1997 Race Report
By John Stifler
June 21 and June 28 this year mark a historic convergence in New England running,. The 21st was the 37th running of the Mt. Washington Road Race, the famously, almost unbelievably grueling 7.6 mile footrace up the steepest road to the highest summit in the Northeast.
The 28th is the official celebration of the Silver Anniversary of the Sugarloaf Mountain Athletic Club, one of the oldest and largest running clubs in western New England.
The coincidence of the two events is practically perfect. Thirty-seven is an odd number to celebrate, but everything about Mt. Washington is irregular anyway. The first race up Mt. Washington was in 1936, the sixth one in 1966, and 1997 is the 25th anniversary of the first official Mt. Washington finish by a woman.
That woman was Charlotte Lettis, who also that year helped found the Sugarloaf Mt. Athletic Club (and also won the inaugural L'Eggs Minimarathon in NewYork, soon to become the most prestigious all-female road race in the world.)
In the early 1970's Charlotte Lettis was a drama student at Umass when she took up running almost on a lark and discovered she was good at it. With a little help from Tom Derderian, a Umass cross-country runner she had met, she founded a club to encourage women to run. Eventually the husbands, boyfriends and brothers who had cheered from the sidelines were invited to join the club too.
With some of the original members on hand, Sugarloaf will celebrate its Silver Anniversary at a reunion party this Saturday evening in Smith College's Davis Student Center, in Northampton, Massachusetts. Anyone with Sugarloaf membership past or present or with any particular interest in the club is warmly invited; if you want to go and did not already send an RSVP, phone Irene Woods at 413-774-5873 to see if there is still room.
The event is a catered buffet with a large dance floor and a DJ. It starts at 7 p.m. and ends when the last runners decide they'd better go home and sleep before their Sunday morning runs. Cost is $10 per adult, $5 per child.
Meanwhile, in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, Lettis' legacy is being fulfilled in the increasingly competitive women's field for the Mt. Washington Road Race.
"When I started running," said Lettis in a 1982 interview, "I had a cause". Her cause was basically that women could run seriously, the same way men did. Ten years later, that cause was old news, while the new story was that women's running had graduated from being a legitimate part of the fitness boom to being an uncompromisingly competitive sport.
Historically, Mt. Washington is dominated by men, but this year the men's field lost the prohibitive favorite, Daniel Kilhara of Kenya, who last year ripped a full minute off the course record set by Derek Froude of New Zealand in 1990, but this year could not get a leave from his military duties in Kenya to travel to the U.S. in time for the race.
The women's field, in contrast, included at least four entrants who could conceivably have won. In terms of experience, Canadian Jacqueline Gareau led the pack, as the 1980 Boston Marathon winner had won Mt. Washington in each of the three times (1989, 1995, 1997) she entered. Also in the thick of things was Julie Peterson of Beverly, Mass., a three-time runner-up in the Race With Only One Hill.
But look at who else was there: Cathy O'Brien, a terrifically strong runner, first U.S. finisher in the Olympic marathon in 1992, with more speed than either Gareau or Peterson. And then, phoning two days before the race to say she had decided this would be her year to see what the Run To The Clouds is really all about, Joan Samuelson. "I'm really just doing this for the T-shirt," Samuelson quipped to race director Bob Teschek in her familiar deadpan.
The field also included Kim Goff of Greenville, RI., recent winner of the Big Sur Marathon in California, and Sandra Khannouchi, wife of Moroccan world-class road racer Khalid Khannouchi and international competitor for the Dominican Republic, of which she is a native. The organizers tried to get Knahhouchi's husband to come along and run too, but Khalid had his sights set on winning the huge Peachtree Road Race in Atlanta on July 4th and did not want to try anything unusual, such as running uphill for an hour in the windiest place on earth, before then.
"To win Peachtree, Khalid has to figure out how to beat 15 Kenyans!" said Sandra.
Once the race was underway, it quickly became clear that O'Brien had everything completely in control. She took the lead in the first mile, running comfortably and looking very strong. Since she was unfamiliar with the course she ran conservatively. "I never really pushed too hard," she said later, and her appearance confirmed that observation. She crossed the finish line in 1:12:24, good for first place, a $750 prize, a $100 extra for being the first New Hampshire woman to finish, and third fastest time a woman has ever run here. (J'ne Day-Lucore set the course record, 1:11:45, in 1992. Christine Maisto won a year earlier in 1:12:15.)
Julie Peterson got off to her usual forceful start and held second place for a while, but Samuelson moved up steadily, passed Peterson in the second mile, and followed O'Brien to the top with a time of !:16:03. Since Samuelson just turned 40, she became the masters champion and in the process broke Jacqueline Gareau's 1994 age-group record by 13 seconds. Gareau, hampered by a cold and a sore Iliotibial band, ran in fourth place the whole way, finishing in 1:22:32, behind Peterson's 1:20:07.
If the men's race lacked the brilliant speed of the Kenyans who have won in the past two years (Kihara in 1996, Gideon Mutisya in 1995), it was nonetheless an impressive battle among two friends, teammates and interstate rivals, Craig Fram of Plaistow, N.H. and Eric Morse of Moretown, Vt. For four miles it looked like Morse's year, as the Mt. Washington veteran pulled ahead early and held a 22-second lead over Fram at halfway, but by the Fourth mile Fram could see that the lead was shrinking. He caught Morse just after five miles, they slapped hands once, and Fram went on ahead to win in 1:04:48. That's the slowest winning time since Keith Woodward's 1:06:39 in 1983, but Fram had nothing to apologize for, especially given the difficult conditions (wind gusting to 55 mph., dense fog covering the upper slopes). What's more, it's worth noting that Fram is 38 years old, the significance of that fact being that if he maintains this level of performance on Mt. Washington, in two years he can take a crack at one of the oldest records in running, the Mt. Washington masters course record of 1:04:57, set in – are you ready for this? -- 1962, by the legendary Fred Norris.
Morse was a solid second in 1:05:38, his slowest time here. Third, in 1:07:09 was 39-year-old Thomas Borshel of Odaho Falls, Idaho, who could also make the masters division even more interesting if he decides to take another crack at the Hill in 1998. First master this year was Brian Reinhold, 40, a resident of Sweden, who finished in 1:11:44.
By John Stifler
1997 Photo album
For complete results and photos visit the results section
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