Photo / Renee Cordes
Jeyna Senbeta, of Chicago, was the winner of the men's wheelchair division.
Updated: August 5, 2024
Beach to Beacon runners dodge raindrops, raise funds for Portland nonprofit
Photo / Renee Cordes
Thousands of runners participated in the 26th annual TD Beach to Beacon 10K road race in Cape Elizabeth on Saturday. This was the scene near the finish line in Fort Williams Park.
After rolling past the finish line in Saturday’s TD Beach to Beacon 10K road race in Cape Elizabeth, wheelchair athlete Jeyna Senbeta stayed put for a few minutes to welcome his peers.
“It’s probably the first time all year I’ve felt pretty good,” the 37-year-old from Chicago told Mainebiz after finishing in 24 minutes and 40 seconds. “I spent the past nine to 10 months with either various injuries or grieving for family members or friends. It’s been a rough year.”
He was the first person to cross the finish line, averaging 3:59 per mile.
"I had a drought for winning this race,” he said. “I went from having the course record to going ‘0’ for who knows how long, so it feels nice to finally get this win again.”
Some 6,095 people including elite athletes participated in the running race that followed. The event raised $150,000 for Preble Street Teen Services in Portland, including $30,000 donated by TD Bank. As more pledges come in over the next month, the total is expected to go up.
The course starts on Route 77 near the Crescent Beach State Park entrance, winds along tree-lined hilly roads and ends in Fort Williams Park near Portland Head Light overlooking Casco Bay — hence the name, Beach to Beacon.
This year’s fastest runners overall were elite athletes Tadese Worku of Ethiopia, who won the men's division in 28:12, and Faith Chepkoech of Nairobi, who was the fastest woman at 32:05.
Standing near the finish line, first-time volunteer Jane Levesque had the important task of accompanying wheelchair athletes after the race to a special tent nearby.
While the 82-year-old from Nashua, N.H., participated in the race herself in 1999, on Saturday she was there as a volunteer and spectator because “I wanted to experience it.” Two of her children participated.
The annual event goes back to 1998, when the race was founded as the Peoples Beach to Beacon by Cape Elizabeth native Joan Benoit Samuelson to benefit children's charities in Maine.
The 67-year-old, who now resides in Freeport, finished first in among women in her age group with a time of 45:38, nearly 40 years to the day she won gold in the first-ever women’s marathon in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. On Saturday after completing the race, Benoit was surrounded by hugs.
Photo / Renee Cordes
Joan Benoit Samuelson, right, hugs a fellow athlete after completing Saturday's race.
Delayed start
More than 3,000 miles from the Paris Olympics, this year’s Beach to Beacon started an hour late because of early morning thunderstorms. Rain fell during the wheelchair race, giving way to clear but humid conditions once the bulk of the runners got under way.
“This year for the first time ever we delayed the start of the race,” Dr. Mylan Cohen, the race’s medical co-director, told Mainebiz in the medical tent on Saturday as volunteers were prepping.
“As far as the rain is concerned, hopefully that will keep people cool, yet what we’re really worried about is that people will say, ‘Oh, it’s cool, I’m going to push myself and here’s my day for my personal best,” said Cohen, a cardiologist at Maine Medical Center in Portland. “We’re talking about 90% to 100% humidity today, and I’m a little worried.”
Just in case, the medical area near the finish line was equipped with tubs of ice water to bring down body temperatures quickly if needed.
“We treat on average 80 people here and transport maybe 0 to 1 to the hospital,” Cohen explained. “By treating them here, we really help the medical system. And the hospitals are not really set up to take care of heat injury.”
Like many other volunteers, Cohen has been participating for years, going back to 1999. He does the same for the Boston Marathon, just like his grandfather who was also a race physician.
At the Beach to Beacon, Cohen said, “it’s really one big family. Everybody gets a really good feeling about volunteering.”
Another long-time medical volunteer is Chris Troyanos, a certified athletic trainer and Beach to Beacon’s medical coordinator for more than 20 years.
“With this type of weather,” he said, “the concerns that we have are runner slips and falls … Across the finish line, it’s going to be slick [but] if the sun comes out that changes everything.”
On Sunday, he reported through a race spokeswoman that 35 runners had been treated on Saturday.
Photo / Renee Cordes
Dr. Mylan Cohen in the medical tent near the finish line explains how ice-water baths are used to cool overheated runners.
The sun did indeed come out during the course of the morning, with the wheelchair athletes followed by the elite runners and thousands of amateurs from age 8 to 92 on a very muggy day. The oldest finisher was 92-year-old Charlene Hagen of South Portland, with a time of 1:47:50.
Bell-ringing and cheers added to the ambiance, as did tunes blasting near the finish-line grandstand — from Tom Petty’s “Runnin’ Down a Dream” to Chicago’s “Saturday in the Park.”
Many runners were still moving at a fast pace until the very end, with one barefooted runner sliding across the wet grass like a baseball player stealing a base.
Some participants linked arms in celebration as they neared the end of the course. But perhaps the most moving sight of all was an able-bodied runner pushing a disabled participant across the finish line.
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