SLG'er beats NY Flyer by a nose!!!

BUT BECAUSE OF THE CHALLENGE, FLYER SHATTERS HIS PREVIOUS PR IN THE 5 K

COMPLETE STORY
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Downtown Manhattan witnessed the American Heart Association 5 k on Wednesday, May 17th. 2400 men and 2000 women ran this race. Many SLG'ers were called to run the race, only two surfaced. One was the coach, who could only be there in her coaching capacity because of an injury that will keep her out of the running circuit for a month. The other one was... yes you guessed it, the running monster, Gil Perrone. Perrone met up with Mike "The Flyer" Smyth (who has one foot in the SLG club anyway) at the start. They discussed speed and strategy and off they went. Mike's goal was to run the race in less than 20 minutes, Gil just wanted to run AS FAST AS HE COULD. Our reporter on the course says that it was an intensely fought race. Perrone was ahead the first two miles with Smyth on his tail. At mile two, Smyth caught up to Perrone and both were quite freaked out by there time of 12:10. From there on they raced shoulder to shoulder, not acknowledging each other. And then it became an intense battle for the lead, one time Perrone was ahead, another time Smyth led. At the three mile mark, Perrone showed off his famous kick though and, as the coach witnessed from her prime spot at the finish line, Perrone beat Smyth by a nose. (Admittedly, Perrone's nose is a bit bigger than Smyth's) Perrone finished in 19:41 on the clock, one second (or that nose, well maybe a bit more than a nose) faster than Smyth but their chip time was exactly the same, 19:39
Smyth's previous best in a 5 k came in July 2005 in the "Run to home plate" race where he ran 20:34. Perrone also set a new PR for that distance. His previous best was in that same race, and he clocked in at 21:07. I can hear him thinking that he used to run much faster, but do we really have to compare his results from 20 years ago with what he is doing now? I really don't think so.

The story has a bit more intrigue though. When I checked race results last night, there was no mention of Perrone. I checked again this morning...Same. When I went to look at Smyth's results and extrapolated to where Perrone should have come in, I made two amazing observations. First of, he finished 3rd in his age category. For whatever obscure reason, they had diffrent age categories for this race : from 40-49, 50-59 instead of the usual 5 year age categories. The other observation was that in the usual age categorie of 55-59, Perrone would have come in first.

I checked in with him this morning to see whether he had gone triple ballistic, first of, for not being in the results, second for placing third and third for not having the usual age categories. In any case, after he talked to his and our "good friend" Janet at NYRR, his name appeared where it was supposed to.

So, congratulations to Gil and Mike. A rivalry is born! It is actually continuing this coming Saturday, May 20th. After having run for a healthy heart on Wednesday, they will be running for healthy kidneys on Saturday. And here is the "Ham Question" : Where on earth are the other SLG'ers?? What is everybody doing? Is anybody running? Does everybody have a good excuse not to be running? I demand to see training logs and training schedules and please, please, do come out for the 10 K this Saturday.

By the way, after the race, Gil, Mike and I were very thirsty and went off to Markt to take care of that problem. It was the first time that Mike had been to that particular corner of the Meatpacking district. We had an outside table, it was a beautiful evening and Mike liked the "scenery" on that corner a lot (if you know what I mean) He vowed to go back soon.

Congratulations are also in order for Clem, who ran his 80th MARATHON this past Sunday and finished in a time of 3:26:53.

One more thing, and I will mention this again, By July 1st, I need a little biography of everbody who has signed up to run the Chicago marathon. It needs to have some information of your running background and for the rest it can be serious, silly, funny... whatever. But since not everybody knows one another, I think it would be fun to do a little introduction. So what about it. Does anybody want to start?? I am not good at guessing how many words it should be, but a couple of paragraphs is fine.

Stefan and David, how is the LOGO coming? Stefan, I thought you had made a good start with that profile of the runner on that invitation for Wendy and Erik.

Coming soon to your blog : The famous : "Ode to SLG"