Jeremy Sudbury Goes for 5^th Straight Wins at 2011 Legends Run

This year’s 15^th Annual Legends Run should be a good one. Over 200 runners are expected to toe the starting line at 7:30 a.m. on August 6^th out in Boulder City. Wearing the racing bib with the number 1 on it will be Jeremy Sudbury.

Jeremy Sudbury has run the Las Vegas Track Club’s Legends of Cross Country 5K Run five times from 2006 to 2010. The only time he lost was just before the start of his senior year at Shadow Ridge High School in August of 2006. He was nipped at the finish by Solomon Bennett, a senior-to-be at Silverado; both runners finished with the identical time of 16:31 over a 5K course out into the wetlands behind the Silver Bowl.

Jeremy went on to finish third at the Nevada state cross country championships that fall. Solomon Bennett finished eighth.

“My career has been a roller coaster since my senior year (in high school),” said Jeremy. I wasn’t recruited very hard and decided to continue my career at Paradise Valley.”

But before that Jeremy won the 2007 Legends Run, with Solomon Bennett 30 seconds back in second.

“After a rough first year (at Paradise Valley) involving growing up real quick, I was left to go back to the drawing board and figure out to go to the next level. I decided I needed to take my training to the next level as well as get involved with helping recruit for my junior college.

After many 100+ miles weeks, including one 130 mile week, I found myself lean and mean and ready to compete with the best.”

That August Jeremy came back to Las Vegas for the 2008 Legends Run. Here are some excerpts from the write up from that race, written by yours truly for the LVTC newsletter:

“It takes more than a course change to upset Jeremy Sudbury. Last year the Legends course got changed the day before the race due to flash flood conditions in the wetlands area behind the Silver Bowl. This year, with Jeremy leading the way, the runners themselves changed the course and ran an extra six tenths of a mile, taking everyone with them.

No matter; same result. Jeremy (19:14) finished over a minute ahead of Solomon Bennett (20:24), who also finished second last year. In fact, this is the third Legends Run in a row in which these two have finished one-two. In 2006 Solomon nipped Jeremy by less than a second. That makes it two out of three for Jeremy.

Teenagers dominated both the men’s and the women’s field per usual. Finishing top-six behind Sudbury and Bennett were Tailhar Hasson, who recently graduated from Centennial….”

It appears that Jeremy did some of that promised “recruiting” in addition to winning Legends in 2008. Back to Jeremy:

“ That fall with the help of Tailhar Hasson, we won the national title and the flood gates opened with colleges wanting all of us. The school, however, that I was interested in was OU (Oklahoma), and that’s how I came to get there…. It is definitely a different level now from the desert of Las Vegas, to racing one weekend in New York, then the next in Seattle.”

And Jeremy has never forsaken those roots. He returned to Las Vegas for the Legends Run in 2009. He and an OU teammate, Eric Haraysn, went 1-2, Jeremy winning in 15:16, a new record over the course out behind the Silver Bowl. Solomon Bennett didn’t run this time.

Jeremy then headed back to Oklahoma for his first year at OU.

“I had a breakthrough year at the University of Oklahoma and set the school record for the 10K at 29:18 and broke 14 minutes in the 5K, running 13:58.”

Jeremy was the sixth runner on the OU men’s cross country team that finished 12^th at the 2009 NCAA Division 1 Nationals.

In August of 2010 Jeremy made it four in a row at the Legends Run. He and his OU teammate Eric went 1-2 again, with Jeremy setting a new course record, this time running a phenomenal 14:32.

But for Jeremy it was time was dip on the roller coaster.

“After Legends (2010) I experienced my first major setback in my career when I fractured by sacral ala in the tailbone area. I had to take off 14 weeks and the rest of the year…. The year off gave me a chance to redshirt and gain an extra year of eligibility.”

That takes us to the present. Jeremy is currently in Flagstaff, AZ, training for the start of his final cross country season at OU and he has committed to come back to go for 5-peat at the Legends Run. Will he bring one of more of his OU teammates with him again? That question hasn’t been answered, but other competition awaits.

Solomon Bennett, back in Las Vegas and training hard—he recently won the LVTC Notch Run—is signed up to run, as is the current Nevada State high school state champion, Nick Hartle. Nick will be a senior this fall at Centennial and is coming off an outstanding track season.

Among the women expected to be among this leaders at this year’s race include last year’s winner Jessica Destito, who ran for Cimarron-Memorial in high school, but was better know as an outstanding soccer player in high school and at UNLV; Katy Gorczyca, winner of the 2010 Nevada state meet as a freshman running for Palo Verde, who was runner-up at Legends in 2010; Amanda Gramly, who ran cross country and track at Clark H.S. and Nevada Reno and was fourth at Legends last year; and Erica Schramm, winner of numerous local races in 2011 including the Notch Run, who was fifth at Legends in 2010.

The Legends Run has moved this year from the Silver Bowl to Veterans Memorial Park in Boulder City and the same course as southern site of the Nevada state cross country championships. The record holder on that course is none other than Nick Hartle who he ran 16:05 at the 2010 state meet last November.

As they say, “Records are made to be broken.” Welcome back to Las Vegas, Jeremy.

(Phil Lawton)