The wet weather has made it tough to get the miles in this week, but thanks to Courtney Pure, Ruth Sproul, and Anne Shakespeare for logging some miles to make sure we didn’t miss a single day of the Challenge. Even though it was our lowest mileage week so far, we still managed to break the 10,000-mile mark for the year! You’ll also notice that seven of the ten courses have cracked the 1,000-mile mark individually.
We also had four more finishes, bringing our total to 43. Congrats to Sarah von Schrader, Hank Duarte, Sarah Giesy, and Yamil Andres Molina! We have another 10 people with just one course to go, 13 more with two, and 70 people who have five or fewer courses. With just three weeks to go, now’s the time to start planning out those final runs. Luckily, the weather looks great next week.
There hasn’t been much movement at the top of the leaderboard for a while, although I wouldn’t bet against Melissa Plank moving up into second in Most Miles, and Columbia Warren, Jean-Luc Jannink, and Caroline Rasmussen all have a chance to break into the top three in Age Grade. The @Fantastic-40s seem to have the Team Points well in hand despite a mid-summer push by the @Fabulous-50s, but it’s never worth counting any team out until the last days.
Many of the course sign competitions are locked up—no one will be challenging Patrick Milano’s 82 completions of Sweet 1600 or Mik Kern’s 53 efforts on Duck Trails. But Lakefront Loops 5K is close, with Pete Kresock, Kim Jackson, and Paula Klaben within three runs of each other. And although Adrian Haws has 7 runs on Freeville Fly-In, Melissa Plank has 5 and could close quickly if she wanted to. On Run Rabbit Run, Scott Dawson has pulled ahead of Bill Blessing, 12 to 8, but I don’t think either of them will give in easily.
Speaking of Run Rabbit Run, that’s our second-to-last FLRC Challenge group run for the year on Sunday at 8:30 AM. If you haven’t yet ticked that one off your list, join us! If you haven’t yet picked up your purple FLRC Challenge shirt, this is a great opportunity to get it from me and enjoy a weekend run with friends. If you can’t make it to any of these group runs, contact me to arrange a pickup.
Until next week, keep covering the ground, wet though it may be!