We’re heading into our final week, @Challengers—remember, all Challenge runs must be entered before midnight on November 15. Looking at the In Progress page, 15 people are 80% done or more, and many more could easily finish the remaining courses in the next 9 days. Get those courses in if you want to claim your medal—they just arrived and look great! You can pick up your medal from me next time you see me, and we’ll have an award ceremony at FLRC’s Winter Party, currently scheduled for January 7.
It is acceptable to adjust your Personal Challenge to make it feasible, especially if you started with an ambitious goal of completing most or all of the courses. I’m in exactly that boat—after my cycling crash in September, there was no way I could finish the 23 sub-10K courses I had initially identified. That said, adjusting your Personal Challenge to include only one or two courses because you were too busy to run any others isn’t exactly kosher—a Personal Challenge should still be a challenge. To adjust your Personal Challenge, log in to the leaderboard and click the More Info button in the blue bar at the top of the home screen or your Athlete page. Then click Select a Different Challenge at the bottom of the Challenge Dashboard page and make the appropriate adjustments.
With my Personal Challenge adjustment just now, we are at 69 finishers! (I’m the fifth Personal Challenge finisher because of when I finished the last of the 15 courses I settled on.) Classic Challenge finishers this week include Ballard Smith and Chris Petroff, and Personal Challenge finishers include Tanya Burnett, Lucia Chen, Andrew Flyak, and Bob Talda. Notably, Lucia, Andrew, and Bob ran all 44 courses, as did Chris, even though he had registered for the Classic Challenge. And I don’t want to imply that Tanya was a slouch, since she completed 32 courses. Fabulous running, folks!
But even that’s not all! Along with completing all of the courses, Andrew Flyak exceeded his personal goal of running the Beebe Lake course 100 times! He’s now up to 104 runs on that course, which moves him into fourth place for the overall number of runs on a course in a season, and undoubtedly first for the number of miles on a particular course. There are some apples and oranges here, because 2021 was a longer season, and all other years have been shorter seasons than this one. But whatever! It’s still 100+ course runs, which is amazing!
Wait, it gets better yet! Chris Petroff not only ran all 44 courses this year; he has run or biked from Ithaca to each of those courses! (He has an asterisk on Ludlowville Loop, since he had to bus partway there on his first effort, but he plans to return by bike before the end of the Challenge.) We are contemplating how the leaderboard can reward people who eliminate driving miles while completing the Challenge next year.
And I’m still not done! Not only did Chris Petroff avoid driving to run Challenge courses, but finishing off Dryden Lake Lollipop this week in a new course record catapulted him to the top of the Most Points for men category with 985 points. Patrick Milano is now in second with 942 points, and Adam Pesta is in third with 893 points. Chris also moved into second for Age Grade behind Caitlin Loehr and ahead of Patrick Milano. Keep an eye on Age Grade and Most Points for women as Anne Riordan aims to finish her Challenge this coming week.
Other notes:
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Dryden Lake Lollipop group run: Join us Sunday morning in Freeville at 8:30 AM if you need to knock off this final course for the Classic Challenge. It’s 13.1 miles, mostly on the Dryden Rail Trail and Jim Schug Trail, and I will have a water stop at 4.5 and 8.5 miles.
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Photos of the week: Dennis Stadelman was back in Ithaca to run more courses and share more fabulous photos. They are a wonderful record of how nice a fall we’ve had, but I love that Dennis keeps running into Andrew Flyak on the Beebe Lake course. What are the odds? Pretty good, actually.
The second shot is from Andrew’s 100th Beebe Lake run.
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20,000 miles? We are at 18,711 miles right now, and while 1,289 miles in nine days isn’t impossible, it seems improbable. But so much else you’ve all achieved in the Challenge is improbable that I’m still holding out hope for this numerically attractive goal.
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PGXC course grooming volunteers: The final PGXC race of the year is at Lower Treeman on November 15, the same day as the final day of the Challenge. If you’re not frantically trying to finish challenge courses, we desperately need volunteers to help fix up the course and marshal the race. Please sign up!
Let’s cover the remaining ground!
