With 6 stages and 117.8Ks of racing in the books, all that was left was the most epic stage of all: The Marathon. After this stage, H+P held the top 4 teams and 7 in the top 10. In the ultimate, we ended up having the 2nd OA male (Nick), 1st and 2nd OA females (Vicki, Val), and 4 runners in the top 10 OA (Thaddeus being the 4th) Here’s how our complete results shaped up:
RELAY
Nick came in with a very solid 2:58 for the Millenials- his 2nd best marathon ever- and built on their lead in 1st OA! These boys also put down the 3rd fastest time in H+P history. Coach Sean of the In-Betweeners started fast and proceeded to get beat down finishing in 3:02 (and really appreciates all the support along the way). This performance was enough to make up 25 minutes on the masters men, but the experienced marathoner, Holger, did more than enough to hold the masters men in 2nd OA. Holger’s performance was also fast enough to beat the Masters event record by an epic 1:04:12! Way to go guys! This 3 team race which separated our best runners was an exciting one to follow. While it didn’t produce our fastest time ever, it did produce our 3rd, 5th and 7th fastest team relays of all time!
Coach Gills posted a very solid 3:21 marathon for the women’s A-team. For a team absolutely crushed by injuries and absences, it’s amazing that these ladies were still able to come within 9 minutes of an event record and H+P’s 2nd fastest all-female team EVER (beating 2015’s then-record by 26 minutes)!
In the Mixed battle, Thaddeus (3:20) ran just strong enough to push his team to victory by a mere 15 minutes. Alex had an amazing 4:10 marathon debut- what a course and temperature to tackle your first 42.2K on/in! Props to her for helping us complete our 9th team. Fun side note- did you know that Mixed-2 had EXACTLY the same (to the second) of H+P #TeamLaura from 2015?
The Master Women- a team were were very excited to have- they posted an amazing 14:23:14. Anchored by Robyn’s 40:25 10K and Val’s 3:21 marathon, they were only 2:22 back of Mixed-1 in the end. This will be a tough record for future masters women’s teams to beat!
In the Funatics battle, Andrew did a great job closing the gap by 24:48, but it wasn’t quite enough as Funatics-1 took the W! Both of these teams beat last year’s FUN-atics team as well!
ULTIMATE
As noted above, Nick ran an awesome 2:58 marathon to solidify his position in 2nd OA. It was also enough to officially take down 2012 Dave by 14 minutes– what a battle Dave put up! With how strong Nick ran all week, it just goes to show how great that performance was in 2012.
On the women’s Side, Vicki lost some time once again to Cathy as Vicki came in with a PB 3:16 marathon. However, it wasn’t enough as Vicki still pulled off the win, finishing in Gold and posted one of the top-10 fastest ultimates of all time. Val came in with an outstanding 3:22 marathon, which again crushed her 2015 self. She finished 17 minutes faster than 2015 herself in this challenge which earned her 3rd spot on the ENDURrun podium!
Thaddeus performed very well on the final stage with a great 3:20. This brought him to 47 minutes faster than 2015, holding 7th OA and 5th male finisher!
Andrew finished off his week with a strong 4:43, enough to keep him in 24th OA!
Will battled hard, coming in just over 5 hours. 2013 Will was on the ropes after Chicopee, but with today’s brutal heat, he got lucky and walked away with a small 16 minute victory. The good thing is Will won either way!
To finish things off, here is Coach Sean’s post from Facebook. Thank you for the great week all!
“DEAR H+P!
What a week at The ENDURrun! Thank you to everybody for participating and pushing your limits. 9 teams comprised of 63 people + our ultimates- how is that even possible when there are so many insane stages on weekdays? One of many reasons: many people taking one for the team and tackling a stage that wasn’t their first choice- there was a lot of that! Huge props to people who also contributed in none racing ways- volunteering, pacing teammates, cheering…it just makes it better for everybody and I noticed it all and probably will never do a good enough job of saying thank you.
I may or may not have been the only one, but I got absolutely beat down by the marathon today…but I gotta say it barely bothers me because of how awesome it was to share today and the rest of the week with my second family!”
