Many Flocked to Watsons’ Dock Race

The Dock Race, revived these past few years by George Watson’s son, Chris, a fitting warm-up for the Thanksgiving Day Turkey Trot, drew a large multigenerational crowd of runners, cyclists, skateboarders, baby strollers, walkers, and dogs to the starting line at the Montauk Post Office Sunday morning.

The course, a roller-coaster one that is said to be 3.3 miles, was “definitely longer than a 5K,” said Sharon McCobb, the president of the Old Montauk Athletic Club, which is soon to honor George Watson with its community service award. 

And on that pleasant, almost balmy fall day, a red-bearded native of Iceland, Armann Gretarsson, won it, in 20 minutes and 9 seconds, followed a few seconds later by Omar Leon, an East Hampton High School cross-country runner who had the day before been East Hampton High’s second runner to be scored in the state meet near Rochester.

Leon, who after being cut from soccer bolstered Kevin Barry’s cross-country team, which, partly because of his grit, went on to win a county championship for the second time in three years, led Sunday’s field for the first two and a half miles. 

“He overtook me then — I was out of it,” Leon said. “I stayed with him as well as I could . . . I thought I might close the gap when we got to the docks, but my legs were heavy. I just didn’t have it.”

“I caught him on the hills — he’s a good competitor,” said the 33-year-old Gretarsson, who spends half the year in Montauk working as a lifeguard at Hither Hills State Park and at the Harvest and ENE restaurants. The other half, he said, while sipping some of the free beer that the Watsons provided the of-age contestants, he spends “elsewhere.”

Asked where “elsewhere” would be this year, Gretarsson, who biked across Europe recently, said, “I’ve bought a one-way ticket to California. I’ll spend a couple of nights in Yosemite, and New Year’s in San Francisco . . . after that I’ll either go up to Vancouver or south to Mexico.”

This writer proposed that he go to Mexico, bypassing, if he could, Tijuana and Sinaloa on the way to San Pancho, Sayulita, Zihuatanejo, and (having bypassed Acapulco) Puerto Escondido. 

Bella Tarbet, one of two talented ninth graders who strengthened East Hampton’s girls cross-country team — the other being Ava Engstrom — was the first female finisher, despite some cramping, in 23:15, just a few seconds ahead of McCobb.

Engstrom, who had finished 87th out of about 187 runners in the state meet — “just what we’d hoped she’d do,” according to her coach, Diane O’Donnell — was not there Sunday. 

Asked if it was cold in Rochester, O’Donnell smiled. “Was it cold? It was 23 degrees, with snow on the ground. There was no snow on the course, but the course was icy and muddy, which made it treacherous. It was like an icy ‘tough mudder.’ The day before, it was 19 degrees with the wind chill figured in.”

East Hampton’s boys team, O’Donnell said, “placed ninth, which is what they were seeded.”

Leon, who, as aforesaid, was East Hampton’s second runner, behind Ryan Fowkes but ahead of Geo Espinosa, Bonac’s usual number-two, said that while no one slipped, “Frank [Bellucci, one of his teammates] got a bloody nose.”

“It was a good experience,” Leon added. “There were some really fast people up there.”

One of them was Shelter Island’s Kal Lewis, who won the 5K Class D race in 16:44.6. For a time this fall, Lewis, according to Newsday, had the fastest 5K cross-country time of any of New York State’s runners with the 15:27.24 he ran at the Brown University invitational.

McCobb said that others to be honored at OMAC’s annual holiday dinner at the South Fork Country Club in Amagansett on Dec. 4 will be John Broich, as the club’s male athlete of the year, Mary Scheerer and Shari Hymes, as its female athletes of the year, and Espinoza and Lucy Emptage as its high school athletes of the year. 

Emptage was to have signed a letter of intent to attend La Salle University in Philadelphia on a lacrosse scholarship Tuesday at the high school. 

Asked what he had learned from his race that day, Leon said, “Not to run in this race the day after a state meet.”

“What I learned,” said Gretarsson, “was not to mix gin, wine, and beer the night before . . . or maybe it was the right thing to do. . . .”