Press Release: BAA Masters Team Wins Winnipesaukee Relay

Straight from the BAA website:

In other racing action over the weekend, on Saturday, September 22nd, the Men's Masters team won the 2007 Fred Brown Relay Around Lake Winnipesaukee (NH) outright, finishing more than 24 minutes ahead of second place. The team completed the 65.1 mile event in a time of 6:44:20 (6:13 pace). Team members included: Bernie O'Reilly, Kyle Bowers, Andy MacDonald, Andrew Gordon, Bob Collins, Chris Smith, Bob Gerrity, and Pat Stumbras. For complete results, Visit the Event Website.

Report:
What a day! I have never done an event with guys from the BAA and we had an absolute blast! The report is short; Bernie was 5th, handed to me and I moved us to 4th and then Andy smashed the field and put us 1 minute ahead with more strong runners coming up. The problem with the other teams is they front loaded their runners and with me running 2nd leg, I would say that we did the opposite, but the truth is ... this powerhouse team just had so much depth that we continued to move ahead on every leg after mine. I believe it was 4 minutes after Andrew and was just building with these guys because they are so fast. I figured it out during the 6th leg that Chris was running and called my wife to tell her that we were going to win this thing all out. I had heard Bob had a fantastic leg and we would have the opportunity to join with the 6 finished runners to cheer on the last two - Bob and Pat; who both were smooth and strong on intense hills. We knew we had it in the bag and stopped every mile or so to cheer them on. All of the legs were extremely hard, not just mine. I did have one mile up hill to start my leg (6:45 pace) and then have steep pounding downhills, which unfortunately has made my foot sore, but I'll get over it. I ran 100% hard and I can still feel all those hills in my legs. I haven't run that hilly of an 11 mile course ever and did no hills in preparation, so trust me - I was glad to hand that baton to Andy!

The only down thing of the day is that when we finished, no one was around!! Not even one other team car. We even waited for 15 minutes and could see nobody for a mile down the road! We would have had to wait four hours for the award ceremony. I had already driven home and had at least three beers by then!

Well done guys! The pleasure was mine!

-Kyle