There were two near certainties last Saturday at the Joe-Zilla 5-Miler, the final event of the three-race Trailzilla Trail Run Series at Sandy Bottom Nature Park in Hampton, organized and timed by the Peninsula Track Club.
After winning the first two races in the series, Jim Highsmith, 39, of Newport News, would be crowned the series champion for the men. And after easily winning the first two races for the women, Svetlana Goncharova, 24, of Williamsburg would become the female champion.
But sports don’t always go according to form. As the cliché goes, “That’s why they play the game.”
The popular Trailzilla Series has been held most years for several decades (going back to at least 2003), originally started by Rhonda Venable (past PTC president) and her husband Dave to benefit the Bethel High School cross country team (where Rhonda coached).
The most recent race directors have been Thea Ganoe and Pete Navin of the PTC. The first two races are held on Tuesday evenings in June, and are a 5K and a 4-miler. The finale is held the second Saturday in July, and is a 5-miler. The JoeZilla name comes from long-time PTC president Joe Harney, who died in July 2017. The final race he attended was the Trailzilla race that year.
Highsmith won the first race in the series, the June 14 Trailzilla Fast 5K (so named because it’s actually around a 3.0-mile distance, therefore “faster” than the standard 3.1-mile 5K distance). His time was 18:17, with Frank Leone, 37, of Newport News second (18:45), followed by Nat Blaesser, 37, of Yorktown (19:32) and Kelly Garner, 43, of Newport News (19:39).
Highsmith won again on June 28, the Trailzilla Feel Good 4-Miler (again so named because the distance is actually between 3.8 and 3.9 miles, so runners “feel good” about their times). The race uses a slightly extended version of the USATF-certified 3.75-mile course used for the Sandy Bottom 24 Hour Run in April.
The final JoeZilla race also is slightly short, about 4.9 miles, instead of an exact five miles. At the 4-miler, Highsmith won in 23:31, with Timothy Suhr, 51, of Williamsburg second (23:58), Leone third (24:29) and Garner fourth (24:46).
The point scoring for the Trailzilla series is done by place, so Highsmith had two points after the first two races, Leone was second with five points and Garner third with eight points. For Leone to upset Highsmith and win the Trailzilla series, he’d have to finish four places ahead at JoeZilla, an unlikely scenario considering the results from the first two races.
Once Highsmith showed up race morning last Saturday, it was considered a done deal that he’d win the race and the series.
But disaster struck in the form of his hamstring, an all-too-familiar occurrence to local elite road racers. Highsmith emailed, “I love running at Sandy Bottom, and I felt very strong going into the summer Trailzilla Series. I had just started adding a second speed day into my weekly routine, Tuesdays and Thursdays with [training partner] Rob Lefkowicz. This past Thursday’s session at the CNU track we did 16 x 100-meter striders and on the 12th one I tweaked my left hamstring. I would have normally taken the next week off, but with the Trailzilla summer series on the line, I thought I’d give the 5 mile a try. I knew I had a [series] lead on Frank and was just planning on hanging with him as long as I could. I tried my best to stay with Frank but at mile one the hamstring was re-aggravated. So I had to decide between heading back with a DNF, or sucking it up and finishing the series by jogging in…I finished.” But his finish was 23rd place overall (in 42:47) and the series was lost.
Meanwhile Joshua Willard, 26, of Hampton won the 5-miler in 31:21, followed by Leone (31:37), Garner (33:00) and Kyle Aulenbach, 45, of Yorktown (33:36).
For the series awards (Trailzilla drinking glasses), the top three men were Leone, Garner and Aulenbach.
Highsmith has been one of the fastest runners on the Peninsula for 25 years, starting in 1997 at Menchville High (class of 2001). His high school PRs were 52.4 (400 meters), 1:59.7 (800 meters), 4:27 (mile), 9:42 (two mile, twice Peninsula District champion) and 15:57 (5K cross country). Next was Christopher Newport University (class of 2005), where he set the then-school record in the 3,000-meter steeplechase (9:44) to go with PRs of 15:25 (5,000 meters), 33:54 (10,000 meters) and 25:42 (8K cross country, an NCAA national championship qualifier for D3). He’s been running PTC races since 1999, with his favorites the Smart Smiles 5K at Mariner’s Museum in August and the Menchville Winter Chill 5K in January.
In contrast, Leone had a very modest high school and college running career. At Bishop McDevitt High in Wyncote, Pa. (Philadelphia suburbs) he ran cross country for three years (1999-2001). Leone emailed, “My 5K times were typically between 21 and 23 minutes, which put me amongst my team’s slower runners. My high school 5K PR was 20:02, tantalizing close to sub-20:00. I ran track in the spring too, but I was never fast and can’t remember my lackluster times. I kept running for general fitness during my freshman year at college, but never joined any running team or club, and I didn’t sign up for any races. With time, I ran less and less until, during my sophomore year at college, I stopped running altogether.”
His running career resumed in 2016, when his wife Sara ran a workplace 5K. “After cheering her on at the race, I wanted to give it a try too. So, after not having run with any regularity for 14 years and maybe two or three short runs as training, I finished the race [the next year] in 26:09. I had fun, felt accomplished, and I decided I wanted to keep it up. The next spring, I ran the Broad Street Run (10 Miler) in Philadelphia in 1:08:24, and I ran the same workplace 5K in 19:42, beating my high school PR.”
Fast forward to this past year, where Leone set his 5K PR last October, running an 18:06 (and beating Highsmith by 26 seconds) at the Hilton 5K in Newport News. He’s also turned to longer events, running the Newport News One City Marathon in 2018, finishing in 3:12:13, and now with a marathon PR of 3:04:37. He’s only run four official marathons, but has 24 races now at the marathon distance or longer.
The highlight of his ultramarathon career was winning April’s 24 Hour Run at Sandy Bottom with a total of 112.75 miles. He had placed fifth last October at the Noland Trail 50K, was third at the Freight Train 100K in December and was first at the Dogwood Ultramarathon in March (80.25 miles), and seventh at the Night Train 50K in June. A main focus for Leone this year will be the PTC Grand Prix, for which the JoeZilla 5-Miler was the fifth of 11 Grand Prix races for 2022.
In contrast to Leone and Highsmith for the men, the Trailzilla series win by Goncharova was routine, especially when twice runner-up Megan Schulze (a teammate of Highsmith’s at Menchville High, as Megan Syrett, class of 2000) did not show up to run the JoeZilla race.
Goncharova won the first Trailzilla race in 20:53, followed by Schulze, 39, of Newport News (22:32), Karen Sanzo, 45, of Hampton (23:18) and Jessica Anderson, 40, of Williamsburg (23:36).
Goncharova again easily won the 4-miler with a time of 26:39, more than two minutes ahead of Schulze (28:58), with Julia Brown, 30, of Gloucester Point a couple minutes further back in 30:47.
And at JoeZilla, Goncharova again was a runaway winner, finishing in 35:25, almost four minutes ahead of Sanzo (39:18), followed by Libby Miles, 20, of Yorktown (40:46) and Sheila Scotti, 38, of Newport News (41:03).
For the Trailzilla Series, the top three female overall award winners were Goncharova, Julia Brown and Ashley Bruce, 28, of Grafton. Goncharova emailed, “I feel awesome after I finished 3 races and I won them. I really enjoyed the course. I think this my best runs than other races.”
The Trailzilla Series also gave series awards in 10-year age groups. They went to Damian Hoffman, 43, of Hampton (men 40-49), David Anderson, 52, of Williamsburg (50-59), Walt Bruce, 60, of Yorktown (60-69) and Jim Duffy, 70, of Poquoson (70-and-over).
For the women, the series age group award winners were Brandy Bergenstock, 47, of Newport News (women 40-49), Jennifer Cornette, 51, of Norfolk (50-59), Mary Gibbs, 63, of Poquoson (60-69) and Patricia Travis, 71, of Williamsburg (70-and-over).
The race walker award series winners were Rick Webb, 64, of Yorktown (men) and Gilda Cortez, 66, of Yorktown (women).
The next PTC summer series will be another three-race series, the PTC Summer Fun Run Series, on three consecutive Tuesday evenings (6:30 p.m. start times), starting with the Tom Ray 5-Mile Prediction Run at Newport News Park (Aug. 2), the Lake Matoaka Trail Challenge 4.3-Miler (Aug. 9) and the Swamp Bridge 5K back at Newport News Park (Aug. 16). For details, visit the PTC website at peninsulatrackclub.com.
Rick Platt is president of Colonial Road Runners.
