Many Raptors and prospective Raptors at Lake Merritt "4th Sunday" Race

Post date: Jan 28, 2013 2:34:27 AM

Knowing the Raptors are far too tough to be put off by a mere bout of coldish weather, I expected to see at least a few of our runners at this month's "4th Sunday" race but I was not prepared for the onslaught of kids waiting to race! We had three first-timers, all from the MLK track/XC team, Corina, Mia and Katy. They joined stalwarts, Krisna, Nikhil, Isabelle, Annabel (not running this time. She has a hopefully not-too-serious hip injury/soreness but was there to cheer even though she was up late at the AHS dance Saturday night), Belle, Riley, Jared and Shelby. I think this the largest turnout we have had for a 4th Sunday race!

At the line. Katy is in red jumper, Corina in ble and Miaappears just above Corina's head.

The runner is red is Robel who ran for MLK last year and now runs for BHS. I think we should recruit him!

Most of our "troops" ran the 5K and the results were even more spectacular than usual. Riley and Shelby finished first and second woman (women?) overall. That's right, not in their age group but overall! Not far behind them was Corina who hadn't even shown up to race. She and Mia thought by "4th Sunday Run" I meant that we would just be doing an easy workout. . . like jogging around the lake! To their credit, when they found out that that was not the case they instantly got their "race faces" on a were ready to compete. Corina has a nasty fall, complete with painful abrasions, at the first mile and still finished in an awesome 23:13!

Corina at the finish. No matter how fast she goes she never looks stressed!

I can't be too specific about the times of the others in the race until the results are posted but I can say without hesitation that everyone more than earned their repast at Fentons! Most started out with breakfast (protein!) and then moved on to massive quantities of ice cream. We probably drive the waiters crazy with our three separate bills but some $$$s get spent. If we keep growing as a club the Fentons (are there real Fentons?) will be able to put their kids through college on our Sunday feasts!

Okay, I'll update this when we have results from LMJS. But for now I'm just fiddling with the new website (THANK YOU, Laura!) and seeing how things work. . . more to come. . . Okay, LMJS posted the results. It looks like they had some kind of timing goof-up so the times are slower? But I did glean some further info from the results. I think Fernando told me that LMJS now has a "Twelve and under" class? I can't find any reference to this on the LMJS site and I (of course) forget how they split the age categories at the awards yesterday. Anyone know this? Gary? If there indeed is a Twelve & Under class, then Raptor girls finished 1-3-4-5-6 in that class, with Riley (21:29) 1st, Corina (23:23) 3rd, Katy (23:59) 4th, Mia (25:22) 5th and Isabelle (25:50) 6th! Wow!

The second place girl is named Kylie Tseng and she is from Pleasant Hill. Is that too far away for recruiting? Heck no! Gary and Jared are from Sunnyvale, after all!

This was pretty much a "girl's day" at Lake Merritt, with our only boys being Krisna, Nikhil and Jared. Nikhil and Krisna ran the 5K together and both finished in 24:12. Jared ran into some "traffic" in the form of walkers strolling five abreast on the narrow sidewalk but still ran a 1:11 in the 15K and of course won his age group since he's usually one of or the only "kid" brave enough to do it. In this 15K the next youngest runner was 23!