Huge Turnout for Ellen's Run
By Jack Graves

(Aug. 20, 2009)    Julie Ratner needn’t have worried. Although the staging area was at Southampton Hospital this year, instead of East Hampton High School, the turnout Sunday for Ellen’s Run, a five-kilometer race Dr. Ratner began 14 years ago in memory of her late sister, Ellen P. Hermanson, and to fight breast cancer, was huge.

Jack Graves Laura Brown, the women’s winner, was happy she had chosen to run three miles rather than the half-marathon that was being contested that day in New York City.

    The race director’s Web site listed 596 chip times, though, in the pre-race frenzy to register, many apparently were told they could run, or walk, but that their times wouldn’t be recorded. If the turnout wasn’t a record — the race has had fields in the 1,000 range — it seemed to observers as if it might be.

    “We ran out of numbers,” reported Barbara Borsack, a member of the East Hampton Village Board who recently finished chemotherapy treatment for breast cancer, and who was among those at the registration tables. “It was chaotic, but people were great.”

    Ratner said later that “it looked like the biggest crowd we’ve ever had,” and added that “just on Saturday and Sunday we made $135,000, which I think is also a record. I think it’s going to be a banner year. I hope we do because we have a very large commitment to the hospital. I want to pay that down.”

    “The [Southampton Village] mayor wants us to come back, the hospital wants us to come back, and East Hampton wants us to come back. . . !”

    Borsack, sporting a pink wig, brought with her 38 other East Hamptoners who ran as the Strong Connections team. “There were a lot of ambulance people and Strong family members and friends. We’re shooting for 100 next year.”

    The mood at Ellen’s Run is always upbeat, and Ratner thought it was especially fitting that, because the high school has been turned into a vast construction site, the race was held this year at the hospital, where a state-of-the-art breast care center named for her sister, and to which the Ellen P. Hermanson Foundation has contributed $1 million, was dedicated last week.

    Eileen McCann, a former winner of prizes given out at Ellen’s Run to the breast cancer survivor with the best time, said that she had worried unnecessarily about making the drive over from East Hampton on a Sunday morning.

    “It was so easy,” she said. “It made me think that compared to the journey these women are facing, my trip was nothing, and I wanted to show my support.”

    Yes, it was hot, she said, in reply to a question, “but it’s a beautiful setting.”

    Befitting the giddiness of the day, Bob Teschak of Granite State Race Services, who oversees the Mount Washington Road Race, whose 50th anniversary is next year, was unable in the aftermath to come up with anything other than the winner’s name, Todd Raymond, who crossed the finish line in 17 minutes and 19 seconds.

    Later, however, it was learned that Raymond, a 25-year-old New York City resident and Manhattan College graduate, who ran the 3K, 5K, and steeplechase there, waits tables at the Sant Ambroeus restaurant in Southampton Village.

    During a conversation Monday, he said he’d registered online, and that when he came to get his number on race day, there’d been a foul-up of some sort. Since it was his first race here, “I ran the first mile in five minutes, testing the waters, but nobody came with me, so I treated it as a tempo run after that. I could have pushed more, but it was hot. . . . I hung around for about a half-hour, and then I had to go to work.”

    Nine seconds behind Raymond was the familiar face of Angel Rojas, the 23-year-old Hampton Bays landscaper, who began to pour it on a little too late to overtake Raymond.

    Rojas said afterward he hopes to three-peat at the Strides for Life race in Southampton on Sunday.

    The women’s winner, Laura Brown, 41, of Westhampton Beach, who manages the Gubbins Running Ahead store in Southampton, came within 18 seconds of equaling her all-time best of 19:00.

    “They’re running a half [marathon] in Manhattan today — I’m so glad I only ran 3 miles instead of 13.1,” said Brown, who finished 11th over all.

    Besides Raymond and Rojas, the top 10 comprised Brendan Hannon, 20, of New York City, in 17:32; Nicholas Collazos, 16, of Southampton, in 17:55; Levi Wallace, 18, of Danbury, Conn., in 17:58; Jason Hancock, 35, of Southampton, in 18:12; Jim MacWhinnie, 37, of Southampton, in 18:50; Mike Bahel, 43, of East Hampton, in 18:55; Doroteo Soledad, 33, of Water Mill, in 19:06, and Paul Mackey, 15, of Garrison, N.Y., in 19:17.

    “I did it!” said 90-year-old Andy Neid­nig as he crossed the line in 1:24:06.

    “I ran,” he said when questioned later. “To me it’s running anyway. If I walk, I go twice as slow! Everybody was so happy when I came in because it meant they could all go home! Next year, I’m going to tell them to have a 90-plus age group.”

    Neidnig, who was the national A.A.U. mile and 2-mile champion in 1939 and ’40, and who missed the Olympics because of the war, said that lately “my system has been telling me it wants to run. The legs want to move. I’m not saying I’m going to race every race from now on, but I’ll probably do the Great Bonac 10K” on Labor Day.