48th annual Mount Washington Road Race attracts record number of elite athletes
Posted Monday, 5 May, 2008
Pinkham Notch, N.H. – May 2, 2008: The 48th annual Mount Washington Road Race is still seven weeks away, and already runners have broken one unofficial record for the event: Far more runners than ever before have entered the race via the lottery bypass for elite contenders.
Sponsored by Northeast Delta Dental, with additional support from New England Runner magazine, Bridgton Academy and La Sportiva, the "Run to the Clouds" will be held this year on Saturday, June 21. In what is affectionately known as the footrace with Only One Hill, runners will ascend the all-uphill Mt. Washington Auto Road 7.6 miles to the summit of the highest peak in the Northeastern United States (6288 feet above sea level), in the process battling the 11.5 percent average grade and the unpredictable Mt. Washington winds.
This year, for the third time in the past five years, the Mt. Washington Road Race serves as the USA Mountain Running Championships. The first U.S. male and female finishers will be named the USATF 2008 national mountain running champions, and the first four U.S. men plus the first U.S. woman will also be automatically selected to the U.S. national mountain running team that will compete in the World Mountain Trophy race in the Sierre Crans-Montana region of Switzerland on September 14 of this year.
Given the fact that the race is the USATF national championship and a USA team qualifier, it must have been inevitable that the number of excellent American mountain runners applying for entry increased markedly this year.
Since the peculiar logistics of the race can accommodate no more than 1000 runners, while the actual number of applicants each year is nearly twice that number, a lottery determines who among these entrants will get to run. However, past winners of the race, along with age-group winners from the preceding year, may bypass the lottery and enter automatically. So may runners whose recent times and race performances indicate that they may contend for one of the top places.
That last group is particularly large this year. It includes Eric Blake of New Britain, Connecticut, who won Mt. Washington in 2006; Simon Gutierrez of Alamosa, Colorado, who won in 2002, 2003 and 2005; Craig Fram of Plaistow, N.H., who won in 1997 and then twice broke the master's (over 40) record on the course; Christine Lundy of Sausalito, California, who this month competed in the U.S. Olympic Trials Marathon in Boston; Alison Bryant of Elkin, North Carolina, who placed third here a year ago in her Mt. Washington debut; Colorado mountain-running legend Chuck Smead, now 56; fellow Coloradan climber Laura Haefeli of Del Norte, Colorado, who last year became the only American woman ever to win a medal at the World Mountain Trophy race (Haefeli won the bronze and led the U.S. women to the overall team championship); Lisa Goldsmith, also of Colorado, another Olympic Trials marathoner who has won the women's master's title at Mt. Washington; and many others, including seasoned veterans and young first-time Mt. Washington runners who have demonstrated exceptional speed and strength in races elsewhere. Although she has not yet officially announced her intentions, it is likely that six-time Mt. Washington winner and current world mountain champion Anna Pichrtova of the Czech Republic will return to try for her seventh Mt. Washington win.
Runners entered this year come from 35 states and five Canadian provinces. The top runners will contend for the first prize of $1000 for first male and female finisher overall, with a $5000 bonus for breaking the men's or women's course record and a $2000 bonus awarded by New England Runner magazine to a man or woman breaking the master's record.
The men's course record is 56 minutes 41.0 seconds, set in 2004 by New Zealand's Jonathan Wyatt, a three-time World Mountain Running Champion. The women's record is one hour 10 minutes 8.2 seconds, set by Sweden's Magdalena Thorsell in 1998. The masters records are 1:02:12, set in 2005 by Matt Carpenter of Manitou Springs, Colorado, and 1:16:03, set in 1997 by Olympic gold medalist Joan Samuelson of Freeport, Maine.
The race starts at 10 a.m. The Mt. Washington Auto Road is closed during the race. Spectators may hike up the mountain or drive up in cars to bring the runners back down afterward.
For extensive additional information about the Mt. Washington Road Race, including history, photos, past years' results, and more, visit www.mountwashingtonroadrace.com. For a complete list of entrants that can be sorted by state or in alphabetical order by name, go to that Web address and click on "lottery entrants."
Contacts for more information about the race (not for publication):
Bob Teschek, race director, (603) 863-2537, racetime@gsrs.com.
John Stifler, press and elite athletes' liaison, (413) 585-0924, jstifler@econs.umass.edu.
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