With an eclectic set of races in October — from 1.7 mile sprints to 13.1 mile expeditions through the New York Harbor littorals, and with members training for both marathons and indoor miles — it was hard to pick out a performance of the month. However, I have the website password, so I will: Deborah Barchat’s age-group dominating, 52-week-age graded PRing, orange blurring, 84.7% at Grete’s was the performance of the month.

 I’ve been writing this column for a while now, and a few patterns not involving pi or even fibonacci numbers have started to emerge: one is that it is really hard to set a high age-graded score in a half or full marathon. Doing well on the age graded tables at the epic distances requires epic miles, and who has the legs and commitment for that?

 Maybe Deb Barchat does – she seems to specialize at Grete’s – she has won it three years in a row, and her performances there are always among her best for the year. This year, she whipped twice around CP/Lillehammer fast enough to put her in the top-10 female age-graded masters performances of the year. She now also has the best 2009 score for a female CPTCer not named Sylvie or Yumi. But unfortunately Deborah set the only 52-week age-graded PR at Grete’s.

 The actual wilds of Van Cortlandt Park treated CPTC masters better than pretend Norway. The day after the gallop, Orange harriers roared into VCP and limped away with three age-group wins: Armando Oliveira, Coach Tony, and Catherine Stone ran away with it all. Or some of it anyway. But no 52-week age-graded PRs. As an aside, I think a really great photo gallery would be close-ups of masters runners’ faces as they scream down those hills, leaping over railway ties and giant roots.

 At this point, I was checking my spreadsheet to see if the bloody new version of Excel had sent my PR-identifying conditional formatting packing and replaced it with gray hair on my head. It seemed ok. Unrelatedly, the long haul crew sailed for SI. Stuart Calderwood pillaged the awards table and came back with gold, but still, no one set a PR.

 The Orange moved back up the Hudson River to VCP for the Harry Murphy 5k, and, like an India vs. Ethiopia dual meet, there were many winners on one side: Neil Fitzgerald, Raymond Thomas, Doug Labar, Hank Schiffman, Susan Pearsall and Jeannine Bardo each won his or her age group – Doug by over two minutes. Only Neil punched a PR ticket on the x-c course. 

 In our race-winning-but-apparently-not-peaking form, we returned to VCP on October 18, on a 43-degree rainy day. That’s nothing, said Neil Fitzgerald, Raymond Thomas and Hank Schiffman, who each won his age group. Still no 52-week PRs.   

 Enough, said Faster Masters, after getting off the phone with Redmond and Addis Ababa. Medals are nice, but we don’t do this for prizes – we’re trying to beat off age improve ourselves. Melvyn Stafford, David Greenberg and Kevin McGuire reported to the Marathon Kickoff start line with their race faces, and each of them set 52-week age graded PRs. Be particularly happy for Melvyn and me – we both set all-time age graded bests, at least from what is in the NYRRC database for races over a mile: 77.3% and 77.2%, respectively. Gold medals were hard to come by at the kickoff – only Faster Masters regular Yasuhiro Makoshi won his age group. And, in an equally surprising bit of stasis, there is still a Democratic majority on the Upper West Side.

 The points standings are going the way of that metaphorical Indian cross-country team – the 40+ women dropped another place, unfortunately.

 First Place: W50+, M 50+

Second Place: W 60+

Third Place: W 40+

Fourth Place: M 40+

Ninth Place: M 60+

 

dgreenb300@aol.com