Monday, July 13, 2015

Mt Washington on foot and wheels

My CMS teammate Erik Vandendries had an unusual double this weekend, taking on the Newton’s revenge on Saturday and the Cranmore mountain race on Sunday.  Newton’s revenge is a bike race up the Mt Washington Auto road and Cranmore is a running race up (and down) Mt Cranmore.  His 5th place finish at Mt Washington and 6th place finish at Cranmore are impressive feats but I think his other “double” is even more impressive. 

Erik ran his first Mt Washington earlier this year posting a 1:12:20 to take third place in the 50+ age division.  His time was the 6th fastest ever run by anyone over the age of 50.  Add to that his 1:03:15 from Newton’s revenge and he rode/ran a combined time of 2:15:35.  It got me thinking if anyone has gone faster.  I scoured the results, cutting off at 1:15 for both of the bike races and the running race.  I have the running results back to the very beginning and was able to get all of the Newton’s revenge results (this year was the 10th).  The hill climb bike race is entering its 43rd year but I was only able to get results back to 1997.

In the last 19 years I found no runners (except Erik) who have done one of the bike races and the running race in the same year.  Only two other runners had gone under 1:15 on the bike and on foot.  Erik’s combined time of 2:15:35 tops both.

Name                Bike      Run      Total

Lou Bregou        1:06:21 1:13:43 2:20:04 Different years

Matt Mallet         1:07:51 1:12:52 2:20:43 Different years

Erik Vandendries 1:03:15 1:12:20 2:15:35 Same year

 

If anyone has results from earlier years I’d love to get that info!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Mike McCusker (of Bridge of Flowers fame) has done both run and bike race several times (in the same year). A few years back, he broke the 60 year old record at the bike race (in 1:15:xx) and I believe placed in the running race as well. I did both run and bike race in 2008 and 2010 and found I am a better runner than biker (or a much worse biker..). I ran/biked times that were very close with my run times each year being a minute or two faster than my bike times. There was some talk about having a mountain run/bike series as Ascutney, Mt Washington, Mt Greylock all have hill bike and run climbs but not sure that went anywhere. I had a hard time convincing the biking crowd that it was fun to run up the mountains. :)