Two Creek Road Runners placed in Newark’s annual Turkey Trot 5K, held on Saturday, November 23. The Newark Turkey Trot, which has now been contested for more than 50 years, is Delaware’s oldest annual running event.
CRR Mary Braun won the 60-64 age group with a time of 28:21*. She finished 115th overall and 32nd among all women runners.
Still running and racing, 80-year-old CRR Doug Ridge placed 2nd among the 70-and-overs in a time of 32:56*, finishing 206th overall and 141st among the men.
CRR Steve Goodwin is in Paris and, like he has done for previous Olympic Games, is leading a group from the University of Delaware on a grand adventure of sport and culture, as part of the University’s Study Abroad program.
In the 70-74 age group, CRR Diane Kukich is still training daily and racing occasionally…and nearly always winning. Her racing muse is her daughter, Christine, a Baltimore resident who has taken up running and racing pretty seriously over the past decade.
They register for and compete in races together, which, though they each run at their own pace, gives them good mother-daughter time. This is especially true when they both bring home hardware, which, depending on the race, is becoming more commonplace.
Last weekend, the Kukich women competed in the Coastal Delaware Running Festival.
The elder ran in the Cape Challenge, which included a 5K in Dewey Beach on Saturday and a 9K in Rehoboth Beach on Sunday. She won the 70-74 age group in both events with times of 26:43 and 50:12, respectively.
Christine did the Fort Miles Challenge, which included the 5K on Saturday plus a half-marathon on Sunday. Not to go home empty-handed, she placed second among her 30-34 age-group peers in the 5K in 22:50 and fourth in the half (missing third place by one second) in 1:44:08.
A year ago this month, CRR Matt Robinson, “self-appointed CEO” of the Creek Road Runners, graduated from the International Coaching Enrichment Certificate Program. In the photo above, he is being congratulated by International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach.
Robinson heads the University of Delaware’s Community Engagement Initiative, but he has spent the last 20 years doing sport development work funded by the U.S. Department of State, the IOC, and the U.S. Olympic Committee. He has collaborated with the NBA, FIFA, U.S. Soccer, and the Olympic committees of multiple countries.
Robinson leads the International Coaching Enrichment Certificate Program (ICECP), which has trained more than 400 coaches from 120 countries in 25 sports. He is a sought-after speaker on the topic of sport diplomacy, athlete and sport development, and developing legacy plans for cities and countries that host major international sporting events.
Plus, Robinson has always been a staunch supporter of running, and particularly the Creek Road Runners. Congratulations to our “CEO.”
Photo courtesy of the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee
Minnesota native and Delaware Sports Hall of Famer CRR Jim Fischer has just published a book called Run, Train, Race. Based on his 50 years of running, teaching, and coaching, in his book Fischer offers practical distance-running advice for runners at all levels.
Locally, Fischer has been conducting training sessions on the track at the University of Delaware and more recently at local high schools for more than 30 years. Anyone can take advantage of this type of coaching. And, indeed, over the years several Creek Road Runners have done so and benefitted from his expertise.
Fischer is a Level III certified coach in endurance and has taught Level I and Level II certification classes across the U.S. He served on the NCAA Men’s Cross Country Coaches Association’s Executive Board, presented at the Seoul Olympic Scientific Congress, and conducted coaching and training clinics in China, Egypt, Honduras, and Yemen. He was an assistant coach for the “East Team” at the 1991 U.S. Olympic Sports Festival in Los Angeles.
CreekRoadRunners.org 