You must have finished only a minute ahead of me (with my 7 a.m. start)--you really didn't need that early start!! You ran a great race and a PR! wow..congrats on 5 JFKs --5 more and you will be in the 1,000 mile club! LOL...I am not sure I want to do the drive down again:(((

CTmarathoner said...

p.s. now rest up and relax before thinking about any long race or run!!

Runner Tammy said...

Jamie, thank you for these kind and encouraging words. What I need to do next year is run with Gilligan. He has the tendency of chasing and barking at horses so he could be my secret weapon.

Emmy, I am so bummed that we missed each other by less than 2 minutes!!! I was there with hawaiin lei and bright yellow shirt with "TAMMY" on it. I bet we were in the medal area together (although I was very distressed at that time because my sister was not there...apparently she thought I had slowed down so would not cross the finish until 12 or 12:30) Apparently my family/crew have no idea I randomly slow down and speed up. My last 3 miles were sub 10 minutes!

CTmarathoner said...

tammy --we must have been at the finish line area together except you were in the graveyard getting your photo taken --good job with doing the last few miles in 10 minutes!
Assume you found your sister...

Tristan said...

Not meeting you at the finish line gets you the "Best Crew Ever" appellation? Oh, I get it, you really mean worst ever. Cool, I'm not the worst anymore! No, I admit Cindy is better than me but not being there at the finish (even though she was cheering on other people) seems like it's less than perfect. It's downright traitorous. Anyways, being fired from crewing is not such a bad thing Cindy said so herself when I suggested the possibility.

Runner Tammy said...

Tristan,

You're Fired!!!!

Just kidding, I need you to be my chauffer at VT100, but you are NOT my crew as you are fired from that position long ago.

Anyway I did not fire you until you failed in crewing for me during about 20 marathons. A wife can only forgive so much:-)

Tammy

P.S. if it makes you happy I will put Cindy on probation. She better not fail me at Umstead though!