USATF has posted results for Saturday’s National Masters Weight Pentathlon Championships. Click here for the page. In it we learn that Gloria Krug, 77, of the Philadelphia Masters TC scored 3,877 points — which smashes the listed American age-group record of 3,573 by Bernice Holland at 2003 Puerto Rico worlds. Before they went up sometime this morning, meet director Carl Reichard wrote me: “The results were sent to USATF by Charlie Butterfield Saturday night. There was some dialogue between Andy Martin and Charlie about format. Andy has been wonderful in helping me with this meet and I am sure he will get them up as soon as he can.”

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The People’s Republic of China used to be called Red China. And deservedly so. They should be red-faced with shame over how they treat masters track! With 1.3 billion people and a booming economy, you’d expect their masters track movement to be going gangbusters. But nope. How many masters meets does the PRC hold every year? Just one. Incredible but true, according to a source who gave me some insights on the PRC from his Hong Kong perch. I devoted my MAD blog this week to that subject, and I’m reprinting it here — along with some clickable links.

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Last year, I noted how the San Diego Senior Olympics wouldn’t have a track meet for the first time. A meet was promised in 2008, and it’s a go for Saturday, September 13, at scenic Point Loma Nazarene University (not San Diego State as some sites suggest). However, I learned today that the meet will be limited to athletes 50 and over (as of Dec. 31, 2008). This is a disappointment, but beggars can’t be choosers. In the late 1990s and early this decade, 40-plus athletes competed in the San Diego Senior Olympics because it was held in conjunction with the annual Chuck McMahon Memorial Meet. But not this year. And I was told that the San Diego organizers got in trouble with state Senior Games officials for letting sub-50s compete. So there it is. The deadline for entering this year’s S.D. Senior Games is August 29 — Friday. Click here for the entry booklet.

USATF has yet to post results from yesterday’s National Masters Weight Pentathlon Championships. Not a surprise. But still a shame. Unless a massive Internet or computer crash is involved, there’s no excuse for dilly-dallying on such results. The information is of interest to fans, friends, family and potentially local and national media. If it’s not posted ASAP, this will be another nail in the coffin of USATF’s reputation for not giving a rat’s patoottie about masters track. (But God bless the athletes who post individual results for themselves on mastersrankings.com.)

I’m sorry. I’m an utter failure. I’ve tried everything but put a gun to my head. I can’t seem to accomplish a simple task on your behalf. I can’t get the minutes from the USATF Masters T&F Committee meetings last November in Honolulu. According to USATF bylaws, minutes are supposed to be kept at such meetings, and I assume be made available to members. But not this year. Why should anyone care? Well, let me tell you.

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Dave Ortman up in Seattle, recovering from his Spokane title exertions, has composed another masters parody to a pop melody. He writes: “Here’s another jingle for the Track Poetry corner. Note that (Amy) Winehouse’s lyrics (from the song “Rehab”) didn’t make a lot of sense to start with. As with most poetic license, the biggest problem I came back with was my achilles, but that’s a mouthful to try to rhyme.” Here’s a video of Winehouse singing “Rehab.”

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My sportswriter friend Don Norcross wrote this nice story about Bud Held for today’s Union-Tribune. But the paper didn’t have room to run the photos my wife, Chris, and I shot at Spokane, where Bud raised the M80 world record in the vault. Well, that omission is remedied here. Chris took the close-up shot below with our 200mm zoom lens. I used a wide-angle lens to get the series that follows. All the images are from Bud’s third-try WR of 8-8 1/4. Meanwhile, I have hundreds of other photos from Spokane to sort, crop and resize for a long-overdue photo gallery. Stay tuned.

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This is what happens when organizers of masters nationals don’t publicize their dates expeditiously. Because of contract wrangling, Clermont, Florida, only recently disclosed July 9-12, 2009, as dates for the USATF outdoor masters nationals. That weekend, however, had been claimed for the 2009 USATF masters multi-event championships (decathlon, heptathlon, etc.) So now they’re in a bind. Becca Gillespy, an organizer of the meet, writes me: “Next summer, the Masters Multi-Event Championships will return to King’s High School in Shoreline (Washington). We were planning on having it the weekend of July 11-12, but it looks like that will now conflict with Masters Outdoor Track Nationals. We would like some feedback from interested athletes about good dates later in the summer.” You can write Becca directly at becca@polevaultpower.com, or post a comment here. For shots of the 2006 meet held at the same site, click here.

So many masters in the Olympics, so little time. Jeff Hartwig didn’t reach the finals in the vault. But his 5.55 jump yesterday (18-2 1/2) remains an amazing feat at forty. The lone American in tomorrow’s final is 35, however. That’s Derek Miles, the Trials champ, who cleared 5.65 (18-6 1/2). (You also can read Jeff’s blog at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.) On the foreign front, I note in my MAD blog that Jamaica’s Danny McFarlane lowered his own M35 world record in taking fourth in the 400-meter hurdles behind the U.S. sweep. WMA may even recognize his astounding mark of 48.30 (which age-grades to 46.1), since it currently lists his 48.57 from last year (even though he ran 48.32 at age 35 at Osaka IAAF worlds.)

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From USATF: “In the women’s 20 km race walk, Team USA’s 44-year-old, first-time Olympian Joanne Dow (Manchester, N.H.) walked the fastest time by an American woman ever in international competition. The mother of two placed 31st in 1:34:15, behind winner Olga Kaniskina of Russia (1:26:31), Kjersti Tysse Platzer of Norway (1:27:07) and Elisa Rigaudo of Italy (1:27:12) on the medal stand. Dow will depart on Thursday for the U.S., and on Tuesday morning she and her family drive from Manchester, N.H. to Philadelphia to take her oldest daughter, Hannah, to her first day of college at the University of Pennsylvania.” What a Mom!