Ed Whitlock shot by Doug Smith
trains at an Ontario cemetery, but he’s about 10,000 miles from the grave. Over the weekend,
he ran 3000 meters in 12:00.88, lowering the listed M80 world record of 13:30.77 by Oregon’s
John Keston in 2005. He did this at Kamloops indoor nationals—the
Canadian masters championships—only 13 days after turning 80. For sake of comparison, the M80 indoor record for
1500 meters is 6:19.34 by
Ernie Warwick in 1996. So if he ran even splits, he set back-to-back 15 records. Impossible. You don’t want to know the age-graded equivalent of his 3K. OK, it’s 7:22.5. The real-world WR is 7:24.90 by
Daniel Komen. The other WR-setter in Kamloops needs no introduction. W90
Olga Kotelko raised her own 4.90 WR in the shot with a toss of 5.25. On her next try, she put it 5.74 meters (18 feet, 10 inches). Results for Day 1—Saturday—are
posted as a PDF. A bunch of Canadian records were set as well. Congrats to Ed and Olga, two peas in a superhuman pod.
9 Responses
Komen’s 3000 m record is 7:20.67 and it has been a very tough one to break or even approach. El Gherrouj tried very hard and was only around 7:23.
Yup, the outdoor 3K WR is 7:20.67 by Komen. I cited the indoor WR for sake of comparison.
That is fantastic. I read an article about Ed in Running Times. He is awesome!
Full results now posted:
http://canadianmasters.ca/wp-content/uploads/Results-Kamloops-2011.pdf
…including an update to your story.
1500m
Whitlock, Ed M80 Canada 5:48.47 WR CAN
I just finished the NEWS page. Ed wound up with THREE World Records…..we weren’t expecting the third one!!
Ed Whitlock rocks. That young man can rumble. What, he’s in the 80-84 group? Doesn’t sound right.
Running 5:48.47 when he should be out playing croquet and stopping every 10 minutes for lemonade? Hmmm…
Details to come soon, but John Altendorf raised the M65 world record in the pole vault to 3.70 meters — also at Kamloops.
A Brief Chat with Ed Whitlock | Racing News - April 6, 2011
[…] turned 80 on March 6, and 13 days later set his first world record for his new age group, running an indoor 3000 in 12:00.88 (a 99.4 on the age-graded calculator). More single-age records seem sure to follow. Whitlock has […]
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