By Jody Record, Media Relations
History professor Cathy Frierson doesn’t consider herself a natural runner. Or a good one.
Still, she likes to make community whenever and wherever she can. So, saying yes to being part of an eight-member all-women’s UNH relay team set to run the 18th Annual Lake Winnipesaukee Relay this weekend was a given.
Never mind that it’s a big lake. Big. With lots of hills.
Right from the start, Frierson took to colleague Ruth Sample’s idea of forming a team for the 65-mile run. Part of the appeal: knowing there would be women who were staff members as well as professors. And, as it turns out, students.
“It was especially exciting when the last two women to join the team were graduate students in sociology--one of them is in her first semester at UNH,’’ Frierson says. “What a way to join and represent the community.”
Sample, who organized the group, has done the race several times before. She’s an associate professor of philosophy, which lends understanding to the selection of the team name: The Featherless Bipeds.
“Aristotle considered that as a possible definition of human being,” Sample says of the term. “He rejected it in favor of ‘rational animal’ but I’ve rejected ‘rational animal’ in favor of ‘featherless biped.”
Other Biped members include Michelle Grenier, assistant professor of kinesiology; Sinthy Kounlasa, an administrative assistant at the Whittemore School of Business; Gale Carey, professor of animal and nutritional studies; Jennifer Jacobs, associate professor of civil engineering and graduate students Leslie Dillon and Amy Barr. The group’s ages range from 22 to 52.
Michelle Grenier has heard of but never met Ruth Sample; Gale Carey told her about the team when they ran into each other while swimming recently.
“One of the fun parts for me is getting the chance to meet people whose names I’ve heard,” Grenier says. “So this is a social/physical goal in a different form.”
Because she signed on late, Grenier chose one of three remaining legs, no. 1. The 10.7-mile stretch is longer than she’s used to running but she’s been training with teammate Sinthy Kounlasa, a frequent marathon runner.
“She’s my motivation. That’s it, to run with her,” Grenier says. “Have I been running for years? Yes. Do I use races to motivate me? Yes. But this might be a little bit more than I can chew.”
Sample began running when she was 13. She now works the back roads of Madbury four or five days a week and has been training for the upcoming race all summer. Hers is Leg 5, a stretch of 10. 8 miles that race organizers call the prettiest on the course, with beautiful scenery and rolling hills.
It turns out the word “hills” shows up in almost every leg description except one: Leg 4, assigned to Frierson. For her, getting to run the flat sidewalks through Wolfeboro was the deal cincher.
“Ruth promised me from the start that I would get the easiest leg of the race,” Frierson says. “All the other women, except for me, are really strong and experienced runners. Some are simply phenomenal. Even with my slug-like pace, we might do well among all- women’s teams.”
Jennifer Jacobs must be one of those really strong and experienced runners. She’s tackling the hilliest part of the course: 4.4 miles with the first one-and-a-half miles straight uphill. Friends who have been there told her the course is pretty steep. She says she doesn’t want to see it until she starts running.
“Even then, I don’t think I’ll look up,” Jacobs says, adding, “I took the short leg; the hills come along with it.”
Lately, Jacobs has been running four days a week, at lunch with her colleagues or later, in tandem with her three dogs. The first dog does a mile, the last, three-and-a-half. She goes back for her old dog in the middle, and they run a quarter mile together. That’s all he can manage but Jacobs says she wouldn’t leave him out.
As for Frierson, her goal, always, is to finish.
“If I’m not the last one to cross the finish line, that’s a bonus,” she says. Then she says, “This team effort demonstrates that there are so many possible ‘communities’ at a big university like UNH. And it’s fun to create a community around such a positive effort.”