From David Greenberg of the 40+:

CPTC 40+ won the club championship with a little bit of everything –breakthroughs, consistency, depth, new faces, running while hurt and a little bit of luck.

Scoring tends to shift around for a few days after team champs, but as of press time, we won the race and the maximum doubled points.  If the results stand as they were on Monday morning, I believe the points will be:

CPTC 89

Warren Street: 78

West Side: 66

NBR: 55

 

And after the two worst races are subtracted:

CPTC: 69

Warren Street: 60

West Side: 50

NBR: 50

 

Our top five were:

Peter Brady

Daniel Gercke

Mo Lahseni

Gerry O’Hara (age 51)

Jim McQuade

(Matthew DeAngelis was fourth fastest but he is ineligible to score)

 

The breakthroughs: Daniel Gercke has continued to stomp on the carb pedal and had the co-race of the day. Even after a year of consistent PRing, he found a way to do it again, running a lifetime PR for 5 miles and winning the 45-49 with his 27:23/88.39%.  His AG% was the 4th highest of anyone in the race. Daniel has done every points race so far and has scored in each.

Daniel:

A pressure cooker is used to soften meat until it falls off the bone, melting tendons and other connective tissue. So that was Saturday. In the last mile I caught a few rival club members with a dainty little surge, but it was all I could do to get to the finish and melt with dignity.

Rather than another picture of Daniel, consider a graph our teammate in the UK, Gregg Lemos Stein, put together showing Daniel’s constant improvement since 2009:

gercke graph

Sharing race of the day honors is Jesus Ansede-Ferreiro, who continued a recent streak of PRs, hitting a lifetime 5 mile PR (races in the NYRR database) with his 31:52/71.92%.

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Mohammed Lahseni

Photo: Jay Mojica

Our #3 scorer, Mohammed Lahseni, also beat the heat, setting his best AG % in the NYRR database for any distance, and also set a masters PR at 5 miles: 28:43/82.31% – almost a minute faster than last year. Mo was second in the 45-49.

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Nigel Francis

Photo: Jay Mojica

Nigel Francis ran his best AG score since October 2013 – great to see Nigel running fast: 32:01/74.42%.

On the consistent side, we can look to our #1 scorer, Peter Brady – check out his times for the last three  team champs: 27:02/26:59/27:02. This year’s AG score, 85.45% was his best of course. Note that this was off mid-d training – two weeks ago Peter defended his national title in the 40-44 800 with a sub 2 minute effort. Like Daniel Gercke, Peter also scored for the open team.

Peter:

It’s great that we won the masters division handily and I’m glad I was able to contribute. I definitely was hurting in the last two miles.  If you see the picture Jay Mojica posted of me near the finish on Facebook, that tells you exactly how I was feeling. A hot, hilly 5-miler is quite a different animal from an 800 on the track!  But I still managed to run well and I’m happy with my result all things considered. In the last three years, I’ve run 27:01,26:59 and 27:02, so at least I’m consistent!

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Peter Brady

Photo: Jay Mojica

Tim Stockert also showed consistency, running 7 seconds faster than last year with his 30:13/79.47%/9th AG.

Coleman Cowan showed some serious grit, doubling back just six days (!) after Ironman Lake Placid:

I had a great day at Ironman Lake Placid.  After a fast swim for me, six and a half hours plus on the bike beat me up a bit, so I took it easy on the run, holding 8:00/mi. pace and walking the aid stations.  But that made all the difference between an enjoyable experience and the suffer-fest it could have been.  I finished in 12:10:19, but the day seemed to fly by.

After four days of complete rest, I did a short shake-out run on Friday to stretch my legs out, but still didn’t know what to expect for Team Champs.  All in all, I felt pretty good during the race.  Backing off the pace early helped get me up Cat Hill and through the heat in decent shape.  I didn’t have the speed I had last year, but my legs felt stronger than I expected.  I finished 30 seconds off my course PR last year.  After 140.6 mi. last week, I’ll take that any day.

Injuries are a part of the game – while Jim McQuade did not have a good race relative to his high historical standards, he ran injured and fast enough to be our #5 man.

Kudos to Gerry O’Hara, who double dipped at age 51 to be our #4 scorer. His 29:13/84.16% was good for 3rd in the 50-54 and checked in at #7 all time for the CPTC 50+ at five miles.

Welcome to two new athletes: Matt DeAngelis made his CPTC debut with a sparkling 28:53/78.18 at age 40. His time would have been our fourth best on the day, but since this was his first CPTC race, he was not eligible to score. If you meet Matt, congratulate him – he ran a masters PR for five miles and his best AG score in the NYRR database. I asked Matt to introduce himself:

I wanted to take this opportunity to introduce myself to CPTC.   I’m very excited to be part of this elite group of runners and hope I can contribute to the Men’s Masters Group for the remainder of the season!    As for my running background,   I just got back to competitive running after almost 18 years. As a collegiate, I ran for University of New Hampshire (Cross Country, 5K/10K).   I have been training on my own last few years and ran my very first Marathon (NYC) last fall.  I had no idea what I was doing, but got the bug back and thought I’d join a team in 2015 to help with my training. My focus will be Half Marathon/Marathons and plan to run NYC in November and Boston in April.     I look forward to the road ahead and meeting more of you!

Our second new athlete is Jeffrey Garnett, who made his CPTC debut this summer and I hope we will see more of him on the line and at practice.

Jeffrey:

As far as introductions, I am recently returning to competitive running after almost 10 years.  In that period I ran but had numerous injuries and other priorities that slowed me down.  Have now been in actively training since Feb last year and happy to say no injuries.  We became first time parents last June so I’ve been adjusting my training schedule around his 😉  I am almost back to my PR times from 2004-05 and my goal for this season is to set one.  I regularly attend the Thurs night workouts and when I can the Tues night.  Look forward to meeting and running with you soon.

 We get a bit of a break now, with the Fifth Avenue Mile, a traditional CPTC strength, next. After that we will have the Bronx 10 miler, Grete’s, NYCM and December 15k. We’re in a good place – first – but we do need to firm up attendance at Grete’s – if you can get that on your race card it would be orangetastic.

Off the roads, Rawle Delisle set his third 40+ club record this season – throwing the javelin 43.85 meters at the USATF NY Championships for the win. Earlier he had run 11.16 and 22.59 to set club 40+ records in the 100 and 200.

First call for the USATF 5k Masters XC championship meet in Saratoga, NY on October 18. XC is a team sport so we need to get at least 5 together so we can score. Let me know if you are interested so we can start organizing.  http://www.usatf.org/Events—Calendar/2015/USATF-Masters-5km-Cross-Country-Championships.aspx

From Chris Donnelly of the 50+:

It was an amazing turnout for the Club Championships this year and the CPTC 50+ men came away with a strong third place finish. And it was great to see so many of us out there; we could have easily fielded a five deep scoring team like they do for 40+.
The morning dawned sunny and temperatures climbed as the race raged on. In the 50+ category , tt was a hot one in more ways than one. A mere 8 seconds separated the top three teams and we were right up there with 2015 powerhouses Warren Street and West Side. Scorers Gerry O’Hara, Chris Donnelly and Alan Ruben all finishing within the top 10 in their respective age groups.
As the heat started to crank up, so too,  did Gerry.  His 29:13 finish not only was good for third place among men 50-54 (84.16% AG), but it also vaulted Gerry to seventh place on CPTC’s  all-time best list in the 50+ five mile category.  As 40+ Captain David Greenberg notes, that’s a tough list to crack.
Donnelly followed, shaking off a midweek knee flare-up to place seventh in the 50-54 men with a 32:04 (77.96%).  It was a couple of seconds better than the recent Frontrunners race,  and his fastest five miler since late 2012. Teamwork was the highlight:  “I had a spirited back and forth with (40+ teammate) Brenn Jones all through the race, and when Alan Ruben surged forward during the third mile, his presence really helped me to focus with Cat Hill approaching.”
In his second outing since returning to the roads Alan Ruben bettered  June’s  Frontrunners five miler by 23 seconds, to finish at 32:13 (80.94% AG), taking eighth place among men 55-59. Alan, of course, tops that 50+ all-time best 5 miler list to which Gerry has just been added.
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John de Csepel
Photo: Jay Mojica
The CPTC effort doesn’t stop there; our depth was unmatched. We posted another eight 50+ runners in this race, far and away a deeper bench than any other team (including their 60+ members). In fact, our next two finishers posted times so robust that each would have allowed us to keep that third place finish. John de Csepel, spends most of his time on the track, but heeding the call,  John rocked a 32:48 (74.98% AG), good for 10th place in the 50-54 age bracket! Marc Mizrahi was just a few seconds behind John, rolling in at 32:59 (75.17%), good for 12th place in the 50-54 bracket. In his first NYRR race in nearly a year, Marc carved 46 seconds out of last year’s time. Welcome back.
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 Victor Osayi
Photo: Jay Mojica
Michael Siegel was next, running 34:04 (71.62% AG).  Michael, too, significantly bettered his time from June’ s Frontrunners race, which was 34:47.  Casey Yamazaki, who’ s also back on the slow build after an injury, posted  a 34:12  (72.17% AG), grinding out a six second improvement over his Frontrunners result. Our old friend Victor Osayi, who’ s been absent from the NYRR road scene in recent years but always joins in for the Club Champs effort, posted a better AG percentage, 69.07% than last year, registering a 37:45.
And there were more 50+ stalwarts. Bob Markinson ran 38:10 (65.49% AG) right in line with his recent races. Budd Heyman’s 38:34 was good for 67.02% AG. Oscar Garcia ran 38:48 (64.41% AG), nabbing his best age group finish of 2015. Fred Paredes was next at 47:53 (50.94% AG).
What other team could boast such a turnout? Our strong showing in the double points Team Championship puts CPTC’s 50+ squad squarely in the hunt for third place on the season with the Fifth Avenue Mile, traditionally one of our strongest races, coming up next month, followed by the long road races where anything can happen.  In a year where so many of us have been hampered by injuries, we’re putting our best foot forward.

From Hank Schiffman of the 60+:

These were not your friendly racing conditions. Pre-race, they didn’t appear to be quite so difficult, but they were. To come up with some metric to compare last year’s race with this one I took 13 runners who ran both races in the upper level of their age groups, 60-64 and 65-69, and compared their absolute times and their AG %, last year vs this. I did not sort out for known injuries. 3 runners actually ran faster last year, but we do not know what the factor/factors behind their change.

Average running times of both groups:

2014- 34:46

2015- 38:32

Age Grade % of both groups:

2014- 73.24%

2015- 72.47%

Even with the 3 times that went against the grain, the drops were considerable. The AG% tends to erase the degradation for age; it is probably the better figure used to compare results on race day conditions.

As to our own horse race, 6 seconds made the difference between 2nd and 3rd place in the club standings. That is less than 2 seconds per scorer. The line needed to be drawn somewhere, this was the great divide. When the dust settled, CPTC 60+men found themselves on the southern side of the line in 3rd place for the race.

Yet we did superbly well with our resources. Other than Gary Gosselin and Hank Schiffman (me), I reckon everyone else who ran was either schlepping along an injury or two, or was undertrained from coming off an injury. And this does not touch upon our disabled list. We caught a remarkable break in that Chris Neuhoff had recovered enough just to run. During the race he had to deal with discomfort from his injury but he soldiered on. The price of orange and blue can be dear. Waiting for the team photo, Budd Heyman was working him over like something out of extraordinary rendition. I thought I heard Chris mutter uncle…

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Hank Schiffman

Photo: Jay Mojica

Our race stats:

Hank Schiffman 33:45/82.22%

Gary Gosselin 35:20/75.74%

Chris Neuhoff 37:19/73.67%

Doug Labar 40:15/65.91%

Phil Vasquez 41:20/65.33%

Harry Lichtenstein 44:46/60.86%

Dave Delano 50:12/56.82%

 

A lot of pride was swallowed as our men jumped in to race this one for us for insurance that we had 3 scorers. Nobody wants to parade on Easter Sunday down 5th Avenue wearing less than his finest clothes. Injuries may heal but the race results will be online for as long as we are around.

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Gary Gosselin

Photo: Jay Mojica

Gary threw this race into his calendar. His white whale this year looks a lot like the marathon. He had not run this race last year.

Doug was next. And he hasn’t raced this distance since he stopped using his dial up modem. He is much stronger but is sensibly, cautiously increasing his regime following injury.

Phil followed. His progress is remarkable in light of how extensive his surgery was repairing his feet.

Harry hasn’t been running team point races for quite some time. With more injures among the team he could have been our 3rd scorer.

And then there is Dave. He too ran although with questionable recovery. But always with that remarkable helmet of silver hair.

Our bench is rich in orthopedic material. We might be the very reason why the medical establishment is doing so well.

Many thanks to Kevin McGuire and Fred Trilli for coming out and cheering us and our women on.

All seriousness aside, the horse race is for second place. My numbers are unofficial, but that won’t stop me; I’m still in the sway of my pre-race coffee. On first glance we have 70 points to WSX 67. But the Greenberg Rule of -2 puts them ahead with 57 to our 54. Brooklyn is sleeping well tonight with a solid 102 and a -2 of 75. Taconic and VC Park are slugging it out for also ran. Prayer will not get us 2nd place. It must be earned with sweat. None of us will lose any sleep if we end up in 3rd come Club Night. But 2nd place might put a bit more shine on the orange and blue.

We do need a few more guys to run the Bronx 10 miler. Granted the registration is closed. I’m thinking we could appeal to NYRR if need be.

Hank Schiffman

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Larry Go, Daniel Gercke, Ani Go, Chris Donnelly

Photo: Nigel Francis