Race's popularity growing

Friday, December 08, 2006

By JIM OAKS

For The Times jaaoaks@aol.com

The word must have spread throughout the running world that the Huntsville Track Club's Rocket City Marathon is a quality race at a bargain price. How else can you explain an increase in entries from 953 last year to 1,107 this year?

The ratio of women runners continued to increase this year, up from 26 percent last year to 29 percent this year. There are 318 women entered.

Late registration is still open from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. today at the Nesin Therapy Expo in the downtown Holiday Inn. The late entry fee is $80.

Speaking of 'Nuts': The guest for tonight's Carbo Dinner presentation is Bob Schwartz, an avid runner and author of the book "I Run, Therefore I am Nuts!" Schwartz will share some of his humorous experiences with runners at 6:30 in the Holiday Inn's Grand Salon Ballroom. The presentation is open to the public.

Running teams: The Husband-Wife team competition is popular at Rocket City. This year 22 teams are entered, including the defending champions Steve and Allison Pastorek from Jonesborough, Tenn. Last year their combined time was 6 hours, 25 minutes, 42 seconds with Steve, 30, running 3:06:23 and Allison, 29, finishing in 3:19:19.

Among the 15 Parent-Child teams entered, it is unusual to find two teams from the same family. This year four members of the Kerry Chatham family from Guntersville will attempt to run their first marathon. Kerry, 44, will run with his daughter Morgan, 18, and Carol, 45, will run with the other daughter, Payton, 17.

"We have been working on this since March," Chatham said. "I was pushing 270 pounds and knew I had to do something."

Chatham is down to 218 now with the encouragement from the family. They all hope to finish between 41/2 to 5 hours.

Familiar with city: Four of the top five seeded men in Saturday's race have experience in Huntsville. Kevin Hill, Dewayne Miner and Justin Gillette ran Rocket City last year, finishing fourth, fifth and 10th, respectively.

Second seed Jared Nyamboki has not entered this marathon before but was fourth at the Mercedes Benz Cotton Row Run in May. Joseph Chirlee, the top seed, has not attempted a marathon, but his recent time of 1:02:18 in the Philadelphia Distance Run half marathon makes him the favorite. Chirlee recently won the Vulcan 10K in Birmingham in 30:00.

Among the top three women, only Melissa Lehman has run this course. She was the fifth woman finisher at Rocket City in 2005 in 3:10:00. Jan Gautier has marathon experience and won the women's master title at Cotton Row, finishing in 39:11.

Like Chirlee, Janet Cherobon, the top women's seed, will be attempting her first marathon. She was an eight-time NCAA Division II All-American at Harding University, running as Janet Kogo. She currently lives in Norcross, Ga., with her husband, Jay Bawcom, who has family here in Huntsville. Cherobon was second at Cotton Row in 34:50 and in October won a half marathon in Jonesboro, Ark., in 1:23:54.