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About Your Race Director
In 2010, Local ultra-distance athlete Sam Pasceri took the next step in his athletic career. This time he stepped up as Race Director. Having raced around the country during the spring, summer & fall he saw the need for a challenging winter ultra event. What better place than Lockport, New York in the middle of winter? The Winter Beast of Burden was an instant success. The very first race drew elite runners from around the world, including the well known Charlie Engle. Charlie is mostly known for his amazing movie, Running the Sahara. With the success of the Winter Beast of Burden Sam felt compelled to launch the Summer Beast of Burden.
The Summer Beast of Burden offers experienced runners a chance to PR on one of the flattest courses in the world, while also catering to the new ultra runner by offering a very friendly race course with the best stocked aid stations in the sport today. Sam takes great pride in his aid stations and for 2012 has launched, “The Battle of the Aid Stations.” Sam can usually be found at the Start/Finish line with his side-kick Jim Pease. Their aid station has usually taken the backseat when compared to Dani’s Gasport aid station. Sam’s sister Ginny (OK, wife) & her side-kick Jen run the Middleport aid station. Having Nancy Keleher there as a message therapist has been a major plus for them but, will it be enough to put them ahead of Sam & Jim? In the past we have witnessed Dani breaking out everything from Sno-Cones machines to Hot Dog Stands at her aid station but, rumor had it that Sam & Jim had a “Snow Making Machine” on standby for this year’s Winter race due to the lack of snow just days before the race. Luckily Mother Nature helped them out. So, what will this battle bring? Well, you’ll just have to show up to see!
About the Erie Canal: “Clinton’s Big Ditch”
The Erie Canal is famous in song and story. Proposed in 1808 and completed in 1825, the canal links the waters of Lake Erie in the west to the Hudson River in the east. An engineering marvel when it was built, some called it the Eighth Wonder of the World.
In order to open the country west of the Appalachian Mountains to settlers and to offer a cheap and safe way to carry produce to a market, the construction of a canal was proposed as early as 1768. However, those early proposals would connect the Hudson River with Lake Ontario near Oswego. It was not until 1808 that the state legislature funded a survey for a canal that would connect to Lake Erie. Finally, on July 4, 1817, Governor Dewitt Clinton broke ground for the construction of the canal. In those early days, it was often sarcastically referred to as “Clinton’s Big Ditch”. When finally completed on October 26, 1825, it was the engineering marvel of its day. It included 18 aqueducts to carry the canal over ravines and rivers, and 83 locks, with a rise of 568 feet from the Hudson River to Lake Erie. It was 4 feet deep and 40 feet wide, and floated boats carrying 30 tons of freight. A ten foot wide towpath was built along the bank of the canal for horses, mules, and oxen led by a boy boat driver or “hoggee”.
In order to keep pace with the growing demands of traffic, the Erie Canal was enlarged between 1836 and 1862. The “Enlarged Erie” was 70 feet wide and 7 feet deep, and could handle boats carrying 240 tons. The number of locks was reduced to 72. Most of the remaining traces of the Old Erie Canal are from the Enlarged Erie era.
In 1903, the State again decided to enlarge the canal by the construction of what was termed the “Barge Canal”, consisting of the Erie Canal and the three chief branches of the State system — the Champlain, the Oswego, and the Cayuga and Seneca Canals. The resulting canal was completed in 1918, and is 12 to 14 feet deep, 120 to 200 feet wide, and 363 miles long, from Albany to Buffalo. 57 Locks were built to handle barges carrying up to 3,000 tons of cargo, with lifts of 6 to 40 feet. This is the Erie Canal which today is utilized largely by recreational boats rather than cargo-carrying barges.