Still recovering here, but it’s great to see all the energy people are putting into finishing the Challenge. Congrats to Meaghan Keenan, Dan Keenan, and Xinyi Wang for completing the 10-course Classic Challenge, and to Verity Platt, Bruce Lauber, Andrea Lachance for completing Personal Challenges—21 courses for Verity, and 10 each for Bruce and Andrea. Great running, everybody! We are now at 51 finishers and over 17,000 miles for the year.
At the top of the leaderboard, only one thing has changed: Chris Petroff moved into third place in Most Points for men, nudging Patrick Milano down to fourth. Both of them still have another course to run, as does Ryan Jacobsen, currently in sixth. That competition will heat up over the next few weeks. Another competition to watch is Most Points for women, where Anne Riordan has three courses left to run, but has the fastest times on five of the seven courses and the second-fastest on the remaining two. She and current leader Sarah Woodyear could end up in an end-of-Challenge runoff for some of those courses.
The other question is whether our third 44-course Personal Challenge completion will come from Jacqui Treml, who has one more to go, or Andrew Flyak, who has two more to run while trying to get his Beebe Lake completion number up to an astonishing 100. Or we could see a quick run from either Matt Clark or Lucia Chen, both of whom have four more to go. And how many people will complete all 44? I’m betting it’s at least 10.
This Sunday is a PGXC race in Syracuse for many of us, but for anyone who wants easy miles before PGXC or is not looking to race this weekend, Heather Cobb has organized an FLRC Challenge group run on the Black Diamond Trail on Saturday morning. There’s also the Easy as Pie 5K in Brooktondale on Saturday morning, which can be submitted as a Lakefront Loops 5K completion.
Photo of the week goes to Julie Barclay and her new running companion Jake, who was a good dog while showing off the fall leaves at the Hammond Hill Hoctathon. I think Jake is now five courses into his doggy Personal Challenge.
Until next week, keep covering the ground!