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Palm Harbor runner continues winning ways

By DAVE THEALL
Published July 27, 2006

A high-energy veteran runner from Palm Harbor chalked up two more age-group wins last weekend.

Duncan Cameron first ran the third Sunsets at Pier 60 5K on Clearwater Beach, where he won his 60-64 age division in 20 minutes, 46 seconds. Then Sunday, he traveled to Tampa's Al Lopez Park for the Run Thru the Jungle 5K and again emerged as the age-group winner, this time is a swifter 19:46, good for first man from Pinellas and 14th male overall in the field of 102.

In both races, Silky Sullivan of Tampa finished second in the 60-64 age group.

For Cameron, the age-group wins weren't unusual. What is usual is for him to finish ahead of the winners of one or two lower age divisions. At the beach race, he was the second over-50 runner behind Ron Murawsky of Clearwater. He won the 50-54 bracket in 19:54.

"I got off to a bad start at Friday's beach race," said Cameron, who has won 21 of 22 races this year in his division. His only second was at the Gasparilla 15K, where he finished behind an out-of-state runner by 46 seconds, clocking 1:01:36. That was Ewar Gordillo of Waynesboro, Ga., who finished 82nd overall.

"The starting area at Friday's beach race was very narrow and therefore slow," Cameron said. "I tried to pick out a couple of runners, Steve Karpacs and Amy McClenathan, to go after, which I did but never caught up with them."

Karpacs finished first, 40-44, in 20:43. McClenathan, from St. Petersburg, finished as the third woman in 20:30.

Christa Benton ran away with the women's title in the series for the third consecutive time this summer. The USF fifth-year senior won in 18:56, good for seventh overall in the mixed field of 140.

Kailand Cosgrove, 15, posting a time of 20:10, finished between Benton and McClenathan. Cosgrove is expected to run strong this fall in cross country for Tarpon Springs High.

The girls 13-14 age division was swept by a trio of Shorecrest Prep runners also getting ready for cross-country season. They are Shannon McClenathan, Amy's daughter, plus twins Sarah and Lindsay Evans.

The men's winner, Keith Sawyada of Clearwater, a former winner of the overall five-race beach series, hadn't toed the starting line since finishing third (1:14:11) at February's Gasparilla Half-Marathon.

Sawayda, 43, let the high schoolers streak away while he bided his time and gradually eased up in the ranks toward the middle of the beach race.

"I ran with Brad Millett (of Crystal River) for a while, then pulled away at a mile and crossed in 16:58," said Sawyada, a Notre Dame graduate who ran previously for Warren G. Harding High School in Warren, Ohio.

"I was pleasantly surprised with my time since I've only been running four days a week, but I still do speed work. I figure that my time would be closer to 16:30 if the race were on the road rather than the sand."

Sawyada said he wanted to do an early race to see where he is in competitive condition and to prepare for the fall.

Millett held on for third place in 17:19, just behind Ken Scoggin, 18, of Cottage Grove, Ore. Scoggin, like Cameron and Sullivan, doubled last weekend by also running at Al Lopez Park. He finished second there. This time the winner was Derek Fenton of Raleigh, N.C., with a swift winning time of 15:53.

Jacki Wachtel, 27, of Tarpon Springs maintained her winning ways taking the women's title by a wide margin (18:07) over Paige Williams (19:26) of Apollo Beach and Jessica Forrester (19:50) of Brandon. Wachtel was seventh overall.

Age-group highlights include Pamela McCann, first, 40-44 in 25:24, and Jeanne Dix winning 70-and-over in 43:46.

ULTRA SCENE: Noora Alidina of Palm Harbor and the West Florida Y Runners Club was running the third and final stage of the Badwater Ultramarathon on Wednesday night. The marathon was not completed at press time.

Alidina and the rest of the 80 or so starters began their 135-mile trek in California's Death Valley at 282 feet below sea level. The temperature Sunday morning was 125 degrees, highest in the nation.

The ultra event is held in three stages. It concluded Wednesday night more than halfway up Mount Whitney, the tallest mountain in the contiguous 48 states at 14,494 feet, accord to the Department of the Interior's U.S. Geological Survey.

The official cut-off point to finish is 60 hours with designated disqualification times after Stages 1 and 2.

Last year Alidina crossed the finish line in 42 hours, 30 minutes, to earn a coveted Badwater belt buckle. This year, after going through about six pairs of shoes as she did last year, she said her goal was below 40 hours.

Alidina has a support crew that includes her husband, Arif, her oldest son and her teammate Mary Stewart-Wong.

Alidina, a register nurse and native of Jordan, trained for the Badwater challenge by running standard 26.2-mile marathons, including January's Walt Disney World in Lake Buena Vista. Her time there was 3:49:22. She has run the Boston Marathon several times with a best time of 3:19 in 2000 at age 43.

GASPARILLA: Next year's Gasparilla 15K, the 30th, will include as a guest former Olympic marathoner Bill Rodgers, winner of the inaugural event in 1978. Rodgers, a four-time winner of both the Boston and New York City marathons, set the course record of 44:29 that year. It lasted until 1979 when Ralph King won in 44:12.

[Last modified July 27, 2006, 07:21:45]