Rochester Road Trip

As mentioned in my earlier post, there was actually some cross country running in Rochester last weekend, as well as some poorly chosen race music. A plethora of photographers were on hand - here are some of the photos of my team-mates.



Here JJ Fialkovitch, well recovered from his Chicago marathon learning experience, runs just ahead of the partly obscured Jeff Doyon and John Blouin. John and Jeff are shown clearly in the next shot.







Brad Kozel leads Jay Slowik.



Ted Breen.


Some high points of the men's race: Brian Sell was the top finisher for Hansons (#5 overall), leading them to the team victory. Brian's role as pace-setter was noted in my earlier Chicago report. Interviewed after the race he admitted to being "not much good" at cross country. It's all relative, I guess.


Our own Mike Piech finished an impressive 63rd out of 309 runners. Here he is looking alarmingly comfortable as he heads towards a 31:55 (5:08 per mile) finish, on a course where only the top two men broke 30 minutes. Below, Kit Wells and Sam Blasiak (our #3 and #2 team finishers, respectively).







Unfortunately, the event lacked any notable road trip stories (unless you count driving in circles trying to find the course a notable story). Most of our team-mates ultimately decided to drive back to Boston soon after the end of the race, thus missing out on the post-race party. Thus we missed out on hearing The Skycoasters, described on the race website as "The Number 1 Party Band in the World" and whose website boasts: "Corporate parties, weddings, festivals, special events, clubs, world sporting events.….
The Skycoasters play it all!" Is that a deliberate reference to the memorable bar scene in The Blues Brothers? (Barmaid to Elwood: "We got both kinds of music: Country and Western.")

Forced to find our own post race entertainment, Christy and I headed to Saratoga Springs, a convenient stopping-off point about halfway back to Boston. We stumbled on two gems: the first was a restaurant specializing in crepes and pomme frites (that's French Fries unless you are from a red state) called, appropriately, Ravenous. I can attest that the frites were world class. Our second find was a B&B called The Mansion, a fabulous historic house-turned-country inn; and at only 35% more than the race headquarters hotel in Rochester and approximately 1000% more luxurious, the best bargain of the weekend.