CAPE ELIZABETH – Josh Nemzer understands. Really, he does.
The last thing an exhausted runner wants to face after completing a 6.2-mile race on an August morning is The Hill.
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And yet that’s where finishers of the Beach to Beacon 10K road race are funneled — up a steep grassy hill overlooking the Portland Head Light and Casco Bay.
“We hear that often,” said Nemzer, 54, whose title of senior event director for Dave McGillivray Sports Enterprises (DMSE) means he orchestrates much of the logistics for the event, celebrating its 15th running Saturday.
Nemzer spoke Tuesday from atop that hill, beneath a peaked white tent and a glorious blue sky, one day before the expected arrival of McGillivray, the race director since the 1998 inception.
“If we allowed (the runners) to stop at the finish line, they’d basically be running into each other,” Nemzer said. “We’d see Keystone Kops magnified to the 6,000th level.”
The folks from DMSE are like the Keystone Kops, only the exact opposite. In four days, working within the parameters of a public park attracting thousands of tourists and on the roads of a busy seaside town, they manage to assemble all the fencing, bleachers, signs and tents the race requires.
And then, with hardly anyone noticing, they break it all down in about four hours.
“We try to respect the beauty of what each and every runner has done in accomplishing those 6.2 miles,” Nemzer said. “So we really try hard not to touch anything until everybody has finished their needs of that part of the course.”
Every year, organizers discuss what went right, what went wrong, and how things can improve. The Hill became a necessary off-shoot — Nemzer calls it bleeding the system — of expanding the number of participants. The first year saw 2,408 runners reach Fort Williams. More than twice that amount (5,876) finished last year’s race.
“Here we are 15 years later with a product that probably started darn good and now we’re getting up there,” said Nemzer, raising a hand to eye level, “but we still need to examine the space above where we are because we want to continually improve it.”
As lean and fit as you might expect from someone who has climbed all 48 of the 4,000-foot peaks of New Hampshire, Nemzer has been McGillivray’s right-hand man at Beach to Beacon since 1999. Their friendship goes back three decades, to the 1982 Bay State Triathlon in Medford, Mass., where Nemzer was competing and McGillivray was directing.
“Everybody who competes in an event should help manage an event,” McGillivray told the assembled athletes. “You’ll get a better appreciation for it.”
Nemzer took the message to heart, started volunteering and eventually joined DMSE, for which he also directs the Mt. Washington road race. He and his wife, Rhea, have two grown children. Alissa, 23, will run Saturday and Aaron, 21, works with Josh on the setup crew that rolled into Cape Elizabeth on Tuesday and began assembling skeletons for some of the approximately 25 tents used for the race.
“We grow in size as we get closer to race day,” said Nemzer, from an advance guard of 15 on Tuesday to about 30 on Wednesday to 45-50 from Thursday through Saturday. The DMSE team, he is quick to point out, is bolstered by 600 race volunteers as well as town officials and public works employees.
Aside from having to cancel a Friday night Kids Fun Run one year because of weather, the race has gone off largely without a hitch.
“We’ve undergone our share of ferocious thunderstorms the night before, necessitating a reset of fencing and signage,” Nemzer said. “I just chalk those up to Mother Nature. Beyond that, whatever has gone awry, we’ve noticed and nobody else has.”
As for climbing that hill after conquering the rest of the course, consider it an opportunity to cool down and lower your heart rate. Nemzer called it part of the fabric of the race, similar to the stroll down Boylston Street after the Boston Marathon.
Besides, he said, “How can you beat the view once you’re at the top?”
Staff Writer Glenn Jordan can be contacted at 791-6425 or at:
gjordan@pressherald.com
Twitter: GlennJordanPPH
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