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FLRC Newsletter - August 2004 |
| Geezer Report from the Empire State Senior Games and Beyond | |
A quick report on some recent races from the geezer division of FLRC/High Noon. On June 10 and 11, respectively, I ran a 5K and a 10K in the Empire State Senior (50+) Games in Cortland. Weather was essentially perfect both mornings: about 50°F at the 8:30 start time with no wind; a little damp on Thursday, but sunny and dry on Friday. The course is absolutely flat too, with the 10K being two loops of the 5K course, so you get one split at least! I was surprised to see so few Ithacans, since we have a lot of good 50+ runners. There were 50 in the 5K and 27 in the 10K, I think. Some (Diane Sherrer and Zsofia Franck) ran the 1500 on Friday instead of the 10K (you could have actually run both since the 1500 was late Friday afternoon). I'm surprised that we haven't heard anything from Diane yet.
Anyway, I ran pretty well in both, considering my advanced years (70), running 22:10 and 46:10, the latter being about 1.5 minutes faster than Skunk Cabbage. Felt pretty good on both. Probably should have run a little faster, but I had no serious competition in my age group. I was trying to catch Diane at the end of the 5K, but she was about 20–30 seconds ahead and I couldn't manage it. Zsofia was about the same distance ahead of Diane.
I hope more Ithacans will show up next year. Nearby and with a fast course, it is a friendly low-key race. The results and awards are out very quickly, so you are home long before noon.
The following Saturday I ran the Vestal XX (20K) for the first time since 1980! I haven't run that far in at least five years (maybe more)—either in a race or in training—but I decided to give it a shot. As many of you know, the course has a lot of nasty hills, worse than the Skunk half marathon hills by quite a bit I, in my opinion. So I started out pretty carefully, running the first 10K (which is the hardest, with a net uphill) in 51:36, and the last 10K in 52:00, for a total of 1:43:36. I had sort of hoped to break 1:40, but it quickly became clear that that was out of the question. The weather was a little warm (over 60) and humid, but not terrible. Sunday's weather would have been much better though (I once drove down to this race on Sunday—since all road races are on Sunday!—only to wonder where everyone was!). I passed the 9-mile mark in almost exactly my finishing time (1:15:29) of the 1980 race. I was pretty well finished this year too(!), but I managed to totter on, and actually my last mile, which is all downhill, was my fastest (7:52). I felt pretty battered at the end, calves thinking about cramping, quads getting sore—almost like a marathon—but was satisfied with the effort.
I finished 79/137 overall, and for the first time in my life (I think) I was the oldest finisher. One nice feature of this race is that the awards (except for the first three male and female finishers) are all based on age-grading. On that basis I wound up 9th overall, with an age-graded time of 1:15:59, 30s slower than my 1980 time. Other FLRC members who were there included Boris D. (9th in 1:19:54), Steve Ryan (50th in 1:36:48), and Bob Congdon (56th in 1:37:30). Jeff Juran often runs this, but wasn't there. So, for what it's worth, the age-grading got my time back to my 46 year old time, not my 27 year old time like it is supposed to.
One thing I noticed was that my 1980 time, when I was 46, would have placed 4th overall this year, and only 15 secs after 3rd place, whereas I was 21st in 1980. Four of the top ten this year were in the 40–44 age group. Where have all the fast 20- and 30-year old runners of yesteryear gone?
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