HARRA Cross Country Relay Race Report

Our Blog This! Striders team (Jennifer Kim, Jessica Alexander and Holden Choi) had a good time (before, during and afterwards) at HARRA's Cross Country Relay that featured 38 Striders teams as we ran close to our marks! (Too bad that the Tornados couldn't do anything about the heat, especially running into the sun heading back to the start!)

I didn't get the split hit after my hand-off to Jennifer Kim, but I had looked at my watch and a little disappointed that I did my first 2-mile leg in 20:48. This means that I had an 11:20 split on the return after posting a decent 9:28.58 run going out to the mile 1 marker.

Jennifer came through and beat her earlier projection of greater than 24 minutes (this came about after running 12 miles Saturday morning with Houston Fit) by posting a 22:45.96 split to put us at 43:33.96.

Jessica and Holden put together two (2) nice legs by posting times of 18:02.54 and 18:13.02, respectively, to give us a 1:19:49.52 finish.

Of the seven (7) Open Mixed teams from the Striders, our 1:19:49.52 finish was 6th and I think that I saw on the "Striders time sheet that went missing" that we had finished 98th overall.

Running coach Steve Shepard reported that the 152 runners, 38 teams, was the largest gathering of Striders at a race in club history. (At the 2002 HARRA Cross Country Relay, the Striders fielded 7 teams -- according to the Stridelines issue!)

As far as the club goes, the Striders had the following teams that placed:

Yong Collins, Marcella Paull, Celeste Habiger and Julie Rutledge won the Vet Womens!

Sandy Parker, Sophie Rydin, Marjorie Marks and Theresa Drago were 3rd in the Vet Womens!

Karen Bowler, Helen Grant, Alison Stewart and Jackie Connelly won the Masters Womens! (What's remarkable here is that Karen is a Veterans runner, but moving her onto the Masters team ensured that the team will pick up the most important 13 points in the team competition for two of the 3 women's categories!)

Rob Keene, Chris Boylan, Julie Norton and Jody Rice were 2nd in the Open Mixed!

I had the chance to meet Gabriel Rodriguez for the first time. (I actually was in the On The Run store in Clear Lake once with my friend, Shelley Stephenson, but hadn't gotten the blog up and online at that point.) Not surprised, his On The Run Racing team nabbed the first overall spot in a sub 42-minute performance. It is the fifth such sub 42-minute performance in the last five years. (That link will be online off of my main page later today!)

He commented that he "heard" me finish (as he ran a later leg) and that "everyone out here knows you as they were hollering Jon!, Jon!" (Some of us slow guys need to get shown the love every once in awhile too!) Seriously though, at any event, it is a challenge to get an opportunity to network with people and to give them the time that they want to spend talking about the sport, the clubs, the people, races, training, etc.

I really had a chance to talk to a lot of people other than our own club members. Some of them included Tom Sherwood and Wayne Rutledge (two Run The Woodlands veterans), Vera Balic of the Bay Area Running Club, Roger Boak of Terlingua Track Club, Leno Rios of Tornados Running Club and HARRA president Tom Stilwell of the Bayou City Road Runners. Ok, it seemed like more than that!