For Pete’s sake, buy his book.
Record-setting 5K man and
columnist Pete Magill, our
M50 friend, is rolling out a website companion to a book he wrote. I was jazzed that it might be a reincarnation of his Younger Legs for Older Runners site, which
he shut down four years ago. But alas, it has different goals. Pete writes: “This site isn’t meant to be a repeat of
my blog, which focused on daily posts, stories, training advice and reporting on masters performances. This is more my coaching site, where I’ll be making training programs, personal coaching, and local classes available.
The [Running Corps] website will also serve as an Internet billboard for my upcoming book (new release date July 29).” But masters will have a keen interest in Pete’s takes on injury prevention. He plans a bunch of videos “all chosen for the completely scientific reason that, well, I’ve had them all since turning 40!” He also notes that the site won’t be mobile-ready for about another 2-3 weeks, but “should be optimized for all browsers and screen sizes by next week (currently, it runs best on Google Chrome).” Also check out
the Facebook page devoted to the site. Best of luck, Pete!
9 Responses
Pete and I ran together on a training run last week and talked about injury prevention as being one of the most important tools on maintaining optimal performance.
His site will be invaluable for Masters runners of all levels.
Can’t wait to get the book as well!
I talked to Pete at a meet four years ago about his Running Times article “Solving the 5K Puzzle.” I stated at the time it was the best 5K training program I had ever seen. I was tying to break 17 minutes and failed to do so that day. He told me to stick to the program and that I would next year. The following seasons I ran 17:20, 17:10, 17:01. Last year I finally broke 17, running 16:58 at age 55. I too am looking forward to Pete’s new book. Now if I could only catch Rich Burns!
Looking forward to help my stubborn old masters mind to open up, to listen, pay attention, to someone who truly can represent how-to train to race then recover to race again. Someone who truly represents my current self quote at age 54… “I ain’t 45 anymore”.
Thanks Pete!
KP
I trust Pete Magill to be objective and thorough in his writing and superb in his running, and thus I think this new website will turn out to be valuable to a wide audience.
Just today I received some advice by e-mail from another trusted source (Earl Fee), and I hope to get back in the running game using Earl’s suggestions.
Back to Pete Magill, I haven’t seen much mention of him on the present site (Ken Stone) in recent months, but I do remember a nice photo spread and report on Pete and the redoubtable Christian Cushing-Murray in March of 2013. The subject was “Cush’s” American record for 1500 of 3:55.09 (M45) set in the Occidental Distance Carnival.
I just went to the USATF website; I am shocked, shocked, mind you, that Cush’s American record never even made “pending.” Ken, when you next see Pete, maybe you could ask him what happened to Cush’s record.
Well, Peter Taylor, you will indeed be shocked (shocked!) to discover that Christian’s record will never be a “record.”
But you might actually be shocked to hear that the blame lies not in our USATF czars, but in the meet itself.
Christian ran the time–he has the FAT photo and a video to prove it–in a legitimate, USATF-sanctioned meet at the well known Occidental College (home of the upcoming Oxy High Performance meet featuring some of the nation’s and world’s top track athletes), only to discover that there wasn’t a single, certified USATF official on hand. That’s right. Christian had all the paperwork, ready to be signed … and no one to sign it … at a USATF-sanctioned meet.
The Occidental track coach recently tried to help me get the paperwork somehow presentable; he thought the starter might have been a USATF official, and maybe that would do (Sandy indicated that it might). But no, turned out there was a different starter for the meet, and he wasn’t a certified USATF official.
How a meet can be USATF sanctioned and then not go to the trouble of hiring a single USATF certified official is beyond me. But the upshot is that Christian’s record won’t be recognized, even though it’s completely (and demonstrably) legitimate. Apparently, we now have to call meets ahead of time to check on the status of their officials. Sigh….
I’ve been hoping to convince Andy Hecker to at least add Christian’s time to the Wikipedia page for US Masters records. So thanks for reminding me. I’ll send off that email today.
Pete
Thanks, Pete. And yes, I did pick up the literary allusion with a twist (“The fault, dear Brutus …..in our stars, but in ourselves.”).
Too bad for “Cush.” Your note brings up two points for me, Pete:
1. In the modern era we often have excellent proof that a performance that looks like a record actually occurred. Back in the day, we had hand timing and no videos; today we have FAT and plenty of video proof of the event. This creates a certain tension; we KNOW that something happened but cannot do anything about it.
In the old days we THOUGHT that something happened but could not give any high-tech evidence.
2. The fact that there were no USATF-certified officials is not particularly surprising to me. From everything that I’ve been told, you can get a USATF sanction for a meet that will have no officials of any type. Furthermore, the request for a sanction has no space to list the officials.
3. I might push the NCAA angle. Were any of the officials certified by NCAA? Let me go look at the rules, Pete, will be right back. OK, because the NCAA is a member organization of USATF, the NCAA can sanction a meet. How about using the USATF sanction for Cush and then having an NCAA official sign the form?
Peter T.
Come the Anaheim USATF national meeting this fall, the Cush snafu should remind us what’s at stake when we revisit record ratification rules. The status quo is beyond insane. It’s criminal.
FYI – There’s now a mobile-ready version of The Running Corps website. It’s an automatic redirect from petemagill.com, so all you have to do is go to the site from a phone.
Leave a Reply