Magill overcomes muddy fall to win XC club nationals

Pete Magill, I’m worried about. Now 46, he’s still kicking M40 butt in cross country. Saturday he won his second masters XC title this season, taking the USATF Club race in Ohio (after falling in the mud). (Here is video of his finish.) In October, he won the 5K race in Saratoga. My concern: Will Pete have any energy left for track season? Just kidding. He gets stronger as the air grows warmer. Another shout out goes to Dave Clingan, who coaches a youth club up in frozen Portland, Oregon. At the national Junior Olympics XC meet in Kansas, his 11-year-old runner Paige Rice won the midget girls 3K race in 10:58.57, beating a slew of 12-year-olds. Her team took sixth of 19.


Dave writes:

Conditions in Kansas were severe. Rim Rock (Farm, designed by former KU track coach Bob Timmons, who lives nearby) is a cool place to run, but not in such nasty weather. Snow on the ground, 25 degrees and really intense winds.
A couple of large tents blew off the ground and landed on top of my rental car. I haven’t seen so many little kids bawling in my life. It was too much for the younger athletes.
Except Paige, that is. Running against girls a year older, she crushed the competition, winning by 17 seconds in the Midget Girls race. It was amazing.

I also got a rundown on the USATF club race from Pete Magill, who also congratulated Dave with this note:

Sorry to hear that the younger athletes had to endure such miserable conditions. It must have been hard. Hell, a good percentage of us old adult runners were bawling our eyes out at the conditions in West Chester!
While the weather actually warmed up a little by race time (I’m thinking mid-30s under gray skies), there was still some snow on the ground, and where there wasn’t snow on the ground there was melted snow – meaning lots of mud! Also lots of very uneven grass and (between the mud and grass) exceptionally poor footing.
The race itself was a blast. Well, after the first mile it was a blast. I spent most of the first mile concocting and then rejecting various excuses for dropping out of the race (a new record for me! … usually I make it to at least mile 3 before going through this routine!). The quad strain I’d gotten the previous Sunday and then a very nasty bout of allergies mid-week (so bad I missed two days of work) had me feeling like absolute crap. But I had the vague hope that my body would somehow work through it and get into a groove. And that’s exactly what happened!
By mile 3, I was feeling so good it was almost laughable. The race pace felt like a tempo run, and I was thinking, “Man, when is this going to pick up, because if this is all the other guys have got, then the race is over now.”
And, naturally, that’s when I hit a very slippery patch of mud on a turn and went right down on my ass, sliding a good 10-15 yards before coming to a stop. The front pack rudely kept running. And suddenly I was looking at their backs shrinking into the distance.
Of course, my first thought was that I should panic completely. But that only lasted a second. I still have vivid memories of falling at Portland in the Club Championships back in 2004. That time, I tried to get back into the race too quickly after having the wind knocked out of me during the fall, developed a nasty stitch, and struggled to get third in the race. So this time I tried a different plan. I calmly climbed to my feet and then took my time getting back into the race.
And here’s the amazing thing: as I caught and then passed the runners ahead of me, they actually made the effort to tell me things like, “Great job, Pete,” and “Way to get back into it!” Unbelievable. Only in a masters race do your competitors waste breath to encourage fellow runners!
Anyway, I finally caught Tracy Lokken, last year’s champion and the leader at that time. And I did what I absolute loathe other runners to do – I latched onto him and just dogged him for the next two miles. And waited for him to put the pedal to the metal, because Tracy is a VERY strong distance runner.
He won our Masters Marathon National Championship at Twin Cities this past September (beating Danny Martinez, Dennis Simonaitis and Paul Aufdemberge, among others), and, well, he was the defending Clubs champion! I figured he’d know I had a good kick, so I figured he’d want to lose me. So we went through mile five, and he hadn’t pushed the pace.
And I thought, “Well, now mile 6 is going to be the most painful experience of my life.” But then he didn’t push it during mile 6 either. And as we started to approach the finish, it occurred to me, “Wait a minute, I think Tracy’s having an off day.” And then, just before 6 miles, he actually moved aside to let me pass.
Well, my first thought was, “Okay, now I get it. He’s trying to set me up – let me take the lead, then dog me until he starts his kick, thinks he can catch me off guard.” So I took the lead. But then I immediately slowed the pace, unwilling to play his game. And I swear, I must have looked over my shoulder 25 times (no exaggeration) as we headed into the final stretch. But Tracy wasn’t playing a game with me.
Leading for all those miles had simply sapped his legs. So with 150 meters to go, I took off. And made sure that the first thing I did after crossing the finish line was to turn around, shake Tracy’s hand, and let him know that I knew that he’d done all the work. But hey, it’s the club championship, and my team needed me to get as few points as possible.
And then the real fun started. Because as I was shaking Tracy’s hand, I was also looking down the finishing stretch. And lo and behold, there was Jeff Ambos (our 2nd man) kicking in ahead of American masters record-holder in the 10,000 (track) and Front Line’s 2nd man Paul Aufdemberge.
Well, Tracy’s with Front Line, and we knew they were the team to beat. But we figured our only hope was to beat them in the 4-5 man spots, since their top 3 were so invincible. And here I’d gotten their number one man, and now Jeff (in his first masters cross-country championship) had beaten their second man! And no sooner was I giving Jeff a hug, than here comes our third man, Michael Buckhoff, also running in his first masters cross-country championship!
Soon after that, David Olds came blazing in as our fourth man. Followed by the brothers Arsenault (Rob and then Dan), and then our 7th man, Kevin Barda! We’d run out of our minds! In fact, our 7th man beat the 4th and 5th men from every other team except Dirigo (who surprised for 2nd place in the team competition), and he beat most of the other teams’ third men too!
After being the butt of relentless jokes about our name in the lead up to the race, we Fluffy Bunnies had won the championship!
Okay, time to get back to the real world.

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December 10, 2007

3 Responses

  1. Mary Harada - December 10, 2007

    Congratulations to Pete and the Fluffy Bunnies. I love the name of the club and would change the name of my club to something like that if I could (not really – but I do love the name). Pete is a real mudder.
    I missed the 5k and 6k masters x-c races this year for a variety of no good reasons- just did not get to either one. And I am sorry to see that the Women 60 and older were represented by just two women. That is pretty sad. Perhaps it is because women of our age were not brought up to play in the mud.
    I love x-c, but I admit I do not like running in the mud. The Portland X-C – where Peter fell in the mud dampened my enthusiasm for late season x-c races on race tracks where dirt is imported to create artificial hills and rain turns the entire course into a sea of mud. I did exactly what Pete loathes doing or having done to him- I hung onto the back of the lead woman in my age group and picked her off 400m from the finish to win my age group.
    Sorry about that Lois but you would have done that to me if you had the opportunity!
    I got caught in another sorry excuse for a x-c course at a horse track in San Sebastian. Since then I have picked my spots with great care and allowed my dimming enthusiasm for wallowing in mud, snow, ice, and poor footing to make me chicken out of some good races.
    I missed the hurricane run in Riccione, and now the run for mud pies in Ohio. Oh well there is always the possibility of sucking mud holes at Franklin Park in Boston- it was pretty dry this year, and other national x-c races in other places – as long as they are not horse track. I hope to be back next year to uphold the honor or the 70-74 year old women – just as long as they do not fold up the tents and take down the finish line before I finish.

  2. Kelly Kruell - December 22, 2007

    Mary, you and the other older women were missed. It is not as much fun to run in a xc race when the field is so small. I hope that you will return next year — and bring all your friends with you! How about San Diego in Feb.? It should have nice weather.
    I guess Pete will have to stop whining about the mud (and snow) if he keeps on winning in it! He resolutely states that he doesn’t run well in mud, but I think the results prove otherwise.
    Me, I love the mud and was disappointed that the women’s race was mostly just snow & slush (which I don’t like) and not very muddy. I was a victim of the tactics you and Pete employed and I didn’t like it one bit. The race photos show me being stalked the entire way (by a friend who was just far enough back so she wasn’t helping me a bit) and then being outkicked. Alas, I’m going to have to work on retaliation!
    Mary, what else would get more women there? It seems like the 40s women are starting to get it (most teams had 5 women instead of the 3 needed to score), but as I move into the next age group (okay, in the next 2 years), I wonder how to increase participation. It would be so great to have races that approximate the 300-400 guys in the masters men’s races! Let’s try to get to at least 150 women!

  3. Mary Harada - December 22, 2007

    Good question – what would it take to get more women to the national x-c races – wish I knew – in NE where we have a good number of x-c races for masters women, the numbers who turn out seems to shrink each year.
    If a national race is held near an area that has strong clubs with a lot of masters women running x-c – then the turnout may be better.
    However I have been running the National masters x-c races for over 10 years – not all of them but many of them – and the turn out for women 50 and older is always very very small.
    As for San Diego in February – that is in the midst of indoor track season here in NE – I am not training for x-c – with all the snow we are having this year maybe I should be be training for snow shoe racing!

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