Masters ladies were awesome at Penn Relays, too.
My bad. I neglected to mention the masters women’s events at Penn. Fortunately, Julie Hayden of Athena Track Club checked in with some anecdotes and links from Philly. Julie writes: “Just wanted to update you with my take on the ladies’ results from Penn, as the way that the results are printed it is not always easy to pick out ladies teams, especially since in the 4×4 the runners have not been listed.â€
Julie continued:
In the 4×1 http://pennrelaysonline.com/109.html Athena T.C. ran as listed. It appears that we were the only 40-49 all female team, as the Carolinas named Michael Burke as their anchor on the day. (That was Athena’s first ever attempt at a 4×100!)
In the 4×4 http://pennrelaysonline.com/147.html Our team was Joan Hunter, Lorraine Jasper, Terri Rath and Charmaine Roberts. We were the first women’s 40-49 team and the time is a pending American Record beating the one we previously held by 6.39 secs. Central Park had two women’s teams (one of which I think was 40-49) and Shore A.C. one (40-49) I believe, from the information Phil Felton distributed.
Some personal feedback:
The storms met the severe category forecasted. (We were driving between Baltimore and Philadelphia in the worse of them.)
The delays made it very difficult to prepare for the races at the right time. More than one very experienced athlete told us that we were getting ready too early for the 4×100. Just as we were finally about to prepare before check-in however, we discovered that our race was about to go out on to the track. In a frenzy we stripped off and put on our shoes and ran out to our stations. As we are not sprinters, we all laughed a lot about our 4×1. It was so much fun, but over before we knew it!
The 4×400 was the opposite story, with too much time waiting in the marshalling area for ideal preparation, although we did hear from two athletes that four top masters men’s teams missed their race including Sprint Force America and Maryland Masters. Apparently, they were all using each other to judge when to go to be marshaled!
As always, we are grateful to Phil Felton and his colleague (I’m afraid I don’t recall the lady’s name) for all the work they do for masters at the Penn Relays. It was great to see Peter Taylor there (I’m not sure if he announced at all, but I am positive he was providing information to the announcer during the 4×4 that our team ran in, and we thank him sincerely for that.)
We didn’t have the wonderful weather of last year’s meet, but it was still an honor and a thrill to be given the opportunity to be part of such a great track and field event.
