suns along the Mohawk

lead runners on Washington Avenue

 First photo: Stockade-athon leaders, on Washington Ave., approach Front Street & Cucumber Alley in Schenectady’s Stockade Historic District. Below is a detail from the photo on the right:

– above: Kip Tisia [Bib 1] sets the pace, with Yonas Mebrahtu a step behind, through the Stockade; right behind them are Sam Morse [Bib 2] and Thomas Young [Bib 13], with Eric MacKnight [Bib 4] next. Mebrahtu won, with MacKnight 2nd, Morse 3rd, Young 4th, and Tisia in 8th –

– click on a photo for a larger version –

  You will find over 200 photos in this posting taken during the Stockade-segment of the 2015 Stockade-athon, with the photos presented in three Slideshows. As noted last year, when the course was changed to have the Race start and finish downtown rather than at Central Park, the first runners now enter the Stockade only three minutes after the start of the Race. That makes for a far less enjoyable experience for those living in the Stockade, which had always been the halfway point of the Race.

With the new Downtown Course, the entire cohort of runners passes by any one Stockade location in 8 minutes, at a rate of two hundred runners a minute. In addition, they no longer pass the Circle with Lawrence the Indian, the heart of the Stockade, where neighbors have for years gathered to watch, cheer, and ring bells. Watching and taking pictures of such a mass of humanity is a frustrating experience. I guess we were spoiled. I certainly was as a photographer hoping to capture as many of the participants as possible for inclusion in this weblog, which refuses to focus solely on the front-runners and likely victors. Nonetheless, I hope you will enjoy the images, and perhaps locate yourself or loved ones. See our Stockade-athon Category for links to prior coverage, and see the Schenectady Gazette article “40th Stockade-athon packed with contenders” (by Mike MacAdam, Nov. 8, 2015), for information about this Race, and its 40-year history.

. . . share this posting with this short URL: http://tinyurl.com/2015Stockadeathon

update: The Daily Gazette has reported that “Hannah Davidson of Saratoga Springs ran an impressive 51:19 to win the women’s 15k Stockade-athon this morning.” [The Gazette has a great photo of Hannah crossing the finish line.]  And,  “Yonas Mebrahtu of Flagstaff, Ariz., won the 40th edition of the Stockade-athon on the men’s side in 46:10”.

RESULTS: The Gazette has also posted this link with the results from the Albany Running Exchange.

Yonas Mebrahtu, in yellow [snapshot from video]

 Top Five Men: (1) Yonas Mebrahtu [Bib 37] in 46:10; (2) Eric Macknight [Bib 4]; (3) Sam Morse [Bib 2]; (4) Thomas Young [Bib 13]; John Busque [Bib 7]

Hannah in yellow [from video]

Top Five Women: (1) Hannah Davidson [Bib 14] in 51:19; (2) Salome Kosgei [Bib 28] in 52:17;  (3) Jodie Robertson [Bib 15]; (4) Karen Bertasso [18]; (5) Katie O’Regan [Bib 16]

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Noon Update – Slideshow No. 1: The following Slideshow contains about 60 photos taken in the 7 or 8 minutes it took for the Stockade-athon to race through a few blocks of the Stockade neighborhood and across Riverside Park. The photos appear in the order they were taken.

For a larger version of any image, pause the Slideshow on that image and right click on it; then choose “View Image” or “Open Image in New Tab”.

Photos may be used for any non-commercial purpose without further permission from the editor of this website, David Giacalone, the photographer. If posted online, please credit “suns along the Mohawk” and David Giacalone, with a link to this posting.

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SLIDESHOW No. 2

Here’s a few dozen additional photos taken in Riverside Park, right along the Mohawk River, while the Stockade-athon runners sped or ambled by. I hope you enjoy seeing the faces, shapes and colors. As mentioned above, for a larger version of any image, pause the Slideshow on that image and right click on it; then choose “View Image” or “Open Image in New Tab”.

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TUESDAY NIGHT ADDITION – Slideshow No. 3: (update on Nov. 10 & 12, 2015): The Good News: A stationary camera, which I had originally aimed at the intersection of Washington Avenue with Front Street and Cucumber Alley, captured the entire Stockade-athon contingent, from lead car to trail car. The Bad News: Unfortunately, the camera was accidentally bumped, so that it was focused the entire time at a point higher and further up Washington Avenue, yielding a disappointing 8 minutes of video (with full bodies seen only in a small section of the screen). The Compromise: To salvage what I could from the resulting movie, I have culled and cropped individual snapshot scenes from the video, posting 39 images in the Third Slideshow immediately below on Tuesday night, plus another 25 photos on Thursday evening, Nov. 12, for a total of 64 images.

 Most pictures are from the first two minutes of runners passing by Cucumber Alley, but many of them are taken from the middle and end of the 8-minute video. I apologize for the low resolution and frequent blurriness of the images, which consist of relatively small details from a much larger video frame. Also, because relatively few Bib numbers are visible or legible, I am only able to identify a small percentage of the runners. I’m hoping many visitors to this site will nonetheless enjoy seeing themselves, friends, family members, or team-mates as they approach historic Cucumber Alley. You can always the runner was so fast [s]he was just a blur.

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Bonus Section: Where’s Katie O’Regan? [Katie Ó Riagáin] Katie O’Regan came in fifth in the Women’s Division this year, and that’s three times in a row in the top five. Because Katie was kind enough to share this posting on her Facebook Page, and she is pictured in both our 2013 posting and 2014 posting, I made a special effort to find a useable image of her on the video taken at Cucumber Alley. Unfortunately, that task was harder than you might think, given the limits of the video itself and her diminutive size. [Katie was not in a pink jersey this year. Hers was a very light (almost white) yellow.] I ended up making this collage to prove the point; click on it for a larger version:

. . pre-race posting:

 WELCOME & BEST WISHES to the Stockade-athon 2015 runners. Later today you will find scores of photos as the Race traverses the Schenectady Stockade neighborhood and Riverside Park, plus results.

Until then, see our Stockade-athon Category for links to prior coverage, and see the Schenectady Gazette article “40th Stockade-athon packed with contenders” (by Mike MacAdam, Nov. 8, 2015), for information about this Race, and its 40-year history.