Masters Track News and Muse

Used to be that M40 sprinters going low-11s in the 100 were viewed as phenomenal. Now it's ho-hum for Aaron Thigpen, who clocked 10.94 for 100 meters with 0.0 on the wind meter yesterday. Simply amazing. He did it at the Stanford Invitational yesterday in Palo Alto, south of San Francisco. His time was 14th out of 38 recorded in a variety of heats. He won the Hawaiian nationals M40 sprints last year in his M40 debut and made a splash at Boston this winter as well. His best in 2005 was 10.68.

By "pop," I don't mean soda. I mean props, kudos, recognition. Jim Ferstle penned a nice piece for runnersworld.com about Nolan Shaheed and Mary Harada, who made their mile marks at Boston indoor nationals. It's headlined, appropriately, "Masters show how it's done." He also talks about Aaron Thigpen, who has a famous actress cousin.

Kathy Bergen of La Canada (pronounced Cun-YAH-da) speaks one language well: world records. After setting jump marks in Boston and indoor sprints bests earlier, she drove a few hours south to Santa Ana today and flopped over what I'm pretty sure was 1.35 (4-5) to break Rietje Dijkman's 2-year-old world outdoor record (1.34) in the W65 high jump. Her witnesses are pretty solid -- among them Ed Caruthers, a coach at Santa Ana College (the meet venue), who stood next to Dick Fosbury on a Mexico City podium in 1978. (Straddler Ed took silver at that Games. He's almost 61 but doesn't jump; knee has gone south. He limps.)

Readers of this blog know that masters announcer Pete Taylor is held in high-esteem -- with comments appended to various posts being testatment to this. But runners make up the bulk of these voices. Jumpers and throwers have a right to think: "What's the big deal? When have I heard MY name announced?" Well, it's not because Pete doesn't care. It's mostly about sight lines -- and the fact field events are outside his field of vision.

I have a masters track friend in Florida who signs her email notes to me "ecc" and I reply to her by my nom de plume "wcc." Our own inside joke. She's "East Coast commie" and I'm "West Coast commie." Now that Pete Taylor the announcer is contributing so much to this blog, I should give him a nickname, too. But commie is taken. I'll entertain ideas. In the meantime, here's his latest take on masters meets on the East Coast he'll be involved with. (And if you have an essay to contribute on any issue of masters track, don't be shy. Shoot 'em my way!)

Between the indoor nationals of March and the outdoor nationals of August, masters have lots of options for competition. But perhaps the biggest thrill is running in front of 44,000-plus spectators on Saturday's slate at the Penn Relays. It's one of a handful of "open" meets that are masters-friendly. USATF Masters does have a "masters invitational program," but it's fairly limited at this point to selected events at the open indoor and outdoor nationals and the Mt. SAC Relays (800s) and Drake Relays (mile), organized by Mark Cleary of Orange County, California.

Brian Foley, secretary of Australian Masters Athletics, died last Saturday at age 62, reports the governing body's Web site. Brian follows WAVA pioneer Ian Hume of Canada up to that big track meet in the sky. Brian competed in the 800 and 1500 at the San Sebastian world meet in 2005. He wasn't the best, but he was in the game. He'll be missed all the same. Our condolences to his family and friends Down Under.

Mark Cleary has cobbled an incredible field for the Drake Relays masters mile at 11:18 a.m. Saturday, April 29, in Des Moines, Iowa. He writes: "The mile at Drake will be the finest field ever to run a Masters Mile on U.S. soil: Tony Young, John Hinton, Peter Hagelbach, Peter Magill, Kevin Paulk, Conor O'Driscoll, David Bailey, Steve Gallegos, Samuel Kibiri, Nolan Shaheed, Chris Yorges, Joe Dudman, Dan Held and Tom Smith. If we get some luck with the weather, the 4:12 record that Tony set in 2004 could go. We could see records in the M45, M50 and M55."

Ruth BreMiller, an organizer of the fabled Hayward Masters Classic, sends this joyous news: "We were officially notified yesterday that construction has been delayed and that Hayward Field will be available June 24 and 25. A schedule and entry form for the Hayward Classic can be found on our website www.haywardclassic.org." This averts the dire dilemma I mentioned a months ago. And it guarantees a 25th edition of a meet that has more than a few record attempts in the offing. Wooo-hoooo!

Aaron Thigpen is ramping it up. Friday night in the university/open 100 at the Mt. SAC Relays, Aaron ran the 100 in 10.72 with a legal wind of 1.0 meters per second (about 2.2 mph). That's close to the 10.68 he ran in June 2005 at the Southern California Association Masters Championships in West Los Angeles. Aaron already is listed as the M40 American record holder from his 10.80 at the Hawaii masters nationals last summer. So at least he's lowered his "official" AR. (Aaron's all-time bests are 10.02 (wind-aided) and 10.18 (legal).

On my Hawaii vacation, I learned the sad news of the passing of Erwin Jaskulski, the Austrian expat who held the M100 record for 100 for four years. Blind in recent years, he retired from track. He passed away a month ago, but his legend will never die. He joins fellow M100 100m record-holder Everett Hosack in that great masters meet in the sky. One obituary said a memorial service is planned for early May.

Gilad Janklowicz has graciously sent along details of the memorial service for M100 sprint stud Erwin Jaskulski -- plus a detailed obituary with lots of interesting facts on the gentleman's life. First the service info: "A Time To Remember" will be held at 11 a.m. Sunday, May 14, in the International ballroom at the Pagoda Hotel in Honolulu -- 1525 Rycroft St.

Lesley Richardson has posted thousands of action photos she took at the WMA World Masters Indoor Championships in Linz, Austria. Check out her gallery, which is organized by day and event. They're for sale, of course. Lesley is a sprinter herslef, but she hasn't recovered from an injury so she didn't compete at Linz.

Dennis Lewis, the Greta Garbo of masters track, says he's looking forward to again challenging M45 high jump world champion Bruce McBarnette at Charlotte this summer. So says a report in his hometown paper, which is hard as heck to read online because the paper's Web site makes you jump through all manner of hoops. (They cheat to get more page views by chopping the story up into many pieces.) So to save you digital frustration, I've stitched the story together:

So where would YOU rather run -- at a hot North Carolina meet with a few dozen fans in the stands, or during prime time of a cool Philly event with 50,000 people roaring themselves hoarse? The lineups of the masters sprints at this year's Penn Relays are so loaded, they should be declared national championships. Our friend Larry Libow of massvelocity.org in Massachusetts has shared the race rosters with us. Most of the big guns are coming -- Bill Collins, Aaron Thigpen, Allen Tissenbaum, Bobby Whilden, Courtland Gray, Val Barnwell. The list goes on.

Rock stars know they've made it when they're on the cover of the Rolling Stone. The equivalent for track stars is Runner's World. Or the online version. Today we get to meet Masters Hall of Famer Sid Howard again -- whose world and national titles are too numerous to count. Peter Gambaccini conducted the Q&A, which revealed Sid's M65 training regimen and regrets over his San Sebastian race tactics. Cool read. Rock on, Sid!

Central California is a Garden of Eden for growers, where much of the nation's produce is harvested. It's also a paradise for masters track, where every May the Visalia Masters Classic attracts great athletes from around the West. Except not this May. Bob Higginbotham, the 79-year-old meet director, says the event is being pushed back until sometime in October. Why? Uh, lemme tell you about it.

The Salem News Online has a nice report (albeit belated) on M60 sprinter Roger Pierce, who helped set a 4x2 world indoor record at Linz and won the 400-meter title at Boston nationals. His appreciation for his wife is noteworthy. Not all masters are so lucky. He says: "None of this would be possible without my wife's support. She's been an integral part of it. Obviously, she could've made it miserable for me for the last 30 years."

My apologies to my Down Under friends for not saluting their efforts in Canberra, where they recently completed their four-day masters outdoor nationals. Hope this makes up for it. Here are results from Day 1 and Day 2 and Day 3 and Day 4. The star of the show may have been W60 Marge Allison of Queensland, who won everything in sight.

Jeff Davison of Southern California made good on his vow of organizing a masters shuttle hurdle relay in Arizona. Yesterday in a suburb of Phoenix an M45 quartet ran the 4x110 shuttles just as the preps do in meets like the Drake and Mt. SAC Relays. Jeff almost had enough hurdlers for an M60 relay, but was short one hurdler. (Occupational hazard in this event.)

Marla Runyan, the legally blind Olympian, on Saturday ran her first race since giving birth to her daughter, Anna, in September 2005. Now 37, Marla clocked 32:11.92 for 10,000 meters at Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon. That's not far off the listed American W35 record of 31:28.92 by Francie Larrieu in 1991. The listed world best is 31:20.28 by Norway's Ingrid Kristiansen in 1991.

Pat Manson, a Kansas Jayhawk track alumnus, vaulted 5.50 meters (18-0 1/2) in a return to the Kansas Relays over the weekend. At age 38, he's showing the needed fitness to take down Larry Jessee's maligned world record of 18-0 of 10 years ago. Elsewhere on the geezervault front, Doug "Bubba" Sparks shares a link to a photo sequence of a 10-8 jump by M65 Steve Warr at the San Antonio Senior Games.

Anyone out there wanna host a big ol' track meet? World Masters Athletics has posted a reminder that the deadline for submitting bids for the 2010 world indoor championships and the 2011 world outdoors is September 1, 2006. If North America were to win one of the meets, it would mark nearly a decade after the last time the Yanks hosted the big shindig (Puerto Rico 2003 counts). For the record, the 2007 outdoor championships is in Riccione/Misano Adriatico, Italy. The 2008 world indoor meet is in Clermont-Ferrand, France, and the 2009 outdoor worlds is in Lahti, Finland.

Today's issue of Runner's World Daily (the online unit) carries another chat with a masters superstar -- this time W70 Mary Harada, Linz medalist and world record holder in the indoor mile. In a typical show of masters modesty and gratitude, she credits her running friend Louise Adams as a role mdoel and supportive friend. And in defiance of the Track & Field News credo that "nobody gives a rat's ass" about masters track, Runner's World continues to showcase older champions. Compare RWO's print circulation to T&FN, and you wonder why the "boyz from Mountain View" (T&FN) continue to diss the geezers. They're just cutting their own demographic throats. Anyhoo, here's Jim Ferstle's Q&A with the brilliant and beautiful Mary:

Wendell Palmer is a beast. I say that in a nice way. He's a world-class thrower (and record holder) with great genes (his mother, Margaret Palmer White, died at age 102 after competing in the throws as late as 100). On April 8, at the Jackrabbit Relays in Odessa, Texas, Wendell was out throwing his weights around -- in five events. Gerald Perry sent me the meet results, and asked that I post them. No prob, Gerry. Thanks for the latest Palmer poop!

Every time a new IAAF newsletter come out (in PDF format), I download it to see if any masters athletes have been nailed for a doping offense. The April newsletter has no such bad news this time. But it does have an interesting section devoted to the workings of that mysterious entity known as the IAAF Masters Committee. Only a handful of privileged folks attend its meetings, usually at some big-time European track meet with meals served with the finest china, crystal goblets and vintage wine. Biggest news from the latest meeting: WMA hopes to plant a meet in South America.

Frank Schiro, the heroin-conquering masters sprinter, is celebrating the 21st anniverary of a road race he founded 21 years ago, where all proceeds go to Integrity House, a drug- and alcohol-treatment program in New Jersey. He writes: "This race is a positive statement that athletics transcends any high from a substance -- and secondly that treatment can work and people can and do get better if given a chance." The Run for Freedom series of races (5 miles, 1 mile fun run and 50-yard kids course) will be held May 21, 2006 -- starting and finishing at Integrity House in Newark.

Thank God Bill Collins is 55. It leaves the M50 group all to me! Hahaha. Kidding. But what can you say about the standing-start Houston flash? At the Penn Relays today, he ran the 100 in 11.50. Another day, another world record. He crushed the oldest masters 100-meter record on the books -- the 11.57 set by Britain's Ron Taylor in 1991. Bill's time would have taken fourth in the M40, forgawdsake. Complete Penn Relays results are here. Masters results, in order of appearance but not importance, are below:

Raw results are nearly meaningless, but the masters mile marks at today's Drake Relays indicate something slowed down the likes of M40 greats John Hinton (winner in 4:23.85) and Tony Young (nearly seven seconds back). I checked out the hourly weather conditions for Des Moines, Iowa (site of Drake), and learned that it's been raining and howling. Wind gusts were up to 20 mph, and the temperature was in the mid-50s. Yuck. Despite the conditions, M55 Nolan Shaheed of sunny SoCal managed to run 4:47.53 -- only two seconds off Vic Heckler's American age-group record.

At Penn, the geezer 100 is a crowd-pleaser, especially after Everett Hosack ran at age 100 several years ago. It's contested during prime-time on Saturday -- a day after the other age-groupers run. The race formally is called the 75-and-older 100. This year's winner was Austin Leary, age 75 -- an apparent newcomer. Haven't heard of the gent until today. (I don't see him in the masters rankings the past four years.)

It wasn't a record, but the winning M40 4x4 team at Penn came scary close. The all-time best M40 4x4 is the venerable 3:25.40 by the Philadelphia Masters (Dhamiri Abayomi, Robert Stanford, Jim Burnett and Edwin Roberts) way back in 1983. (April 30 correction: Actually, the record is 3:20.83 by Sal Allah, Kevin Morning, Ed Gonera, Ray Blackwell in 2001. My apologies) This year's winner -- a bicoastal team made up of Kettrell Berry, McDuffie Allen, Cornell Stephenson and Sal Allah -- clocked 3:26.80, an average of 51.7 per leg. The leadoff leg was San Diegan Berry, the M40 champ at 400 at last year's Hawaii masters nationals.

Don't blink when Alisa Harvey takes the track. At Penn, while masters sprinters and relayists dominated attention, Alisa doubled her fun by smashing the W40 American records in the 1500 and mile, competing against national-class open runners. This gives her at least a half-dozen middle-distance records for her debut W40 season. So reports Penn, via my masters friends: