2011 Report

November 13, 2011 brought perhaps the most colorful fall foliage and the most beautiful weather of any Potomac Heritage run on record. A big thanks goes out to all of the volunteers. In particular, the aid station captains, Steve Platt, Robin Blendell, Vicki Kendall, and Bob Phillips, and all of the aid station volunteers who helped to make this run possible. Also, thanks to the core WUS folks for helping me pre-mark earlier in the week and to Neal Gorman for doing such a great job of marking on Sunday morning before the run. Thanks to Todd and Joe for helping with the food and Brian Greeley, Sean Andrish, Brittany Zale, and of course Doug, for helping prepare the house and clean the house. Brian actually baked those excellent cookies, volunteered an aid station, and cleaned up, but because he was presenting at a neuroscience conference, he missed the entire party. Also to those of you who brought yummy treats, these were very much appreciated by the runners and partiers.

As for the run, Keith Knipling utilized home course advantage and took the win in 4:48. Will Weidman, Brian Mayer, and Johathan LD chased and made futile efforts to use bonus points to catch Keith. Kristin Eddy was the first woman. She garnered extra bonus points for baking up a storm, but no one would have caught her even without the bonus points.

Runners from the charitable organization Back On My Feet had an especially strong showing. All of the runners from this organization who started the run, finished it. Since the finish percentage was quite low, this is a worthy accomplishment.

Other performances worthy of mention, include that of Wayne Sherman, who broke his arm on Friday and showed up in a full cast. He finished the run with much persistence, although it’s not clear how he got up the rocks at Gulf Branch with one arm. Also, Loren Colvin, finished her first 50k on her own as darkness approached. Maria Bertacchi made a long awaited return to ultra-distances.

Greg Nadal and Mac Hussey are credited with a finish, but need to run the course again to have the ** removed from their names. They made a navigational error that cut off a small amount of distance but resulted in failure to check in at Turkey Run in the outbound direction.

Several runners battled to achieve the most bonus points. Bobby Gill and Sean Andrish competed with one another, but were outshined by Alan Zwart and Quatro Hubbard. During “Truth or Dare” at aid station 2, Alan Zwart chose “dare” and received 40 points for diving in the Potomac River. Quatro Hubbard received 40 points for allegedly carrying a hub cap from Chain Bridge back to the finish. However, there was no clear evidence of any hub cap at the finish, so the “most points” award goes to Alan Zwart. Not surprisingly, none of these runners finished, so the bonus points were useless to them.

David Snipes wins the “sorriest excuse for a run” award, as he showed up about 15 minutes before the start and indicated that he believed he was just too late to start. He then took a nap in his car and showed up a few hours later.

Congratulations to all finishers! I hope everyone had a great time and will come back again. Below are the preliminary results. If your name is spelled incorrectly or your time is incorrect and you want this changed, please let me know within a week by emailing me at whereiskerry@gmail.com. If you don’t think you got all of the bonus points you deserved, feel free to tell everyone that you were cheated, but we won’t be making any changes unless the discrepancy was due to transcription error. The word of the aid station captains governs.

Results