© 2024 Maine Public | Registered 501(c)(3) EIN: 22-3171529
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Scroll down to see all available streams.

Thousands Turn Out for Beach to Beacon

Jennifer Rooks

More than 6,000 runners and volunteers took part in the annual TD Beach to Beacon 10K road race in Cape Elizabeth Saturday.

Kenyan distance runner BedanKaroki was first to cross the finish line with a time of  27 minutes, 37 seconds.  The best women's time was turned in by Britain's Gemma Steel  who finished with a time of 31 minutes, 28 seconds. Maine's Ben True came in third overall behind Stephen Kosgei Kibet of Kenya.

 

Runners aren't the only ones to look forward to Maine's largest road race.  
"We've been coming here for several years," says Alan Bing of Kittery. While Bing says his wife - who is in the race- does the running, he's content to man a water stand at mile five, which can be hard work too.

"There's probably half an hour or 45 minutes where it's just totally full of runners." says Bing. "They all want water- or most of them do- and so we help them out." But Bing says he has noticed that the elite runners like Karoki and True never stop for water.
 

Credit Jennifer Rooks
Sharon Wilke and Greta Frankwicz hold up a sign for Emmanuel Bett; Frankwicz's family hosted the elite Kenyan runner this year.

  The six point two mile course runs from Crescent Beach to Portland Headlight.  It's Maine's biggest road race, founded by Maine native Joan Benoit Samuelson, who twice won the Boston Marathon and who also won the first-ever women's Olympic marathon in 1984 in Los Angeles.