From Frank Handelman:
“IN THE FALL OF 1972, when the Central Park Track Club started, the dominant teams in New York were Millrose and the New York Athletic Club. Millrose had virtually all New Yorkers on the team, with many from the Bronx. They had a great team, with Norb Sanders and Gary Murchke, both NYC marathon winners in the pre-five-borough days, Vince Chiapetta, the NYRR president before Fred Lebow, John Garlepp, now the Millrose coach, and many other stalwart distance runners. The NYAC was loaded with nationally ranked athletes who were sponsored by the team and came in for the local championships. They were so strong that one year, I placed 10th in the Met cross country championship in Van Cortlandt Park and all nine ahead of me were NYAC; my friend Marcel Phillipe, who ran at Fordham and then in two Olympics for France at the 800 meters, was the only one who lived in the New York area.
David got our club started with the idea that we could rise from the grassroots and challenge these local powers. In our first truly organized team effort, the Met 15 kilometer in Scarsdale in early 1973, we ran strongly and placed second. Then in October, we pointed for and ran the Met 30 kilometer, over three laps around the Central Park six mile loop. Big races in those days were about 200-300 runners, and most of us knew each other. We were up against a strong and deep Millrose contingent, but we decided to take it to them.
It was three-man scoring, and we had four who were ready, David, Jack Brennan, Bennett Gershman, and myself. Bennett and David were lawyers, and Jack and I were in law school. I ran near the front with Ben, and David was just behind, with Jack near him. During the race, Ben made me stop each lap while he ran into the trees in the West 80s to get a bottle of “Gookinaid” he had stashed there. It was a powder mix, the precursor to Gatorade, and he told me it would help us. I was dubious, and thought we were wasting precious seconds, but he was insistent that we would be strong at the end, and he was right. In those days, there were no water stops, nor splits for that matter. We then left the bottle for David and Jack.
It was like a dual meet, with Millrose and CPTC taking most of the top ten. Ben and I came in third, holding hands at the finish to create a tie, something that was commonly done then, although the officials would not formally recognize it, David was 6th, and Jack 7th, and the Met title, the first CPTC team win was ours. You can see our happiness in the post-race photo, as well as those wonderful singlets that we brought back this winter.
In the next year, future CPTC Hall of Famers Shelley Karlin and Fritz Mueller arrived, and we got stronger and much deeper, but that first team victory was our greatest thrill, and David’s dream was on the way to becoming reality.”