48th ANNUAL MT. WASHINGTON ROAD RACE
Pinkham Notch, NH – June 21, 2008
Eric Blake of New Britain, Conn., and Brandy Erholtz of Bailey, Colorado, won the Mt. Washington Road Race today by besting the largest field of contenders ever in the 48-year history of this grueling all-uphill run.
Blake, a Mt. Washington veteran and 2006 winner, fought off an intense challenge from first-timer Clint Wells, of Superior, Colo., finally breaking away with a grimace and a surge up the staircase-steep final yards of the Mt. Washington Auto Road. Meanwhile Erholtz, a newcomer like Wells, took a lead in the first mile over the favored Laura Haefeli, of Del Norte Colo., leaned into the Auto Road’s relentless grade, and maintained that lead steadily to the 6288-foot summit of the highest peak in the Northeast.
“That was the toughest run I’ve ever had!” said an exhausted Blake after his final gravity-defying surge to the line. He made the climb – 4650 feet of altitude gain in 7.6 miles – in one hour and 39 seconds, with Wells finishing just behind in 1:00:50. “I tried to push the pace, because I knew Clint had track speed and was a good finisher.”
Erholtz said she too was running scared, waiting for Haefeli — the only American woman ever to win an individual medal in the World Mountain Trophy race – to catch her, but Erholtz’s strength and determination were apparent. She won in 1:11:08, while Kasie Enman of Huntington, Vt., overtook Haefeli to claim second in 1:13:26, with Haefeli third in 1:13:34.
“Finally my training has paid off!” said Erholtz, despite overriding fatigue as she stood in the finishing chute. “All those 100-mile weeks of running in snow and rain, at 4 a.m., uphill and downhill. And I get to go to Switzerland!”
Sponsored by Northeast Delta Dental, the Mt. Washington Road Race this year served as the U.S. national mountain running championship and as the prime selection race for the Teva U.S. Mountain Running Team that will compete in the World Mountain Trophy race in Switzerland in September. Since the winning woman and the first four men would automatically become members of that team, the race attracted record numbers of top-level mountain runners from the Rockies and the Appalachians who were entertaining hopes of winning a trip to the Alps.
Several of them fought for position from the start, including three-time Mt. Washington winner Simon Gutierrez of Colorado, Matt Byrne of Pennsylvania, Shiloh Mielke of North Carolina, Zac Freudenburg of St. Louis, Mo., and Laurent Vicente, who was hoping to win a spot on the Canadian national team. Blake and Wells started more conservatively, along with Rickey Gates of Boulder, Colo., and by the halfway point in the race it was apparent that one of these three would probably win.
Just after the five-mile mark, at the top of an extended straightaway where the road is dirt and the hillside falls away sharply to the forest below, Blake and Wells managed to break away from Gates. From there on, Blake pushed the pace as hard as he dared but could not shake Wells, who seemed to be running more comfortably.
Blake, however, knew precisely where the course makes a sadistic upward twist for 50 yards leading to the finish, while Wells had not seen the course before. Blake made one final move, every muscle showing the effort, and won. “I didn’t know I had that left,” said the new U.S. Mountain Running Champion.
Gates, who also finished third here in 2006, his only previous Mt. Washington appearance, arrived at the top in 1:01:12. Behind him, 24-year-old Joseph Gray, an all-American steeplechase runner from Lakewood, Washington, surprised nearly everyone except himself in outlasting Gutierrez to claim fourth place in 1:01:31.
Fifth was fine for Gutierrez, whose time of 1:01:34 broke the existing masters (over 40) course record of 1:02:12, set by Colorado’s Matt Carpenter in 2005, and won Gutierrez a $2000 bonus from New England Runner Magazine.
Haefeli, 40 years old, won the same bonus, and earned herself comparison to one of running’s all-time greatest athletes, by breaking the women’s masters record of 1:16:03 previously held by Joan Benoit Samuelson.
The first New Hampshire finishers were a pair of well-seasoned road-racers: Dorcas Wonsavage, 43, of Hanover, and Craig Fram, 49, of Plaistow. Fram, who won this race in 1997, broke the course record for men aged 45-49 by finishing in 1:05:45, good for tenth place overall. Wonsavage’s time of 1:23:51 placed her 14th among the women.
