Seriously, Fluffy Bunnies are the masters cat’s meow
Over on our Forum is an interesting little thread started by vaulter Mike Soule entitled: “So Tell Me, How seriously DO we take ourselves?” Lots of cool replies. I thought of this question after reading a note sent me by Pete Magill, masters winner of the club XC nationals Saturday. I had asked him about his title-winning club, named “Fluffy Bunny.” He explained, “David Olds started the Fluffy Bunnies about five years ago. The name is David’s response to the preposterous level of seriousness with which some people take our sport.”
Pete continued:
There are those who believe that training and racing is not fun — it’s work! And it needs to be approached with a serious, workmanlike rigidity in demeanor and execution.
David (and the rest of us Bunnies) believe that running is something else entirely. Namely, that it’s fun. We train because it’s fun. We race because that’s a blast, too. We do hard workouts, but only because it pleases us to do so. And if the workout or race doesn’t go as planned … Oh well, there’s always beer.
David has long hoped to put together a strong masters squad for his Bunnies, but he couldn’t while we were on a winning streak with Team Runners High. It wouldn’t have been fair for us to leave the other guys on TRH when we were defending Club Champions! When we lost that title to Front Line Racing last year (in San Francisco), the time seemed right. The winning streak was over. And, more than that, many of our TRH teammates seemed to have lost some of their enthusiasm.
So we moved to Fluffy Bunny (with TRHer Andy Atkeson) and started the process of building a new team. By last June, we’d gotten commitments from 5 new runners (guys who hadn’t been on TRH). And with these 5 guys (Atkeson got injured and couldn’t make Club Nationals), David and I got our first title as Fluffy Bunnies. We’ve also added former 3:37 1500 meter runner Christian Cushing-Murray to the squad. Though he was unable to make Club Nationals, Christian will be running with us at the USA Cross-Country meet in February, meaning that 2008 promises to be quite fluffy if we can all stay healthy.
Fluffy indeed!
Go Bunnies!
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Let me drop in a few other mentions of Masters success in this meet.
First looking at the OPEN women’s results, in 11th place overall is perennial W49 superstar Monica Joyce. With not even one thirty something ahead of her, her time would have won the Women’s Masters race by over a minute and a half. On down the list are a few other Masters women from our local (Southern California) former multiple National Champion team See Jane Run Club.
Missing one of their three regular strong (now 41 year old) women competitors, they still only finished 5th. W41 Sylvia Mosqueda was only 25 seconds behind Joyce. W41 Tania Fischer only 10 seconds behind her. Both would have easily won the Masters race save Joyce’s domination.
And missing from the action was W41 Kirsten O’Hara who was doing dyestat duty at the Footlocker meet in San Diego at the same time. All three were finalists in the State Championship 3200 between 1983 and 1984 (O’Hara won in 1984).
Title IX is alive for these girls. Their teammate W36 Gracie Padilla was the only other over 35 woman in the top 83 places in the race. And one other W42 of note was the record-setting Alisa Harvey in 89th place–still good enough to have won the Women’s Masters race.
The Men’s Open race shows even less “geezer” representation, with barely a 30 something showing on most of the top teams. M42 Patrick Fuller, running for incomplete Team XO would have been in a close battle for 2nd place in the M40 division had he run in the Master’s race.
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