At its annual meeting in January, the Lincoln Track Club (LTC) recognized three individuals for their outstanding contributions to the Lincoln running scene. President Ryan Regnier, with help from other LTC board members, presented the awards at satellite locations before and during the club's virtual annual gathering.

DISTINGUISHED ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
Noah Rasmussen of Lincoln received Lincoln Track Club’s Distinguished Achievement Award for his outstanding 2021 race season.

Rasmussen over the last four years has become one of the region’s top distance runners, culminating in a 2021 race season that was one for the record books. Noah came off the 2020 covid break ready to run. He posted a 4:00 time trial mile. He had a 14:20/4:20 double, with a 5K in Ames, Iowa, followed just 12 hours later with the Lincoln Mile. In September he posted a 24:44 five-mile race during the iconic Buffalo Run at Lincoln’s Pioneers Park, breaking into the race’s tough-to-crack Top 10 All Time record books.

The secret to improvement in running is consistency and setting challenging goals, and Noah Rasmussen has set the example for runners in Lincoln.

DISTINGUISHED SERVICE AWARD
Scott Krueger of Lincoln, received Lincoln Track Club’s Distinguished Service Award for his years of dedication as the club’s Bicycle Coordinator. In this role, Scott recruits and leads all the volunteer cyclists who support runners on the Lincoln Track Club race courses. He is the eyes and ears on the course, always putting runner safety as his highest priority. He often returns from working a race with course suggestions or improvements for the next year.

Scott has been part of the Lincoln Marathon bike crew for all but two of the past 20 years and works as many Lincoln Track Club races as he can each season.

His work is behind the scenes (which he says is exactly where he wants to be!) but yet has a major impact on the successful execution of Lincoln Track Club races.

PRESIDENT’S AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING SERVICE TO THE RUNNING COMMUNITY
Nancy Sutton-Moss received the President’s Award for Outstanding Service to the Running Community. This award is not an annual award, but a special award only bestowed by the Lincoln Track Club President to those who have made a tremendous personal sacrifice in support of running in our community. Nancy Sutton-Moss, whose name has been synonymous with the Lincoln Marathon and Half Marathon for decades, has made such sacrifice.

Nancy has been involved with every Lincoln Marathon, from its very start in 1978. She was a volunteer that first year. As the race grew in numbers, so did Nancy’s involvement, with her next taking on the role of Volunteer Coordinator. In any given year, she was responsible for organizing 2,500 to 2,600 volunteers.

Nancy eventually assumed the role of race director. She made several key changes to expand the event through the years, including adding the half-marathon, moving the race from its original home in and around the Air Park neighborhood to a route that explored much more of the city of Lincoln, and moving the finish line from Vine Street in front of the Coliseum to the 50-yard line of Memorial Stadium. With each change, the race grew in registration numbers, reaching 14,000 in 2014.

Through all the growth, Nancy remained committed to quality and attention to detail and perfected the art of developing and sustaining relationships that continue to be important to the Lincoln Track Club today.

Nancy has left the Lincoln running community in a good place as she moves into a well-deserved retirement from the race she helped build.