Marnell Runs to the Clouds

There's only one hill, but it's 7.6 miles up the side of a mountain. Ithaca-area runners think our landscape has some brutal bumps to scale, but Buffalo Street, Turkey Hill and Mt. Pleasant are simply for sissies. Want to know what you're made of? Enter the Mount Washington Road Race held each June in Pinkham Notch, N.H.P

"It's the most amazing thing I've ever seen," said Locke's Lorrie Marnell, our resident mountain goat who has run the race three times. "I said this year would be my last year, but after the race I decided I have to go back. What else would you want to do?"

Nicknamed the "Run to the Clouds," which this year celebrated its 40th anniversary, the Mount Washington Road Race requires runners to climb a 7.6-mile uphill course on an auto road, which rises 4, 650 vertical feet, and ascends an 11 percent grade to the 6, 288-foot summit of New Hampshire's most temperamental and unpredictable peak.

"This is a race for someone who wants to do something different, appreciates nature, and wants to work hard," said Marnell, the president of the Finger Lakes Runners Club. "It's not a picnic! It's hard, but it's over in one hour and 40 minutes."

Exactly one hour, 38 minutes, 23 seconds for the 39-year-old Marnell, who placed 20th among all females and seventh among women ages 35-39. Daniel Kihara of Kenya, the defending champion, was the first among 1,000 runners to reach the finish line, in 59:24. Kenya's Alice Muriithi, who resides in Westchester, Pa., won the women's race in 1:17:26.

Jacqueline Gareau, the only person -- male or female -- to win both the Boston Marathon and the Mount Washington Road Race, was the top female masters age-graded performer (1:18:43). She summed up the experience for everyone: "This race just goes on and on, you know? It just doesn't end."

On race day, temperatures were in the mid-70s at the base of the mountain, and 56 degrees on the summit. As the race progressed, runners encountered 50-foot visibility and wind gust of 50 mph.

"You'd round a bend, and wow!, the gusts would just blast you," Marnell said. "It also went from clear to fog real quickly." But when she could see, the views were breathtaking.

"The views are amazing. The vegetation changes, the trees are full and tall, then become shorter and thinner as we ascend," said Marnell, who trains by running the vertically-challenging God's Country Marathon, Ithaca's hills and a two-mile ascent in Fillmore Glen State Park. "There's flowers which grow along the way that grow no other place in the world. Then eventually, there's nothing but rock."

The secret to success at Mount Washington is a run/walk system. No one but the Kenyans could race to the summit without a break.

"The only flat section is at the bottom for about 400 meters. The road is paved, with trees on both sides," Marnell said." The road winds all the way -- back and forth, across the mountain. Some of the road is paved, and some is gravel and dirt. Everybody walks; there's no point in running the entire way, because you can walk faster on some of the steep sections.

"I don't have a system; I do what I feel," she said. "I run enough hills to know when I should be walking."

The steepest part is the final 15 feet to the peak's finish line, which you can't see until you're 10 feet away from it. Time to celebrate, but the top of Mount Washington, and its brutal climatic conditions, is not a place to throw a post-race party. Runners usually hurry to the summit lodge and change into warm clothes, which they've carried around their waist or are provided by friends waiting at the summit.

Now, how to get back down to the big bash at the bottom?

"Some people run down, and some people car pool," said Marnell, a mother of four. "You're given a pull tag,and any driver who takes three other runners back down, can go back up for free that day. Otherwise, it costs $10 per car, plus $5 for each person in the car."

If you want to go, know that you must plan ahead because Mount Washington fills up fast. It's a lottery system tap dance, which begins by sending a request for an entry, along with a self-addressed, stamped envelope, postmarked by a designated date in the early spring. The 2000 entry fee was $20, and that included a beautiful bragging rights T-shirt, and a delicious post-race pasta dinner.

For information, click on their website at www.coolrunning.com/mtwashington/. Or write Granite State Race Services, Bob Teschek, P.O. Box 990, Newport, N.H. 03773; email: therash@snet.net.

-- Diane Sherrer