By Jeremy Stafford — Daily Sports Correspondent

For race director Rosie Schiavone, the 27th annual Apple Blossom 10K race went without a hitch.

Well over 1,000 men, women, and children woke up early Saturday morning to compete in the race, and 1,122 finished it. Many of the participants entered the race to compete for the various cash prizes, which amounted to $7,700; but most entered the race simply to have a good time.

"Apple Blossom is great," Schiavone said. "The kids are dressing up in costumes, and it's wonderful."

Several runners wore plastic crowns on their heads, and the younger runners shaped their hair into mohawks; some pushed strollers as they jogged the race, and others walked briskly while they talked with friends.

"It was as smooth as could be," Schiavone said with a smile. "I've never had a race as smooth as today."

Twenty minutes into the race, the crowd lined up along the final stretch of the course, and at the 30:09 minute mark, Wogayehu Tefara crossed the finish line. Tefara is an Ethiopian runner who learned of the Apple Blossom 10K when his manager came across the race on the Internet.

"I was so happy with the reception that I got," said Tefara, who spoke through his translator, Abiy Zewde. "I was very happy with the whole situation."

Tefara, who prefers to run marathons, maintained a pace of 4:51 throughout the race, but finished almost a minute slower than his best 10K time.

"I was expecting to run in the 28-minute range," Zewde said for Tefara. "I didn't get very much sleep, but I expected to do much better than I did."

The second-place finisher, Ezkyas Sisay, is also from Ethiopia, though he has never run with Tefara. Sisay kept up with Tefara for much of the race — they posted identical 5K times of 15:17 — but Sisay could not match Tefara's intensity for the entire course.

"He said that he just felt like he was very tired," said Haddis Tafri, a friend of Sisay who translated for the runner. "We had to get up at 5 [a.m.] from D.C. to get here at 7, and [Sisay] arrived in D.C. at 1 in the morning, so he didn't get much sleep."

In fact, because of travel, both top finishers had problems sleeping the night before the race — a circumstance strangely similar to last year's Apple Blossom event, when David Chepkwony and Mercy Cheburet lost sleep while traveling from Kenya. Chepkwony and Cheburet won the Open Men's and Open Women's division respectively.

Though some participants were upset last year that runners from outside the U.S. won the Apple Blossom event, runners in this year's event were supportive of Tefara and Sisay.

"I think it's great," said Mark Stickley, who was clocked at 33:10 and won the Men's Masters division for the second straight year. "They're making the field better. They're making the competition better."

But Stickley did have his reservations, saying foreign runners sometimes return to their native countries without paying U.S. taxes on their cash prizes.

"Please pay Uncle Sam his share," he said. "Don't just take it all to Ethiopia. Give Uncle Sam his piece of pie because that's what I do."

"I think as long as taxes are paid and things are taken care of, that's all that matters," Schiavone said. "We're thrilled to have them here. It really steps up the competition level, and how can you complain about that?"

Other local finishers include Brenda Schrank, from Winchester, who finished third in the Open Women's division with a time of 38:21. Simon Biddle-Snead, from Berryville, finished first in the Men's 15-19 division with a time of 32:29. John Volinsky was clocked at 42:24, which was the fastest in the Men's 45-49 division. Armistead Legge, from Winchester, finished second in the Men's 14 and under division, and was clocked at 39:39, and Chandler Dehaven, a 14-year old who specializes in the 2-mile, placed third with a time of 40:20.

Comment on this story | View Comments |