Year In Review: Another great race around Shelter Island

Shelter Island’s greatest annual sporting event, the 10K, lived up to expectations in 2025. Here’s a report published in June.

One of the rituals of the Shelter Island 10K, on a day filled with them, is the gathering at the finish line near third base at Fiske Field, waiting for the lead runners. They emerge from the trees as distant figures far away off Bateman Road, hitting the grass of the outfield, and making their way in a long loop on the field to break the tape. 

But on Saturday, June 21, at the 46th annual 10K, it wasn’t runners but a single racer, East Hampton’s Ryan Fowkes, 24, coming out of the trees alone, running 100 yards ahead of the next athlete to emerge for the final lap.

Breaking the tape first in a field of 812 runners who registered and finished, Fowkes’ time was 31:16:92 for the 10 kilometers around the Island. Behind him was last year’s 10K winner, Jordan Daniel, 30, of Sag Harbor, who made up ground in the final run to the tape and finished at 31:29:49.

The first woman across the line was Penelope Greene, 22, of Sag Harbor, who was timed at the finish at 36:26.94, good enough for 7th place overall.

Two of Shelter Island’s most competitive runners, Jason Green and Delia Hayes, were the first Island man and woman across the finish line for their hometown race. They are no strangers to being the first Islanders in the 10K, achieving that mark several times. 

Green, 22, finished 6th overall with a time of 34:30.00. Like everyone else, he noted that heat was a factor, one of the hottest race days in his experience running the 10K, starting in 2015. “I really started to feel it in on the first downhill, but I kept pushing,” Green said.

He recently ran the BOLDERBoulder Bullet 10K in Colorado, where he finished 82nd in a field of more than 50,000.

“I ran a good pace today,” Green said as friends and family surrounded him.

Hayes ran a 43:28.56 for 53rd overall. She ran with her brother Owen to start, but around mile two, she thought she was keeping him back. “I told him to go. The heat was really something. I couldn’t really push myself.” But she pushed enough to claim her honor.

And Owen finished 14th overall, running with a group he brought from the Georgetown Runners Club.

HOT? OH, YEAH

For those who turned out for the festivities and to view the race, it was a hot day, but for the athletes running the 6.2 mile course from Wilson Circle around the Island’s shores, it was brutal.

Dripping with sweat, just beyond the finish line, race-winner Ryan Fowkes was exhausted but exhilarated. “The last 400 yards I was hurting,” he said between deep breaths. “There was a little breeze, but the heat was something.”

At the beginning of the race, he was keeping pace with Jordan Daniel, but then hit another gear and left him about 1,000 yards to the finish. Daniel made up ground, and, as he said, moments after finishing, “traded blows with Ryan, taking the lead and then giving it back.” He had nothing but praise for his fellow East Ender.

Penelope Greene, with a bright smile and glowing with sweat, seemed a bit fresher than the men. “The heat really was a factor today,” the first woman across the line said. “I love Shelter Island and love this race. I’ve run the 5K here but never this race.”

She started out running with “a group of guys,” she said, “but then they took off and I thought, ‘I won’t follow. I’ll chill.’” A good strategy, as it turned out.

The race was missing two of its finest athletes, Shelter Island’s Bill Lehr and Melville’s Peter Hawkins, wheelchair racers who have challenged each other for years at the 10K. Both men were attending a funeral of a friend and had to bow out, leaving the wheelchair division to Michael LaRose, 34, of Bay Shore.

LaRose finished with a time of 46:21, but it would have been better if he had not missed a turn. Moments after the horns sounded to start the race, he turned right down Route 114 instead of left on St. Mary’s Road. “A cop told me I was going the wrong way,” he said with a smile. “The heat was really bad,” he added, smiling again, “but on the downhills I can glide.”

He wanted a shout-out to the Kelly Brush Foundation, which gives grants to those who have experienced spinal cord injuries. “They got me this $6,000 chair,” he said. “I could never have afforded that.”

Several spectators and athletes noted that there were few if any of the great Kenyan and Ethiopian runners in the field who have won the race on several occasions through the years. Some speculated it was because of the Trump administration’s new immigration and deportation policies, but nothing has been confirmed.

As LaRose wheeled away to applause and cheers from the spectators near the finish line, running legend Bill Rodgers finished the 5K. At 77, Rodgers is one of America’s greatest athletes, running and winning long distance races, including marathons, on five continents. Rodgers was present at the creation of the world-wide running boom in the 1980s (some would say he was the cause) and has had a career that includes winning the Boston and New York marathons four times, twice breaking the American record at Boston.

He was tired, he said; the humidity was more than he expected. But he never likes to miss Shelter Island’s great summer race. “It’s so beautiful,” Rodgers said, taking in the athletes flooding onto Fiske Field for water, bananas and oranges, surrounded by families and friends.