Perhaps lost in the excitement of the USATF-NE marathon championship at the Vermont City Marathon was the relay competition within. Amongst the thousands of relay runners was one legend (that we know of, at least): Deena Kastor. The Olympic medalist led a team of tough young ladies to a win in their division.
The team, simply dubbed Deena’s Team, was made up of Carly Neeld, Meghan Cook, Caroline Oshea, and of course, Deena Kastor. Together they ran a 2:50:47 and finished 11th out of 741 teams in the open competition. The next closest competitor in their division was a whopping 25 minutes behind.
We got a quick interview in with Deena before we wrapped up our coverage for the day:
Apparently Jess Cover of RunVermont made a deal with Matt Pelletier ahead of this year’s race. If Matty P was able to earn his 5th win (one for the thumb!), then he’d have to get another tattoo. As luck would have it, we ran into both Matt and Jess on the way to the next spot, separately, but then they both ended up joining us later. Story confirmed. It looks like Matt’s getting the VCM logo in the upper thigh area. Now we have to figure out how to get some Level ink on him.
Speaking of Matty P, we ran into Ed Duhamel as well. So what we had was a mini reunion for some RI XC alumni, class of ’97 (if you include yours truly).  We got this ‘class photo’ in and got to talking:
Ed earned 7th overall at states in XC our senior year, out kicking me with a ferocious finish at Bryant. That finish knocked me off of the coveted First Team All State, where I had to settle for 8th and 2nd team honors. We had a laugh about that then turned to Matt. Where’d you finish? Matt was like 16th that year. That’s nothing to be ashamed of by any stretch of the imagination, but it also just goes to show that you never know just who’s going to be the one to really take it to the next level. Even coming out of college many people probably didn’t see this type of success for Matt. Lots of hard work and many miles were put in to get there.
Also had a reunion of sorts from the Boston Beer Mile that was held last December. Why is it I only see these guys when there’s beer involved?
Finally, since here on the Level we aim to give runners the attention they deserve, we felt like we should give runners the paparazzi treatment when we saw them out after the race. We saw Joanna Johnson, who was the second woman in the race, and she was first up:
It was perfect that we were able to get that because we never got a chance to interview her after the race. The next one wasn’t so certain. We were pretty sure we were looking at Blair Teal in the booth next to her. What are the odds that the second man is sitting right next to the second woman? So we went to ‘bother’ him too. But…
It turns out we were wrong. It wasn’t Blair. Instead it was Timothy Mulligan, who not only bore some resemblance to Blair (at the moment at least), but Tim also ran a 2:48:07 and finished 32nd overall. So, insert your own mulligan pun here, we messed up and ID’d the wrong guy. But Mulligan deserves a shout out anyway. Here’s the real Teal shot:
Maybe they don’t look too much alike after all… Oh well, it was all fun. Between covering the race and the after hours socializing, it made for a long day, but what an experience that was!
