PORTLAND – She hails from Kenya. He comes from Caribou.
On a damp and drizzly Sunday morning, Cynthia Jerob and Spencer McElwain came away winners of the 21st Maine Half Marathon.
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Jerob, 18, set a course record with a time of 1 hour, 16 minutes and 23 seconds over the 13.1-mile course that begins and ends near Portland’s Back Cove. It turns around on Route 88 in Falmouth not long after the road dips, then rises over the creek that flows into Mussel Cove.
Runner-up Kristin Barry, 38, of Scarborough was the previous record-holder. She finished in 1:19:08, faster than her winning time of a year ago but shy of the 1:17:53 standard she set in 2009.
Because Jerob broke 1:17, she earned a $500 bonus to go with her first-place prize of $200.
That money is likely to go to her family in Kenya, according to Edward Little High cross country coach Dan Campbell, who provides a home and a training base in Auburn for Jerob and two other Kenyan runners.
“I think her parents sold cows to get her here,” Campbell said. “So I know she’s very invested in sending some of her winnings home.”
Jerob came to Minnesota in April, then moved to New Mexico before winding up in Maine. She said she plans to return to Kenya in December because “I can’t train when it’s snowing.”
McElwain, a 2008 graduate of Caribou High who earned a degree in mechanical engineering in the spring from the University of Maine, knows all about training in snow. So Sunday’s rain didn’t faze him in the least.
“The weather was fine,” he said. “It’s much colder in Caribou.”
McElwain caught up with marathon leaders Dan Vassallo — who eventually won that race in a course-record 2:21:12 — and Rob Gomez about a mile before the half marathoners (and those who registered for the marathon but opted instead for the half) turned for the return jaunt to Portland.
Turning with him were two older UMaine graduates, Adam Goode of Bangor and Kirby Davis of Falmouth. Davis wasn’t in the race; he was pacing Goode, 29, and left the course before the finish.
Midway into Mile 11, McElwain surged up an incline to take the lead for good.
“I pushed up the hill and Adam didn’t go with me,” McElwain said. “I just kind of cruised from there.”
McElwain crossed the line in 1:10:23 with Goode arriving 43 seconds later. Chris Kibler, 22, of Bath was third in 1:14:12 and Bowdoin College senior Anders Samuelson, 22, of Freeport fourth in 1:15:28.
After waiting behind the finish line to congratulate Vassallo, a 2007 Colby College graduate, McElwain ran back on the course to accompany his girlfriend, Kate Nickerson, over the final four miles of her first marathon.
Now living in Old Town as he pursues a business administration masters at UMaine, McElwain said he’s still getting used to training without team support. This was his first attempt at a race longer than 10 miles.
“Once I lose my fast-twitch muscles, maybe I’ll move up to the marathon,” he said. “But I think I’m going to stick to the half for a couple of years.”
MIKE BROOKS, 67, of Danville and Ron Paquette, 71, of Albion have run dozens of marathons, but the sight that greeted them on Morton Road in Yarmouth near Mile 13 was a first.
Six Belted Galloways had wandered down a driveway and onto the course.
“We gave them the right of way,” said Brooks, one of the nearly 100 folks who left at 6 a.m. because they expected to be on the marathon course for about six hours or more.
Brooks and Paquette ran alongside the cattle — “Them on the left, us on the right,” Brooks said — for about 200 feet before the animals stopped.
Stopped, Brooks said, just after he had warned them, “There’s a McDonald’s ahead. You’d better watch out.”
After finishing, Paquette and Brooks jokingly admonished the race director, Howard Spear, for doing a lousy job with traffic control. Brooks said the cows came on the course not long after the three lead men — Vassallo, Gomez and Moninda Marube, who also lives with Campbell in Auburn — had passed.
“They were beautiful-looking animals,” Brooks said, “but they seemed nervous.”
ELIZA TIBBITS, 23, of Old Town was the women’s marathon winner in 3:03:50. She caught the marathon bug while at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, where a Patriots Day tradition is cheering on runners in the Boston Marathon.
“That was the best part, almost, of being at Wellesley,” she said.
DAVE JACKIEWIECZ, 31, of Portland fashioned an old life vest, three swimming noodles and yards of brown fleece into a moose costume he wore for the half marathon. In other races, he has dressed as a lighthouse and a beer bottle.
TWENTY-EIGHT military runners in Afghanistan started early Sunday morning and completed a marathon relay.
Staff Writer Glenn Jordan can be contacted at 791-6425 or at:
gjordan@pressherald.com
Twitter: GlennJordanPPH
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