My son Joey and I spent the better part of the day down at Bowdoin Park for the Nike Cross Country Regional races for the Northeast and New York Regions. Wow! What a day!
Bowdoin is our home course, and what a great course it is. Today, the folks at Nike really dressed it up even more.
And I must take this opportunity to give a major (huge!) shout-out to longtime Arlington High School coach Terry Horton, now our assistant coach at Marist College, who more or less crafted and sculpted this Bowdoin course from scratch more than 20 years ago, to what it is today. He did this primarily with his own two hands, his trusty pickup truck and his even more trusty father, who helped do the heavy work for years and years on this course. Terry's contributions to the Bowdoin course cannot be overstated.
This year, the course was trashed after about a dozen races at the Coaches and Officials meet in a downpour in late October. Joey and I ran the course the next day during a Mid-Hudson Road Runners Club race. It was a mud pit, seemingly beyond repair.
Today, driving down the park road (thanks to Pete Sanfilippo for giving me VIP parking!), the course looked amazing. It was all mulched and in prime running condition. Nike had the course lined from start to finish. Really classy. When I talked to Terry the day before the race via cell, he was (as usual) down at Bowdoin putting the finishing touches on his baby. He told me: "You aren't gonna recognize this place."
He was right! Imagine being a volunteer groundskeeper at your local Little League field, and then having that field being transformed into Yankee Stadium overnight. That's how Terry must have felt. But as he accurately pointed out, this can be done with a Nike crew of 30 or so folks, as opposed to the one-man volunteer band that he is each and every autumn.
Oh, and one more thing, as an FYI for those interested in map minutia: Everyone says Bowdoin is in Wappingers Falls, and that is its mailing address. But technically, Bowdoin is located in the Town of Poughkeepsie. Not that anyone cares, but I'm kind of a maps/borders freak.
Anyway ... the races were excellent. The runners were among the best high schoolers in the country. It was sunny and windy. But for Nov. 28, you couldn't find better conditions or a better venue. A truly memorable day.
We did a lot of Marist networking down there today. Several runners and their families said there were going to drive up the road to Marist and check out the campus. Nice. Very nice.
Lastly, there has always been this debate about which courses are tougher. Holmdel in New Jersey. Wickham in Connecticut. Bowdoin in New York.
The best New York runners have known all about Bowdoin. Now, entrants in the Northeast Race can reach their own conclusions. No matter what they think, they should know that they saw Bowdoin at its absolute, glorious best today at the NXN meet.
3 comments:
Pete, I'm insulted. You listed Holmdel and some course in CT, yet you forgot one of the best courses in NYS. One that has bettered (in my opinion and those of the Footlocker Regional) Bowdoin - Sunken Meadow State Park. Now, while I've been told by reliable sources the course is not what it once was, when I was in high school Cardiac Hill was ranked top 15 toughest hills in the country. Holmdel does not have a hill, and well, CT is, um, not difficult.
I was surprised that the twins didn't break 16 yet ran 14:56 at Holmdel. After many years of listening about the "bowl" and the "roller coaster" I think it finally stands that Bowdoin is the toughest overall. Sunken Meadow's 1-2 punch of Snake and Cardiac is tough but there are nice downhills and flats that make it a slightly faster course (maybe less than 10 seconds).
If you read any of the articles post-race about the twins you'd know that they just ran hard enough to sweep the top two spots. Had they run all out they would have without a doubt broke the course record. A fellow top NJ runner ran this course earlier in the year and was one second off the course record. His name, Jon Vitez. If you look at the Meet of Champions results from NJ you see that the twins handily beat him.
Harris I don't know if you noticed this BUT THE WHOLE SECOND HALF OF BOWDOIN IS DOWNHILL AND/OR FLAT! I spend my days pouring over race results and the fact of the matter is that the times at Bowdoin and Sunken Meadow are equal.
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