Monday, June 15, 2009

Escareno Doubles His Pleasure

Christian Escareno has looked good all season, but when he won the Downers Grove Park District 5-miler on Sunday, his time of 27:59.10 seemed slow. Here's one reason it was. The course had been changed with more turns, including two 180s, and GPS runners were reporting the course .1 to .2 long. But that's not the whole story. Twelve hours earlier, Escareno, 21, of Mount Prospect, a member of the Fast Tracks Racing Club, won the open 5,000 on the Benedictine University track with a 14:43.44 at the Midwest Distance Gala in Lisle. In doing so, he beat Greg Costello of Chicago, one of the top runners on the local scene, who ran a 14:49.37. But back to Downers Grove we go, and it gets even better. Jesus Escareno, 19, Christian's brother, finished second in 28:53.45, and Felipe Lopez, 32, of Chicago finished third in 29:17. On the women's side, it was Columbo Lopez, 30, of Chicago, first in 31:41.10; Nell Shields, 30, of Chicago, second in 32:47.90 and Christine Lipa, 49, of Glen Ellyn (go Elmhurst R.C.!), third in 34:25.35. In the 10 mile (maybe 10.3?) Tim Henry, 25, of Carol Stream, took honors in 57:47.60, and last year's CARA female Runner of the Year, Pam Blair, took the women's race in 1:06:46

2 comments:

Pam said...
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Pam said...

The "5 mile" race was determined to be 5.13 miles and paces have been adjusted to reflect this. As for the "10 mile" race, the directors say that some people ran 10.26 and others, 10.13, as the course correction was made after some of the 10-milers had already run the extra 0.13 a second time. It seems that this should have at least been mentioned in the letter to participants, if not on the results page... In any case, the race was a throw-away for many of us.