The FLRC Challenge is starting to kick into gear! Some administrivia:
-
Sign Up Today: We’re now up to 94 participants. As those who have participated before know, the Challenge is way more fun when you can do it with friends, so please, recruit your friends!
-
Leaderboard Updates: Our leaderboard wizard, Steve Desmond, has deployed an update that displays the Community Stars and Team Points competitions. Community Stars now requires checking 44 topics, so it may take a few minutes for stars to appear after you post. Bugs continue to be squashed.
-
Lawn Signs: If you have an FLRC Challenge lawn sign, now’s the time to put it out so everyone sees what we’re up to. If you want one (modeled here by a young Crosby Woods), see me at a group run or workout—I have some more.
-
Shirts and Medals: I’m still working with USA Racing on the medal design, and we’ll keep collecting shirt orders for another week or two before placing the order.
-
Saturday Group Run: Join us for a Challenge group run on the soft, easy Duck Trails course at Sapsucker Woods tomorrow at 9 AM. It’s a good intro to trails for anyone who is only used to the roads.
-
Counting Races: Remember, if you run 1600m, 5K, 10K, or half marathon race, you can submit the times for the Sweet 1600, Lakefront Loops, Sights of the Heights, or Freeville Fly-In courses, as Caitlin Loehr did while winning the masters division (and 7th of 341 women) at the Jim Thorpe Half Marathon. Woo!
-
Rule Update: If you’ve been wondering, there’s no double-dipping on overlapping courses. If someone runs the East Hill Dryden Rail Trail course, for instance, they can’t also record an East Hill Rec Way effort without running it separately because otherwise they’d get miles in Most Miles that they hadn’t run. It remains totally fine to connect multiple courses in a single outing, as long as you cover the ground for each one.
Meanwhile, back at the actual running, we’re over 500 miles for the week again, with the Beebe Lake course still the most popular, but trailed closely by East Hill Rec Way, Duck Trails, and the new course on the block, Sights of the Heights. Having it go by the doors of a few dedicated Challengers should make for a spirited competition for its sign by the end of the year—Jon Lewis has run it 6 times already.
Other numbers are climbing fast as well. Unsurprisingly, Pete Kresock has run 17 courses already, but newcomer Harshil Shah has done 12, and Ryan Jacobsen is at 8. Pete’s also in the lead for Most Miles, but Caitlin Loehr is in second, followed by Harshil. A bunch of people are tied for Community Stars, but Dennis Stadelman is still in the lead for ice cream pictures.
Some great photos this week again, such as Laura Taylor’s and Tonya Engst’s photos at the base of Taughannock Falls and Dennis Stadelman’s shot of Fall Creek winding through the FH Fox course.
See you tomorrow, and until next week, keep covering the ground!
