Completion #41 belongs to Brian Lazzaro (@brian-lazzaro), who gets bonus points (well, not really) for running Forest Frolic, Danby Down & Dirty, and Thom B (his last one) since tearing his hip flexor the week after Monster. The picture he sent me of the 8 inches of bruising on his quad was too scary looking for public consumption.
With his completion, Brian moved into fourth place in Most Points behind Adam Pacheck, Bill Watson, and Crosby Woods. Congrats, Brian, and here’s hoping that hip flexor heals up soon.
Completions are picking up, as I thought they would. Today’s accomplishment goes to Philip Gabler, who decided to beat the rain predicted for tomorrow’s group run and finish off Forest Frolic today. Congrats on completing the FLRC Challenge, Philip!
I’m kicking myself for failing to commemorate this accomplishment better in the moment, but kudos to Amanda King (@amandaking) for completing her FLRC Challenge on yesterday’s Forest Frolic group run in the rain. Should have gotten a picture of her with the course marker sign, but this group photo will have to do. Identifying Amanda is left as an exercise for the reader.
And just one day later, another Forest Frolic effort enabled Tristan Lambert (@Tristan_Lambert) to complete his FLRC Challenge—congratulations, Tristan!
October 20th was another twofer for completions of the FLRC Challenge, and what a gorgeous day to run it was, too. First off, Mark Perry (@FLXrnr79) ran Pseudo Skunk Cabbage to notch his tenth effort and claim his FLRC Challenge finishers medal. Then, right at the end of the day, Dennis Stadelman (@dennis-s) became the fifth person to complete the FLRC 100K Ultra Challenge, running all ten courses in one day.
Congratulations to Jason Dean (@deaner98) and Sarah Giesy (@SarahG), who both finished off their FLRC Challenges on Sunday, both (but separately, from what I can tell of timestamps) on Tortoise & Hare!
Jason employed a “one-and-done” strategy, hitting each Challenge course just once. That’s confidence! And Sarah decided to be done with the Challenge this weekend, running Danby Down & Dirty on Saturday before finishing Tortoise on Sunday.
I hadn’t planned to complete the challenge on Sunday. The weather was SO nice that I decided to just do it! This challenge may have convinced me to throw the occasional trail run into my running plan!!
Thank you @adamengst for organizing this challenge!! It pushed me to try something new and different.
Turns out I missed two other FLRC Challenge completions over the weekend—kudos to running partners Paul Maza and Jami Landry, who doubled South Hill Rec Way and Pseudo Skunk Cabbage on Sunday to finish! (The leaderboard was fooled because each of them had a run that had failed to upload initially in Webscorer due to weak cellular connectivity at Danby and Thom B.) Now we’re up to 50 completions!
Now that Paul and Jami have previewed all the courses, Paul tells me they’re planning to take on the FLRC 100K Ultra Challenge soon. Impressive running, folks!
Three more people took advantage of the gorgeous weather on Tuesday to finish their FLRC Challenges. Congratulations to Zach Murray, who did a morning Pseudo Skunk Cabbage for his tenth course, and to Ruth Sproul and Anne Shakespeare, who have been running the Challenge together and knocked off Forest Frolic for their final course. Anne (66) Ruth (69) are also our second- and third-oldest FLRC Challenge finishers after 70-year-old Steve Ryan. Impressive showing, everyone!
The glorious fall running weather continues, and this weekend saw a pair of Aarons finishing their FLRC Challenges, both by completing the Thom B Trail Run course. Aaron Proujansky (@aaron.proujansky1) ran his Thom B on Saturday, and Aaron King (@aaronking32) knocked off his effort on Sunday while taking a swing at the FLRC 100K Ultra Challenge. Congrats to both of them!
Congrats to Jules Johnson (@jlb262), who finished her FLRC Challenge this week with a one-and-done strategy! She started on October 14th with Cornell Botanic Gardens and methodically worked her way through the courses to finish with East Hill Rec Way today, finishing everything off in just under a month. Nice work!
The completions are coming fast and furious now, and particularly if you need to finish off some trail courses, I’d encourage you to think about when you’ll run them! In the last few days we saw six completions from:
Alexander Loane (@alex.loane.83), thanks to a Frolic completion that didn’t post initially on the 9th
Brittany Cronk (@brittanycronk), employing another one-and-done strategy and finishing with Heather Cobb’s group on Pseudo Skunk Cabbage on the 13th after a blistering start in June before picking up again in September
Kate Anderson (@kate-anderson), taking advantage of the Pseudo Skunk group run too
Peter Frazier (@Peter_Frazier), who made the trek out to Forest Frolic on the chilly Sunday morning for his final course (and first Challenge run since August—hope there wasn’t an injury in there)
Amalia Skilton (@amalia), who hit the Forest Frolic trails an hour after Peter, then came back to join the festivities at the PGXC post-season party from being one of the FLRC Women’s Open team.
Josh Brockner (@JoshB), who waited until the afternoon on Sunday to hike Forest Frolic and show that he’s back from breaking his foot on his previous Frolic attempt on September 12th
Congrats to Kuwanna Dyer-Pietras (@kuwanna-dyerpietras) for completing her FLRC Challenge yesterday with a quick East Hill Rec Way. Kuwanna didn’t even know about the FLRC Challenge before running the in-person Danby Down & Dirty race on October 2nd, but after recording it as her first effort, she has cruised through the remaining courses. And that’s while driving up from Vestal for each one—talk about dedication!
I appreciate this, Adam! I was able to run through so many beautiful new to me places this fall and it’s also been great to share miles with few people too.
I’ve been able to squeeze in some of these runs when I’m not teaching, and yesterday after my morning run here, I changed into dry clothes and drove to Ithaca to finish the Challenge. I was able to cover 19 miles yesterday and have a longer IG post about this, in case anyone is interested. Some of this mileage resulted because I ran the Cornell Botanic Gardens course twice…missed the small loop the first time around so I ran the course again. I’ve really enjoyed all the courses, but have wanted to run the Waterfront and Arboretum for a long time, so it was great to finally see those. But I’ve missed all the flowers and the leaves, so I guess I’ll have to come back!
That said, I’d love to run the BDR to connect with the North and South Rim trails…there are others and my list seems to be growing!
I’d like to stay involved with the FLRC. Thanks again for the kind words.
Our 64th finisher is in! Congratulations to Kim Jackson (@KimJ) who braved the pre-Thanksgiving traffic on the roads around Ellis Hollow to complete Pseudo Skunk Cabbage for her tenth and final course. Way to go, Kim!
Kudos to our two most recent FLRC Challenge completions: Damian Clemons@DamianClemons) and Jamie Howard.
Damian had just missed completing the Ultra Challenge because he ran out of time to run Pseudo Skunk Cabbage before having to go to work, so on his second Ultra Challenge attempt—which was successful!—his completion of Pseudo Skunk marked his overall Challenge completion.
And Jamie, taking advantage of today’s sun, chugged through Pseudo Skunk as well for his tenth course. Good work!
Congratulations to Diana Hackett (@dianahackett), who ran Pseudo Skunk Cabbage yesterday to complete her FLRC Challenge! She’s our 67th finisher, and we have 13 more people with 8 or 9 completions waiting in the wings, which would get us up to 80. We have 193 registrants and 163 people have run at least one course, so it would be great if more than half of those who started the Challenge could complete it.
Braving the winter temperatures but getting it done before snowshoes were required, John Hummel (@johnhummel22) has completed the FLRC Challenge today, finishing off his “one-and-done” strategy with a run-through of the Thom B. course. Congrats, John!
Kudos to John McKain (@Jmckain85) for completing his FLRC Challenge last Sunday on the Tortoise & Hare course. His completion was delayed from appearing on the Completions list because his Danby Down & Dirty completion failed to post from Webscorer that day—not a lot of connectivity out there. So let that be a lesson—if you check the Activity Log linked from your Athlete page on the leaderboard and something doesn’t appear that should, repost from the Webscorer app. From the Home screen, tap Race Archive > My Results, scan for the run in question, tap it, and then tap Post Result to send it to the server. The leaderboard should update instantly.
