The sixth annual 100 Km Catskill Mountain Road Relay (CMRR) was held Sunday, August 10, 1997. In its sixth year, the race drew runners from Atlanta, Georgia, home of last summer's Olympics, to Montreal, Quebec, Canada, home of the 1976 Olympics twenty years earlier. The spirit of the Olympics was present, as runners representing ten American states and Canadian provinces strove to follow the Olympic motto, "Citius, Altius, Fortius": faster, higher, stronger. The course of the CMRR is of prodigiously Olympian proportion: sixty-two miles of roads encircling hundreds of square miles of mountains. The race rises and falls more than a vertical mile in elevation. The notorious 5.9 mile Winisook Hill leg rises 1,180 feet in elevation. Only the brave with strong quadriceps go flying down the 1,040 foot drop of Peekamoose Hill; runners have been known to hit speeds faster than 4:30 per mile on this descent.

The earlier starters (teams' average 10km abilities: 47 - 60 minutes)

Vark Street (Yonkers) Boys, a group of men with a cumulative total of over one hundred twenty years of fire fighting experience, started off from Woodland Valley at 5:30 AM. Teams starting by 7:30 AM included superteams (6-10 runners rather than the traditional five) Unleaded and Middie Mountaineers captained by teenagers Carolina Martinez of Monticello and Erika Johnson of Middletown. Frontrunners Iris, a masters team of 41 to 56 year olds from Montreal to Washington DC captained by Kurt Kehl, was one of five Frontrunners teams of five runners each, the largest representation of any club this year. Two mixed teams of men and women were captained by George and Joanne Shurter of Middletown (Amendola's Restaurant) and Ed Eppler of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania (Ten Legs Strong). Ed's team included husband and wife, Jack and Elaine, and son Jason McCambridge. Wawarsing-based superteam Roadkill included dad Bill McClay, mom Joan McClay as team driver, sons Rob and Tom, Tom's wife Ann Marie, friends John and Diane Siegart, Tom Ticknor, Bill Carr, and Dan Palmese. Mike and Claire Quinn's Road Ruggers came up from Manhattan, and Mike Bogaczyk's superteam Leathernecks of Stewart Air Base in Orange County came prepared to run as a ten-man unit.

The next wave (teams' average 10km abilities: 40 - 45 minutes)

By 8:15 AM, the next wave of runners were beginning their race as the previous teams were spreading out from Phoenicia to Big Indian. Firefighters Vark Street Boys were starting the nine-mile ascent from the fifteen mile mark at Big Indian to the top of Winisook Hill that would bring the teams from 1200 feet above sea level to nearly 2700 feet elevation at Winisook Lake, the highest pond source of the Esopus Creek which supplies the Ashokan Reservoir. The heat was on.

Thirteen of the twenty-six teams started at 8:15. From Robbie Burgos's Stewart Marines and Chris Stevens's Frontrunners Athena to Jorge Salazar's superteam USPS Two, teams' average 10km ability levels ranged from 40 to 45 minutes. Former mercenary Jim Sweeney, who was hired to do battle for a team missing a runner last year, formed his own team this year - the Fox Hollow Flyers, named after the clove in the north side of the CMRR's Panther Mtn. White Plains lawyer Peter Larkin's Tortoise Chasers, Sullivan County's Martin Silverstrim's well-tuned Team Diesel, Judy Rubin's class-of-the-women's field and record-holders Westchester Wildcats II, John Murphy's self-deprecatingly-named S.C.U.M.M. - St. Catharines Unlimited Mileage Masters (ages 44-60) - from St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, Julio Lugo's former Masters turned Seniors USPS One (ages 50-55) from NJ, and Gerry Janssen's record-holding Westchester Seniors (ages 50-58) were back and ready to race the challenging beautiful course again. Bill Lacey and Bob Backus started a new running club, the Del-Sego Roadrunners to form a superteam from Delaware and Otsego Counties. Ed Prevost's Albany-area superteam Castleton Rockets and Dan Giacobbe's Frontrunners Apollo from Philly and DC completed the field of 8:15 starters.

The speed-demons (teams' average 10km abilities: 34 - 39 minutes)

As the 9:00 AM starters toed the starting line, the 8:15-ers were finishing their fast descent into Phoenicia. The firefighters were entering the steepest grades of Winisook Hill 23 miles into the race as the road climbed the flanks of Panther and Slide Mtn at seven increasing to ten per cent grades, respectively. Unleaded, Road Ruggers, and Athena were gaining ground at 18 miles, with the teams starting behind them gaining on them.

Among the 9:00 AM starters were one superteam Has Beens & Hero Chicks, captained by Liberty coach Chris Russo, and three five-person teams: the cryptically-named C.H.U., and the fastest Frontrunners teams Zeus and Mercury. Team captain Vince Nicoletti of Pleasant Valley in Dutchess County was running with former Arlington HS (Poughkeepsie) teammates ages 16-19, training consistently, and looking to enjoy the race in a low-key way. FR Zeus, captained by Tim Stockert of Philly, had Terri Handy, an ultra runner who was to run the fastest women's time of the day on the tough Winisook Hill leg. Kenney Eye captained the FR Mercury team, taking over the duties of team-forming from the original Frontrunners teams organizer, Mike Zuzu. If you think forming one team of five or ten is hard, ask Tim Stockert or Kenney Eye of the Frontrunners, or Mike Polansky of the Plainview Old Bethpage RRC what it's like to organize five to nine teams. Aside from directing the CMRR, it may be the most demanding job out there prior to race day.

The five-person team race

J. Damian Kellogg led off Frontrunners Zeus with the fastest performance of the day for leg 1, a 35:05 for 6.5 miles, an average of 5:24 per mile. Keep in mind that while this is equivalent to 33:29 for 10km, he and his teammates would be running twice, with less than two hours rest in between. The challenge in racing a double-leg relay like the CMRR is in pacing one's self right for the two efforts: not quite as fast as one's 10km pace, but a bit faster than one's half-marathon pace. Then there are the hills... but that will be later.

While Zeus had a 49 second lead at the exchange at the end of the first leg, team C.H.U.'s captain Vince Nicoletti chipped away 44 seconds by running faster than Zeus on the second leg through Phoenicia and along Rt 28 for the second fastest leg 2 of the day, a 40:56, an average of 6:07 per mile for the flat and gently uphill 6.7 miles. Only George Shurter of the mixed Amendola's Restaurant team ran faster for the five person teams: 39:52, a pace of 5:57 per mile for the 6.7 miler with flat stretches and gentle upgrades.

Next, C.H.U.'s Ed Tuttle ran the 6.5 mile third leg through Big Indian and up the rolling hills of Oliverea in 40:56 (6:05 per mile),1:09 faster than Zeus's runner to give C.H.U. a lead of 1:04.

Only 5.9 miles in length, the notorious Winisook Hill leg four is the third shortest of the ten relay legs in the race, but it can be the first to third longest in duration. The best runners can be humbled by this mountain. From its deceptively flat start from Maben Hollow Road in Little Peck Hollow, the route goes for a flat first half-mile before rising from 1600 to 1900 feet elevation over the next 1.2 miles (a challenging climb of five per cent), levels then dips downhill for a half mile, rises 100 feet for 0.8 miles (a two per cent grade), then increasingly steepens to a Mount Washington-like eleven per cent grade for over a mile, rising 900 feet vertically in these last two miles. Passing Winisook Lake, the course crests the hill and then drops downhill at a seven per cent grade for 0.8 miles before leveling out prior to the exchange 25.6 miles into the race. A 39:07 (6:38 per mile) by Matt Reda vs. a 45:28 for Zeus's runner broke the race open and gave C.H.U. a lead of 7:25 over Zeus.

The fifth leg saw C.H.U.'s Geoff Van Fleet run 39:41, nine seconds faster than Zeus's Joe Lanteigne, for the second and third fastest times of the day, keeping the gap at 7:34. Larry Waite of Amendola's Restaurant ran the fastest leg time: 38:02, a pace of 5:36 per mile for the 6.8 miler with long flat stretches and gentle downgrades.

The sixth leg was the flattest and longest of the day. Frontrunners Zeus's Todd Henry ran 2:09 faster than C.H.U. to close the gap to 5:16. Todd ran the second fastest time of the day for the 6.9 miles: 41:25, a pace of 6:00 per mile. George Shurter of Amendola's Restaurant ran the fastest leg 6 of the day: 40:43, a pace of 5:54 per mile.

Leg seven began with a 1.4 mile descent of Wildman Hill at a steady seven to eight percent grade. C.H.U.'s Vince Nicoletti ran the fastest leg seven of the day: 37:21 for the 6.3 miles, a pace of 5:56 per mile in the heat of the day. Vince added 3:39 to the C.H.U lead to increase it to 8:55, their largest lead of the day, but one the Frontrunners were working hard to overcome.

J. Damian Kellogg of Zeus ran the fastest leg eight of the day, a 38:21 (5:54 per mile) for the deceptively difficult 6.5 miler which has slowed more runners in past races than any other leg. By this point in the relay, runners are on their second leg and any overly ambitious attempts at running a hard first leg begin to show themselves. Zeus had cut 2:10 off the lead and brought it down to 6:45, despite C.H.U.'s Ed Tuttle running the second fastest leg eight of the day.

Leg nine is the shortest leg at 5.0 miles but has challenging uphills and the least downhill of any leg as it threads past the cliffs and this year's dried-up waterfalls of Peekamoose. Matt Reda ran 32:07 (6:25 per mile) to put C.H.U. up by another 49 seconds, bringing their total margin to 7:34, despite the fact that Tim Stockert of Zeus ran the second fastest leg nine of the day.

Leg ten saw both teams again producing the first and second fastest times of the day in a race that saw C.H.U.'s Geoff Van Fleet run only 16 seconds faster than Zeus's Joe Lanteigne, 29:00 (5:41 per mile) versus 29:16 for the 5.1 miler which screams down off Peekamoose Hill at grades close to thirteen per cent, the maximum grade allowable on a NYS DOT road. The final difference between the two teams was a mere seven minutes and fifty seconds after six and a half hours of racing - a margin of only two per cent. Credit goes to those athletes who never give up, and both of these teams exemplified the Olympic motto: "The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well."

From the fire fighters of Yonkers to teams C.H.U. and Frontrunners Zeus, from Atlantan Chris Stevens and 55 year-old Julio Lugo who each ran three legs, all of the participants of the 1997 Catskill Mountain Road Relay fought well.

Final Results for August 10, 1997 CMRR

100Km Catskill Mountain Road Relay - August 10, 1997 - Race Director: Brian Cavanagh

Brian Cavanagh is a USATF certified coach who started the CMRR as a regional coaching project in 1992 to motivate runners to have fun training together for a common goal.