By David Yon
Lincoln High School runners showed up in force at the 2001 Prefontaine 5K and Scott Poindexter and Allie Hunter ran away with the race titles. Scott ran with Wade Brett for the first two miles before taking control of the race and winning in 19:37, continuing his outstanding senior season for Lincoln Coach Perry Shaw. Wade finished second in 19:46, the only other runner under 20:00. Allie was a solid winner over Sydney Mondragon coasting through to a 22:17, while Sydney finished in 23:08. Fran McLean took the masters title with a 26:21 for the women; while Tim Unger finished third overall to take the male masters top spot with a 20:28.
First year race director Jeff Nielson figured out the right formula for putting on this race. Start out by calling Bill Lott and Ray Hanlon for the finish line, Lucy Thomas for registration and Tommy Thomas for water table. Beg last year’s race director, Jeff Doherty to show with stress reducing beverages (and maybe lots of helpful advice). Then place an order upstairs for great fall weather, throw in a lot of hard work and sprinkle in a few downed trees, lots of ankle-sucking sand and any other obstacle you could think up to conjure up the real spirit of Prefontaine. Finally, order a great looking long-sleeve shirt from Dave Watson. Stir it all together with lots of worrying, including waking up at 3:00 in the morning completely convinced that you forgot to line up the volunteers for the bike part of the race (of course that was fine, since the bike portion is not until next weekend). The result Saturday morning was a top-notch performance in Jeff Nielsen’s debut at directing this race. So good in fact that the 154 finishers of this race are sure to put it on their list of races to run next year. It is great to know that this GWTC treasure is in good hands.