Shower-to-Shower Mother's Day 5K

On this day, there was a northeaster storm stalled offshore, bringing plenty of rain to the New York City area. But since this was a scoring race for the women, people still felt that they had to show up. This includes not only the racers, but also their cheering teammates (Carsten Strandlod, Luca Trovato, Alan Ruben, Sarah Gross, Irene Jackson, Mel Washington, Julie Denney, Stacy Creamer, ...).

Even the web site camera person showed up, even though this was definitely not good for the health of the camera (nor for himself). When he stepped out of his house, there was only a drizzle outside; but, of course, once the race started, the rain came down in buckets. What can one do? As a consequence, the photographs here have the 'wet' look.

BEFORE THE RACE

Photo 1: Yumi Ogita was delighted to see an old friend, Jane Ellen Gertz. It must have been years since Jane Ellen ran a race!
Photo 2: The race is about to start, and Lucy White was in a panic to change into dry racing flats. Julie Denney was supposed to be working today, and she was just waiting for the pager to sound at any moment.
Photo 3: Lucy White and Audrey Kingsley waved to the camera. We will count it against these two for not having any trace of orange color on them. As a side note, even Susan Yang of the Astoria Park Track Club was seen wearing a Central Park Track Club cap. Audrey's motivational speech to herself was, "If I have to run in these conditions today, I better win something!" (Postscript: Third place, women 20-29)

MID-RACE (East 72nd Street)

Photo 4: Here is a group of people waiting for the runners to come around: Julie Denney, Alan Ruben, Gordon Bakoulis (coach of the victorious Moving Comfort team) and, in the baby stroller, Joey Ruben. Guess who is best equipped for the rain?
Photo 5: The first runner coming through is ... Irene Jackson! Irene said, "But I'm not in the race!" That may be true, but it would be no deterrence against us taking her picture. Farther back, the other runner in orange is Stacy Creamer, currently training for Grand Ma's Marathon. Stacy found out the hard way that her jacket was not water-proof.
Photo 11: At this point, there were four women in the lead pack. Here we see Gillian Horowitz, the eventual winner Siobhan Murphy (partially obscured) and our own Alayne Adams. What impressed us most about Alayne was that she was actually smiling and waving at teammates.
Photo 12: Also in the top ten was Yumi Ogita, running light and easy as always.
Photo 13: Gliding over the cascading water were Lucy White and Audrey Kingsley. They both had about the same goal times (sub-20 minute), and it was good to work together with somone familiar. Besides, this felt exactly like the 2400m on the track last Tuesday, rain and all, right?

FINISH (100m to go)

Photo 16: Alayne Adams was gritting her teeth to try to catch Gillian Horowitz, who was the 1997 New York Road Runners Club's Runner of the Year. In Alayne's own words, this was not one of her faster races (yes, she had achieved the same time once while pushing a baby stroller simultaneously!).
Photo 17: Yumi Ogita finishes ninth overall, to the approval of Irene Jackson.
Photo 18: This picture shows Elizabeth Murray (from Witold's Runners), Audrey Kingsley and Lucy White in a file. Audrey had the right idea by pushing hard from a long way out; unfortunately, she found out that the gas tank was empty on this day. Lucy would spring from behind and overtake her. The astute reader will have noticed that Audrey is minus the white shirt in Photo 13 --- she had tossed it away in between. After the race, Audrey would jog back to that point to retrieve her favorite marathon shirt..

POST-RACE

Photo 21: Alayne Adams is making friends with Gillian Horowitz in the mist.
Photo 22: Lucy White had an expression like, "I can't believe I did this." Actually, it really was not that bad, compared to the previous Tuesday track workout that she did in even worse weather conditions.
Photo 23: Jane Ellen Gertz was looking for a dry spot, which was obviously nowhere to be found. Not having raced for so long, she had a hard time finding the gear. She found the orange t-shirt, but her club cap is somewhere in storage. Please note that those shorts are not club uniform.
Photo 24: Stuart Calderwood (from the New York Harriers) was willing to share his secret method for keeping his feet dry --- wear plastic shopping bags over the socks. Desperate times call for desparate tactics.
Photo 25: The only way to participate in any post-race chat, as Audrey Kingsley and Sarah Gross were doing, was to stand under an umbrella, which was being held by Luca Trovato. What do people chat about? Here is a sample: Luca was heard to say, "Can I get a medal too?" To which Stacy Creamer said, "If you want to hang around in this rain, I am sure that you can have all of the medals because no one else is going to stick around."