Running Utica’s Boilermaker 15K Road Race is challenging enough.
Reuniting with family and friends afterwards, somewhere out there in the sweaty sea of humanity the annual Boilermaker Post-Race Party has become, can be almost as challenging.
For Boilermaker partygoers – runners and spectators alike – it’s best to plan ahead when an event this big finishes with such a celebratory bang, with 30,000-40,000 people cramming their way into the F.X. Matt Brewing Company parking lot for music, fireworks, food and, oh yeah, free beer.
“I would suggest that friends, family members, whoever they are, pick a place to meet beforehand; that’s what we have always done,” said Jack Coughlin of Frankfort, a 53-year-old Boilermaker runner and active member of the Utica Roadrunners. “We’ve always set up a meeting place before the race. We just tell people where we’re going to be.
“Eventually, we’ll all meet up there. It just may take them a while to get there.”
A few Boilermakers back, one of the Coughlin family’s road racing friends from Scranton, Pa., couldn’t find his car – “We walked by it four times,” said Coughlin – but other than that, their post-race reunions have gone off without a hitch.
“We haven’t lost anybody yet,” he said. “For somebody coming into town (for their first Boilermaker), it’s best to look at a map; try to scope things out the day before the race; see the lay of the land; and then say, ‘This is where we’re going to all meet.’”
On Sunday, Coughlin will run his 16th Boilermaker. His daughters, 30-year-old Danielle Schaak of Waterford, Mich., and 16-year-old Sarah Coughlin, are also running. So is 10-year-old son Brian Coughlin, a Boilermaker rookie who has been participating in Saturday’s youth run for years.
“He’s been wanting to run the Boilermaker for two years now, and we finally decided that he was ready,” said his mother, Charlene Coughlin, a longtime Boilermaker volunteer who does select timing at the finish line.
Some runners and their family and friends do more than designate a post-race meeting place.
Some use flags or balloons to mark their party spot – both require getting there early to stake their claim – and figuring out a runner’s estimated time of arrival always helps.
“We used to meet right in front of the brewery, but it just kind of kept moving back and moving back,” said Rome’s Sandra Mumford, who now waits for her husband – and several other family members who run the race – across the street from the Polish Community Center. “We had to find a bigger space, somewhere it would be easier to find them all.
“Sometimes I haven’t picked him out and I didn’t see him at the finish line, but we always know where to find him.”
Jim Mumford, a 62-year-old veteran of 23 Boilermakers – it would’ve been 24 if he wasn’t undergoing chemotherapy for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma – won’t be alone. Three nieces, Patricia and Stephanie Johnson and Anna Mumford, nephew John Mumford, and son-in-law Nick Eagan are also running Sunday’s race.
“There will be at least 20 of us at the party, but it’s not bad,” he said. “We always meet in the same place.”
The same place for Ilion’s Melissa Roach and her family is the Utica Roadrunners’ tent – a much easier find. That’s where she and her father-in-law, James Roach, brother- and sister-in-law Keith and Patricia Roach, and niece Vanessa Roach will be meeting.
“We’ve been doing that for so long, it’s easy for us,” said Melissa Roach, 40. “I can’t imagine what other people have to go through, though, because it has gotten to be quite a crowd.”
