Locals win Great Race titles
As for Edinger, he set a 10K personal record in his first race of this season — “a rust-buster,” he called it — and it certainly felt better than last year, when he was coming off Achilles tendinitis in both heels. The only worry for him Sunday was if his stomach would hold up for the duration of the trek that began at Frick Park in Squirrel Hill.
“You just push through, and if you throw up, you throw up,” he said.
And did he, well, you know?
“No,” he said with a laugh. “If I was pushed to the end, I might’ve had to.”
Instead, he was able to cruise on home.
But while Edinger is a native relocated to the Buckeye State, Jennifer Bigham is an Ohioan who now calls Pittsburgh home.
And she also can call herself the 2016 women’s 10K champion.
It was a moment long in the making for Bigham, 35, who lives in Squirrel Hill with her husband and three young children. She simply walked about a half-mile from her home to the starting line, and 34:24 later, she added a Great Race firstplace finish to her resume.
“I just went out hard, and the miles were clicking by,” said Bigham, who finished 45 seconds before friend and training partner Laura Harnish, 29, of Highland Park. “Sometimes that happens, sometimes it doesn’t.”
Bigham, who moved here three years ago, finished second in 2014 and 11th in 2015, but last year she ran while pregnant with her son who’s now 6 months old. But in a way, she can thank her middle child, Wells, for this victory.
Three years ago, Bigham was standing under the banner for the Great Race starting line a couple of days before the event when her water broke.
“I always knew, this is my race,” she said with a laugh. “I had to win someday.”
While Edinger and Bigham shared a common triumph, their plans for the rest of a sunny Sunday were vastly different. Bigham still had 8 or 9 more miles to finish off her training schedule for the day, but she at least knocked out some of that on a run from Downtown to Lawrenceville to meet her family at a Thai food spot for lunch.
Edinger, with a couple of 140-mile weeks of preparation behind him, was done for the day. He headed straight from the awards ceremony to the North Shore to tailgate with friends and coaches for the Pirates’ 1:35 p.m. game against the Washington Nationals.
“It’ll be a fun day,” Edinger said. “And it’s perfect weather.”
In the 5K (3.1 miles) portion of the great race, 2016 was a repeat of 2013. Pittsburgher Caleb Muller won with a time of 14:42, and Larissa Park, a Mt. Lebanon native who now lives in Marblehead, Mass., took first place among women in 17:06. Muller, 25, and Park, 36, also won the 5K three years ago.
The husband-wife duo of Clay and Lisa Burnett, from Chagrin Falls, Ohio, who swept first place in the 5K a year ago, had to settle for double silver this time. Clay finished four seconds behind Muller, while Lisa came in 23 seconds behind Park seven months after giving birth to the couple’s second child.