Monday, April 14, 2014

NETT Braves the Mud, Hills, and...Snow? At the Rivah

Five hearty Mini Ponies made the trip to Andover this weekend to run the Merrimack River Trail Race (aka the Rivvvah) with some impressive results.

The first mile of the race featured a couple major snowpiles (from where the snow gets dumped off route 93) which made that section a unique challenge. There was some good mud and of course, the hills don't get any smaller on this course.

But it didn't deter our hearty crew. We'll start with Adrienne, who finished fifth woman overall and second in her (new) age group with a very strong run finishing the course in 1:22. "It really was a picture perfect day," she said. "We had to scale an iceberg or be careful not to fall into the river. I did manage to beat the gaggle of high school girls who were running."

Bob also managed to capture second place in his age group in the very competitive race field, finishing in 1:31. "Adrienne breezed by me about mile 2 and I never saw her again until she was coming back in," he said. "I love how the race director, Stephen, entertains us before during (he even pops up in the middle of the course), and after the race, and how he talks about how much his late friend Tom loved running so much."

Chris managed to grab fourth in the very competitive 40-49 age group cranking through the course in a very speedy 1:08.

And lastly heterolifemates Crazy Dave and Big Ben ran the first half of the race together and then picked it up in the second half to finish 1:15 and 1:17 respectively. For Crazy Dave, it was 19 years since he first ran the Rivah. "My log book shows I ran a 'tempo run' at 1:05 that year....Father Time is no friend of mine!"

As always, it was a well organized event that raised a lot of money for the Thomas Chamberas Scholarship Fund. Petey was everywhere on the course, making Monty Python references on the top of the biggest hill and turning the post-race awards into some kind of runners' game show. He puts everything he has into this race, with his trusty cohort Dave Dunham, NETT pal Tom Hildreth and many others working behind the scenes on this race.

Congrats to these folks for successfully putting this race into its third decade.

1 comment:

Frank said...

Nice job!