It wasn’t unusual to see a temperature in front of the bank in downtown Boonesboro, MD of “19” on a late November morning.  It also wasn’t unusual to see teeth chattering, arms shaking, hands rubbing together, and little puffs of steam from the mouths of runners walking to the starting line for the 44^th annual JFK 50 Mile.  What was unusual was that the temperature barely went above freezing at all that day and that the wind maintained a near constant 20-30 miles per hour.

The highly touted field included some previous year’s top finishers and some new comers with credentials good enough to cause them to become considered possible winners.  And, also wanting to be part of the oldest and most prestigious ultramarathon in the United States, a number of first timers toed the line hoping that their preparation was adequate and that this first experience would end up a happy one.

In particular in the field that day were the following:

Returnees:

827^th Leo Lightner (Rocky River, OH) who set a new 80+ age group record of 12:55:48

188^th Rick Moyer (Reading, PA who ran 9:10:17

And first timers:

90^th Brian Coughlin (Riverside, CT) who ran 8:37:25

142^nd Mia Kingston (Bethesda, MD) who ran 8:54:12

268^th Luis Stoute (Panama City, Panama) who ran 9:37:24

345^th Helene Strutko (Harvey’s Lake, PA) who ran 10:01:43

It was a phenomenal effort on the behalf of all competitors on a day that conditions were so tough that it would have been much easier to drop out and go sit somewhere warm than to continue toward the finish line.  All competitors are to be congratulated.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 22nd, 2008 at 3:06 pm and is filed under Results. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.