Sacramento Running News

Huh?

Some years ago, I was at an awards ceremony after a local ten-mile race when they called up the winner of the men’s 20-25 division. He’d run the race in 72 minutes. Not a terrible time, but hardly a prize-worthy one, considering the masters runners (40+) were running significantly faster.

As the runner went up to collect his prize, a 50-year old friend sitting nearby turned to me and said, “When I was his age, I ran 55-minutes at this race and didn’t get squat!”

My 50-year-old friend isn’t the only one noticing this change.

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Ranger Ollie sez: “Be careful!”

Finally some good news for those of us who use and enjoy the American River Parkway!

The Sacramento County Board of Supervisors has approved the hiring of four additional park rangers this year, on top of the two added last year.

The County now has 20 officers to monitor and patrol the 15,000 acre regional park system.

Read more about it here.

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Huh?

I have marveled at length on the popularity of themed running “events” and wondered at their place in the sporting world.

“Carles,” writing at Grantland, has an excellent psychoanalysis of the phenomenon.

Like most healthful activities, the event will wag a carrot in front of your face with the promise of turning you into a better person by achieving a seemingly arbitrary goal. Afterward, we can go to a local chain restaurant and have a cold beer, because we worked off so many calories.

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Laura Matz hams it up for the camera. (Photo by Abe Underwood)

Braving unseasonably warm weather–some might even say it was hot–several hundred runners gathered for the 39th annual Buffalo Stampede and the 18th annual Parrott Migration, this past Sunday.

The Stampede is the race and the Migration is a fun-run, which starts an hour earlier to give the slower runners more time to finish the course.

Starting and finishing at Rio American High School, the flat, ten-mile course winds through one of the region’s better neighborhoods, and includes some short out-and-back sections where you can see who’s in front and who’s behind you.

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Iain Mickle (#241) leads the Masters Men’s race. (Photo courtesy of Sean Dulany/Freeplay Magazine)

In Saturday’s first Pacific Association race–the women’s 5K–Lindsay Tollefson made it three years in a row with her win at Rebel’s XC Challenge, at Granite Park.

Tollefson, 28, of Roseville, took first with a 17:34 over Tanya Ferreira, 24, of Watsonville, who finished second in 17:58.

The third woman finisher was Madeline Kramer, 26, of Oakland, who brought it home in 18:00.

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