After a couple of slow weeks dogged by thunderstorms, you came roaring back to push the overall FLRC Challenge distance well over 10,000 miles! We’re right around the halfway point to the end of the year, so the question will be if we can maintain pace and break 20,000 miles by December 31st.
You’ve now run over 1000 miles on six of our ten courses, with Thom B. bumping over that mark just recently. Thom B. is also one of two courses where women have logged more miles than men, thanks to Liz Hartman and Karen Ingall combining for 204 of the 1037 miles. The other is Tortoise & Hare, where Mickie Sanders-Jauquet has singlehandedly (doublefootedly?) run 18 times for over 97 of the 815 miles—Tortoise will undoubtedly be our next 1000-mile course.
Jullien Flynn will be leaving Ithaca shortly for a postdoc at MIT, and she’s been on a tear of late. Last week, she took the top spot on the Black Diamond Trail, and this week she reclaimed the lead on the Waterfront Trail from Margaret Frank with a commanding 18:41 5K time. That extends Julllien’s lead in Overall Points over Gabrielle Woo, but with half of the FLRC Challenge left to go, there’s still time for a dark horse to give Jullien some competition. (Though she could always swing back to Ithaca from Boston for a few key efforts, if necessary!)
Congrats to leaderboard developer Steve Desmond, who braved the pavement of Pseudo Skunk to log his tenth course and qualify for his FLRC Challenge completion medal! We have 12 runners who just need another course or two, so look for more Challenge completions soon.
For those who haven’t yet run Forest Frolic (and everyone else), you have two chances to run the course with company. Tomorrow, July 24th, Mickie Sanders-Jauquet is organizing a run-through of the Frolic course, meeting at 8 AM. That’s in part to help people prep for the in-person Forest Frolic race coming up on July 31st—since the Frolic 15K course is the same as the Challenge course, you’ll be able to submit your time as a Challenge effort.
We’d all love to see photos from the group run—or any of your Challenge runs. To facilitate that, we’ve created a shared FLRC Challenge photo album to which anyone can contribute. You can upload photos to the Web-based album from a computer or any smartphone.
The FLRC Annual Picnic will take place on Thursday, August 26th at 5 PM at Upper Buttermilk State Park, so pencil it in on your calendar. It’s free and there will be great food from Fitnell Farms Catering, who also do food for Finger Lakes 50s and Monster Marathon. RSVP, please! It will be a great opportunity to connect with some of the other FLRC Challenge runners you’ve been seeing, and we’ll be presenting the first few FLRC 100K Ultra Challenge finisher awards to Jesse Canfield, Pete Kresock, and anyone else who completes all ten courses in 24 hours by then. I keep hearing from people making their plans, and Paul Maza wrote to say that he and his running buddy Jami Landry did seven of the courses in 18 hours last week as a warmup for the full Ultra Challenge and @Ian’s Virgil Crest Ultras. Impressive.
Newcomers to the leaderboard this week include Jane Cogger and Amalia Skilton—welcome! With 23 weeks left to go, there’s still plenty of time to sign up and complete all ten courses, so keep spreading the word. I love seeing those lawn signs!
Until next week, enjoy your summer running!
