At the same Duke meet where John Hinton lowered the M45 world record at 1500, Olympian Joan Nesbit Mabe did the same for the W45 American record at 1500, fellow middle-distancer Lesley Chaplin-Swann points out. Joan ran 4:43.21 to smash the listed AR of 4:46.00 by Carmen Ayala-Troncoso in June 2006. Joan’s 1500 time is roughly equivalent to a 5-minute mile. The listed W45 AR for the mile is 5:07.76. The world record for the 1500 is wayyyyy out there, though: 4:05.44 by Russia’s Yekatarina Podkopayeva in 1998. (It’s so extreme that her times were banished from calculations of the most recent Age-Graded Tables.)

Joan, a poet as well as a runner, wrote about her new record on her runningland blog:

After hanging on to questionable fitness since January, I managed to box my way out of a paper bag last night at the Duke Twilight meet to break a US age group record in the 1,500m. I ran 4:43 . . . still not a sub-5:00 mile (which was my “radical” goal this year – ha! how odd that is to actually write down – radical goal – when I used to run mile repeats between 4:50 and 5:00).
Anyway, after the race an “old guy” friend of my said the most sensible thing: “Just think, Joan, you won’t have to hurt like that for another five years – when you turn 50!” Indeed.
Does anyone remember the Mike Myers character on Saturday Night Live named Deiter? At the end of his faux-European talk show, Sprockets, he would look at the camera and announce, “And now it is time on Sprockets when we dance,” then launch into hilarious gyrations. Well, now it is time on Nesbits when I dance.

Here’s the Duke 1500:

Event 5 Women 1500 Meter Run
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NCAA REG: R 4:27.80
Name Year School Finals
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1 Nicole Schappert Wake Forest 4:27.30R
2 Allie Kieffer Wake Forest 4:27.44R
3 Rebecca Ward William & Mary 4:32.85
4 Georgia Davis NC State 4:35.38
5 Meghan Burns William & Mary 4:38.67
6 Meghan Gaffney Appalachian St 4:39.38
7 Kristina Roth NC State 4:40.99
8 Jessie Yester NC State 4:41.13
9 Patricia Loughlin Duke 4:42.04
10 Joan Nesbit Mabe Carrboro AC 4:43.21
11 Keely Murphy William & Mary 4:43.56
12 Deanna Kulesz Western Carolina 4:43.81
13 Tara Connor Radford 4:47.35
14 Molly Lehman Duke 4:48.09
15 Kara McKenna NC State 4:50.08
16 Kati Albright Unattached 4:52.28
17 Jess Weber UNC Greensboro 4:52.59
18 Emily Sherrard Duke 4:54.41
19 Karin Ohman William & Mary 4:55.10
20 Anna Farias-Eisner Unattached 4:57.06
21 Aisha Brown NC Central 5:07.00
22 Desinia Johnson NC Central 5:11.66
— Michelle Sikes Wake Forest DNF
— Katie Doswell Unattached DNF

Brett Honeycutt of The Charlotte Observer reports: “Former East Mecklenburg High star Joan Nesbit Mabe, a 1996 Olympian and three-time All-American at North Carolina, recently broke the World and U.S. records in the women’s master’s indoor mile for 45-49-year olds at her college alma mater. . . . ‘I wasn’t planning to break the record at this meet, but when I realized I was running fast enough to do it, I decided to go for it,; Nesbit Mabe said in an e-mail. ‘My plan was to run this first mile at Carolina to see where my fitness was, then to — hopefully — improve in my next attempt to break it.’ She said she hopes to break five minutes Feb. 17 at Virginia Tech and to go after the 1,500-meter outdoor U.S. record.” A sub-5 mile would put Joan on a pedestal with the legendary Yekaterina Podkopayeva of Russia, the only woman to go sub-5 at age 45. Podko did that in 1997 — running 4:48.42.

Olympian Joan Nesbit Mabe, a scholar of distance running, continues to make history herself. A week after turning 45, Joan returned to the University of North Carolina, her alma mater, this weekend and blistered a mile in 5:04.74. That beat the listed indoor WR of 5:08.6 by Canada’s Patty Blanchard in 2003. (The previous American age-group record of 5:08.81 was set by Lesley Chaplin-Swann less than a year ago.)

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