My friend and RD of the infamous Escarpment Trail race was just
highlighted in the Albany Times Union(NY). See
http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=298087&category=SPORTS&BCCode=HOME&newsdate=10/25/2004
Of course they were nuts enough to interview me.
As long as were are blowing smoke I made a local running rag last week.
The price of autographs have been raised.
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Nobody likes a challenge more than Doug Freese.
The Saugerties runner has completed numerous marathons and
ultra-marathon runs. He is a fixture at most local road races . and
certainly at the post-race beverage tent.
He's also one of the funniest guys on the local running scene. A few
years ago, after a column I wrote about the Race Around Briggs in Milan,
Freese dubbed me ``wussy boy'' on the Onteora Runners Club e-mail list
group for waxing poetic about the endless northern Dutchess County
hills.
Freese, however, is no ``wussy boy,'' that's for sure. He has
completed the hilly Vermont 100-mile race . which is held in the heat of
the summer. And most recently, last weekend he finished third in his age
group at the Vermont 50-miler.
Freese wasn't alone up in Brownsville, Vt., for this unique race. The
Vermont 50 features mountain bike and running races on the same site and
the same day. Many local runners and riders made their way into New
England for the fantastic, early-fall event.
Here's the way Freese described the race scene in an e-mail earlier
this week:
``The 700 or so mountain bikes go off in five-minute intervals with
the fastest group first and finally novices and Clydesdales. If you are
a
mountain bike geek, there are some incredible rides on the line . only
to be outdone by running garb. Biking shirts take second only to NASCAR
for advertisement per square inch. At 6:42 a.m., the apparent rag-tag
runners toed the line and shuffled off into the sunrise.''
When it was all said and done much later in the day, Freese had
finished in 10 hours, 3 minutes and 11 seconds. Freese said this Vermont
ultra is held under much better weather conditions than the midsummer
100-miler.
``For anyone interested in this type of running and distance this is
one of best on the East coast,'' Freese wrote. ``For some evil reason,
many of these trail runs are in the summer while temperatures are high.
To find one at this time of year in these conditions is a delight.''