The weather having cooperated, Sunday’s May Day 5K road race in East Hampton Village attracted a huge crowd of all ages, some of whom were pushed the 3.1-mile distance in strollers, and some of whom, like the 90-year-old Alan Patricof, simply strolled.
Jenn Fowkes of the Old Montauk Athletic Club said 922 were registered, and that 761 finished.
Tim Lynch, 39, of Greenlawn, who had come out for the day, was the winner, in an eye-popping 15 minutes and 41.97 seconds, a personal record for him; Clive Johnston, 24, of New York City, was the runner-up in 16:04.71, also a P.R., and Neil Falkenhan, a 41-year-old East Hamptoner, finished third in 16:43.94, a P.R. as well.
“Those guys were fast,” Falkenhan said of Lynch and Johnston. “There were four of us at the start, and it stayed that way for about a mile when they dropped me and I stayed in third the rest of the way.”
“I’m just a regular runner trying to stay fast,” Lynch said when questioned after he broke the tape at the Main Beach finish line.
The women’s winner – and 13th over all – was Kira Garry, Dr. Kira Garry, that is, of New York City and Montauk, in 18:35.69.
“She worked a 14-hour shift at Mount Sinai, took the train out, and I picked her up at the station in Montauk at 12:30 a.m.,” said Kira’s mother, Louisa, the Ross School girls track team’s coach, adding that she thought her daughter was “running back to Montauk now. . . . I’ll pick her up on the way.”
Alyssa Bahel, 27, the female winner at Katy’s Courage, was the runner-up to Garry – and 19th over all – in 19:34.92. The top 11 finishers included four members of East Hampton’s boys track team – the senior Benson Edman, sixth in 18:02.61, Liam Knight, a junior, seventh in 18:04.19, Jasper Samuelson, a freshman, eighth in 18:05.30, and Edmar Nateras-Gonzalez, 11th in 18:24.87.
The 5K was founded as a fund-raiser for mental health counseling by Dylan Cashin and Ryleigh O’Donnell, who are in college now – Cashin at the United States Naval Academy and O’Donnell at Emory University. Taking over for them this year were the ninth graders Lucy Knight from East Hampton High and Vanessa Rizzo from Pierson (Sag Harbor) High School, both of whom run on Bonac's girls track team. Fowkes said they are more than worthy successors. Seventy-five percent of the net proceeds from the race is to go to the Tyler Project, a mental health service organization named in memory of the late Tyler Valcich, and the remainder is to go to OMAC, Rizzo and Knight said.
The track teams of East Hampton High School and the Ross School were well represented. There were also a number of participants from Edwin Garcia’s Hamptons Run Club, and from 11937 Fitness, a Newtown Lane boxing club headed by Jonathan Lopez, that day’s fifth-place finisher, who the week before had won the Katy’s Courage 5K in Sag Harbor, his hometown.
The age-group winners were: Eliana Benjamin and Jasper Samuelson, 14 and under; Vivienne Humm and Benson Edman, 15-19; Alyssa Bahel and Johnston, 20-29; Tammy Gutierrez and Federico Rojas Granados, 30-39; Helen Dole and Falkenhan, 40-49; Cheryl Hunter and Angus Whelchel, 50-59; Louisa Garry and John Kenney, 60-69, and Lisa Donneson and Paul Maidment, 70-99.
