Merlene Ottey is in lane 4 of Heat 5 of the 60-meter dash at the European Indoor Championships tomorrow in Birmingham, England. As luck would have it, doping dodger Ekaterína Thanou of Greece is in lane 5. But Merlene (with the 15th-best time this season and making her Euro indoor meet debut) isn’t the only masters-age runner to contend at Euros. Russian Vyacheslav Shabunin, 37, is in the 1500. He has a season best of 3:42.55 — close to 4-minute mile pace. His heat is Saturday as well.

Some editor at the Vancouver Sun spotted new national senior health stats and told a reporter, “Hey, go find some geezer to write about.” They found Dan Daniels. What a geezer. As Chad Skelton writes, “Daniels is the kind of senior citizen who makes the rest of us feel really, really guilty. The Sidney resident, aged 78, spends about 10 hours a week training for the decathlon — lifting weights, distance running and practising everything from the javelin to the high jump — despite enduring quadruple bypass surgery two years ago.” The story includes a nice shot of Dan using a practice hurdle — the kind that goes down to 27 inches (his competition height) or lower. Nice write-up.

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Patty Murray, W40 champ at the recent USATF cross country championships at home in Boulder, traveled down the road to Colorado Springs on Sunday and ran a 1500 in 4:50.52 at the Colorado Association and Mid-America Region USATF masters indoor championships. (That’s only a couple seconds off the listed USA indoor record.) But Alisa Harvey’s recent indoor mile record of 4:47.26 is worth 4:25 for 1500.

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W60 sprinter Kathy Jager of Arizona, were she a cat, has used up three or four lives now, athletically speaking. And like Rulon Gardner, the Olympic wrestling champ who recently survived a plane crash after losing a toe to frostbite some years earlier, Kathy knows triumph (Gateshead medals) and tragedy (an unfair doping suspension). Now GeezerJock editor Sean Callahan reports her latest challenge: “Kathy Jager, a W60 track and field athlete who lives in Glendale, Ariz., says masters sports saved her life. Late last year, she told me, she began to feel dizzy.”

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Julie Hayden of Athena Track Club graciously shares an inside account of what it was like to compete in the Boston indoor nationals’ masters 800 exhibition. Julie writes: “I flew out from Washington D.C. (Dulles) on Saturday morning. The weather was fine. Alisa (Harvey) was going to fly out on Sunday, but Jet Blue canceled all their flights when a snowstorm traveling north hit the area. My flight out of Boston on Sunday night was canceled for the same reason, so I ended up spending 24 hrs longer in Boston than I intended. I was fortunate that Mary Thane kindly agreed to share her room with me on Sunday night.”

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Coach Roger Kingdom in Pennsylvania writes about his elite hurdles race: “We are in the final stages of putting together our meet info. I need to know what masters hurdlers and 5K runners are seriously interested in competing. I need to have some indication of their participation by March 9, 2007. The cutoff standards are 15.50 in the 39-inch hurdles and 17:30 in the 5K. Please have them reply to me . . or Daniel Caulfield at 724-938-5828.” Coach Kingdom also sent along meet info and an entry form (which I converted to PDFs). Spread the word.

Just posted a few photos from the USATF Southern California Association Indoor Championships, held Outdoors — an annual meet put together by Andy Hecker to allow SoCal masters to compete at distances they’ll face at Boston indoor nationals (like the 60, mile and 3000 meters) in a few weeks. Although I’m not going to Boston, I ran, too. (But don’t ask me my marks. If I told you, I’d have to tickle you to death.) Anyway, we all had fun in the chilly Santa Ana sun (it sprinkled for a bit, too). And check out a wonderful series of photos my wife took of M50 vault icon Charles Brown. For best effect, click the “slide show” button at the upper right of the page. Results are now posted here.

Alisa Harvey and Catherine Stone-Borkowski are listed as DNS in yesterday’s masters exhibition 800s at the USATF indoor open nationals in Boston. Alisa (who lives in Virginia) reports that she simply couldn’t fly to Boston, writing me today: “I did not make it out of https://www.aasfoundation.org/zithromax-1000-mg/ Washington, D.C. The area had a snowstorm early Sunday morning which canceled my flight. . . . Just another winter dilemma in the Northeast.” (Later addition: Catherine had the stomach flu and had to scratch.) In Alisa’s absence, Marisa Hanson won the women’s race in 2:23.68. As expected, Peter Hegelbach won the men’s race in 2:01.56.

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So what else is new? Jeff Hartwig continued his magical masters tour in Boston yesterday, opening at a first-try clearance of 18 feet before going 5.80 (19-0 1/2) and missing three tries at 5.93 (19-5 1/2), which would have been an M35 age-group world record (indoor or out). And come late September, when he turns 40, he may raise the M40 world record well past 19. Under the headline “yes, this guy turns 40 this year,” USATF’s Jill Geer wrote: “American record holder Jeff Hartwig won his second national indoor title, eight years after his first, in the men’s pole vault, and he did so in impressive form. The 39-year-old easily won the competition at 5.80m/19-0.25, matching the top clearance by an American this indoor season.”

The Armory track in Manhattan may see yet another masters world record this season — but this time in a sprint relay. My masters moles inform me that four 70-year-olds will team for a 4×200 on Saturday, March 3: Bob Lida of Kansas, Rich Rizzo of New York, Larry Colbert of Maryland and Dick Camp of Massachusetts. My source says: “The . . . team should be able to run 28.5 a man for 200 meters so there is an excellent chance of achieving our goal . We have been training for months for this opportunity. So we are all looking foward to (March 3) with much anticipation.” Three of the four run for New York-based Sprint Force America TC with Dick Camp from another club. “So if we do get the record it will be listed as U.S.A. W.R.” The listed WMA world indoor record for the 800-meter relay is 1:58.71 by a German team at the 2004 Sindelfingen WMA world indoor championships.