Strides for Health and Fitness 5K Run

Mertz back on track, wins 5K
By Kevin Spradlin

Tristaterunnur.com

CUMBERLAND – The 112th running of the Boston Marathon this past April was not a good experience for David Mertz.
Training for the 26.2-miler had gone very well. He was pumped. Then, on race day, he came up lame. Tendonitis in his left ankle. He painfully made his way through the race but decided to drop out several miles before the finish line.

It stung. And recent training suggested that he wasn’t coming back fast as he’d prefer, as he experienced a see-saw of good days and bad days, more bad than good.

But on Saturday morning at the 2nd annual Strides for Health and Fitness 5K (3.1-mile) run in the Upper Potomac Industrial Park, the 22-year-old Cumberland resident ran away from the record crowd and won in stellar fashion. He finished the mostly flat out-and-back race in 17 minutes and 7 seconds.

Mertz easily outdistanced Allegany High School cross country coach Tommy Chandler, 26, of Cresaptown, who finished in 17:32. Johnny Macklen Jr., 16, of Ridgeley, W.Va., was third in 17:40.

Paula Bridges, 42, of Cumberland, won the women’s title in 21:12. Nikole Sensabaugh, 44, of Frostburg, won the masters title in 23:55. Tom Ruckert, 56, of Grantsville, was the first masters male to cross the line in 18:32.

Mertz entered Saturday morning as the defending champion. He won in 16:46 last year. While he’s not quite in that shape yet, he’s closer than as recently as a month ago.

“I think, today, I feel that I’m back,” Mertz said. “It’s over a minute (personal best) for this year.”
Mertz said the stars seemed to be aligned throughout the past week. In a hilly run at New Germany State Park, he “felt strong” and attacked each hill. Just two weeks earlier in that same workout, “I stopped after the first hill.”

In the women’s race, Bridges was thrown off by the unseasonably cool temperatures at race time, which dipped below 60 degrees. Temperatures have been so dauntingly hot and humid lately that she has kept her daily runs to about three or for miles at a time.

The veteran runner likely could have gone for at least an easy 10K on Saturday, as she outdistanced second-place Rebekah McBride, 16, of Fort Ashby, W.Va. McBride finished in 21:58 while Allison Tappe, 17, of Ridgeley, was third in 22:27.

“They said it wasn’t hilly and it really wasn’t,” Bridges said, noting only a gradual incline in mile two and another just a few hundred meters before the finish line.
Bridges said she went too fast at the start of the race.

“At the very end, I wished I had more (energy),” Bridges said, “but you can’t wish for more.”
Crystal Yoder, race director, was just happy Bridges and the other 67 runners, 19 runners and a handful of quarter-mile fun runners participated in the race. The number of athletes more than doubled last year’s total of 34 official finishers.

Yoder knew that race proceeds, which are donated to the Lance Armstrong Foundation, would be higher than in 2007. The race had 43 runners signed up before race day.
“It was a much better turnout,” said Yoder, a physical therapy assistant at Progressive Physical Therapy and Sports Medical Clinic.

Last year’s race competed with the high school Bull Run Invitational during the high school cross country season. This year, with an earlier race date, there were 23 runners range in age between 13 and 17.