Race of the day honors on the women’s side go to Yumi Ogita, who blitzed a 2:58 and was the top female CPTCer of any age on the day. Yumi had originally planned to run the Philadelphia Marathon on November 21, but she, like the Republican Party, felt that she was peaking, and decided to divert to Staten Island.
While I usually try not to be specific on runners’ ages since age is implicit in their age graded scores – let’s just understand that Yumi is 49 years old and she just ran a stunning 2:58, only a few minutes off her lifetime best of 2:50, run 15 years ago, and hit a massive 88.7% age graded score. She was 57th out of around 16,000 women.
The marathon capped an amazing year for Yumi, in which she ran at or near her all-time life prs. Take the Fitness Mind Body Spirit four miler on September 11 – Yumi ran it at 6:01 pace, which was the fastest pace she has run in the NYRR database, which goes back to 1987. That race translates to a 90.2%, which is the only recent 90% + score recorded by any of our teammates on the roads save Rae Baymiller in 2008. Generally, a 90% score indicates the athlete is performing at a world-class level. The highest recent men’s score is Alan Ruben’s 87.7% in 2009.
Since Yumi seems to have pressed the fitness button for which we all search, I gave her a call as she nursed herself back to health after a big effort. She was coping with recovery well, not surprisingly. “It was a great race,” Yumi said. “Much better than I expected,” she added, through the static on the line from planet fitness.
Yumi obviously felt optimistic going in, but a sub-3? Well, that was her plan and she stuck to it. She ran the first half in 1:28 or so, feeling good and starting to believe that a sub-3 was possible. She gave credit to the wall of orange for pushing her through the last few miles, and sped home without slowing down much at all.
You may have seen Yumi, her husband Casey Yamazaki, and their daughter Erika on the side of NYC buses and on NYCM posters. She was asked by the NYRRC to be part of their ‘I’m In’ campaign, and, like her running, proved good enough at modeling to make it in New York.
Speaking of how hard it is to make it in New York, the only bad luck she had was to run in an age group with olympian Linda Somers Smith (2:40). While her time would have won the division in 2008 or 2009, she had to settle for third this year.
I kept asking, nay begging, for some training hints to pass on. Her mileage is not extraordinary – around 50 miles per week through the fall. She wasn’t even completely injury-free since she missed all of March with a stress fracture. She does work more on her core than many of us do, however, and I have since done 100 sit-ups.
So what explains Yumi’s ability to get faster as she gets older? It’s a mystery, but anyone who talks to her can sense her love for the sport and her desire to run fast. Running is of course massively mental, and it is clear that Yumi has that part wired. If her recovery goes well, look for her at the Joe K 10k December 5.
On the men’s side, 58-year-old Yasuhiro Makoshi celebrated his 27th consecutive NYCM by breaking three hours and taking second in his age group, becoming our only male medallist on the day. His race translates to a 84.8%, which was the best men’s score on the team.
While Yumi has been fast for years, Yasuhiro is the other sort of successful CPTC masters runner – the kind who starts late but year after year improves his fitness until he has become one the fastest masters runners in the city. His early marathons were strictly average – in the 4-hour range. On his sixth try he broke four hours for the first time, and on his 22nd try, at the age of 54, he broke three hours. His swiftest New York race came at age 56, with a 2:56. So Dathan Ritzenhein, keep trying.
Yasuhiro is general manager of Restaurant Nippon, a company that owns two restaurants in the city and supplies food to several airlines. So while he regrets that his late and long hours prevent him from working out with the team, he is grateful for the orange wall which cheered him on not just at 89th street, but throughout the course.
It is easy to pin down Yasuhiro’s formula for fast: a steady 55-60 miles per week, combined with an interval workout on the track on Thursdays. The secret sauce is classic New York: Yasuhiro does regular hill workouts on none other than the Queensboro Bridge, that colossal carrier of 90,000 expensively shod feet every November. The double secret sauce is that Yasuhiro races more than a taxi honks: 31 times over the past 52 weeks. So for anyone who wants to get fast: run a lot, run fast, run uphill, and race race race.
Three other masters’ performances stand out: Tommy Mori was apparently the only masters athlete to run faster in 2010 than in 2009: 3:12:07 versus 3:16:08 in 2009. While we all have to believe that we can always run faster than one year ago, in this case, Tommy ran faster than he ran 17 years ago – this was the fastest of his 17 New York City Marathons (although his lifetime best is 3:10).
The fast time was particularly sweet for Tommy since it came out of potentially massive disappointment. A serious triathlete and ironman, over the summer he suffered an injury serious enough that his doctor told him that he must stop swimming and cycling. While disappointed, Tommy channeled his energy into just running, and as a result was able to run more in preparation for this year’s race and get that four minute NYC PR.
Tommy joined the team in 2009 and in the next two years ran a personal best 11:09 at the Lake Placid Ironman (his 7th completion of the distance) and now he has set a NYC PR – I think the team should feel good about that equation.
Josh Rayman finished up a strong fall with the fastest men’s masters time: 2:43, after an equally impressive 1:16 half on Grete’s hills.
And finally you should know about my personal favorite race, done by the one CPTC master who ran negative splits on that beast of a course, Allan Piket, who split 95/93.
I called up Allan because I would have trouble negative splitting a trip to the fridge. His race went, not surprisingly, just according to plan. Coach Tony’s 10-10-10 strategy was the goal from the start, and Allan, Casey Yamazaki and Kimihoko Oishi set out down Fourth Avenue together, an orange crew fiercely committed to holding back.
Allan had set out key points of the race: at 8 where Tony was stationed – stay slow; at 15 where his girlfriend was posted with a big high five – time to speed up; and at 24 where the orange wall kept him going. Or in this case, speed up again.
A negatively split marathon relies on work done months before, and Allan credits group workouts in the park like four miles at marathon pace and then four miles at half marathon pace as key to his day. He also completed five 20 mile long runs.
“The more experience you get,” says Allan, “the smarter you are.” Easy to see that his years of triathlons and running won him a great day. The sheer patience an ironman event demands is something we should all learn – or as he put it: “you don’t win an ironman in the swim, just as you can’t win a marathon in the first ten miles.”
May we all negative split life.
The club team competition has not yet been added up including the marathon as of press enter time, but as of November 6, here is where we stand:
1st: M 50+
2nd: W 40+
3rd: W 50+, M 40+
5th: W 60+
10th: M 60+
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