Annapolis Striders finish ninth at RRCA 10-Mile Club Challenge

For the road racer, no greater local challenge for bragging rights can be found than the Maryland/D.C. Road Runners Club of America 10-Mile Club Challenge which was held Feb. 28 in the hills of Columbia.

The RRCA Club Challenge is an opportunity for all RRCA running clubs in Maryland and Washington, D.C. to compete over the 10-mile distance and crown winners for the year.

The course is the real challenge, with deceptive downhills over the first few miles and then into the village of Owen Brown. That is where the course sets out to separate the wheat from the chaff with long grinding hills creating a gap between the lead runners from the peloton.

After the course finishes its body blows, competitors find out where they stand among the best the running clubs the area has to offer. Many a local club runner has gone out to Columbia and realized “I’m not as fast as I thought.”

Race day presented nice weather for the last day of February for the 564 finishers — down somewhat from the pre-COVID last edition of 2020. Impressively, 64 runners cracked the one hour mark with Nathaniel Dordai of Columbia just missing it by 10 seconds.

Georgetown Running Club swept the male and female overall team wins, although interestingly enough the Baltimore Road Runners Club and the Howard County Striders had the fastest male and female runners.

The Annapolis Striders, sporting identical team jerseys, finished ninth out of 14 clubs, an improvement over the 2020 edition. Meanwhile, with Kent Island Running Club came in 13th, while the Eastern Shore Running Club was 14th.

Gene Severtson led the Annapolis Striders with an impressive time of 59:02 (45th overall), while Nicole Dawson led the club’s females in 1:08:13 (92nd overall). Severtson and Dawson repeated their firsts for the Striders from 2020.

Congratulations to all our local runners for taking on the hills of Columbia and giving their best on race day.