Familiarity is overrated. Just ask Laurel Burdick.

Two weeks removed from winning her age group at the Lucerne Marathon in Switzerland, 58-year-old Martha Degrazia was still operating like clockwork on Sunday.

"The Climb" is the reason why Fer­nando Cabada Jr. worked much harder than he planned en route to winning the 34th annual Gazette Stockade-athon, which drew a record field of nearly 1,500 entrants on a clear, sunny Sunday.

Patience is perhaps the most important virtue Fernando Cabada Jr. needs to hold on to right now, because his short but spectacular running career has suffered fits and starts, too, and he’ll need some time to regain his footing as one of the most promising young marathoners in the U.S. With that objective in mind, he’ll run in the 34th annual Gazette Stockade-athon 15k on Sunday.

A year after just five seconds separated the men’s and women’s Gazette Stockade-athon winners from their respective runners-up, Emory Mort of Ghent and Kaitlin O’Sullivan of Syracuse each won by almost a minute on Sunday after dropping their closest rivals for good on the uphills after the halfway point.

It has become commonplace for the Gazette Stockade-athon to extend its reach beyond the Capital Region for runners, but it’s still interesting to see what kind of convoluted hopscotch can land athletes in Central Park each November.

Kaitlin O’Sullivan, a 23-year-old member of the Syracuse Chargers running club, sowed she has stamina as well as speed, pulling away from Chargers teammate Jennifer Adams of Gansevoort to win the women’s division of the 33rd annual Gazette Stockade-athon by 59 seconds Sunday at Central Park.

Peter Newkirk had a lot more fun using his legs than his mind during the 33rd annual Stockade-athon Sunday.

Emory Mort outlasted a field of about 1,350 runners this morning to win the 33rd annual Gazette Stockade-athon.

Besides chip timing, the Gazette Stockadeathon will also be offering substantial prize money to the open competitors for the fi rst time on Sunday.

Times should be faster at the Gazette Stockade-athon this year. Not necessarily the runners’ times, but the results tabulators’ times.

As much as I’d love to run in the Stockade-athon on Sunday for the first time, after covering it every year for the last 20 years, there was no way I would do it. Now, 2009, I’d like to think that’ll be a different story, and the promise here is that, as long as my feet don’t break down, I’ll be in the field.

Fleet Feet opened on Wolf Road 2 1 /2 years ago and offers a wide variety of merchandise, much of which you can find at other sports apparel stores. What sets the store apart, though, is that Fleet Feet’s workers go the extra yard beyond just finding a shoe that’s the same size as your foot.

That old pair of running shoes hiding in the back of your closet has a future.