Links to Lake 5K

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Saturday, August 29, 1998 -- Morgantown
Links to Lake 5K

Pictures: [Set 1] [Set 2] [Set 3] [Set 4] [Set 5]

Lakeview's parking lot overflows with runners at the Links to Lake 5K

The crowds of runners rolled into Lakeview Resort, just outside Morgantown, WV, to threatening skies on Saturday morning, August 29th. However, the rain stayed away for the Links to Lake 5K and the weather was just warm, humid, and overcast. Lucky for the over 400 runners and walkers, the course from Lakeview to Mont Chateau on the Cheat Lake was downhill. Well, they did throw in a short hill at the finish just to keep everyone honest.

Eric Morris makes his move to escape the crowd

The racers left the parking lot of Lakeview Resort at just after 9:00am. It didn't take long for Eric Chandler to move to the front, and that is where he stayed. Chandler finished the race over 40 seconds ahead of the competition in a time of 15:46. The battle for second was much closer. At the two mile mark, Ed Frohnapfel was still trying to shake the likes of Don Wren with others chasing just seconds back. Inside of the final mile, Frohnapfel was able to pull away to take second in 16:25, just 5 seconds ahead of Don Wren (16:30). Going head-to-head for fourth and fifth overall was Bob Nedley and Scott Biola with Nedley (16:33) getting the edge by just a second of Biola (16:34).

Eric Chandler, first overall, was all alone at the finish

The fastest women for the day were led to the finish by Charity Wachera who finished 12th overall with a time of 17:24. Taking home the second and third place honors were sisters Jesi (18:07) and Jil (18:43) Christiansen, respectively. These two ladies are members of the amazing Christiansens, a family of runners from Pennsylvania. Between Mom, Dad and their seven children, the family had a full nine runners participating in the race, and we mean race. Whatever they feed these kids, we want some! Here is a run down on how they all did (note some of the ages, Jacy just turned 5 earlier this summer!)

The Christiansen family (pictured L-R: Jesi, Jeni, Marcia, Jacy, and Joshua) after another day's run

Plc	Name	Sex	Age	Grp Plc	Time	Pace
21	Jed	M	11	2	17:51	5:44
28	Jesi	F	13	***	18:07	5:50
38	Jil	F	15	***	18:43	6:01
48	Jake	M	9	6	19:12	6:10
50	Job	M	7	7	19:13	6:11
68	Jeni	F	17	2	19:57	6:25
82	Marcia	F	43	1	20:18	6:32
161	Jacy	F	5	3	23:08	7:26
162	Joshua	M	43	14	23:09	7:27

In the 5K walk, it seems the women gave the men all that they could handle taking five of the top six spots overall. The race for first and second came down to a "battle of the sexes" between Clyde Johnson and Debbie Goss. Johnson (30:02) was able to edge out Goss (30:04) by just two seconds to keep the male egos from taking too much damage.

Chet Cook knows what racing is all about

Now, it seems that within the field of walkers there was some questions as to whether some folks may have gotten away with shortcuts or maybe thrown in a little running. Well first, let us all remember that we are out there to have a good time, enjoy the outdoors and get in a little healthy exercise. So let's play fair, be nice, and most of all have fun. Second, it seems that Lakeview Resort may have been a little overwhelmed with the large crowd that attended the race, about double what they had last year. It is a lot of work to organize and run a race and the Lakeview folks apologize for not having everything going as smoothly as it could. They promise to work harder next year to be sure they are ready for all the racers, now don't you racers forget to read point one again.