Montgomery County Endurance Athlete of the Year Awards

Bill Dwyer and myself holding court on Saturday at Run The Woodlands 5K.

Photo courtesy of Rick Cook

Here's what will appear in Tuesday's running column in The Courier:

Spring’s Jacob Mazone made a charge in the last tenth of a mile of Saturday’s Run The Woodlands 5K, but it wasn’t enough to catch recent The Woodlands High School graduate Michael Golden as the 18-year-old raced to a two-second winning time of 16 minutes and 51 seconds.

Mazone notched his sixth sub 17-minute 5K of the year with a runner-up finish of 16:53.

Huntsville’s Adrienne Langelier, 25, easily won the women’s race over The Woodlands Running Club treasurer Pam Meaux, 47, and College Park High School harrier Emily Jensen, by throwing down a personal best 19:17. Meaux and Jensen came in 25 seconds apart with respective times of 20:51 and 21:16.

Despite The Woodlands Running Club capturing the Saw Trophy back from Huntsville’s Seven Hills Running Club in friendly interclub competition at Saturday’s race, there was a fair bit of excitement regarding the post-race announcement of the Montgomery County Endurance Athlete of the Year Awards.

For the sake of full disclosure though, I might be a bit biased.

Late last year, Woodlands Fit half marathon coach Bill Dwyer and myself created a legal entity, Friends of the Running Community, as we attempted to bring one of America’s all-time marathon greats Bill Rodgers to The Woodlands to race Jeff Wells in a pre-Nike South road race – 30 years after their famous battle at the Boston Marathon.

Although multiple logistical issues kept us from bringing that to fruition, we’ve long been convinced that Montgomery County has some of the best athletes in the state of Texas in all of our sports’ various disciplines.

Therefore, we’ve created the Montgomery County Endurance Athlete of the Year Awards to begin to recognize on an annual basis the best male and female in road racing, multisports, ultra and trail running as well as the top high school track and field and cross country athletes.

Additional recognition will be given to the top non-high school coach and volunteer plus a pair of rookie athletes of the year.

A nomination process, to be announced, will commence November 1 and continue through the weekend of the Sunmart Trail Endurance Runs in Huntsville. Semifinalists in each category will be delivered to a regional media panel who will vote on the winners.

Honorees will be recognized at a season-ending awards ceremony tentatively scheduled to be held at Conroe’s Town Hall Texas on Saturday, January 10, 2009 where Chevron Houston Marathon race director Brant Kotch has agreed to be the guest speaker.