Baltimore Marathon Was Today

The marathon was great and resulted in a new women's course record by Ukranian Olena Shurkhno and a reasonably good men's time.  A few pictures below.

Russian women and Ukranian Shurkhno (F26) before the race.

Dave "Frodo" Berdan on his way to PR of 2:21:19.

Shurkhno wins 2011 Baltimore Marathon with course record time.

Beginning of the 2011 marathon.

Stephen Muange wins 2011 Baltimore Marathon.

More interesting to me were observations of the people I interacted with this week/weekend.


In no particular order:

• The Russian/Ukranian women were quite pleased with the beer after their superb running.  Note that Shurkhno has three 32 oz beers at 11 am in the morning!!  Runners may want to take note of this apparently successful training regime.

• Carolyn and Steve were a tremendous help to Clay as always and are  competent at managing the athletes.
• The program of home-hosting athletes is a success.  The athletes love the special attention and comfortable surroundings and the families truly enjoy it.  The adults and the kids bond with the athletes and learn a bit about countries very different from the USA.  Paula Harmon, who coordinates the program for Clay, says that this is a highlight of the year.
• Corrigan Sports Enterprises focuses on customer satisfaction.  Participation in the various events has increased every year - 25,000 participants this year in spite of hefty race fees.  An example:  there was a problem with the number of shirts printed for one event.  All participants immediately received an email acknowledging the problem and stating how and when the race would resolve it.
• Clay is the elite athlete coordinator and is well loved by the athletes, their managers, and the families that host the athletes.  He is good at this.
• I had a nice conversation with Steve Nearman (journalist, race director, financial advisor, et al.)
• I meet interesting people every year at races.  This time:
• Derege:  A interesting Ethiopian who has lived in the US for many years.  He wrote and published a book about his father, who was killed in their homeland.  I am eager to read the English translation, and since it is not ready to be published, Derege asked me to give him full feedback on the readability.  His story sounded interesting enough that I suggested he contact Bob Edwards of Sirius/XM about appearing on his show.
• Mary:  A USA athlete from California who had a pretty serious conflict with another athlete; fortunately, they managed to stay away from each other.  Tonight Mary put some braids/dreadlocks in my hair.  Carolyn and I asked her to come to the marathon trials in Houston a day early to do the whole [braiding] job on both of us.  Imagine me with dreadlocks!!
• Hicham - a NYC guy who drove some athletes to Baltimore and then helped Clay a lot.  A truly nice person and I hope that we will keep in touch.
• Jim Adams, owner of the Falls Road Running Store, hosted Bill Rodgers - a very nice treat.  However, I was amazed that lots of regular runner types don't even know who he is.

That's it!