Despite the many challenges presented by everything from a worldwide pandemic to race day weather, in the end, it was more than worth it to see over 430 runners complete RunVermont’s 2020 Half Unplugged. I know I speak for our entire team, staff and Board, when I say we’re quite pleased to be back in action with live events. Amidst a recent resurgence of the virus, we’re hopeful that our procedures and protocols will be successful in providing the safety net and allow us to continue with the production of live events as we move into 2021.
A few of the race highlights include some very fast times from runners like George Aitken at 1:16:09 and Morgan Perlman at 1:19:03. The women provided some of the closest competition with four runners under 1:30: and a gap of 1.8 seconds between Emma Locke and Andrea Allen, who took the 2nd and 3rd place honors behind the women's overall winner Jennifer Moltz. Perhaps they’ll consider returning next year to defend their performances in the same wave, that would make for some exciting racing indeed.
While the young and the fast were busy proving their mettle we also have to give the appropriate nod to those at the other end of the age spectrum. In what turned out to be an interesting battle in Sunday’s final wave, the Men’s 70-79 age group bragging rights goes to Zeke Zucker. Zeke beat out Toshiharu Furukawa by a mere 01:45 with Zeke posting a 1:54:13, for 91st place in gender. And all this at the sprightly age of 77! Just another reason Zeke is a member of the RunVermont Hall of Fame.
We also heard from a number of runners who posted PR’s, not a small feat considering some of the weather conditions. And a big congratulations to all the Saturday runners, those were not ideal race conditions but you managed to persevere to provide nothing but smiles at the finish line. If you had a good time, we would encourage you to put up a post on our FB page to say thanks to all the volunteers, they’re always the ones who make it happen and they persevered in some tough conditions.
For all who came to join us for this event, we say thank you, it was great to see you and we hope to see you again, in person, at a live event in 2021. We’re working on next year’s calendar as we speak, and it’s sure to include live events, virtual races, new formats, new races, (both free and fee based), new training plans and coaching services. No matter what we bring to the table, we’ll be ready to adapt as we need so that we can continue to be a partner in your running life.
Feel free to give us a shout or drop us an email with any thoughts or ideas, we love to hear from you.
Run healthy!
Your team at RunVermont,
Peter, Joe, Chuck, Amanda, Michelle and all of our volunteers