Another great day at the office for the Big River Racing team on Sunday. With a such a large group of athletes racing it’s hard to talk about all of the great performances. Let’s start with the half marathon.
Matt Dirnbeck was back in action with his second half marathon in as many weeks. Matt captured third place for the second week in a row with a 75:07. As teammate Matt Kruger put it, “Dirnbeck is a 75 minute half marathon machine!” (By unofficial count Sunday performance marks Dirnbeck 5,000th half marathon in the 70-80 minute range).
In the woman’s half, Andrea Karl was also back on the race course after winning the full marathon last weekend at the MO’ Cowbell. Let me repeat that, Karl WON the FULL MARATHON last week and raced the half marathon this weekend. And she ran 85:11, good for second place. That is amazing! If I can walk down stairs without wincing a week after my marathons, I fell like it’s a success.
In the shorter races, the men’s 10k had Big River racers all over the place. Big River went 2-4-5-6-7 in the race with Matt O’Connor finishing 2nd in 30:52. He was followed by Matt Lawder (4th-31:48), Brian Holdmeyer (5th-not listed in results), Matt Kruger (6th-32:29), and Mark Paulson (7th-32:47). The race started out a little relaxed with neither O’Connor or the eventual winner Ryan Dohner presing too hard through mile one. Those two began to pull away through mile two. They paced together until Dohner started to pull away after the 5k mark.
In the other race of the day, Tom Albes completed his first marathon in Chicago running 2:43:15. Tom had a tough time in the second half of the race, but hung tough and competed on a tough day. Congrats to all of today’s racers!!!
Many more on the BRRacing team were out there on Sunday, I’ll try to update the post with any new info as I get it.
