Linus Kiplagat Ran Away With the Shelter Island 10K

Linus Kiplagat, a 23-year-old Kenyan who lives in Lansing, Mich., won the 39th Shelter Island 10K Saturday in 29 minutes and 45 seconds. 

“It was a two-man race, pretty much from the beginning,” Cliff Clark, one of the scenic, nationally known road race’s founders, said afterward, “though I knew, given his 14:30 split at the 5K mark near the Gardiner’s Bay Country Club, that he wouldn’t set a record.”

“It’s a tough course,” Clark added, “and the second half, which is all uphill from the second bridge — from four and a quarter to five and three-quarter miles — is much tougher than the first.”

Kiplagat and his fellow Kenyan-born competitor and training partner, Isaac Mukundi, 30, ran together for the first two miles, in 9:05, after which Kiplagat, who has had a successful running season, began to open up a gap that he proceeded in the succeeding miles to extend and extend.

Dr. Owen Anderson of Lansing, who has written books on the science of running, oversees running camps in Michigan and Kenya, and coaches Kiplagat and Mukundi, who were making their debuts here, rode with Clark in the press truck, sharing the radio commentary.

The women’s winner was Birtukan Fente Alemu, a native of Ethiopia, in 33:40. She was 14th over all. 

The fourth-place finisher, Tadesse Yae Dabi, 29, was on his way to winning this race two years ago when he ran onto — rather than around — Fiske Field because a marshal was too slow in closing a section of snow fencing that had been opened so the press truck, transporting photographers to the finish line, could pass through. 

Mary Ellen Adipietro, the race director — a volunteer, as is everyone connected with the race, including her husband, Dr. Frank Adipietro — vowed at the time that it wouldn’t happen again, and it hasn’t.

Clark said the men’s record stood at 28:37 (set by Simon Ndirangu in 2012), and that the women’s record, which he couldn’t recall, would probably be safe for a long while.

There were some familiar faces in the top group: Nick Lemon, 25, a former Gubbins Running Ahead employee who lives in Boston now, placed 11th, in 33:17, and Kira Garry, 25, a part-time Montauker who lives in New York City, was 23rd, in 36:09, earning her a fourth-place finish among the women.

Lemon said he’d never run on Shelter Island before, “because I was always working on Saturdays.” It was, he added, his first 10K on the roads, and, he had learned, “much harder than on a track,” where his best has been a 31:22.

Garry, a Yale graduate whose parents, Bill and Louisa, traversed the course on bicycles, runs for the Central Park Track Club. It was her first time running Shelter Island too, and, yes, “it was hard . . . I went out a little too hard at the beginning.” 

Moreover, Erik Engstrom, a county cross-country champion when he was a student at East Hampton High School, placed 25th, in 37:06. His former Bonac teammate Erik Perez was 34th, in 37:57.

The male masters winner, in 31:59, and the seventh-place finisher, was Mengistu Tabor Nebsi, 40.

Clark said there were about 1,600 participants in all — 10K runners and 5K runners and walkers — their entry fees benefiting the Shelter Island Community Fund, the Timothy Hill Ranch for at-risk youth in Riverhead, and East End Hospice.

Lindsey Gallagher, Shelter Island High School’s salutatorian and a four-time county cross-country champion, ran with Joan Benoit Samuelson, the former Olympian, who, according to Clark, “loves Shelter Island, and she really loves the kids.”

“I look up to her a lot — it was fun,” Gallagher said after crossing the line in 57th place, in 41:57. Benoit Samuelson, who is 61, ran the 6.2-mile distance in 42:01. Bill Rodgers, 70, the former four-time Boston and New York City Marathon winner, who, like Benoit Samuelson, is a regular Shelter Island 10K attendee, did not run this time owing to a hamstring pull. Gallagher agreed that if she could run as fast as her running partner when she hit 60, she’d be thrilled. 

She’s going to Washington University in St. Louis in the fall, buoyed by academic and athletic scholarships.

Another stellar Shelter Island High School runner, Kal Lewis, who recently won the state’s Division II 1,600-meter championship, in 4:15 — his second statewide win, the other having come last fall in the Class D cross-country race — was reportedly on his way back from a regional race in North Carolina.

When it was noted during Monday’s conversation with Clark that it seemed extraordinary that Shelter Island kept turning out highly competitive runners even though the school didn’t have a track, he said, admittedly somewhat tongue in cheek, “Runners can run anywhere, tracks are for spectators.”

One reason Shelter Island kept turning out talented high school runners had to do, he thought, with the race itself, and with Shelter Island’s popular 5K in the fall.

“Shelter Island has become a long-distance running mecca, Shelter Island parents put the elite runners up, their kids get to meet them, and a lot grow up wanting to be like them.”