Doug Smith is kind of the Ken Stone/Dave Clingan of Canada — the No. 1 source for great masters news from the Great White North. Yesterday’s email included his news of the Canadian Masters Athletic Association. He also shared details on Ed Whitlock’s fabulous M75 marathon record. But he did me one better by including lots of quotes from Ed. Doug also attached an Excel spreadsheet that contained the 2006 Canadian masters rankings for the 100 meters by age group. (9/25 addition: Doug said he’s had time for only that one event so far.)

Here’s a potion of Doug’s Canadian masters news:
Ed ran a 3:08:35 today in the Toronto Waterfront Marathon….smashing the WR by 10 minutes!! …on a very windy day. He broke the CAN record by 52 minutes!!!
You can add that to the list of WR’s he’s set since he turned 75 in March;
Indoor 3000m 11:28.28 WR
Mile 5:41.80 WR
5000m 19:07.02 WR
10,000m 39:25.16 WR
He was even able to answer a few questions this afternoon….
Ed, your plan was to start out at a pace that you could only hold if you were having a super day. How did that work out?
Well in retrospect I shouldn’t have tried it, but I don’t regret giving it a go. I ran my target pace to 15 kilometres. when the plan was to speed up slightly if I was feeling good to try and go sub 3. If I was not feeling that good, ease back, which is what happened. I didn’t really ease back enough and I suffered over the last 8k against the wind. I was lucky I had a running partner that partially sheltered me from the worst of it. The last kilo was brutal.
Like you say, the wind must have been a factor. It was a pretty blustery morning.
Well the wind was obviously a factor for everyone and “people” said it slowed everyone. But…….. It was a loop course so you had the wind at your back as much as at the front, and the winning time was great (2:10:15). I think that I am not a particularly good runner in the wind, kind of like hills I don’t like those either. I like to get into a steady even pace, wind and hills create variations. As I said before I particularly suffered over the last 8k of the race running against the wind.

How did your knee hold out?
Surprisingly my knee gave no trouble and my hamstring which was also giving cramping problems over the past few weeks was not in evidence, even when I got tired.
That’s 10 minutes off the WR that stood for 11 years. I know it’s a bit soon after the race, but do you have any plans to take it lower in the future?
I feel I should be able to do better if I got in better preparation. So, no plans but hopefully another opportunity will come up.
Since you don’t run cross country, you’ve got a nice break. What’s next in your plans…the Indoor 1500m WR (5:37) or Earl’s 5:41 Indoor Mile WR?
I have some low key road races left to run this fall. I certainly hope to be able to run some good races indoors. My 3000 indoor record needs taking down, I had a few problems before that race last spring.

And more from Doug — regarding the Charlotte masters nationals, where Canada was well-represented:
Karla (Del Grande) had some interesting comments about the USATF Masters meet in Charlotte…
Our Canadian Women’s Relay team members were Laurie Meloche, Gail Johns-Rees, Lyn Barrett, and me. We entered as a W45 team (Laurie and Lyn) but with Gail and I from W50. (Are the results listed as W40? Does it go in 10 year groups?) Gail was born in Canada, and lived in Cobourg and Newmarket before moving to Salem, New Hampshire. (I think it was about 6 years ago.) Her 21 year old daughter was there with her, who was born in Canada also. I first met Gail in Boston at the US Indoors. She was pleased to join us, and I gave her a Canadian singlet so we can do it again. We called ourselves Canadian Blizzard to bring some cool air in but the officials changed our name to Team Canada. In case we had a record it would be more official I guess.
Here are the points calculated for “Team Canada” in Charlotte, using the system of:
8 pts for 1st,
6 for 2nd,
4 for 3rd,
3 for 4th,
2 for 5th,
1 for 6th.
Etobicoke Gladstone/Huskies women (Lynda, Karla, Nanci) = 53 points
Etobicoke/Gladstone/Huskies women + men (Earl) = 73 points
Canadian women (Lynda, Karla, Nanci, Jean, Joan, Laurie, Rhona ) = 123 points.
Canadian men (Todd, Richard, Stan, Andre, Vern, Fred, Alan, Earl) = 66 points.
Total Canadian women + men = 189 points.
( I didn’t include Kathy Martin or Gail Johns-Rees, since, although Canadian born, they ran for US clubs. I also didn’t include relays. Gail was part of our Canadian relay team that won gold, however, so if relays count, she contributed to our 8 points there. The Men’s Alberta Relay would have contributed 4 points for their 3rd place. I believe our relays would only count if we entered the Team Relays. Both teams ran as Ad Hoc because we’re Canadian, and not considered a club team.)
In the Team Standings, that would put Canadian women 4th, and Etobicoke women tied for 10th, out of 52 teams.
The Canadian men would be 10th out of 117 teams.
Canadian women and men would be 5th out of 134 teams.
Well done, Canada!
Charlotte was a very interesting experience weather-wise. Hot hot hot! Everyone thought it was humid but at 40% humidity we didn’t find that so bad. Of course everyone thought we Canadians wouldn’t be used to any hot weather. I heard that a lot.
Guess they hadn’t heard of our latest Toronto heat wave of 37C before we left (45 humidex or 120F). Their actual temp was up to 100F which is about 37C or about the same. Still, hard to get one’s head into a “warm-up.” And it caused interesting situations like Todd Crawford not finishing his M40 Pentathlon until 12:30 in the morning after the meet was shut down then restarted.
I had my 400 rolled over to a final because someone bailed out after declarations (after our “warm-up”) then pushed to Friday evening when I again “warmed-up,” then postponed to the next day by the lightning storm. We had lots of time to bond with old and new friends while herded into the parking garage. Condensing the schedule on Saturday was a necessity but of course not everyone was happy. I found it saved on “warm-up” time by running races close together.
People were very friendly in Charlotte, and as usual for a US meet, there were lots of officials and volunteers to run the meet efficiently. I was handed water after my races (even sprints!) and in the waiting tents.
A nice touch was a meet shirt included in our package, although there were no small sizes so most of us women have huge new sleep shirts, supposedly medium. Those of us who were the top age-graded in our divisions (50-59 in my case) were given Champion bags which are very nice. We felt very welcomed as Canadians.
However, I did hear that the computer system won’t calculate team points properly if a foreigner is in the results, which is a sore point for some Americans. But overall, looking at your lists, Doug, we did really well as a team ourselves. Even if we were shown as from NY, NY (as I was) or Unattached. Good for you to find us on the lists! Joan compared the 1400 Americans to 140 Canadians at Moncton — about the same ratio compared to the population. Not bad!
We’ll get pictures added eventually. We didn’t know that there were so many of us Canadians there, but we have shots of quite a few. http://www.imagestation.com/album/pictures.html?id=2103499044
We were given the address of a US website for viewing or purchasing pictures:
www.serdardesign.com/OnlineViewing
There would be lots of Americans interested in combining a trip to the East Coast** before or after Maine next year, if that could be arranged. And I had inquiries about our other meets, like the Ontario indoor season as well.
Now for some downtime after San Sebastian, Linz, Moncton, and Charlotte, before cross-country.