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Summary

May 2nd Sunday; 81 runners; 13+ teams

East to West; Caroline (Rt. 79) to Watkins Glen State Park (lower entrance)

Catherine the Great: Jackie Tarrent

Back to the "classic" route. The race date was only announced about six weeks beforehand, but the three years of anticipation and rumor ensured a large and enthusiastic turnout. Race director Daley cooked up a scoring system to favor veterans: cross-country (place) scoring, but times adjusted -1 minute for each year over 40 years of age, before places were computed. This was a completely arbitrary rule, true to Triennial tradition.

Unknown to the organizers (but definitely within the rules), turkey season began the day before the race. Runners on the early stages (before noon) were treated to encounters with men dressed as trees and carrying large shotguns.

Teams

1. Atrocious: captain Joe Daley
2. Green Goons of High Noon: captain Rick Cleary
3. High Finger: captain Joe Dabes
4. Running Linguists: captain John Whitman
5. Zen Runners (actually the Bottom Feeders in disguise)
6. Snuggle Bunnies: captain Jeff Buboltz
7. Trail Tribe: captains: Knewstub brothers
8. Trail Hags
9. Mighty Isis
10. Atalanta's Rose (whatever that means)
11. LateCummers
12. TIUTALAM (don't ask): captain Skull
13. Six Fine Fillies
14. Trojans (incomplete): captain by default Bob Congdon

Stages

Same as Triennial V (1993), but in the reverse direction  

Results

10:17:33

Ammendend Results

Ithaca, NY, May 11 -- Finger Lakes Triennial Trail Run VII Director Joe Daley shocked the Central New York Running Community today with the announcement that under longstanding but little known special authorities, he had been forced to declare Atrocious the victor in the hard-fought and hard-calculated battle in early May. "My hands are tied," said a shaken Daley, after mobs had gathered outside a number of his 100 properties to protest the decision. "The rules are the rules -- that's what America is all about...if some people don't like it, they can move to Serbia, so I can bomb them."

According to Daley, he was forced to award the victory to the revered Atrocious team when notified by Atrocious lawyer Jeff Furman that Atrocious had by a majority vote traded Jim Booker to the Running Linguists for John Whitman. Under the Triennial Rules, trades consumated within two weeks of the event result in the trade of the performances as well. As a result, Atrocious gave up an 8th place finish on the Lick Brook leg, and received a 3rd in return. The new final score was Atrocious 18, Green Goons 20, High Finger 21. High Finger had been penalized a point for Joe Dabes' incessant whining in the aftermath of the race. Informed of the ascension of Atrocious and his team's decline into third place, Dabes had an apoplectic fit while running for his keyboard. He is recovering nicely in Tompkins County Eldercare.

Atrocious runner Caleb Rossiter initiated the trade of Booker for Whitman, out of disgust that Booker had let the Snuggle Bunnies beat him on his leg. When asked by reporters if he felt that he was betraying Booker, who had run his congressional campaign in Allegany County and run every step of the county with him during that recent campaign, Rossiter said: "It's not personal, Sonny, it's strictly business. I can't abide a man being beaten by the Snuggle Bunnies." Whitman eagerly accepted his promotion to Atrocious. "I've been a running linguist long enough. It's time to join the big leagues. I can't wait for 2002, and I'll die before I let a Snuggle Bunny beat me."

[Editor's note: there are rumors that Whitman was convinced to waive his no-trade rights as captain of the Linguists, when certain facts concerning the true reasons for his frequent trips to Japan, linked with his stock holdings in certain vending-machine concessions, were on the verge of appearing in the Drudge Report...]

Recollections

Caleb Rossiter writes:

"I had always wanted to try the fabled Texas Hollow leg, where I had heard of hand over hand climbing...unfortunately, I had not been training too hard and resembled a mobile can of Chunky soup, and couldn't get my hands very far over my head. After a snappy start, romping along Cayuta lake, there it was: the straight climb onto the first ridge...not too bad, as I held onto fourth; then after a long down hill, came the the even tougher climb to the top of the Hollow...still not too bad, as I moved into third...but the interminable downhill started to blow my legs out, and I was in fourth again at the bottom...climbing back out was brutal, but I walked (literally) away from my opponent, crawling indeed hand over hand the last stretch, and then at the top, wildly sprinted away to hold him off....and that was irrelevant: turned out the lowlife was just running it for fun, without a team...wish he'd told me earlier. I carried out the run perfectly to match my training: I arrived at a roar, with nothing left, the runner's dream...

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Last modified: Sun Aug 24 15:55:53 EDT 2014