The World's Longest Beach Run - 35 Miles on the Beach
from Atlantic Beach south to the Jetty at
the St Augustine Inlet. Weather was cool and overcast, with a slight wind
that came from the south by the end of the race. The conditions at the
start were better than usual, though the race began near high tide. The J2J race started
at 9:00am, close to high tide, yet the surface was relatively flat even
from the beginning. While beach surface conditions were
improving during the day, the beach, as always, provided varying
challenges throughout the race. As is normal, winter storms had changed
portions of the beach, leaving some flatter than usual and some with more
cocina shells. Runners reported seeing many starfish, conch shells, sand
dollars, and other unusual sea creatures all along the course. In some
areas, erosion had eaten away at the dunes near some homes, leaving small
"cliffs" from the water to the houses above.
In this third year that
included relay teams, runners on teams won the first five finishing
positions, showing the strength of teamwork in this long distance race.
Times for many teams and individual runners showed faster times in 2008,
in spite of the slight headwind. Team Tenacious Turtles improved their own
finish time by a whopping 12 minutes!
After leading for much of the first half of the race, Team Tenacious
Turtles was passed by Team Brew Crew, who headed to a first
place finish in 4:20:25, an improvement of about 10 minutes over last
year's first finishers. Running steadily from
start to finish, Chris Maples was the first solo
runner to finish, in a time of 5:31:37 -- once again, a finish almost 10
minutes faster than last year's 5:40:10 solo first place. Lorna Brown was
the first solo woman runner to finish, and was also third solo overall in
a time of 6:11:10, followed by Loretta Haycook in 6:21:20, which is almost
10 minutes better than her fastest previous J2J.
For the first time, a BIKE Division was added to J2J,
with three cyclists at the starting line. This year, the 35 miles of beach
was so challenging on a bike that one of the cyclists decided to drop out
at about the halfway point at Mickler's Landing. Even by the first
checkpoint, some of the Teams were ahead of some of the bikes in the cyclo-cross
type conditions, in which the riders spent some of their time pushing
their bikes when they encountered soft sections on the beach. At other
times, they were rolling well, especially as the tide was getting lower
throughout the day. After a challenging day in and out of the saddle, the
Bike Division was won by Andy Stenson, by about 20 minutes over his
teammate, Clark Schaffer, who announced that he was already planning to
return to take on the Jetty-2-Jetty Ultra in 2009.
If
you or your support crew have digital photos, please
email them to us and we will post some of them on this page with the results
below.