Thursday, September 27, 2007

A Royal Race

A sunny Sunday morning in September felt like a perfect day for the annual Queens Half Marathon. Busses arrived from Manhattan carrying hopefuls; carloads of "locals" jammed College Point Avenue hunting for rockstar parking near the start. The Hellgate team was in good spirits. Everyone exuded relaxation. This was our Boro.

When the gun went off at 7 a.m., we had overheard everyone talking about the new course. In years passed this race was a 2 loop route, but this year NYRR developed 1 long path with tons of turns and bends throught the streets of College Point, Malba, and Whitestone, Queens. This did not daunt the Hellgate squad.

Aurelio lead the team with a fantastic finishing of 1:22:58 (a week after putting up a 1:21:53 at Yonkers). We can also welcome back Andrei to a more regular NY running scene (he and Heather have moved back to Astoria). Big congraulations are in order for Mary (1:35:14) and Suzanne (1:37:00) who reigned their age groups by placing 2nd and 3rd. Please note that this was a personal record for Suzanne by over a minute! Ken pulled a Mike M. by showing up after the mats were pulled; that didn't slow him down! He whizzed by this blogger at about mile 11 - he caught a good portion of the race field! Jenn and Jamie ran a part of the race together epitomizing team work!

Everyone did spectacular and please find all the results on the NYRR website. Congratulations to all!


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Well done everyone. Great write-up Jessica.