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.

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Bob Weiner has been generating publicity for his Washington clients for many years, so he knows what buttons to push. As the USATF Masters Media subcommittee chair, he also ramps up his PR shop twice a year to draw attention to indoor and outdoor masters nationals. Make that three times a year. In late November, a column he wrote for a Honolulu daily attracted as much press for USATF’s annual meeting as all the athlete honorees put together. Bob wrote: “It’s time for baseball to delete the asterisk from Barry Bonds’ records and do what USA Track and Field and the Olympics would do — remove his records altogether.”

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Well, Fresno State might not have room for us at their big “Dream” meet, but Boise State is bullish on masters track. Mike Maynard, BSU’s head track coach, writes: “We have a masters section planned in the United Heritage HS Invitational on Feb. 2. I am hoping/ trying to create a Masters level meet within the format of the United Heritage HS meet. I also plan on expanding the meet format in the future. I am starting with limited events this season to gauge the Masters level interest in the community/region. If sufficient interest exists I will expand the meet, and the events offered in the future.” That’s marvelous, Mike! Here’s a PDF flier on the Feb. 2 meet, which apparently is at the site of the 2005 masters indoor nationals in Nampa, Idaho. Hope masters accept the invite.

Sacramento had no competition, so winning the 2010 masters outdoor nationals wasn’t unexpected. But Bob Burns of the Sacramento Sports Commission is still one proud poppa today in his press release on the subject. The main news: the event’s timeframe. The 2010 nationals will be in July, instead of the traditional first week of August. Bob writes: “The four-day event will be held July 7-11, 2010, at Sacramento State’s A.G. Spanos Sports Complex. Approximately 1,000 athletes ranging in age from 35 to over 90 are expected to compete.” As it turns out, Sacramento will host the 2011 world masters champions almost exactly a year later: July 7-17, 2011.

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You can’t tell the players without a scorecard. Same with USATF rule-change proposals. The Hawaii meeting of USATF resulted in a bunch of alterations to the rulebook, and the scorecard of those changes is right here. But then you have to refer back to the original proposals to make sense of the scorecard. Sigh. The good news is that Proposal 8 is listed as “R” on the scorecard — rejected. That means the much-maligned idea (to take the pentathlon out of the masters indoor and outdoor nationals and start a separate nationals) is dead and buried. Another revelation: Rule 320.8 says: “Masters records may be made in mixed age and/or mixed sex competitions.” Reason prevails!

Diego Cacchiarelli and Werter Corbelli make belle statistiche.

Diego Cacchiarelli is a 38-year-old gentleman who lives in Macerata, “a Medieval town in the center of Italy.” Werter Corbelli is 50 and resides in Rimini, near the world champs site of Riccione. I recently raved about the stat work on the Italian masters Web site and wrote them a fan letter. Diego responded and answered some questions. So now we know the names behind the numbers.

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Phil Raschker, honored a couple weekends ago in Monte Carlo as IAAF Female Masters Athlete of the Year, is back in Georgia (but planning another trip to Europe — visiting her mom in Germany and training with friends). She took a moment to reply to some questions (after sharing some photos) about her experience at the IAAF Gala. I first asked her: Did you meet or talk to any of the elite honorees? Phil replied: “There wasn’t a formal session for meeting elite honorees. However, I met and talked at length with the men’s masters honoree. Additionally, I talked with some of the elite honorees and former/present athletes at the gala, including Meseret Defar, Tyson Gay, Jeremy Wariner, Sergey Bubka, and several others. Generally I congratulated them on the past season and wished them all the best for the upcoming Olympics.”

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I have stat envy. Over the past few days, I’ve been ogling the work of masters rankers and record-keepers in Spain and Italy. They join the Germans, Brits and Aussies (and the USA) as the most with-it statisticians in the masters movement. Spaniard Andres Martinez sent me two PDF files showing how that nation ranks its “hombres y mujeres.” They do it age-graded. Using the WMA tables, they’ve come up with list upon list of the best sprinters, runners, jumpers and throwers regardless of age. Here’s the men’s rankings. And here are the women’s rankings. From Italy, Diego Cacchiarelli writes to inform us of the amazing work of Werter Corbelli and Luigi Fasolato: an Italian record page that includes its own world age-group records. (But recent records are noted as 2003, rather than 2007 for some strange reason.)

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Alisa Harvey, who turned 42 in September, ran a nifty 4:53.36 mile and 2:12.76 for 800 meters Saturday at the Liberty Kickoff Invitational in Lynchburg, Virginia. Alisa holds the listed W40 American indoor mile record of 4:46.29, set last year. But she could use more competition. She won the 800 and took second (barely) in the mile to Emily Anderson of William & Mary. (Emily should thank Alisa for pushing her to a PR.) According to the Age-Graded Tables, Alisa’s mile is worth an open mark of 4:32.

Dave Clingan, chairman of the USATF Masters T&F Awards Committee, met with some of his committee members at the Hawaii annual meeting of USATF. They made some changes in how awards will be decided. The main difference is that the calendar year will decide the hottest of hot. This modifies the previous system (in use only one year) where the previous outdoor season and later indoor season were taken as a whole for deciding the Male and Female (and other) Athletes of the Year. (This isn’t to be confused with the recent USATF Masters Athlete of the Year award, which went to the distance runner and not Phil Raschker. That’s a different award.)

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