Dancin’ in the Rain; The Embry Riddle-Asics XC Classic

It was a weather report that this correspondent, with an expensive Nikon digital camera, didn’t want to hear: “A persistent and very strong easterly flow will produce gusty winds of 20 to 40 mph and occasionally very heavy rain across the Florida peninsula through the weekend... It won't just be windy and cloudy...end of story. The strong, persistent winds will give way to many more problems.” (Tim Ballisty is a persistent Editorial Meteorologist with The Weather Channel).

 

But I went to Embry Riddle University in the pre-dawn hours anyway, hoping that their top-notch school of meteorology would provide a second, sunnier opinion. I got there early enough for the (7:20 AM) College Men’s Race, just in time to wade through a sea of athletes that had flooded the lobby, halls, rooms (large and small), and perhaps even the elevator, with their bodies, bags, breakfasts, and blankets. (But not the hardwood gym floor; tall girls were playing with nets and balls there.)  The rain-soaked runners were riding out one of the aforementioned “other problems,” a delay caused by lightning.

 

The “official” ERAU student weather forecast, ahem, surfaced, in the form of rainwear that took two forms: those with and those without. The “withs” had umbrellas, rubber boots, raincoats, and/or plastic bags made into hot, but otherwise useless coverings. The “withouts” went the other way, producing a message that fell between “all is lost!” and “so what?”  Displaying beachwear that included barely-there Speedos (symbolic of  the speedy and flamboyant members of the Embry Riddle Alumni Racing team), very wet t-shirts, shorts, flip-flops, and/or bare feet. No one, that I could see, ran naked.

 

I did have a naked camera, though. I was reminded of this when my D-300 drew stares from the camera-less—which I interpreted as shock and awe—and comments from the paid  pros who had “raincoats” on their cameras: “You’re taking that into this?” (I have to get me one of those green thing-a-ma-jigs.)

 

Yeah, it rained, but it was a mere nothing; 2.95 inches. Compare that to the 1.23 inches that fell on Unionville, Maryland on July 4, 1956 in one minute! Or the 12.0 inches that flooded Holt, Missouri on June 22, 1947 in an hour. Heck, even Daytona Beach has had more; 9.5 inches on this same date in 1953.  But I did have to dodge downright disruptive deluges, which, had they been persistent (as Ballisty warned), might have, by meet’s end, reached the point of a flooding of biblical proportions.  (Not to fear, isn’t that what their hills were for?)

 

I took solace in remembering what my wet-belt karate instructor once uttered, “Embrace the rain. It is nothing but refreshment from above!”

 

The fastest man on campus has, once again, proved that he is the fastest man on campus. By the time the meet’s first wave of runners funneled from field to trail, in the lead was the man with two names, but no peers.

 

Evans Kirwa won by so much—a minute and 33 seconds—that I could have recorded his entire life’s story before Alex Frazier (second in 27:47.86) reached the chutes.

 

 “I didn’t run in high school; I just played soccer for fun, but not for the high school.  One day, in late March--or early April—of 2008, I just put on running shoes and started running.” 

 

(“Run, Evans, run!”)

 

“My first time trial was in September (2008). I think I did 15:09 for 5000 meters. That was pretty neat for me. I enjoyed it. But my friends from high school don’t believe me. ‘Evans in running?’ I just needed something to do.”

 

At that time he was also working on computer programming, and of course running…a lot. 

 

“We are at around 7,000 feet, something like that.”

 

Perhaps that’s why he takes so well to the hills of Embry Riddle’s campus, which are—maybe-- 1/100 that high.

 

“I came here in 2009.”

 

And is making up for lost time.

 

“I race a lot. And I stay up and watch them—road races--(on television) if they are on Eastern time, like the Boston, Amsterdam, or London Marathons.”

 

And planning his strategy for the future?

 

He nodded. “That’s my ultimate goal.”

 

Alex Frazier, drawn in to the conversation, “Oh, yeah; it’s on the radar.”  (ERAU has all kinds of radar.)

 

“I grew up in ‘Marathon City,’ Eldoret, Kenya,” Evans continued. “I get a lot of advice from the runners back home. I’m planning to begin when I’m 28, 29, or 30. I haven’t yet done a half. I might try one at 25 or 26.”

 

In the meantime, there are the shorter college races, which he admits to running a lot.

 

Of course, if you’ve been following Evans at ERAU, you probably remember that he has not always been “flying solo.” For his first two years at the school, he and Sam Vazquez were a dynamic, and almost unbeatable, duo.

 

“I do miss Sammy. I miss him so much. He graduated in May. He was supposed to be here last night, but he was flying stand by, and got pulled.”

 

And yet, doesn’t a “Sam Vazquez” appear in the results? 

 

“His wife (Flo),” also a 2011 graduate, “got a job with the airlines. Sam is not working. He is trying to run in the Pan Am games, and then compete for  Puerto Rico at the 2012 Olympics.”

 

In the meantime, Evans will go on winning his own races, while working on a degree in aeronautics, with a minor in maintenance.

 

Embry Riddle ran a solid 1-2-3-4 (Kirwa in 26:14.90, Frazier, Zach Kraus in 28:32, and Josh Guerrero in 28:55), but then two Stetson runners (Andrew Epifanio in fifth--29:00.23--and Kyle Burton in eighth—29:54.05) “broke their concentration.” Still they finished first with 17, and cross-county “rival” Stetson was second with 75. South Georgia was third. Eventually 52 runners and joggers (more or less) finished in a race that was bottom-heavy with non-college entries (Alumni, Air Force ROTC, “The Flock,” and so forth.) Besides Thomas Wolfe, who says you can't go home again?

 

Like Kirwa, the class of the women’s field is also a well-traveled athlete. Junior Kadian Dunkley was born in Manchester, Jamaica (the island, not the city in New York), moved to Brooklyn at 12 years of age, started college at South Plains Junior College in Levelland, Texas (where she graduated in 2011), and is now running for Bethune Cookman.

 

Running for Clara Barton High School in a city like Brooklyn—with 2.6 million people—had its challenges.

 

“In Brooklyn, we trained for cross country in Prospect Park.” she explained, “Depending upon which entrance you used, it was about a 25 minute walk, or ten minute ride away. (In winter) before the track season, we practiced in the hallways inside the school.”

 

Levelland, in wide-open Texas, was hotter and offered more running space than she had ever experienced in New York.  It has 13,542 people living on 9.9 square miles. Brooklyn, one of New York City’s five boroughs, has 2,600,000 people jammed into 71 square miles (almost 36,000 people per square mile, as compared to 1,354 in Levelland.) Prospect Park alone—designed by legendary park planner Frederick Law Olmstead—is 585 acres in size, has a 90 acre meadow, a 60 acre lake, a zoo, a botanical garden, and (literally) miles of trails to run on. It is a small city in and of itself.

 

“Levelland is a very small town,” she continued. “It was a big change from when I first moved from my family in Brooklyn. The people were very nice. I like Texas very much, and I think I’ll probably move back there when I graduate.

 

“In my freshman year, I was focused on track. I didn’t pay attention to the cross country workouts. But in my sophomore year, when they hired Coach Barker, I tried to be more focused on cross country too. His workouts, and (Head) Coach Beene’s, were the same. We went to the same places to run, and ran the same workouts, but he must have (somehow) made them different.”

 

As the 2010 season progressed, so did her times. She started out at 20:38 in her first meet, (the September 11th Bob Jackon 5K), then ran 19:10.81 in her second (Texas Tech Open on September 17th). Three weeks later, she improved that to 18:54.5 at the South Plains Invitational. At the October 30th NJCAA Region 5 Meet, she ran faster still; 18:24. Her last cross country meet for South Plains was the 2010 NJCAA Meet at the Milliken course in Spartanburg, South Carolina, on November 13th.

 

“At the start of the season, coaches Beene and Barker wanted us to get ready for the Nationals. All the training was for that. We were really focused. We warmed up as a team, and did everything together. 

 

“When the gun went off (at the Nationals), I went out with Lisa (Forsberg, sixth in 18:15). She was our #2 girl. It was hard, but I stuck with her. It wasn’t a difficult course, except for the last hill just before the finish. I gave it my all,” finishing seventh of 286 in 18:16. “That is my current PR.”

 

But the well-traveled athlete wasn’t “home” yet.

 

“I was talking to Coach Jackson (Bethune Cookman) at the time of the Track Nationals, in the spring. He was telling me that he was watching me, and felt that I could do really well at BCC.

I looked the college up on the internet, and it looked good, its history and all. So I applied during the summer.

 

“When I first got here, the dorms weren’t what I expected, but I got used to them. I don’t really notice the temperatures because Texas is as hot, if not hotter. We had morning and evening runs, as we do here.”

 

I asked her about carry-over from her outstanding NJCAA race.

 

“I’m focusing on my goals. I’m a young adult, not a teenager in high school. I am on a running scholarship, so I am going to run to the best of my ability to maintain my scholarship.”

 

Was being a front runner, and the best at BCC, any harder than being in a supporting role at her former college?

 

“I got to the course on Thursday.” (BCC is right down the road from ERAU.) “We went out there to jog the course and get a feel for it. I didn’t know it was going to rain, but I tried to memorize the course, like where you might roll your ankle. I thought about where I would have to change my stride, say open it up on the flat surfaces, and slow down on the hills—but swing my arms more. My coaches—both Beene and Jackson--always told me that whatever you did with your arms would affect your legs. This is something I’ve been hearing throughout my running career, so I pumped my arms more there.”

 

Her winning 19:16 time was a minute off her PR, but the running conditions—and the competition—were far from ideal. I asked her if she was happy with her race.

 

“I’m satisfied with my time. What else could I have changed? At the start, I told my team, ‘What more could you ask for?’ I like running in the cold, rather than the heat. I think my time was pretty good.”

 

Her latter statement alludes to the possibility of another lifetime best at the MEAC race (at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore), which will be on October 29th.

 

“I’m going to see what the course and the weather are like, but my goal is to run in the low 18s.”

 

Although Kadi won by 44 seconds and had the lowest point possible, seven Embry Riddle runners in the top ten (2-3-4-5-6-8-10) just couldn’t be beat. But Bethune-Cookman did snatch second with 71 (1-11-15-19-25-28-29), in a close race with Stetson (7-9-18-20-22-23-24 for 76). Interestingly, if six runners counted, they would have been tied at 99, and after seven the order reversed.  Another fascinating, but absolutely meaningless statistic from yours truly. There were five teams, for whom 41 runners made it to shore.

 

Those guys and gals from Mountain View High School (in Stafford, Virginia) must feel that Embry Riddle is just like being at home. Not only do they keep coming back—they ran here in 2006 and 2007--but they don’t miss a boat, I mean beat, when it comes to winning. They even bring an extra guy to carry the trophies back. (More on him later.)

 

“It was lots of fun,” admitted senior Nicholas Wolfe.  “I like running in the rain. Generally, when I come down to Florida, I come to have fun, and usually, when I have fun in a race, winning comes along with it.”

 

Going one step further, Nic summarily answers that age-old philosophical question, “What comes first, the fun, or winning?”

 

“On Thursday, we went to Universal Studios’ Hard Rock Café. Friday was study hall,” (lest anyone think that a high school kid would be allowed to overdose on a three letter word). “After the race, we’re going to Universal’s City Walk.”

 

But it wasn’t all fun.

 

“I have popital (popliteus?) tendonitis,” he told me. 

 

This ailment is especially troublesome when running downhills, but it is temporarily forgotten while having fun, and has been known to completely disappear while in theme parks. That method of treatment is called curus univerisaltium. It is arguably better than RICE.

 

Back to the race.

 

“At 600 meters, I took the lead and tried to pull my teammate, Jesus Amezquita (third in 17:37.77) with me, but he kind of dropped off because he’s coming off an injury.”

 

Despite all that—the weather, the injuries, and the course being under alternating layers of water and mud, Wolfe finished in 16:47.82, which is just .09 second off the best time of Mountain View’s Tom Porter in 2006. (That year Porter outran Melbourne’s Brian Atkinson, who finished in 17:12. Was that also the year that the crowd forced the original leader to go the wrong way?) Porter went on to finish third in the December 13, 2008 Footlocker National Championships in 15:26 (25 seconds off his South Regional 15:01). 

 

This is Wolfe’s senior year, and he’s looking at, among others, North Carolina State. He is currently thinking of majoring in physical therapy or nutrition.

 

With a 1-3-6-10-14 (and 17) finish order, Mountain View won with 34 points, or roughly half that of Matanzas (60: 2-5-16-18-19-21-23). Bishop Moore was third with three times that of  Matanzas, or 182 (8-25-26-29-30-31-33). There were 79 drenched finishers.

 

Like her male counterpart on the Mountain View traveling squad, senior Kimberly Ficenec seeks fun in all its endless variety. 

 

“It felt like a tempo run,” she said afterwards, “kind of like a workout. The conditions weren’t that great—with the rain in my face and all—and it was difficult going for time,” she said, “but it was a fun race.”

 

There were a couple of tense moments, though.

 

“I got a woodchip stuck in my shoe, and I was trying to run and get it out.”

 

So many runners, and so few woodchips, was she lucky or what? Another thing that got stuck to her was Hannah Loder, of Matanzas. Hannah (second in 20:11.26) was right behind her at the finish.

 

“I was kind of running with her at the end, and didn’t know where I was going. I just looked at the people in the front. Then the guy in the cart stopped. I looked around, and then at him, and he pointed. I said, ‘Okay.’”

 

Not everyone was so lucky as to be in front and have your own guide. After getting hit in the head with a few million raindrops, some of the course monitors were moving as if underwater—which, of course they were--and more than one runner skidded past the sharp left turn into the finish. Others just plain fell. In any case, there were color-coded course lines to follow, but one of them wasn’t the wide, white (near) touch line of the soccer field. Still, those of us huddled under the finish line tent that straddled it got really nervous when an occasional runner—his or her eyes glued to the ground--came barreling towards us, instead of towards the chutes. Luckily, Kim wasn’t one of them.

 

“It was fun,” she repeated.

 

And the winner was: Mountain View with 35 points (1-6-7-8-9). Second was Bishop Moore (16-17-18-24-35 for 110 points), and third, Matanzas (2-19-20-28-46 for 115 points). 81 girls washed ashore.

 

There came a time in the meet, when meet management was seriously thinking that, even in the midst of a Volusia County drought, “enough is enough.” That time came when the sky opened up, totally inundating anyone left with any interest intact, and further chilling those who had been soaked through and through in previous races. Fortunately, subsequent to that the clouds turned to a different shade of gray, thereby seeming to brighten. Did this offer enough hope to gamble on a “combined race”?

 

Predictably, pride inspired the co-mingled runners to run a more competitive race than would otherwise have been expected. Leading the pack was freshman David Perez of Matanzas.

 

“It’s my third race this year,” he told me. “The others were Mt. Dora (September 17th; tenth in 21:05.22) and Bale-n-Trail (October 1st; 56th in 19:21.31). All were JV races. My fastest was Bale-n-Trail. It was a night race. Running at night was harder than today, because it was cold. 

 

“In races like Mt. Dora and Embry Riddle, I’m good at hills. (At Matanzas) we do bridge work, going up and down the bridges, like fartlek. It probably helped me on this course, because of the hills.” 

 

Although Matanzas lies in relatively flat Palm Coast (Flagler County), James Wolfe—being the innovative coach that he is—has “found” a hill.

 

“At Mt. Dora, I had top ten.  In this race I wanted to get top ten again. There were a lot of people here, but they were slow. 

 

“I took the lead in the first half mile, and was in front most of the way. There was one person behind me all of the time, but he didn’t challenge me. When I finished, I saw my time on the clock; it was 19:39. He was probably 15 or 20 seconds behind me.”

 

That runner was 16 year old Alex Burlingham, of Mountain View High School. Alex was the “Lucky 13th” runner on the boys’ team to make the trip.

 

“Our coach, Dave Davis, takes the top 12 boys and top 12 girls on this trip,” clarified Burlingham. “He selects them based on how well they’re running. I was actually 13th because I joined the team late, so he bought an extra ticket.”

 

“We all try to be prepared by early October,” added Abbe Poff, a Mountain View sophomore who was first in the Girls JV race. “Alex is really good.”

 

 “My father works for the government,” explained Alex. “He’s a contractor, a computer systems engineer; retired Navy. I lived in Stafford (Virginia) before we moved to Germany. We were there for four years. I really enjoyed it there, the fact that you could take a train anywhere and do anything. It’s a lot safer there. 

 

 “(While there) I trained by myself. But I also got injured during the summer, so I had to fight that off.  Then I came back, and started a week after school did.”

 

“We included him in conversations, runs, and social activities,” said Abbe. “But Stafford can be boring. I guess it depends upon who your friends are. Of course, Alex makes things exciting. 

 

“I look forward to this trip,” she confirmed. “It’s the highlight of the year.”

 

As was this event.  Always an adventure, this year’s Asics-Embry Riddle Invitational certainly lived up to its billing as a “Classic.”  There’s nothing like the last-minute entry of an unnamed storm and its resultant effects to make a race like no other. No doubt its participants (and at least one photographer) will remember it for a long, wet time.

 

Footnotes: Three + hours of wind and rain wreaked havoc on the timing of this race. You can probably expect a minor correction or two in the results, sometime early next week…As I was leaving the parking area, I found a black umbrella with the name “G. Kelly” written on its handle. It was leaning up against a lamp post…. 

Summary

As the result of a Nor'easter off the Florida coast, a deluge of biblical proportions slammed Daytona early Saturday morning. Although the wind, rain and mud--not to mention the hills--made the spectators miserable, the runners had a perfect excuse to get down and dirty. 

 

Junior Evans Kirwa used the early lightning suspension to get on track, and won the College Men's race in 26:14, leading his Eagle team to a near perfect score with 17 points. (A certain pesky Stetson sophomore interceded between their fourth and fifth man.) 

 

In the College Women's race, although Kadian Dunkley of Bethune Cookman (the winner in 19:16.31) had other ideas, Embry Riddle placed in the next five spots to win the team race with 20 points. Once again, two more Stetson runners--this time a senior and a sophomore--broke an ERAU "string of eight."

 

Visiting Mountain View High School (Stafford, Virginia ) won almost everything else: first in the Boys Varsity race (Nicholas Wolfe in 16:47.82); first in the BV team race (34 points); first in the Girls Varsity race (Kimberly Ficenec in 20:06.64); first in the GV team race (35 points); first in the Girls JV race (Abbe Poff, not timed); and second in the Boys JV race (Alex Burlingham, not timed).  More importantly, 25 Boys and Girls enjoyed a mini-vacation, Universal style!

 

 Because JV was not scored, we did see a Matanzas runner finish first in the JV Boys race, but who was that stranger?

 

(If the gods of creativity shine their light of inspiration through the dark clouds currently looming over Deland, look for the complete story late Sunday.)