(09/23/2009) “He won 22 races on Long Island last year,” a passer-by said as Franklin Diaz, 25, of Farmingdale was being interviewed after having won yet another, Sunday’s Flying Point 10K in Water Mill, for which
 Jack Graves |
close to 200 turned out.
Asked if it had been the first time he’d raced out here, Diaz, a native of the Dominican Republic who moved to this country three years ago, said, with a smile, “I don’t know . . . because I run too much!”
Wearing a Team Runners Edge singlet, the wiry Diaz went out on the flat 6.2-mile course, whose initial and final straightaway bordered the serene Mecox Bay, with several others. The 16-year-old runner-up, Nick Collazos, a Southampton High School cross-country and track star, when questioned later, said, “He pulled away a little bit at the fourth mile. I started catching him in the last half-mile, but he pulled away again.”
Diaz, who, while he was waiting to go out on his warm-down run encouraged runners nearing the finish line, clapping and saying, “Let’s go! Let’s go!” was the runner-up in last year’s Newsday half-marathon after having won its 5K. His best 5K time, he said, was a 15:01, which, given the 36:50 he ran, indicated that he wasn’t pushing the envelope that day.
Diane O’Donnell (51:21), who coaches the girls cross-country team at East Hampton High School, was one of those who did, at least for a while, reporting afterward that she had broken eight minutes in a mile for the first time in three years. Having experienced during that period a string of injuries (broken shoulder, two broken wrists, a rolled ankle, and a torn medial collateral ligament), most all of them while biking, O’Donnell said, “Every time I get to where I feel like I can race again, I hurt myself.”
The big hurt, her husband, Bill (50:07), acknowledged, was himself.
Asked how her girls had been doing, she said, “Shoreham killed us, but we’ve got the talent to have a great team. I’ve got 23 people, but only 10 are competing at the moment. A lot of them aren’t eligible yet. Of my top five from last year, only Ashley West and Alex Keogh are eligible. Ashley was second over all in the Shoreham meet, by three seconds. She ran a ‘p.r.’ of 21:57 at the Peconic invitational at Red Creek Park this past
 Jack Graves |
Thursday. A 22:30 qualifies you for the sectionals, but it has to be run at Sunken Meadow. Ashley’s going to do that in mid-October. Alex has a chance too. She was third last Thursday in 23:38.”
Further, O’Donnell said all of her freshmen were promising, among them Jami Staubitzer, who won the invitational’s 1.5-mile freshman race in 11:03, Nell Black, who was fourth in 12:03, Doris Quigley, who was fifth in 12:05, and Tess Talmage, who was sixth in 12:06. Not to mention, she said, Jen DiSunno and Amanda Beckwith.
The women’s winner Sunday was — no surprise there — Laura Brown, 42, of Westhampton Beach, who was 11th over all in 40:04.
“She’s had a fantastic summer,” said Joe Amato, whose wife, Karen Crotty-Amato, was the second female (and 18th over all) in 41:57. “I think,” he said, “that Laura Brown has a chance at winning the Hamptons half-marathon” to be contested on Saturday.
“I told her [Lauren Laviola] to run each of the first two miles in seven minutes,” said John Conner, Laviola’s trainer. “But she went out in 6:25. For every second you steal up front you give back two at the end. If she’d listened to me, she would have run 1:02 faster.”
Still, Laviola, who was interviewed separately, seemed content, though she said she didn’t know what her time was. (It was 43:16, good enough for 23rd and placing her fourth among the women.)
Another runner trained by Conner, Jorge Flores, who had won the HarborFest 5K in Sag Harbor the week before, was pleased with his 39:00 and sixth-place finish. He’ll run, he said, in the Hamptons half-marathon Saturday.
Speaking of the Hamptons marathon, Diane Weinberger, who oversees it along with Amanda Moszkowski, said Tuesday that “we have close to 2,000 runners registered, representing 30 states, Canada, the U.K., the Cayman Islands, and the B.V.I. Over 1,400 of these runners are doing the half-marathon. . . . We have 65 runners from the American Cancer Society and nearly 200 from Team in Training, which is raising money for leukemia and lymphoma research. . . .”
The Flying Point race, directed by Kim Covell, was a fund-raiser for the Flying Point Foundation for Autism. Steve Cuomo, who oversees the Rolling Thunder Track Club, made up of disabled athletes, some of whom are autistic, brought out about 40 competitors.
Cuomo’s son, Steven, 27, placed eighth in 39:41, followed by a 12-year-old teammate, Michael Brannigan, in 39:46. Another Rolling Thunder runner, Marcus Sanders, 39, was 12th in 40:27.
A Rolling Thunder wheelchair racer, 15-year-old Adam Cruz of Brentwood, who was born with a neuromuscular disease, arthrogryposis, covered the distance in 29:05, topping the field.
“He wants to go to the Paralympics in 2012,” said Adam’s father and trainer, Ken. “He’ll be 18 then — you have to be at least 16 — so the timing will be right.”
Unfortunately, said the elder Cruz, “St. Anthony’s, where he goes, has good academics, but it’s not supportive sports-wise. They have nothing for him.”
“He’s got to motivate himself,” the father said as his son, who has a strong grip, was congratulated. “He practices twice a week with Rolling Thunder, and I work him hard.”