Being a Queen City native, Adam Schwendt knows all about and respects the stamps fellow Bangorians Riley Masters and Adam Goode have put on the Walter Hunt Memorial 3K road race.
In his baptism to arguably Maine’s fastest road racing event Schwendt, a 2016 graduate of Bangor High School, has joined their company.
Schwendt edged out friend and Illinois native Adam Sukiennik to win the 37th edition of the 1.8-mile race from Brewer to downtown Bangor, completing the mostly downhill course in 9 minutes, 29 seconds.
Sukiennik, the cross-country and track coach at Husson University in Bangor, was timed in 9:31 in the race, which featured 473 finishers.
Tyler White of Orono (9:35), Dominic Martin of Bangor (9:48) and Jonathan Grace of Orrington (9:51) rounded out the top five finishers overall.
The women’s competition produced another first-time champion familiar to Maine sports fans in former University of Maine basketball standout Tracy Guerrette of St. Agatha.
Guerrette not only bested her nearest female competitor by more than a minute and a half in finishing in 10:15, she was 14th overall.
“It felt fun to keep the leaders in sight,” said Guerrette, who has her eyes on the TD Beach to Beacon 10K at Cape Elizabeth next month, where she should be a contender to become the top Maine finisher.
Kristine Guaraldo of South Portland earned runner-up honors in 11:48, followed by Kristin Beebe of Bangor (11:54), Jessica Whited (11:57) and Julia White of Orono (12:20).
Runners were greeted with a mild but breezy morning which provided ideal conditions for the race, run in front of thousands of parade spectators.
“It was awesome,” said Schwendt, who competes in cross-country and track at McGill University in Montreal. “It’s great to see all the people come out and watch the race and people be active and celebrate the Fourth of July. I’m happy I got to be a part of it.”
Schwendt and Sukiennik were side by side upon crossing the Joshua Chamberlain Bridge before Schwendt built up a slight advantage heading down Main Street.
“I did my best to catch up to him and then he took over,” said Sukiennik, a Chicago native who is training for his hometown’s marathon in late October.
“A race like this is really good to get my legs moving,” he added.
Schwendt, meanwhile, defeated his former cross-country coach in Goode, who won this event last summer.
“I know that Adam Goode’s had a lot of success here in the past,” Schwendt said. “To keep the Adam streak alive is cool.”
Not just that, but winning the same race in which Masters, a professional runner, ran a blistering 8:02 back in 2011, was special for him.
“He’s a great runner, a good guy to look up to,” Schwendt said.
Schwendt admitted the race was “harder than I thought,” as the first mile is all downhill before runners hit the Chamberlain bridge and another subsequent downhill on Main Street.
“The things you consider flat, they become like hills,” Schwendt said.
Guerrette, who was running the race for the first time, echoed that sentiment.
“It’s a really quick first mile and I knew that going into it so I wanted to be very moderate the first mile,” she said.
Sukiennik was impressed with the number of runners.
“We got to the parking lot [in Brewer], it’s just nuts,” he said. “Bangor’s a perfect town for the Fourth of July. Everyone’s out there being really supportive.”
“It’s a great event because everybody’s out there for the parade,” Guerrette said. “You go over the bridge and it’s kind of quiet, but then when you hit this Main Street and turn right into downtown Bangor it gives you another boost.”
Two recently graduated Maine high school standouts bound for Division I colleges were also awarded $1,500 scholarships courtesy of the Sub 5 Track Club.
They went to Hannah Steelman (Wofford College) of Orono and Paul Casavant (Cornell University) of Hampden Academy.
