I Hate The Pagoda

Our Keeper of the Cup Harry Smith will not be joining us this year at the Golf Outing due to his coaching duties. Volleyball coaching duties!  He reports that The Harry Groves Memorial Cup will be updated with the new engraving and dropped off in time for our tourney, however.

And he dug into his dusty archives to come up with a way of tormenting me.  Turns out we ran in the same race back in 1978, with 3 other teammates.  I'd rather forget the Pagoda 1/2 Marathon Classic in Reading PA.

The Pagoda sits on top of the mountain above Reading, so probably all of you have seen it without the shivers I get every time.  The race started in downtown Reading and the Pagoda was the turn-around spot.  In other words, the first half is all uphill and the second half is all downhill.  I was a pretty good uphill runner, but not very good at running downhill.  That meant a splendid turn-around place every year and then watch as people passed me the whole second half.

Turns out that 5 PSU runners were there, including the winner, "Noisy" Jim Clelland!

1. (1)    Jim Clelland     1:07:17
2. (14)  Dave Baskwill  1:12:30
3. (20)  Harry Smith      1:13:26
4. (30)  Doug Kent        1:14:48
5. (35)  Rich Prann        1:15:10

I'll just add that this race was a very difficult one, so quit criticizing the times!

Some say that's me on the right of the pic next to the bushy-haired Mark Amway!

"Noisy" Jim Clelland breaks the tape.