Race Report: Tanner Wins Riley's.

Photo Credit: Ken Trombatore 2008 © MCRRC Runners Photos

On Sunday morning, several of us ran Riley's Rumble Half-Marathon, in what started out as a cool, overcast and somewhat idyllic running day. For those that are familiar with Riley's Lock, the Rumble is not run on the actual trail but rather on a serene set of roads that run perpendicular to the lock. Green meadows, babbling brooks and corn fields line a course that floats up and down with sharp rolling hills. It's not an "easy" race course (none ever are, really) but the scenery does its best to distract you from what you're doing.

Melissa Tanner and I had made a pact to run this race together as a training run and fall into whatever comfortable pace we managed to find along the way. That ended up being a 6:40 overall, which had started out as flat 7:00's. Although we sped up, at no time were we hitting any reserves or struggling. In fact, we were talking so much that another runner complained we weren't working hard enough.

It wasn't until about half a mile after turning at the mid-point that I realized what was happening. It seemed that everyone we were passing who had yet to make it to the half way point would yell out words of encouragement and support to Tanner. Finally getting what was going on I turned to her and said, "S**t Tanner - are you in first place?!?!? Time to get serious!!!" But Tanner being Tanner, after a long pause calmly said, "...yeah..no need to change anything..."

In the end, Melissa won overall women's with a time of 1:27:13. Sheena Dahlke our other female GRC contender came in 8th place with 1:38:08 (7:30 pace).

On the men's side, Jesse Dylan Keith finished 6th overall with 1:23:51 (6:25 pace), Maxfield Lockwood came in 8th at 1:23:56 (6:25 pace) and I finished with Melissa at 1:27:15 (18th male overall). The fields were 201 women and 336 men. Overall race results can be found here.

- JARRIN