Gail Johns-Rees: Here are my thoughts/observations of the Nationals in Charlotte NC. We flew to Charlotte on Wednesday, arriving mid afternoon. I took a shuttle to the Holiday Inn with my daughter, Nicole, and teammate Paula Fortuna. The weather was hot and humid; felt similar to the New Hampshire weather we had been training through for the past 2 weeks. Not a problem…we can handle this. We had no idea what we were about to experience.

On Thursday morning we headed to the track to pick up registration packets and sign in for the 400M. Nicole went to the track with us every day, camera in hand. Thank you for the great pics Nicola! We survived the soaring temperatures and humidity by constantly searching for any available shady spots, water bottles in hand. Warming up was easy…just standing drinking from my water produced more sweating than any warm up l’ve ever done! So it wasn’t easy trying to determine when I was warmed up enough; then warming down didn’t occur until we were back at the hotel. This was the first of 4 times that I would come to the track to warm up for the 400M! After the fourth warm up, I finally had my first opportunity to race on Saturday and earned a Bronze medal. The winner of my race was the great Karla del Grande of Canada. Karla is the world champion in our age group (50-54) in the 100M,200M and the 400M. The future Hall of Famer, Jacqueline Board shared the Gold with Karla. Jocelyn Lowther of Florida captured Silver. Paula made it to the finals in the 400M. Yahoo…she got to run another 400! She bettered her time in the finals by 2 seconds!

The weather in Charlotte was wreaking havoc with eating schedules; sleeping schedules; racing schedules. But more importantly, the health and safety of the athletes and officials was being compromised. They were attempting to perform in temperatures that reached approximately 120F at the track level. On the first day of the meet 40 athletes and officials required medical attention, including 4 or 5 who were transported to hospital. The Charlotte Fire Marshall came to the rescue and shut the meet down for 2 consecutive days from 11AM until 7PM. We were grateful that someone took charge of a dangerous situation. Thank you!

P.S. Apologies for not getting photos of the men’s races. The heat forced us to return to the hotel after our races. [Commentary by Gail]

On Sunday, after numerous revisions of the meet schedule, it was relay time. Paula and I had both been invited to race in the 4x100M relays…our favourite! However, we would race on different teams this time. Paula’s team included the great Jackie Board. I had the honour of racing with fellow Canadians Lynn Barrett, Laurie Meloche and Karla del Grande. The special moment for me was when Karla presented me with a Canadian singlet. Thank you Karla. I will treasure it always! Team Canada won Gold and shared the podium the American team.

Warren Graff: I was there only late Friday through Sunday, but three outstanding accomplishments that I see were Roger defeating Masters Hall of Famer Stan Whitley in the M60 400 and Gail John Rees getting the bronze the W50 400 (Carla DeGrande is Canadian, so the medals 'move down', and Laura Barre winning the W35 short hurdles in a very strong showing of textbook hurdling, and also winning the W35 Long jump by a significant margin.

Roger was 2nd in the M60 100M and 200M, and Butch Blake got a strong 3rd in the M55 400M and missed 3rd in the 200M by one hundredth to Marion McCoy. I got the bronze in my M60 300H. I may have missed a few but that's what comes to mind. I also notice that if our James Morton was healthy and attended he would have won the M50 400M

Folks -Here is the website of the meet photographer at Charlotte: www.serdardesign.com/OnlineViewing

Tucker Taft: Mass Velocity made a great showing at Charlotte, but unfortunately, we couldn't put together a fully legitimate Mass Velocity relay team, because Jim Schoffman hasn't yet officially transfered, and Cochise, James Morton, and Brady Meyer were all injured.

Nevertheless, we had teams in the 4x100 and 4x400 M50+ wearing the Mass Velocity uniform, and we came in 2nd in the 4x100 and 1st in the 4x400. For the record, we were "Ad Hoc B" in the ad-hoc 4x100 M50 relay, and "Ad Hoc C" in the ad-hoc 4x400 M50 4x400 relay. They ran clubs and ad-hoc teams separately.

We would have still done well if we had raced against clubs (3rd and 2nd, respectively), with Houston Elite (Bill Collin's club) being the only club that would have beaten us in either case. Nothing to be ashamed of!

And when the whole team is healthy, we would give Houston Elite a run for their money...

Tom Gillen: These are some pictures from Sunday. It was very hot and muggy. As you know we needed to add a runner (Jim Schoffman, Mass Velocity member from Minnesota) to our team at the last minute - so we had to run ad hoc.

Roger Pierce was on another ad hoc 4x100 that were national champions. I believe Gail and Paula were on championship relay teams, as well. Warren got a bronze medal in the hurdles.

One final note regarding Team Scores. The Mass Velocity Men's team scored 31 points and placed 23rd out of 116 clubs. Our Women's team scored 49 points and placed 12th out of 51 clubs. Therefore the combined score for Mass Velocity Track Club was 80 points and placed us 13th overall out of 133 clubs!

I think that is a fantastic showing for a club that was missing many key people and where a good number of points could not be given to our club because affiliations were still not in order. With a healthy squad where all affiliations are correct - and with the coming Indoor and Outdoor Nationals in our backyard - I predict Mass Velocity will be among the top three teams. Congratulations to everyone who went to Nationals!!

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