Good news for website readers: my fingers are the only part of my body that is not sore.

The best news from the 2008 marathon is on the team side – after winning absolutely zero team titles in 2007, two of our masters teams pushed through the headwind for big wins on Sunday.

Jill Vollweiler and the Susans Strazza and Richardson toughed it out to win the women’s masters title by over a minute, after last year’s team finished sixth. This year’s team had speed to knock your chin back – its winning time was 54 minutes faster than the 2007 CPTC team, and 15 minutes faster than the winning time from 2007.

On the men’s side, the CPTC senior masters team reversed last year’s narrow defeat by putting last year’s champions West Side Runners a full eight minutes behind. Like the women’s masters team, the senior masters were much faster – 33 minutes faster – than last year. Experience was on the side of Radcliffe, Gomes and these guys: Among the power trio of Jeff Wilson, Alan Ruben and Yasuhiro Makoshi, there are 401 races in the NYRRC database.  Maybe that kind of experience is what it takes to tame the unpredictability of the NY Marathon.

Explain this: We won almost as many medals in this 40,000-person world class race as we did in a 300-person cross-country race a few weeks ago. Man, the Bronx is tough. Jill Vollweiler won a bronze in the 40-44, as did Deborah Barchat in the 60-64.  I’m not sure if medals go four-deep at the marathon – if they do, iron horse Yasuhiro Makoshi won a medal for his fourth place in the 55-59. 

Steven Monte, step up – you are the lone CPTCer to set a new age-graded PR at the marathon: 80.1%. Steven clearly knows how to peak – he ran only six NYRRC races this year and saved his best for the big one. The highest age graded scores for the marathon were turned in by Jill Vollweiler on the women’s side (80.1%), and Lou Gehrig disciple Yasuhiro Makoshi on the men’s (83.4%). For Jill, that was the second time this year she has led the pack, and for Yasuhiro it was the seventh.

In absolute terms, the fastest CPTC masters were Steven Monte (2:41) and Jill Vollweiler (2:55).  

dgreenb300@aol.com