M50 Brian Pilcher runs sensational 15:47 for track 5000

Last month, Brian Pilcher of Northern California won the USATF M50 cross country title in Derwood, Maryland. Is Brian still hot? Uhm, yes. The letsrun.com message board reports: “I would like to acknowledge age 52 phenom Brian Pilcher, who ran an unofficial 15:47 (Saturday) at the SF State Gator Preview Heat 2 of the 5000. Get this — their camera was broken so it was all hand-timed and it might not count for record-keeping purposes!” The listed M50 American record is 15:41.67 by Mike Heffernan in 1991, so he’s not far off. (The listed WR is 14:53.2.) Results for the meet are here, but I don’t see Brian’s race. (However, 44-year-old Aaron Thigpen checked in with a 11.14 for the 100.) But we have a Brian race witness. Tom Lyons wrote: “After the first women’s 5K
heat, and with three heats of 5K’s left . . . the
auto-timer came over to me and said he couldn’t do it anymore. Too dark
to take pictures.”

Tom continued:

We have no lights on the track but the surrounding
buildings have a few so you can actually see things along the
homestretch.

But not enough so you can film the finish. So I jumped up
and became the timer (I was backup hand-timer anyway). We had five
watches going and about 10 of my distance runners on the finish making
an impromptu finish-chute.

In Brian’s heat, one of our runners
(SF State) took the pace through 5:00/10:01 and then Linen from Chico
dropped a 69 with another one of my guys chasing after him. After that,
it was off to the races. A great field with those two at 15:27/15:29
and then the pack started to flow in at 15:39. I don’t have Brian’s
official hand-time yet as I had to leave immediately after the meet to
pick up my kid.