Beating your age in the 400 is tough. How about running 12 seconds faster than your age? Masters legend Guido MĂĽller did it Saturday at the 25th LAC Quelle Fuerth masters meet in Bavaria, where results show he clocked 63.34 at age 75. He thus beat Bob Lida’s listed M75 world indoor record of 63.90 from 2012. Our German friend Robert Koop also reports: “Lidia Zentner (GER) just ran 3000m in 11.16.54 at the indoor meet in Fuerth (BTW, Henry Kissinger’s place of birth).” That appears to equal (or break) the listed W60 world indoor record of 11:16.5, apparently hand-timed, by American Kathy Martin in 2012. Lidia is credited with five WRs in 2013. Guido turned 75 in late December, and Lidia turned 60 last March. Expect more records in 2014.
Guido ran a WR sub-60 for 400 meters at Lahti worlds in 2009. (He clocked 59.34.) Can anyone beat him at Budapest worlds in March?
Jim Proctor posted this note on Facebook: “It’s OFFICIAL! The NCCWMA North America-Central America-Caribbean [Regional] Masters Championships will be held August 2014 in San Jose, Costa Rica. Rainbow taken from the Crown Plaza Hotel before signing, a good omen, with President Marcos Fourier ADEMA, President NCCWMA Sandy Pashkin from Oregon USA, Brian Keaveney, Vice President Stadia NCCWMA from Toronto, Canada, Magda Molina vice president ADEMA. Website up soon but for now email me at jim@runwithjim.com.” I have no clue how the regions pick their meet sites. They just appear out of nowhere. Nice (but bare-bones)website,. though Bidders see this form. The 2012 regionals were in St. John, New Brunswick. Another gift from my FB feed: the new 228-page WMA Handbook, which includes the Age-Graded Tables, called age factors, which help you score multi-events but also compare yourself with Usain Bolt (as we all are wont to do). The Age Factors start on about page 153. The WMA Constitution, implement and hurdle specs and addresses and email for all major players are listed, too.
Randy Sturgeon, recovering from cancer, has sold National Masters News to W55 national champion sprinter Amanda Scotti and W55 runner Tish Ceccarelli. That’s the word from Amanda, a veteran NMN staffer, who writes: “We have both worked there for a number of years so the transition has been pretty smooth. We’re both terribly excited to be taking over and can’t wait to put out our fist issue, the upcoming March one.” Randy’s seven-year tenure was rocky but momentous. He had a succession of editors, starting with Juliet Wahleithner and later Carmel Papworth-Barnum, whom he let go in May 2008. Under Randy, NMN launched a website, moved from tabloid to magazine format, promoted the Phidippides Awards, folded in columnists and began e-blasts to subscribers. USATF continued to subsidize NMN — $5,000 a year — and use the print edition to host chair columns.
Local girl Amanda (in yellow) leans for the tape at 2010 Sacramento nationals, where she won gold in the W50 100 and 200.
Legend has it that 106-year-old Larry Lewis, a San Francisco waiter, ran 100-yard sprints as exhibitions under 18 seconds. His marks never made it to the record books. But M100 sprinters aren’t as rare as you’d think, and the latest sizzling centenarian is Miyazaki “Golden Bolt” Hidekichi, a Japanese gent who says he’d like to race Usain Bolt. Gotta love it. But Miyazaki, who doesn’t look a day over 80, is the real deal. He’s the listed world-record-holder for 100 at 100. Did it in 29.83. Age-graded, that’s worth 7.21 for an open guy. Talk about Insane Bolt. In October, the Golden Bolt ran 100 in 34.10 at age 103. Age-graded: 8.24. So he’s slowing down in his dotage. Here’s a video.
At 103, the Golden Bolt ran 100m in 34.10 — but faster than Usain on AGT.
John Wall is my newest hero. He’s an Australian M65 sprinter who two years ago was preparing to die. According to an amazing story in The Daily Telegraph: “After the operation, and the diagnosis was what is was [a malignant brain tumor], I resigned myself to the fact I was going to die,” John said after winning the 60 (8.61) and 100 (13.8 into a gale) at the Oceania Masters Athletics Championships. “It was a pretty dire position and I have never been in a position where I was not in control of my own body.” Somehow — it’s not clear from the story — he fought back with the support of his manager and best friend Cherie Myers. But he also says: “I don’t want to know how long I have. My headspace is that I want to live as long and productively as I can. … I say to anyone who has cancer: Do not limit yourself to a label somebody gives you.” John, one of a handful of men to go sub-12 in 100 after age 60, starred at 2009 World Masters Games in Sydney:
Mark Cleary is USATF West Region coordinator, an appointed post that puts him in charge of the masters championships for the states of California, Hawaii, Nevada, New Mexico and Arizona. In July 2010, I noted complaints of some athletes to Mark’s insistence on holding two-day regional meets. Mark defends it (despite its extra cost) as a way of replicating the nationals experience. He repeated his argument in a comment Wednesday, saying in part: “If you are a serious athlete and are going to Nationals, you can not prepare the body for a 4-day Nationals off a one-day Region Meet.” My 2010 poll indicated another view: 42 votes for a one-day meet, 16 for a two-day xanax online (and 8 unsure). My poll isn’t scientific. But it suggests that further study is merited. Mark works hard to serve elites, but are elites on his side? And what do coordinators elsewhere do? According to his annual meeting report, the 2014 West Region meet is June 21-22 at Caltech in Pasadena. So that’s not likely to change. But shouldn’t the athletes have a say? For 2015, how about someone at USATF doing a survey? Mark may be on the wrong side.
Mark (in blue at 2007 Mt. SAC Relays) also runs masters invitational program.
We have a billion reasons to fix masters track in India.
Wasn’t this resolved? I’ve reported about the insane dueling federations of India. But a report in The Times of India labels the national masters championships Feb. 24 “the selection trials for the 18th Asian Masters Athletics Championships.” Sigh. We’re a sport where everyone can run, right? (It’s in the WMA Constitution.) Does that mean pay-to-play politics are still alive? In 2010, WMA President Stan Perkinsdodged my questions. In his 2013 report to the Porto Alegre General Assembly, Stan wrote: “The resignation of long serving (Asian WMA) Secretary Hari Chandrahas left some problems for the region which is still to appoint a permanent replacement.” I’d say. Stan never responded to my candidates questionnaire, which included an item on India. Gotta write him again.
Call it Aerobics 2.0. If boomers (and their parents) start rolling wine bottles under their backs at 3 a.m., drain the market of Sudoku puzzles and take up the Western roll, we’ll have Bruce Grierson to thank. Olga Kotelko, too. Five decades after Ken Cooper’s call to action fueled the running boom, “What Makes Olga Run?” is poised to give longevity hopes (and masters track) rockstar status. Bruce’s book, officially published today by Henry Holt and Company, is subtitled “The Mystery of the 90-Something Track Star and What She Can Teach Us About Living Longer, Happier Lives.” By the time she turns 95 in March, Olga will need an agent to screen appearance requests. Buy stock in Sharpie. With a Parade magazine cover behind her and a segment on NBC’s “Today” show coming up Friday, Olga is on the cusp of major celebrity. Bruce did justice to Olga, and our crazy sport.
On Christmas Eve, I posted a 1996 story about Norwegian distance runner Tor Aanensen. A few days later, author Stephen Seiler found Tor’s phone number and called him. Here’s the report: “He is 73 years old now. We had a nice conversation and he is obviously both clear in his head and still fit physically. But in his own words, ‘There is a time and place for everything,’ and he no longer is driven to compete or fly around to different road races. He still runs 3-4 times a week. He still enjoys interval training, such as 400-meter repeats. He still does hill sessions. But he is not running daily, or doing the long 20K and 30K runs on asphalt, preferring to do most of his running in the forest, with an occasional 10K run on asphalt. He also does strength training at a local fitness center [two] times a week, performing a circuit of 8 exercises. If the weather is bad and there is snow on the ground, he might run on a treadmill for 40 minutes instead of outside.”
World champion Margaret Peters of New Zealand won the 60 (into a stiff wind), 100 and 200 at the Oceania Masters Athletics Championships in Bendigo, Australia, and may have been disappointed in her 19.2 hand-time for the 1. She made up for it Saturday, however, by blasting a 10-year-old W80 world record for the deuce. According to results, Margaret had a legal 1.5 mps wind when she clocked 40.27 seconds — beating the listed WR of 40.78 by Japan’s Mitsu Morita in 2003. The local newspaper profiled her earlier in the meet. “Peters, an Oceania Masters record holder in the 60, 100, 200 and 400 metres events, says taking part in the games was fun,” said the Bendigo Advertiser. “It is the thrill of doing the sport and joining in and taking part with everyone,” Margaret is quoted as saying, noting that she had been running laps every other day to prepare for the meet. “You have to try your best because you don’t really know what everybody else has been doing.” Margaret has competed for many years and was the New Zealand Masters Athlete of the Year in 2011.
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...]
