By Mike LaPlume
Well, we didn’t see any snowflakes. It was even too cold for them! According to my IPHONE it was about -1 degree when the gun went off at the HPM Snowflake Shuffle 3 miler on Sunday. We did see WMUR’s Jamie Staton however! He was at the starting line to help warm up the athletes a bit before the race started.
Even with the cold temperatures, we still saw about a 1,000 runners come out! And, we had a quality field of NH high school athletes competing, and running some impressive times.
Here’s the list!
Ladies:
Maya Brochu, 4th place overall, 19:07
Katie Palmateer, 15th place overall, 20:54
Fellas:
Ian Post 2nd place overall, 16:46
Connor Downes, 6th place overall, 17:39
Ryder Downes, 10th place overall, 18:24
Ben LaPlume, 12th place overall, 18:29
The course was flat and fast with only about 165 ft of elevation total. This, combined with the temperature, made everyone eager to get out to a fast start, and we did! The lead pack of about 20 or so, created a significant gap between them and the rest of the field pretty quickly. From there, it was just a matter of sorting out their places through the few rolling hills between mile one and two, and hanging on as best they could for the last mile.
Both Maya and Ian ran strong races from the beginning. Dominating the field of high schoolers, while also running very competitively among the rest of the field. There was a bit of a battle (as I understand) between Ben LaPlume and Ryder Downes in the final stretch. According to Ben however, Ryder just had too much natural foot speed for Ben to overtake him in the end.
As for me, and my first race back from my back injury you may be wondering? Well, I was hoping to break 21 minutes. I ran 20:54. So I was happy with that. Although, I’m pretty sure I got beat by a kid who could not have been more than 8 years old! Oh well, I’ll get him next time.
All in all, it was a great day for a race. The next one is the Snow Or No We Go Series, at Shaker Village in Canterbury, on February 5th! I hope to see you all out there!
As always, if you participated and I missed you, please contact me at mlaplume@sau4.org, and I’ll update the list.
One Response
I would have to concur with LaPlume’s take of the temperatures as I was there too. Another well run event by Millennium Running.