Cherry Blossom

Here is Tilahun Regassa, 20, waving to the crowd as he surged away from the field at last summer's Falmouth Road Race. The year's fastest half marathoner (he ran 59:17 in January) won last weekend's Crescent City Classic 10K in New Orleans in 28:03, and he came to today's Cherry Blossom Ten Mile Run in D.C. to compete for a winning sum of $7,500.

What a race! A pack of nearly a dozen pros from Kenya and Ethiopia set the early pace. But Ethiopian favorites, Regassa and Lelisa Desisa, 20, and Kenya's John Korir, 34 and a three-time winner, and Stephen Tum, 24, broke free (running 4:30 miles); and as they came into view from the side of the road, say 50 meters from the finish line, we saw the two Ethiopians and Tum bunched up, sprinting madly.

Tum clearly nipped Desisa at the line, but Desisa filed a protest claiming that Tum had somehow impeded his last strides. Tum nonetheless got the win; Regassa took third (and will consequently take home $5,000 less in prize money).

Tum's time was 45:43, and as Jim Hage's article in The Washington Post notes (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/11/AR2010041103550.html), that's the race's second fastest time in its 38 years. (The course record, 45:38, which was set in 1995 by Ismael Kirui, was also a world record at the time.)

For the women, last weekend's Crescent City Classic winner was indeed able to earn the top prize. Lineth Chepkurui, 23, simply annihilated the field, running by herself to win for the third straight year in 51:51.

A four-time winner ('78-'81), Bill Rodgers, who had surgery for prostate cancer in 2008, could be seen running straight through the finish, his hair bobbing up and down as he continued on through a mass of finishers walking through the finisher's chute. There was Boston Bill, running on toward the White House like he had a few more miles to put in.

Unbelievably, another legend, Joan Samuelson, 52, shattered yet another age group record with her time of 60:52, which was good for 18th. (She started with the open men rather than the elite women, who started 10 minutes before everyone else, and could be seen running well under 6-minute pace with a pack of men around mile 2, as the runners came off the Memorial Bridge and passed behind the Lincoln monument.)

GRC put up a fine showing. Jake Klim led the way for us, finishing 22nd in 50:56 for a PR. He was the fourth American, and when you consider that Cherry Blossom's elite field (you need sub 48 to get in) contained 22, finishing where he did is pretty darn impressive. There should be more about our team's efforts at our blog -- http://www.georgetownrunningcompany.blogspot.com/ -- in the coming days, and Peter Silverman (aka Towpath) has produced this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9A9YsQfvWg