Ted (at the lectern) was the pride of Porterville.
Ted Ensslin, a pioneer masters athlete and meet organizer based in the Central California town of Porterville, died Nov. 30 in Gilbert, Arizona. He was 90 and much-honored by his hometown. My masters track friend Roger Drummond wrote me: “Ted competed in multi events in masters meets for many years. He was instrumental in organizing the Golden State Masters meets in Porterville during the 1970s. I believe he was mentioned in the book ‘The History of Masters Track.’ [Correct, see below]. I remember him always talking about masters track to athletes when I was in high school and at Porterville College. Mr. Ensslin, along with Bob Higginbotham and Orville Gillette, were the main inspirations for me to get involved in masters track.”
Len Olson’s “Masters Track & Field: A History” notes Ted’s place in sport.
Linda Cohn relaxes after busy weeks preparing for WR attempt.
Setting a masters world record takes a lot of work — training, supreme talent and a little luck. But Linda Cohn went a step further — making an all-comers meet into a record-eligible meet for the javelin. Starting in mid-November, she was making sure the Dec. 9 Red-Black open meet at San Diego State University had weights and measures and certified USATF officials to run her event. Rick Reaser, the meet director, worked with her, arranging for San Diego officials Jim Skelly and Jay Beltz to provide a scale for her 500-gram stick. So with friends and teammates Rita Hanscom and Linn Dunton helping with logistics, Linda drove three hours south from Northridge and proceeded to stick a W65 world record just days after turning 65. She even brought a steel tape. Official results haven’t been posted, but she threw 33.99 meters (111-6) (and later a 32.94) to smash the listed WR of 32.02 (105-1) by Holland’s Weia Reinboud in 2016. (In 2014, the W60-74 throwers began using the 500g spear instead of 400g.) Linda is the listed W60 WR holder as well, with her 37.50 (123-0) from 2014.
Linda’s series shows that she broke the WR twice on successive throws.
Kim Collins is still making money running fast in his skivvies at age 41. Now the IAAF reports he’ll make his seventh appearance at the PSD Bank Meeting “when he lines up for the 60m at the IAAF World Indoor Tour meeting in Dusseldorf on 6 February 2018. … Collins, the 2003 world 100m champion who set a PB of 9.93 in 2016 at the age of 40, finished a close second in Dusseldorf earlier this year in 6.56, the same time as winner Yunier Perez of Cuba.” So naturally I checked the listed WR at WMA. Says “6.78 Troy Douglas NED 40 25/01/03.” Then I checked my own site and, voila, a post from February noting Kim’s 6.56. (His season best, though, was 6.52, which should by all rights be the listed M40 WR.) So what’s up, WMA? How did Kim fly under your radar? Failed to mail the paperwork?
Mastersrankings.com reminds us that the deadline to enter the late-January Oceania WMA regional meet in New Zealand is Friday, Dec. 8. Americans are welcome. Especially their money, because the point is tourism. (See the travelogue video below.) Fees are very reasonable: $80 to register, and $10 per event or $15 per multi-event. Also noted: “Athletes competing at the OMA Championships should be aware that drug testing will take place in Dunedin. If a Therapeutic Use Exemption (TUE) is required, please contact Dr Roger Parrish, the designated OMA Medical Officer with whom medical matters and TUE issues may be discussed (at) Dr Roger Parrish, 17 Brentwood Avenue, Figtree Heights, NSW 2525. Telephone: 02 4228 6260 (h) Email: roger@parag.com.au. All information and relevant forms can be found on the WMA website.”
M80 Bob Lida, my fellow Jayhawk, is not only a stellar sprinter but also a top-notch wit. I wrote him for reaction to his second USATF Masters Athlete of the Year award, and he had some clever replies. Asked for his advice, he said: “As you get older, pay attention to muscle mass; somewhere along the line it wants to disappear.” Bob was the subject of a New York Times squib five years ago. “Lida was the Big Eight champion in the indoor 440-yard dash in 1959. Then a problem with his sciatic nerve forced him to quit track; he thought he was washed up at 22 and turned his attention to a career in advertising.” Lots has changed, but he’s still fighting niggling injuries. In fact, he says: “When people ask how long I’ve been running, I jokingly tell them 65 years, but 20 of them have been in rehab.” Here’s a video from two years ago. He hasn’t slowed much.
Gary Snyder (in blue) listens at 2009 General Assembly in Lahti, Finland.
Rex Harvey is thinking big — hoping to get more elite USATF masters to 2018 Malaga worlds. Our national masters chair wants to adopt the kiddies’ “No. 1 track team in the world” motto for masters. But this could cost USATF $200,000 — to subsidize travel and reward medalists — and it’s a long shot. At the same time, former masters national chair Gary Snyder has formally announced his candidacy for president of World Masters Athletics. The vote will be at Malaga’s General Assembly. Snyder has a good shot. Here’s the $$$ news out of the Ohio annual meeting, courtesy a report from the Executive Committee: “Harvey discussed the plan to move Team USATF to the top of the medal table at the 2018 WMA Championships in Malaga, Spain, next September. The premise of the plan is that the U.S. has the best talent in the world but getting our best athletes to the World Championships inhibits our overall success there.”
Six age-group greats, and a great administrator, are newly minted Hall of Famers. Committee chair Mary Trotto released the list Sunday night after taking part in the USATF annual meeting in Ohio. She writes: “The following athletes and an administrator have been approved, at the annual convention by the Masters Track and Field committee members, for induction into the MTF Hall of Fame class of 2017. The athletes are Gloria Krug, Dr. William Clark, Harry Nolan, Gary Patton and Thad Wilson Sr. The administrator for service to MTF is John Seto.” John, of course, is the force behind the monumental mastersrankings.com. Names of masters track age-group honorees also were disclosed at a weekend ceremony. And the masters Race Walkers of the Year are the husband and wife team of Dave Talcott and Erin Taylor-Talcott. Meanwhile, we’re still waiting on word of which city was awarded 2020 outdoor masters nationals.
The year after he took 17th in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, race walker Jack Mortland started a modest newsletter. Called Ohio Race Walker, the publication was self-indulgent from the get-go. And self-deprecating. (“Our purpose is mainly to present information and news on the sport (and to keep our own names in print) and we are not planning any crusading-type journalism,” Jack wrote.) The first issue named Jack Mortland Ohio Walker of the Month for February “by an unbiased selection committee (his mother, father, sister and wife).” Along with walk rival Jack “Doc” Blackburn, Mortland was its main editor for decades. It ceased print publication in September 2014. First posted on racewalk.com, the entire 593-issue series has now been added to mastershistory.org — with a crucial difference. The original versions were scanned as images. But the issues on mastershistory.org are text-searchable. That means search engines like Google will eventually have an index of all the results, world rankings and masters mentions in this seminal publication. Over time it became an authority on the sport worldwide. We’re honored to share this, thanks to racewalk.com founder Jeff Salvage and a grant from the USA Masters T&F Committee.
Six decades, 593 issues, of ORW are searchable on mastershistory.org.
Canadian Running has a way with masters — Dan Way specifically. He’s creating a series of training tips videos with the help, this time, of Paul Osland, a world-class middle distancer and coach. Here’s what we learn: “The workout this week: 10 to 12 sets of 300m with a 100m jog for the rest break. This workout isn’t meant to feel like speed work as it’s to be done at 3K and run continuously so as to tax a runner aerobically. As Osland points out, masters athletes need to be mindful about not just the volume of the workout, but also the intensity. A big component of the sport is making sure to listen to the body in order to stay injury free. Adjustments that need to be made to the workout and training plan to make that happen change with age. Factors like reps and set breaks will also vary from individual to individual.”
Jeff Watry won the David Pain Distinguished Service Award.
W65 distance great Kathy Martin and M80 sprint icon Bob Lida have been named USATF Masters Track & Field Athletes of the Year. They were chosen by the Masters T&F Awards Committee, of which I’m a member, after also being nominated to represent the United States as regional nominees for WMA Athletes of the Year. I don’t know who our North, Central and Caribbean regional folks chose. But they’d be great picks. Kathy set indoor WRs in the 800 (2:44.35), 1500 (5:25.29), mile (5:51.74) and 3000 (11:35.98), and outdoor WRs in the 1500 (5:25.65) and 2000 steeple (8:52.49). Bob set indoor WRs in the 200 (29.15) and 400 (70.20). Both also claimed some additional American records. (See ’em all here.) Our committee also chose fellow Hall of Famer Jeff Watry for the David Pain Distinguished Service Award (the second Jeff in a row, after hurdlemeister Jeff Davison last year). Watry, whom I interviewed in 2015, has been been USATF Combined Events coordinator for around 20 years after taking over from Rex Harvey. When he first met Rex, Jeff wrote a program on an Apple IIe to help score the age-graded multis. It was used a few years until Hy-Tek came along.
Ken has followed track as an athlete, writer and web-master since the late 1960s, and saw most sessions of track and field at the 1984 Los Angeles and 1996 Atlanta Olympics. He also attended the 1988, 1992, 2000, 2004, 2008 and 2012 Trials, the last three as a blogger and Patch correspondent. [More...]
