Record Throng at Watson Dock Race

The second leg of what has come to be known as Montauk’s Grand Prix, the 3.3-mile Dock race, attracted more than 220 entrants Sunday, a record. The entries included scooters, skateboards, baby strollers, bicycles of all sizes, and dogs of all sizes.

Last year’s winner, Armann Gretarsson, was there, as was Ryan Fowkes, the East Hampton High School senior who won the Dock race two years ago. (The high school’s cross-country teams were in Rochester last year at this time, at the state meet.)

Fowkes said before the race began at the Montauk Post Office that he had “underperformed” in the state Class B race at Sunken Meadow State Park the day before, an incentive presumably to do well Sunday, which he did, finishing far ahead of the runner-up, Brian Marciniak, and the rest of the field, in 19 minutes and 30 seconds. (Fowkes’s winning time in 2016 was 20:04.)

“It’s longer than a 5K, isn’t it?” Marciniak was to say later, as a large crowd was gathered outside the Dock, many with glasses of beer that George Watson and his son Chris had provided gratis to the adult finishers.

“We hit a downhill with about a mile to go, and he took off,” Marciniak said of the winner. “The wind was in our faces . . . I felt like I was running into the wind the whole time. I thought it was longer than a 5K. You could really feel it in that extra two-tenths of a mile. . . .”

Kevin Barry, Fowkes’s coach, said in discussing the state meet that “the Class B race was the fastest of the day. They went out really fast, and Ryan got caught up in it. But while he’s run better times, he had a great season, and he led his team to a great season,” second to Westhampton Beach in the county Class B meet. “He did a great job.”

Fowkes, by the way, is to be honored as the Old Montauk Athletic Club’s male youth athlete of the year at its holiday dinner on Dec. 3.

Two East Hampton High School girls cross-country runners, Ava Engstrom (who had finished in the top half of Saturday’s state Class B race, bettering her seeding by five spots) and Bella Tarbet, who are sophomores, were third and fourth on Sunday, and Dylan Cashin, a seventh grader who is expected to join Engstrom and Tarbet on the varsity soon, was seventh.

Gretarsson, a Hither Hills lifeguard who sports a red beard, had said before the race began that he hadn’t been running seriously lately (though he’d just finished an hour and a half of mountain biking). He was sixth. 

When last seen, at the Dock last year, he said he wasn’t sure whether he’d head north to Vancouver or south to Mexico once having seen Yosemite. He had gone south, to Baja, he replied when questioned Sunday, adding that he’d surfed in Donegal, Ireland, last month, and would surf in Iceland through December before heading to Puerto Rico for more surfing.

“The surf in Donegal was spectacular, though the people were the main attraction,” Gretarsson said. “The stone buildings were super old, and the bartenders were pretty ancient too. The people there know everything about their history. . . .”

Liam Fowkes, Ryan’s younger brother, a seventh grader, asserted, in reply to a question, that Bill Herzog, who first announced his retirement in 2009, had really and truly done so this year. Nick Finazzo, he said, was now the East Hampton Middle School’s cross-country coach.

“Nick’s been doing a great job,” said Barry, who had a dozen freshmen this fall on his team, which, with 25 on the roster, was his biggest squad ever.

Further concerning the state meet, Barry said Kal Lewis, a Shelter Island junior, had repeated as the state’s Class D champion, distancing himself from the top seed, “the freshman phenom from Beaver River,” Colton Kempney, on the down slope of Sunken Meadow’s dreaded Cardiac Hill.

Sunken Meadow’s second mile, leading up to the top of Cardiac, was the toughest cross-country mile he knew of, said Barry, “though the last mile, which is all on the flat, is the easiest.”

Lewis said in an interview after his Sunken Meadow win that he intends to run next in the Nike Northeast regionals in Wappingers Falls, N.Y., on Nov. 24, and, should he qualify, at the Nike nationals in Portland, Ore., on Dec. 1. To run in the Nike nationals had been a dream of his, he said, since ninth grade.

George Watson, who began overseeing a trio of October running, cycling, and rowing races in the 1970s (so he could be crowned the winner of all of them), was at the finish line, handing out slips to the adults and kids attesting to their placements, the last race director presumably to eschew computer chips. Those races faded away eventually, though Chris Watson revived the road race, which benefits Montauk’s senior citizen nutrition center, in 2010.