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Few major invitational meets allow Masters. The Penn Relays this coming weekend is one that does allow Masters athletes. The Mt. SAC Relays in Southern California is another. Mt. SAC stands for Mt. San Antonio College, a junior college tucked into the rolling hills east of Los Angeles in Walnut.
This past weekend, Mt. SAC saw some wonderful Masters races -- even with some major no-shows (due to injuries and other reasons). I also had a chance to chat with a high jumper I idolized in high school: two-time Olympian Reynaldo Brown. He's making a Masters comeback, he says, at the Pasadena Senior Games this summer. It'll be his first competition since 2000. A kidney ailment sidelined him for years, but now it's resolved, Rey says. He's 58 this year -- and looks fantastic. (I'll post photos (at Masterstrack.com of him and all the Masters events in coming days.)
Among the Masters highlights at Sunday's events:
- Colleen Barney, the 2003 world champion at 100-meter dash in W35, made a triumphant return to competition after a few years off and focusing on her legal career and a daughter who is a champion diver. Colleen might race only once more this season, however. (That's what I'm told by a friend.) But she seemed to have fun out there on a cool but comfortable day in Walnut, Calif. Her W40 race was combined with the W50 race, BTW, after several entrants had to drop out with injuries, including last year's champion, Rita Hanscom.
- Canadian Tom Dickson, 54, won the M50 100 meters, wearing all red. Tom also won this race in 2005 and 2006. He's a coach at Simon Fraser University who accompanies his athletes at Mt. San Antonio College and jumps into the Masters sprints for fun. This winter, Tom was named the 2007 British Columbia Master Athlete of the Year.
- Horace Grant, an M55 newbie, edged M55 world champion Nolan Shaheed, 58, in the men's 800-meter run. Nolan bravely pushed the pace for much of the race, but Horace (traveling all the way from his home in Texas), showed great strength in outsprinting Nolan in the last 300.
- Willie Gault, who turns 48 in September, had the honor of anchoring the HSI elite team in the 4x100-meter invitational race -- which pit him against world champion Tyson Gay! The Hudson Smith International 'A' squad clocked 39.72. I doubt any relay foursome in history has ever gone sub-40 with a 47-year-old on board.
- Aaron Thigpen, who ran a legal 10.60 a year ago at this meet, defended his 100-meter victory with a legal 10.95 today. But after winning the 200 today in 22.45, the results show him without a place. Whatever. He collected a gold medal for the effort anyway. In fourth place in the 100 was Jeff Williams, who the PA announcer reminded us several times was the 5th-place finisher in the Michael Johnson 19.32 race at the Atlanta Olympics.
- David Ashford, the M40 world record holder in the 110-meter high hurdles, is 45 now. Last Friday at Mt. SAC, he ran the highs. No, I mean the HIGH highs. Competing in a university/open heat, David came close to the listed, unofficial single-age WR for 42-inch hurdles of 15.2 with his 15.54 in a three-man heat. But David can claim the single-age American record, creaming the old mark of 17.8.
- Meanwhile, on the Hawaiian isle of Maui, 37-year-old Jeff Laynes ran a 10.36 for 100 meters in the Blue and Gold Invitational Saturday at the Yamamoto Track & Field Facility. That appears to be his fastest time since 2006, when he clocked an amazing 10.17.
On to Penn!
Tags: Track Meets Masters
Tuesday was Tax Day in America, and Masters athletes will have shipped off their returns with a mixture of relief and regret.
One deduction we won't be listing is the expense of our sport. Entering meets, traveling to sites and staying overnight can be a big bite. We do this willingly, of course -- the price of participation. But what if we had a sugar daddy who paid our way to meets?? Wouldn't that be cool?
For 24 members of Sprint Force America, that fantasy will soon become a reality.
A New York-based Masters track club, Sprint Force America has just come into possibly the biggest chunk of change in Masters track history. A corporate sponsor is pledging to underwrite one year (with an option for a second year) of competition at major meets for at least 24 athletes, some in their 70s. The sponsor is the Swiss-based drugmaker Ferring Pharmaceuticals, whose U.S. arm is pushing an injectable treatment for knee arthritis called Euflexxa.
SFA President and co-founder Ed Gonera, a world-champion masters sprinter, provided details of the sponsorship in a phone call last week. With the help of Bob Gray, Frank Schiro and Saladin Allah, Ed wrangled a big time sponsorship.
Under a deal that Ferring hasn't made public yet, Sprint Force America would get expenses for six sprinters in each of four age groups: 40-49, 50-59, 60-69 and 70-79. The money would send these sprinters, mainly relay teams, to the Penn Relays, the National Senior Olympics (and qualifying meets), the USATF masters nationals and perhaps to Lahti, Finland, for the WMA world outdoor championships in 2009.
Currently committed to SFA are some of the best masters sprinters in America -- from as far away as California, Oregon and Texas.
Ed Gonera, Sal Allah and Frank Schiro are among the sponsored athletes. Others on board so far are Bob Bowen, Neil Steinberg, Greg Pizza, Marty Krulee, Ray Blackwell, Anthony Searles, Archie Glaspy, Rich Rizzo, Larry Colbert, Bob Lida, Wayne Bennett, Gary Sims, Mack Stewart, Dick Camp, Corey Moody, Steve Nearman and Rod Jett.
For its part, Ferring would film these sprinters in competition (wearing uniforms with the Euflexxa logo) and use their images in ads marketing the pain medicine. In fact, a film crew already is set to tape the SFA teams at Penn this month.
Although USATF frowns on "national clubs" in Masters track, they exist under a loophole in which athletes from any association can join a club in any other association if they get permission from their "home" association.
Ed vigorously rejects the notion that SFA is "poaching" America's top sprinters from other clubs, saying: "I just want to showcase good athletes. . . . I'm not going after anybody -- (especially if) they're already attached to another team. I don't care if it's Michael Johnson."
Ed, who turns 56 in mid-May, is particularly proud of the fact M70 sprinters will be sponsored. These include Lida of Kansas, Camp of Maine, Sims of Oregon, Stewart and Bennett of Texas, Rizzo of New York and Colbert of Maryland. These gents already have teamed for several world records. And they expect more to come.
At the moment, women aren't in the mix. But Ed hopes that Ferring will eventually underwrite champion female sprinters as well.
Ed has been running Masters track since 1994, when he was 42. He's won 10 medals at worlds, including five golds, and taken 17 national championships. He claims eight world records, two American records and considers a highlight a 48.8 in the 400 at 43 in 1995 "before I cracked my pubic bone two weeks later ouch!"
Ed says he's on the road back from three herniated discs, an arthritic back and foot, stenosis and "fatness."
"I still have goals," says Ed, who competed in the 1995, 1997, 1999, 2001 and 2005 world masters meets. "Got to keep working and deal with the setbacks."
Ferring, which in 2005 had "turnover" of 688 million Euros, telegraphed its intent to be a big-time player in American Masters sports by becoming the title sponsor of Euflexxa GeezerJock of the Year awards through Masters Athlete magazine.
It appears that FerringUSA is looking for new folks to be the face of Euflexxa, perhaps becaus its current spokesman, 1976 Olympic decathlon champion Bruce Jenner, has gotten involved in a reality TV show with his stepdaughters (called "Keeping Up with the Kardashians").
Alex Drigan, who works in Ferring's marketing department, said that characterization of Jenner and Ferring parting ways was "inaccurate." Drigan said, "...We did decide as a company to look at other opportunities to find new 'faces.' Jenner was a great spokesperson for Euflexxa as he totally embodied the spirit of athleticism (at any age). Hence we have decided to look at other sponsorships like Sprint Force America, Geezer Jock of the Year Award and are now looking at another Masters event in another sport."
Ed tells me that over the years he's approached dozens of potential corporate sponsors. But Ferring is the first to promise big bucks. Although Ed has budgets in mind for each event SFA attends, he doesn't have a grand total to tout.
In any case, this is big.
Now the only question is: How will Sprint Force America athletes report this on their taxes a year from now?
Tags: Sponsorship
Over the weekend, we saw some dramatic Masters action on the track and roads, including what was touted as an M45 American record for the 5,000-meter road run and a potential American record for the W40 1500 meters. Both records require a grain of salt, however. At Sunday's Carlsbad 5000, 45-year-old Dennis Simonaitis of Draper, Utah, outkicked 46-year-old Pete Magill to win the masters (over-40) race.
Simonaitis' winning time of 14 minutes, 45 seconds beat Magill's listed American age-group record of 14:55. (Magill also ducked under what the Union-Tribune story said was his old M45 best, running 14:48). Simonaitis earned $1,000 and Magill $500, helping him pay for gas on the trip home to South Pasadena.
Even more amazing: Simonaitis and Magill's marks were faster than the winners of the M30, M35 and M40 age groups.
But back to the records mess.
According to usatf.org, the M45 road record for 5000 meters (3.1 miles) is 15:07 by Doug Bell in 1997. A pending record of 15:04 by Magill also is listed on the site, which says "last updated: 12/24/2007." But no mention of the 14:45.
According to runningusa.org, Stephen Lester was 45 when he ran the 5K on the roads of Magna, Utah, in 14:34 in 1988. (But that race apparently was more downhill than level, so it's considered a "best" and not a record.)
But that's nothing compared with the confusion over the women's 1,500-meter track record in the 40-44 age group.
On Friday at the Stanford Invitational in Northern California, 40-year-old Aeron Arlin-Genet of San Luis Obispo, California, took sixth in her elite section in 4:27.68. That betters the listed AR of 4:32.73 by Joan Nesbit in 2002. Of course, it falls short of Alisa Harvey's unrecognized 4:26.49 at the 2006 Penn Relays -- an automatically timed split on the way to a mile record.
But forgotten in the fog of early Internet time is Ruth Wysocki's incredible efforts of 1997. Wysocki -- a 1984 Olympian whose father Willis Kleinsasser was a national champion of the early masters nationals in the late 1960s -- was 40 when she ran 4:08.69 in winning the metric mile at the Reebok VO2 Classic at Los Angeles on May 18, 1997. Both Wysocki and a track statistician wrote me to confirm this mark.
If for some reason that time wasn't legit enough, Wysocki ran the 1500 (about 100 meters short of a mile) later that summer in 4:11.58. And what meet witnessed that feat? Just the USA national open track championships.
The biggest reason for Masters records falling through the cracks in the 35-40 age range is the likelihood that the marks are made in open/elite competition, and athletes are used to meet directors or governing bodies taking care of records paperwork.
Masters are expected to bird-dog their own records applications. The major exceptions are marks set in national or world championships. But I guess some records don't get grandfathered.
On the other hand, it's a good thing that not all "records" get automatic ratification. At the beforementioned Carlsbad 5000, the results show the winner of the W85 age group as Nancy Fries, 88, of Newport Beach, whose time of 22:56 defies belief.
As it should.
I looked up Nancy's other marks on the Net. Turns out she was 41 in July 2005.
Some of us age faster than others, I guess.
In June 1929, national sprint champion Frank Wykoff of Southern California declared that "starting blocks are bunk." He apparently preferred holes dug in the ground. Or something older: a standing start.
Nearly 80 years later, thirty-something decathlete Dimitry Yakoushkin of Northern California is wondering if maybe Frank, who died in 1980, was onto something.
On his blog last week, Yakoushkin noted the current supremacy of block starts but wonders: "Was a properly controlled study done to prove they were better than a standing start? ...
With today's all-weather surfaces, are they beneficial? Or have we just been jumping off bridges because everyone else has?"
He notes that a standing athlete can have his center of gravity at the starting line, as opposed to 8 inches (or more) behind the line when using blocks.
"Also, the athlete using blocks has to do more work to bring that center of gravity upwards, to a normal running position. As far as creating more force from using the blocks, has it been proven? And if so, what effect does it have on time, the only thing we care about? It's all theory until someone proves it."
Yakoushkin, you should know, is an engineer whose resume includes work in research and development, so he brings a scientist's eye to the issue.
Masters might pay attention, since so-called "down starts" for older sprinters can be a chore -- or impossible, given the lack of strength for the proper pushoff.
Under World Masters Athletics rules, starting blocks are optional. And many world champions, including Bill Collins in his 50s, have used standing starts to win races of 60, 100 or 200 meters. In Bill's case, he eschewed blocks for a time because of a muscle injury he didn't want to exacerbate.
In 2003, after winning world titles and a national championship, Collins said: "The standing start helps me, because it takes pressure off of my sore hamstring. I've had so many injuries, as long as I can compete well starting like that I'll continue to do it. But athletes are getting better and you need an edge. I do have a good forward lean with my stand up start and that helps me a lot."
At the Penn Relays in April 2006, Collins set an M50 world record of 11.50 seconds in the 100-meter dash. With a standing start.
In the upper age groups, especially the 80s and 90s, most sprinters start standing up.
Track researchers have long considered the relative merits of the three main types of block starts -- the bunch (with feet close together and not far behind the starting line), medium (blocks farther back) and elongated (blocks well apart with rear block well behind the line).
Advocates of all techniques debate which is best, and even a formula was devised:
Impulse = F x t (force x time)
F = ma, where m = mass, and a = average acceleration.
However, a = (vf - vi)/t, where vf = final velocity, and vi = initial velocity
Therefore, F = m(vf - vi)/t
Or, F = (mvf -mvi)/t
Hence, Ft = mvf - mvi
You follow?
In a note alerting me to his questions, Yakoushkin writes: "You know of any studies or research that shows starting blocks are beneficial over a standing start? I can't find any, and I think they might be something grandfathered in with no real good reason other than they 'feel' better."
He urges a serious study pitting bocks vs. no blocks.
But you don't have to wait years for the results. Try a standing start in practice yourself. No guarantee you'll beat Bill Collins. But it wouldn't hurt.
Tags: Masters Track Starting Blocks
They held a Masters world track and field championships last week in France -- in the central town of Clermont-Ferrand a few hours south of Paris. Team USA brought home some 50 gold medals at WMA indoor worlds. No wonder, when your crew includes two former IAAF Masters Athletes of the Year.
The latest -- 61-year-old Phil Raschker of suburban Atlanta -- didn't match her record haul of Riccione last summer, when she won 10 titles. This time she took it easy. Won six gold medals and two silver for Etats-Unis. (She's saving her strength for April, when she stands a good chance of becoming the oldest winner of the AAU Sullivan Award.)
The other IAAF superstar was Houston's Bill Collins, 57, who merely took the 60-, 200- and 400-meter races in his age group -- and ran the second leg on the champion 4x200-meter relay team -- in the M40 age group. (That's right; he dropped down to race athletes as much as 17 years younger.)
And, of course, Americans set their share of records:
In W90, Ida Keeling ran 60 meters in 31.82, which appears to be the first time any lady of her maturity has run the race. WMA doesn't list a world indoor record for her age group.
In M60, Charles Allie smoked 200 meters in 24.95, beating the listed world indoor record of 25.10 set by fellow Yank Larry Colbert in March 1998.
In W40, Renee Henderson lowered her own American record for 60 meters to 7.78 seconds.
And in W45 Joy Upshaw-Margerum (big sister of Olympic long jumper Grace Upshaw) reduced her own American record in the 60-meter hurdles to 9.09 seconds.
But perhaps the most impressive mark was by Brooklyn's Val Barnwell, 50, who broke Collins' age-group world record for 60 meters. Val ran 7.18 last Tuesday -- a time that would have won the M45 age group and taken third in M40!
Val's mark would have been an afterthought, however, if Bruce McBarnette of Sterling, Va., another 50-year-old, had raised his calf a bit in the high jump.
After watching McBarnette easily win the event at 1.90 meters (6-2-3/4), M50 competitor Jim Barrineau egged on his fellow American to go for it -- top the fabled M50 world indoor record of 2.00 meters (6-6-3/4) by Germany's Thomas Zacharias in 1997.
McBarnette had the bar set at 2.01 (6-7).
Olympian Barrineau, no slouch himself, once held the M40 world outdoor record of 6-11. Here's how he described McBarnette's series to me:
"I witnessed one of the best jumps I've ever seen anyone take and miss. Bruce McBarnette (after a little nudging from me) decided to try to break Z-Man's supposedly untouchable record of 2.00 and forgo yet another ho-hum American Record. He had been smoking every height.
"His first two attempts were what I would call 'undisciplined' and were not close. I told anyone standing near me not to leave yet. Bruce has an uncanny habit of pulling rabbits out of hats on third attempts.
"Then it came. Fast approach, powerful lead leg and over he went. Only the bottom of his right calf nudged it off. Other than that it was a clean jump. Everybody was thunderstruck he got that close -- including me. After consulting some of the other jumpers, we concluded he would have probably cleared 1.99 or 2.00. Bruce now knows he can do it and, barring injury, he will.
"The outdoor record is 'only' 1.98. I also believe we had the deepest M50 championships in history. My 1.81 clearance on second attempt would have garnered silver in M45."
The meet had its share of bonks as well -- officiating miscues, unfair calls, and just plain stupid organization. More than a dozen athletes shared the dirty details on my other blog (at masterstrack.com/blog), but the worst were these:
-- M45 hurdler Dexter McCloud of Georgia, the defending world champ in the 60-meter hurdles, won his race but found himself disqualified after several rivals complained that he'd had an unfair advantage. And what would that be? Someone, at McCloud's request, had steadied his blocks to keep them from slipping (as they had for another American, Dr. Fred Johnston).
Of course, people steady blocks all the time in U.S. meets. Never a peep.
The irony? After McCloud complained, they gave him the gold anyway -- but still list him on the official Web site as DQ.
-- In the 4x200 relay for the M60 age group, the American team ran into French officiating -- and came out with no medal at all.
Here's how world champion Steven Robbins of Seattle described the debacle:
"For the 4x2 relays, the rules state that team members 3 and 4 are placed at the line in the order that their incoming runner is at at the end of the back straightaway. I ran second on our USA team. I was in second position at the end of the backstretch and our third man appropriately put himself in lane 2.
"For some unknown reason, the official moved him to lane 6. I spotted him with about 20 meters to our handoff, but the confusion led to an athlete from another country stepping in between me and my teammate, and I went flying on my face.
"Laying on the ground, I stupidly pushed the baton forward to try to get it to my teammate and, for this action, our team was disqualified.
"I'm not writing this to complain. In fact, as I reread it, it looks like a script for a 1920s Mack Sennett comedy entitled "The Keystone Kops Put on a Track Meet." I respect and appreciate those cities that bid for world championships. But WMA has to do a lot more to ensure that officials know the rules and procedures and have thoroughly trained those who are working the meet."
Robbins, by the way, is a retired university professor who made his living writing books on management.
He managed to restrain himself in Clermont-Ferrand.
Tags: Track And Field
You stretch before running, jumping and throwing, right? That's been the conventional wisdom for, well, forever. But forever may come to an end amid new research that says stretching might actually be bad for you.
Your performances may suffer, and you won't prevent injuries either, according to this counter-intuitive New Wisdom.
For a great summary of this new view of stretching, see Gina Kolata's recent article in The New York Times titled "To Stretch or Not to Stretch? The Answer Is Elastic."
Stretching before training and competition has been part of my routine for four decades. It's almost a religion. But my faith has been tested by these new studies.
Kolata, a W60 runner and one of the best health and fitness writers in the business, focused on an issue I've been wondering about: Yeah, stretching may hurt your performance, but don't you need it to avert injury? Well, the experts she talked seem to lean toward the idea stretching doesn't prevent injuries either.
But even though definitive studies haven't been done (since maybe it's the warmup that's needed but not the stretching component of it), one wrinkle remains off the radar:
Should Masters athletes pay any attention to what experts say about elite young athletes and their warmup/stretching routines?
Here's my strong belief: The older you get, the more essential stretching becomes.
Kolata quotes a Dr. Charles Kenny:
"Stretching the hamstring muscle, for example, teaches the muscle to relax when the knee is fully extended, Dr. Kenny said. But that is not what a runner needs. Instead, runners need to have their hamstrings stiff and activated when the knees are extended. Of course, one test of how passionate researchers are about stretching is to ask them whether they themselves stretch. Many say they do."
Activated shmactivated, I say. Stretching before racing simply prepares body parts for activity. It's bizarre to think the day's first test of a joint is when you're jumping, throwing or sprinting full-force in competition.
When I noted the Kolata story on my masterstrack.com blog, I got some interesting comments.
A fellow named Paul wrote: "The statement by Dr. Kenney, that 'Stretching the hamstring muscle, for example, teaches the muscle to relax when the knee is fully extended' seems to lack context. If you spend 10 minutes stretching and one hour running per day I think your muscles will 'learn' more from the 1 hour. Personally if I do a two-mile warmup where I stop for easy stretches after the first mile (just to the edge of my range of motion for each stretch). I find an instant improvement in how I feel when I start the second mile."
Another athlete wrote: "Never stretched much in high school and never seems worse for wear. Once I began college track, of course, they taught us 'real' stretching and I managed to get pretty limber. However, I always noticed that my muscles felt much weaker after the fact and I felt like this affected my practices and performances. I never questioned it, though, because I was doing what I was taught. I tend to think that dynamic stretching using activity simulating drills is much better for maintaining power and warming up the muscles."
And Pete Magill, a 46-year-old distance runner fresh off several American age-group records, posted this: "Stopped stretching before workouts back in my 20s. Had noticed that the stretching without being warmed up actually led to injury. But I also started stretching AFTER workouts, which led to immediate and obvious improvement in recovery for the next day's workout (credit the New Zealanders for figuring this out before the rest of us). I now also add exercises that reincorporate under-used muscle fibers and which simultaneously take other muscles out of perpetual spasm (in reaction to muscle imbalances created by the former).
"Bottom line: I don't use stretching (or other exercises) to get more limber. I use it to aid the recovery process. And without it I wouldn't make it through a single month."
USA Track and Field is conducting a study on the merits of stretching, and I hope enough older age-groupers are involved to answer my question about whether masters have special stretching needs.
I once had the honor of warming up with world record holding hurdler Courtland Gray (back in 1997 at San Jose nationals). And as we did 50-meter build-up sprints on the backstretch, he reminded me: "You gotta burn the muscles before they're ready to race."
I think stretching obeys the same principle. Burn 'em first!
Tags: Stretching
At fabled Hayward Field in Eugene, Ore., the U.S. Olympic Trials for track and field begin June 27 and end July 6. But athletes and fans get a break for two days -- July 1-2. They call 'em Rest Days. But not for some fortunate Masters tracksters.
Yesterday on the Track & Field News message board, Trials meet director Tom Jordan posted this revelation:
"There will be all-comers meets on the two 'rest' days, July 1 & 2. July 1 will be for kids; July 2nd for teens and up. Very limited slate of running events; no field events. It's mostly to give interested athletes the chance to run on Hayward Field during the Olympic Trials." I'm still awaiting details on how Masters can enter the July 2 event. (My blog at masterstrack.com/blog will eventually have the goods.)
But if this pans out, it sounds like a dream-come-true opportunity to test your legs and lungs on the same superfast track as the team bound for Beijing. Even more exciting: Fans might fill the newly remodeled grandstands and cheer you on!
Eugene has long been known as Track Town USA (where the nearby pizza joint -- which I highly recommend -- is called Track Town Pizza). Hayward Field -- an 88-year-old, oft-improved track stadium -- has undergone a $7.39 million overhaul. Included is a rearranged infield and track surface, and new lights for TV coverage for night events. (But not live TV; you'll have to visit my Trials blog for real-time results and commentary. More on that in a few months.)
Eugene is no stranger to Masters, of course. In 1989, a legendary WAVA world masters track championships were held there. In 2000 and 2003, Eugene hosted the USATF national masters outdoor championships. Many Masters secretly (and not so secretly) wish the masters national championships were held in cool and comfy Eugene every year. (Many other sites have been dreadfully hot and humid, including Charlotte, N.C., in August 2006, when the meet was almost called off due to a heat emergency.)
But the soonest Eugene will host nationals again is probably 2011, and we haven't heard a peep about their interest in making a bid.
Tom Jordan, a former Track & Field News staff writer, is well-known to Masters of the 1990s. During that decade, he served as executive vice president of the World Association of Veteran Athletes (now WMA). Although he was more interested in promoting his tour service to Masters world meets than promoting Masters track, he at least knows our sport.
But even if Masters are squeezed out of the all-comers meet, older age-groupers will still have showcase events during the Trials themselves. They are part of a series of exhibitions held at every major USATF elite meet.
According to Mark Cleary of Southern California, the coordinator of these invitational events, a Masters men's 3,000-meter run and a women's 200-meter dash will be held at the Trials -- in front of the paying crowds and world media.
Here's what you need to know about these two races:
"To apply for entry into Masters invitational events, you must have met the following standards in 2007 or 2008 (priority will be given to times run in 2008). Fully automatic timing (F.A.T.) is the only method of timing acceptable for qualifying marks. Relay splits may not be used for qualifying.
"Event: Masters Men's 3000m
Standard: 9:35.00
Field size: 12 with 3 alternates
Event: Masters Women's 200m
Standard: 28.80
Field size: 8 with 3 alternates"
The application deadline is 9 p.m. ET June 11, 2008.
But even if you're among the Masters superstars good enough to enter these showcase events, be aware you're not THAT special.
Trials qualifiers with Olympic aspirations get financial aid to travel to Eugene.
Masters?
"You must pay the entry fee of $25, by check or money order, prior to June 11, 2008."
Tags: Masters Track
Forty years ago, David Pain organized the first USA Masters national track championships in San Diego. Four weeks ago, I called David at his home near San Diego State University to let him know that a Web site archiving his Masters track memorabilia -- including results of his San Diego nationals -- had gone live.
Mastershistory.org had arrived!
As briefly noted by Editor Sean Callahan in this site, mastershistory.org is an attempt by a handful of Masters (mainly hurdlers, by happenstance) to collect and preserve the rich history of our niche. A USATF Masters Track & Field subcommittee led by chairman Jeff Davison of Southern California, Andy Hecker of Ventura, Jeff Brower of Texas, Dave Clingan of Oregon, Randy Sturgeon of Sacramento and moi assembled the materials and posted them online -- free for all.
You may have seen it. More than 1,500 people already have (with a significant 300 returning to browse again). And according to site stats, a quarter of the site's visitors poke around for at least 20 minutes and as much as an hour.
The site was revealed publicly for the first time in the February issue of National Masters News, published by Sturgeon. Then I blogged an announcement Feb. 16 that began thusly:
"Until this month, if you wanted to read back issues of David Pain's legendary USMITT newsletters, you had to journey to San Diego and rummage through cardboard boxes in a rental unit. Until this month, if you wanted to review Veteris magazine, a British-based WAVA publication, you had to search dusty attics in the UK. And until this month, if you wanted to see virtually all major USA national and WMA world meet results, you'd have to do a whole lotta Web searching. No more."
The contents -- thousands of PDF pages and dozens of external links -- fall into the broad categories of Results, Archives, Rankings, Hall of Fame and Galleries. I designed the site in less than a week after downloading some free templates off the Web. And M45 hurdler Davison, who did the vast majority of document scanning over half a year, persuaded USATF Masters Track & Field at its Hawaii convention to bankroll the site (pay for domain name registration, Web hosting and such).
Davison's efforts made a dream come true for M50 hurdler Hecker.
In early December 2006, I noted Hecker's longing for an "online Masters museum."
I wrote back then:
"In the wake of an Indy convention (of USATF) that celebrated Masters Hall of Famers going back 30 or more years, Andy writes: 'We would like to recapture the history of our sport. We are looking for the stuff you or one of the old guys in your club might have put away in a box in the garage. Nobody will see it there. We want to create a permanent online museum to the accomplishments of our predecessors, and of course build a system so things are not lost in the future. I am also hoping to recruit volunteers to help process what we are able to find into a viewer-friendly presentation. . . . Currently, as we go back in time, it is harder to find old results online. Our LOCs are not contracted or obligated to hold onto results of our National Championships for any length of time, so it is only through the courtesy of masterstrack.com that some fairly recent results were copied and survive. Lesser meets have a progressively less chance of surviving (so they need more of our attention).
"If you know anybody who was around when the sport started, see if you can get access to their box of old stuff, their photo albums, their news clippings, their medals and trophies. Capture what you can, preferably electronically, and send it to me."
Several folks heeded Hecker's call, including M45 hurdler Brower, who also serves as the Masters liaison to the USATF Web site. Brower already had made a major contribution by scanning results from National Masters News for his own Web site.
Although it's sponsored by USA Track & Field, mastershistory.org ranges far and wide across the global Masters track movement. The site boasts the first virtually complete results of world Masters track championship results -- all 17 editions of the WAVA/WMA world outdoor championships, starting with the inaugural Toronto meet in August 1975.
The original Toronto results book is posted, including page after page of photos of such Masters legends as Hal Higdon, Bob Boal, Bill Andberg -- and David Pain.
In the results book documenting the 1989 WAVA world championships in Eugene, Ore., discus legend and entrant Al Oerter (who won the M50 age group) is quoted as saying the meet was "more like the Olympics than the Olympics."
Plenty of Web sites celebrate the history of the Olympic Games.
Now we have a Web site that trumpets the history of Masters track.
Hope you like it.
Tags: Mastershistoryorg
When is a record not a record?
When I was a budding track nut in the late 1960s, I knew all the world records by heart. They didn't change much. Jim Ryun's 3:51.1 mile and Valeriy Brumel's 7 foot, 5 3/4-inch high jump seemed written in stone. At least in this Stone's imagination.
Now I've seen those records fall, and hundreds more. I can't conjure all the track WRs anymore. But I'm supremely confident I can find them if need be. A good almanac and a hundred Web sites all agree that the current mile record is 3:43.13 and the high jump WR is 8-0 1/2.
But when you ask me the American W40 indoor record for 800 meters -- as a gentleman who works for ESPN did recently -- I have to cough and apologize for a long-winded reply. Do you want the "listed" record or the "real" record? (He had asked for the "accepted" record.) The question came before last weekend's AT&T USA National Indoor Track & Field Championships in Boston, which ESPN taped for Sunday showing.
Alisa Harvey, 42, was on a record streak -- and had qualified for the elite USA nationals, and I told the ESPN guy that the best indoor 800 by a women 40 to 44 was her 2:07.08 from late January at Penn State. But the W40 indoor record listed by USA Track & Field was Alisa's own 2:07.23 from 2006. On Saturday, however, Alisa lowered her January mark to 2:06.08. And in the finals Sunday, she took sixth in yet another AR: 2:05.75 -- which virtually assures that she'll compete in the U.S. Olympic Trials this coming June in Eugene, Ore.
With dozens of events and 14 five-year age groups (from 35-39 to 100-plus), Masters track has hundreds of age-group indoor and outdoor records. And even though few can be termed "soft," they are broken with incredible regularity. So the official Web sites of Masters track can't be blamed for not always listing recent bests.
But in my 12 years as a close observer of Masters track, I've come to realize that dozens of official American and world records are nonsense. By that I mean: They don't recognize true Masters bests. Many legitimate marks set in officially sanctioned meets (including the Olympics!) should be listed as Masters age-group records -- but aren't.
On my Web site and blog (click here to visit www.masterstrack.com), I've chronicled dozens of examples of genuine age-group bests ignored by the record books. Sometimes, official Web sites don't even agree on a world record.
Five years ago, I compared a set of Masters bests (men 40-and-up, and women 35-39 and women 40-and-up) prepared by Peter Matthews of Britain with the official records maintained by WMA, the governing body of world Masters track.
My finding: They agreed on a meager 57 percent of the records.
Peter Matthews is the editor of a world-renowned statistical annual put out by the Association of Track and Field Statisticians and chairs the National Union of Track Statisticians in the UK. He doesn't mess around.
So if almost half the records in his compilation disagree with WMA in just three age groups, what hope do we have for the other 25 age groups (men and women combined)?
This is not an esoteric question for Masters geeks.
Such questions as "Who's the fastest? The best jumper? The farthest thrower?" are part of the human condition -- and a constant query by fans, sportswriters and athletes themselves.
So my heart falls every time I see a record ignored -- or the converse: a mark elevated to record status it doesn't deserve.
The latest examples?
I posted this on my blog over the weekend:
"Running in the rain, Joe King, 81, clocked a mile Saturday in 7:13.25. That beats the listed M80 world record of 7:16.16 by Canada's Hans Weickhardt in 1994 and the listed AR of 7:36.55 by John Hosner in 2006. However, 80-year-old John Keston ran 6:48.3 in May 2005 -- a mark that created a buzz for change in USATF rules. (Rules were eventually changed, but his mark was not grandfathered.) . . . . I also notice that Pat Manson's 5.36-meter (17 feet, 7 inches) pole vault mark at Reno is now listed as the M40 world indoor record -- even though Jeff Hartwig's M40 season best of 5.70 (18-8 1/4) is listed by the IAAF. I guess the record application is still on a boat from Stuttgart."
In the case of the Joe King mile, the meet Web site listing his time had "NWR" next to the clocking. New World Record. It wasn't. But who can tell? In the case of Hartwig's vault, it was too recent to process.
But most of the record anomalies involve performances that long ago should have been resolved, including the milestone first 7-foot high jump by a 40-year-old.
In January 2005, I recounted in excruciating detail how Glen Conley's clearance of 7-0 5/8 in August 1997 at the Empire State Games was relegated to the trash heap of history. Today, the listed M40 world and American record remains Jim Barrineau's 6-11 from 1995.
Conley's historic 7-footer wasn't completely ignored, however.
In late 1997, the USATF Masters Track & Field Committee voted Conley's jump "Masters Track and Field Performance of the Year."
Just don't ask why it's not a record.
Tags: Records
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