59.0°,
Mostly Cloudy Off and running in Rockville Centre
It was a near-perfect day for a race. The air was cool, the sun shining and the course dry. The only hitch was a steady, southwesterly 14-mph breeze with occasional gusts, which buffeted 5K and 10K runners last Saturday morning, especially as they neared the finish line.
Sponsored by the Rockville Centre Department of Parks and Recreation in conjunction with the Chamber of Commerce, the 34th annual village races started with the Family Fun Run at the LIRR station on Front Street, which attracted between 250 and 300 participants of all ages. The starting horn sounded at 9 a.m. and several minutes later, the first of the runners to complete the mile-long course crossed the finish line. Everyone who finished received a trophy and congratulations from Mayor Fran Murray.
An hour later, close to 1,000 runners competing in the longer races, 3.1 and 6.2 miles, took to the roads after the starting horn sounded across from the Fantasy Theater on North Park Avenue. Two Rockville Centre men were the overall winners in both races.
Conor Shelley, 24, was the first to finish the 5K race, with a time of 15 minutes, 19 seconds — recorded by Finish Line Road Race Technicians, with the help of an electronic chip that Shelley and other runners attached to their shoes when they registered.
Shelley, who said he took up running when he was 12, has also competed for the St. Agnes team in CYO, South Side Middle School and Kellenberg Memorial High School. Now he works for a company in New Hyde Park that markets heart rate monitors “It’s really fun; it’s a really fast course,” he said of the Rockville Centre route, “but the wind was in your face from every direction. It made the fast course even more exciting.”
The fastest woman in the 5K was another Rockville Centre resident, Lauren Henkel, 29, who finished in 20:01.
Patrick Duggan, 23, captured the 10K event, crossing the finish line in 36:09. “This is a great event,” said Duggan, a lifelong runner. “It was a great, great crowd.”
The women’s winner, in a record-breaking time of 39:57, was 60-year-old Kathryn Martin of Northport, who was the talk among the spectators near the finish line.
Alan Stein, a 63-year-old Rockville Centre resident who finished second in his age bracket in the 5K in 22:50, also noted the windy conditions, particularly in the last mile. Stein, who said he had planned to compete in the 10K but didn’t think he was in good enough shape to be competitive, told the Herald that he has been running in the village races since the 1970s.
Members of the fire and police departments, the Auxiliary Police and the Law Enforcement Explorers program for village youth lent their services during the races.
