Women of Note in Races Here

Women were prominent in competitions here this past week. Caroline Cashin, for the second year in a row, outdid everyone in the Pump ’N’ Run, her 133 bench press reps sending her off on the 1.7-mile beach run three minutes and nine seconds ahead of her nearest competitor. Paige Duca, a Boston College all-American and all-A.C.C. miler, her best being a 4:37, topped some 500 female registrants in placing fourth in Sunday’s Ellen’s Run, in 17 minutes and 18 seconds. And Maggie Purcell, heading for the University of Richmond, where she will swim, won among the milers in Saturday morning’s Fighting Chance distance swims in Sag Harbor.

Not to say that males didn’t fare well too, Erik Engstrom in particular, who set a record as Ellen’s overall winner, in 15:39.97. That’s no mean feat considering that Troy Taylor, a former Gubbins Running Ahead employee, and a 4:02 miler, crossed the line in 15:40.96 last year, paring 14 seconds from the previous record, set by another former Gubbins employee, Nick Lemon, in 2015.

The last time out, at Jordan’s Run in Sag Harbor, Duca, a Montauk summer resident who will captain B.C.’s women’s cross-country team this fall, and who, like Engstrom, competes in the steeplechase, failed to make a U-turn at the end of the Jordan C. Haerter Memorial Bridge, resulting in an 18th-place finish. This time, she stayed on course, cracking the top five, behind Engstrom, Dylan Fine, and Carter Weaver.

The women’s top 10 at Ellen’s, whose proceeds help fund cancer prevention, treatment, and post-operative services on the South Fork, included Tara Farrell, Barbara Gubbins, Megan Gubbins, and Erik’s younger sister, Ava Engstrom. Barbara Gubbins’s time of 20:07.55, which works out to a 6:33-per-mile pace, was of particular note given that she is 58.

Used to running a half-marathon at a 7-minute-per-mile pace, it showed the track work she’s been doing lately with Farrell at Southampton High has been productive, said the elder Gubbins, who is in the 89th percentile when she’s “age-graded,” i.e., when her times are compared to the best possible ones for women her age.

Farrell, Barbara Gubbins, and Megan Gubbins, who lives in Brooklyn and comes out on weekends, have formed a formidable trio in recent road races, always finishing in the money, as it were. Geary Gubbins, Megan’s brother, and Geronimo, her Portuguese water dog, have been their chief cheerleaders. Geronimo was the first dog over the line in the 2015 Turkey Trot in Montauk, after which he went into a self-imposed retirement. “The pressure’s been too much,” Geary said. Megan Gubbins said, though not ruefully, that her mother “still beats me.”

There were 812 registrants — pretty much the same number as last year — and 665 finishers. The cool, overcast day was perfect for running, Dr. Julie Ratner, the race’s founder, said. 

Debbie Merrick, 47, of New Providence, N.J., repeated as the top breast cancer survivor to finish, for which she received a Tiffany sterling silver heart necklace with sapphires. She was 34th over all. Another breast cancer survivor, Debbie Donohue, an East Hampton librarian, was the first female in the 65-69 division.

Other female division winners were Ava Engstrom, 12-15; Farrell, 35-39; Laura Brown, 50-54; Gubbins, 55-59, and Susie Roden, also a breast cancer survivor, 60-64.

Male division winners included Eng-strom, 20-24; Jason Hancock, 40-44; Arthur Nealon, 70-74, and Robert Goldfarb, who’s 88, 80-plus. Tony Venesina, 76, who was one of the South Fork’s top distance runners some time ago, placed fourth in the 75-79 division, and Perry Gershon, 56, the Democratic candidate for Congress in the First District, was second in the 55-59 division.

The Stony Brook Southampton Hospital team, numbering around 25, was the day’s largest, meriting a prize. Two tickets on the floor to Billy Joel’s Madison Square Garden concert tonight and four tickets to Meredith O’Connor’s Arts Against Bullying Gala concert in Philadelphia next month were awarded to silent auction bidders. 

O’Connor, who Ratner said “has a huge following among teens,” came to the race. “She’s a terrific, caring, wonderful young woman,” she added.

Ratner began this race, and the Ellen P. Hermanson Foundation, 23 years ago in memory of her sister, an advocate for those with breast cancer who died as a result of the disease. Ellen’s daughter, Leora Moreno, an assistant public defender in Charlotte, N.C., said after the race that she’s been a participant “since the age of 6, the same year my Mom died. . . . It’s been amazing to have watched this run become such a celebratory event, and to have watched it grow into what it is today. Seeing my Mom’s name over Southampton Hospital’s Breast Center makes me feel incredibly proud of what the foundation has accomplished.”

Fighting Chance Swims

The swims for Fighting Chance, a nonprofit organization in Sag Harbor that offers free counseling and services to families affected by cancer, did not draw as well as they have in the past, owing, apparently, to several factors, Saturday’s iffy weather being one. Jim Arnold of the East Hampton Village Ocean Rescue Squad had tried to obtain permission from Southampton Town to hold the swims at Long Beach in Noyac, but could not, and so settled again on Sag Harbor’s Havens Beach. The ripple-less water couldn’t have been more inviting. It was like swimming in a pool, everyone agreed. 

As aforesaid, Purcell, a Southampton Town lifeguard at Cooper’s Beach, was the one-mile winner, followed by a fellow lifeguard, and East Hampton Y.M.C.A.-RECenter Hurricane teammate, Caroline Brown, who’s going to Syracuse this fall. Purcell will swim the 100 breaststroke at Richmond. They were joined by another Hurricane, Summer Jones, an eighth grader, in the one-miler. Craig Brierley, who coaches East Hampton High’s girls swim team, which is expected to be strong again this season, had given her the green light to join the varsity, but, her mother, Anne, said, her daughter, who swims the 50 freestyle and the 100 butterfly, had decided to wait until she’s a ninth grader.

 Didric C. Ceder Holm, a 40-year-old native of Sweden and father of four who summers in Bridgehampton, won the 2-miler. “It is beautiful and well organized,” he said on exiting the water, arms raised. He also liked it, he said, that the route, marked by buoys, was straight out to Barcelona Neck and back. Ely Dickson, 14, who is in East Hampton Town’s junior lifeguard program, won the half-miler. Soon after, he was on the way out to the Rell Sunn surf contest in Montauk. Of the two sports, the young Californian said he liked swimming better.

Rich Kalbacher, who served as the swims’ M.C., said that the Ocean Rescue Squad’s Red Devil swims, a fund-raiser for the volunteer organization, which numbers 68 at the moment, will be held at Atlantic Avenue Beach in Amagansett on Sept. 2 at 5 p.m.

“With a donation of $2,000 you can pick out the lifeguard of your choice and swim with him or her the whole way,” he said. The Red Devil distances are to be one mile, a half-mile, and a quarter-mile. “We want families to come out,” said Kalbacher, “little ones, moms, dads . . . we want it to be a family event.”

Pump ’N’ Run

As for the Pump ’N’ Run, held at Atlantic Avenue on Aug. 15, it was the second year in a row that Caroline Cashin, who combines three strength workouts and three running workouts per week, won it. Until last year, no female had won the 16-year-old bench-press-beach-run event, which requires that women lift 35 percent (40 pounds in Cashin’s case) of their weight and men 60 percent of theirs, each rep resulting in a three-second credit on the run to and from Indian Wells Beach, about 1.7 miles all told. 

This year, runners were sent out in order, based on their time credits. Cashin, who had 133 reps, consequently was the first to go out, three minutes and nine seconds ahead of the runner-up, Alyssa Bahel, a Denison University student whose father, Mike, Body Tech’s owner, oversees the competition.

“We used to have a mass start on the run” and the time credits were figured in afterward, “but it’s better this way,” said Cashin. “You get to see who you have to chase down. The first to cross the line wins.”

Besides Cashin and Bahel, who did 70 reps, Geo Espinoza, Mike Bahel, Ryan Fowkes, Omar Leon, Thomas Brierley, Matthew Maya, Christina Winters, and Paul Hamilton rounded out the top 10.

The proceeds will help fund the Old Montauk Athletic Club’s scholarships and its youth athletic programs, Jennifer Fowkes said.

Cashin, who has three children and is training for the New York marathon in November along with Sinead FitzGibbon, Holly Li, Beth Feit, and Sue De Lara, said with a sly grin on Monday morning, that “women are taking over.”