The road race season here has gotten off to a running start given the number of registrants for Saturday’s Katy’s Courage 5K in Sag Harbor and for the May Day Race to benefit the Family Service League at East Hampton Village’s Main Beach.
As of Saturday, Katy’s Courage had attracted 230 pre-registrants and the May Day Race, also a 5K, had 1,612 signed up. Two East Hampton High School sophomores, Dylan Cashin and Ryleigh O’Donnell, standout competitors in cross-country and track, were the catalysts for the May Day Race, which is sponsored by the Old Montauk Athletic Club and East Hampton Village.
This weekend will be the 10th running of the Katy’s Courage race, whose participants run or walk a clockwise 3.1-mile course that begins and ends at West Water Street. Ryan Fowkes, now a George Washington University junior who holds George Washington records in the outdoor 800 and 1,500-meter distances, won this race in 2019, in 15 minutes and 55 seconds. Ava Engstrom, now running at the University of Vermont, was the female winner, in 20:37.78.
The Katy’s Courage Foundation was founded in memory of Katy Stewart, the late daughter of Jim Stewart and Brigid Collins, who died of liver cancer at the age of 12 in 2010. It supports pediatric cancer research, provides an annual $10,000 scholarship to a Pierson (Sag Harbor) High School senior deemed to possess “the kindness, empathy, and courage” that Katy exemplified, and sponsors grief counseling to families at the Children’s Museum of the East End.
The race, run rain or shine — it was run in the rain in 2019 — is to start at 8:30 a.m. Check-in is from 7 to 8:15 a.m. The preregistration fee is $25, and $30 the day of the race.
Banners calling attention to the May Day Race can be seen on lampposts in East Hampton Village.
“Dylan and Ryleigh came to me a few months ago, saying they wanted to hold a race to benefit the Family Service League, whose mental health professionals work with our school districts,” Jennifer Fowkes of OMAC said this week. “We talked about dates and since Mental Health Awareness month is May, we picked May 1 as the date. . . . The girls have already raised more than $12,000 for the Family Service League. We hope to hold it every year.”
For their part, Dylan and Ryleigh said the other day that their own struggles with anxiety, which led each of them to seek therapy, and their belief that those who seek help in solving mental health problems ought not to feel shamed prompted them last fall to raise the idea for a race with their parents and with OMAC’s Sharon McCobb and Fowkes.
Through putting on a road race, they could combine their two loves, running and helping people, said Dylan.
Fowkes added that there are more OMAC-sponsored events to come, including a spring cocktail party and athletic awards ceremony at the Clubhouse in May; a modified version of what used to be the Hither Hills Half-Marathon on May 15, the Hither Hills Five and Dime, in which entrants can choose either to run 5-mile or 10-mile loops, and the Montauk Mile, a fund-raiser for the high school’s boys and girls cross-country teams, on June 12.
