February, 2008

Teammates & Friends:

This is the 29th consecutive newsletter I've published. I've tried hard not to make it my personal forum because I've always believed that it's all about you. But this month you'll learn more about me, and how life's twists and turns created this great club. The Finish Line, Final Thoughts might in fact be my last as I transition into yet another chapter of my life in this great sport of track and field.

So here's YOUR Newsletter...

Perhaps you remember the e-mail I sent out at the behest of Mark Cleary (SoCal) calling for master men & women to enter exhibition events at some of the upcoming big meets. Here is what he wrote: "would you please get the word out to these teams that we still need competitors for the Open Indoor National Masters Invitational event--Men's 60m dash and Women's 400m all athletes must be at least 40 and the women's time standard is 65 seconds and the Men's time standard is 7.33 for 40-49 and 7.36 for 50-59--Thanks--they can apply electronically at the www.usatf.org on the Masters Invitational web page--Thanks--Good luck I hope all the teams run well--Mark"

A substantial number of Velociteers quickly noticed the incredible time standard set for M50s for the 60m event. Bob Marchetti wrote to Cleary "Hello Mark, Your notice for competitors for the 60M Men’s dash was passed on to me by Larry at Mass Velocity. Not that I’m even close, but the qualifying standards for 50-59 is pretty much out of sight. When Bill Collins set his 50-54 record, he ran a 7.26. Last year, Bill was the only 50-59 sprinter to run a 7.36. This year, only Marty Krulee has done it. Could it have been a typo?"

And Mike Fortunato also sent a response to Cleary: "Only Bill Collins qualifies. 7.33 is vastly easier for 40 than is 7.36 for 50. The former is the equivalent of a 7.00 college runner -- nothing truly special. The latter is the equivalent of a 6.58 college runner -- trials or even semis at an international meet. About a tenth slower than the WR when we were young. 14 men in their 40s would qualify based on 2007 times. 1 man in his 50s -- Bill ran a 7.36. In fact, the 7.36 might have been a nod to Bill, personally, a guy who led off a WR 4x1 in 1977 and has done a lot for the sport (and its announcers) since."

Mark Cleary sent Mike this clarification: "Michael, that was exactly the case--Bill is slightly slower than the 40's and he is the only one fast enough to race with them. We did mixed age groups a year or two at the indoor meet and it was a disaster we did not fill all the 6 lanes for the first time ever--we had 4 competitors--so the strategy was to stay with a 40's race and allow Bill to race--he has been invited in the past and has never made it to an invitational event--so it probably won't matter anyway. I would think that Mass Velocity must have at least one 40 year old that could make that field--Mark"

Thanks to all you eagle-eyes for spotting this nod to Bill Collins and making Mark acknowledge his intentions.

Wayne Jacobs, M55 from Glenshaw, PA "I just ran at the GBTC Indoor Meet and was asked to join your group by a guy, whose name I forget, who ran the 400. I joined your club yesterday, even though I'm not a sprinter. I'm soon to be 60 and run the 3000m, 1500, mile & 800."

Lisa Latno, W45 from Gray, ME "I have been running since 2002 with Unum (corporate track - MECTA and USCAA) and am happy to report that I have improved my times every year.. but as I get older I realize that trend will probably stop .. soon. Last year was my introduction to USAT&F. With encouragement from Kim (Williams), I went up to Orono for the outdoor master nationals and had a blast. I am not affiliated with a club - though I was asked to run with the ‘Wicked fast team’ in a 4x400 relay in Orono - but we had to run as a non-club (because obviously I wasn’t a member .. ) I just went to the link and joined Mass Velocity. I’m hoping this will kick-start me to ‘train’ vs just work out. I have always tried to ‘stay in shape’ but I do realize there is a difference between staying physically fit and training to run faster…Any tips always welcome!!!"

A number of months ago I decided that it would make the dues bookkeeping much easier to switch to a calendar year system, the same as USATF uses for its membership. So with the new year, here's a reminder that you should renew your membership with USATF and renew your membership with Mass Velocity.

For your Mass Velocity annual $15.00 dues you can either pay online via PayPal (no longer a subscription so you don't have to become a PayPal member and can use any major credit card) or by mail, by going to the Renewal Page. If you have paid your dues within the past three months, we will apply that to your 2008 dues.

We have had a good number of folks renew either online or with a mailed check but there are still a substantial number of you who need to fulfill your financial obligation to the club and your teammates. Please do so as soon as you've finished reading the newsletter. Thanks.

USATF Sportsplex Eastern Regional Masters Track and Field Championships

& RESULTS / PHOTOS / VIDEOS

Results from Harvard: http://www.coolrunning.com/results/08/ma/Jan20_Greate_set1.shtml


Bob Segal writes: The flotrack people filmed most of the B.U. Terrier meet (www.flotrack.com).

Here are some of our heroes in video. There may be more on that site (55m) that I missed but this is what I could find so far. They did not film some of the later heats of the 400 or 800, so some of us did not make it into the video. I did ask them if they had those later heats, so maybe they will add them.

Mike Needham:
http://www.flocasts.org/flotrack/coverage.php?c=163&id=8017

Tucker Taft:
http://www.flocasts.org/flotrack/coverage.php?c=163&id=8035

Bill Robinson and Neil Steinberg:
http://www.flocasts.org/flotrack/coverage.php?c=163&id=8048

More (not MVTC, but familiar names we know and admire). I think Susan Wiemer was a late scratch.

Becky Connolly:
http://www.flocasts.org/flotrack/coverage.php?c=163&id=7744

Sarah Lawson:
http://www.flocasts.org/flotrack/coverage.php?c=163&id=7724

---

"Hey Coach Larry, Thanks for keeping the U.S. afloat while we were in Israel! Now I will begin training for the National meet! I mailed my dues today. I added an extra $10.00 in case the team wants to have a banner at Nationals again, or if the team just needs it! - Terrence Haynes

"Larry. Your write-up on the coaching forum is fantastic. I am happy to have my lifetime coaching mantra ("the difference between an Olympic sprinter and a softball player is time spent on the ground") corroborated. But I do have a question. As an obsessive counter of steps, I know well how many strides are taken in the first 10m, 20m, 30m, etc., and I could not help but note that there must be a typo in your notes on strides/ top speed/ meters run. Your notes say elite sprinters hit top speed in 11-12 strides or 50 meters. Surely even Carl Lewis could not run 30 meters, much less 50 meters, in 12 strides. As Lewis' 42.5 stride 100 meter was one of the longest striding elite 100s ever, and as the first few strides are shorter than the rest, I am confident that Lewis took at least 22 strides to get to the 50m. I myself at nearly 55yo can barely get to the 20 meter in 12 strides, and I figure an elite runner gets there in no fewer than 9.

The old rule used to be that it took 5-6 seconds to get to top speed. At 4.5 strides a second, that would be, say, 25 strides: or about 50 meters into the race. (My youthful 100 meter took 49.) So did you mean that we hit top speed 11-12 strides counting only rights (or lefts) --and hence at about 50 m, or did you mean 11-12 strides, counting both, and therefore at about 25m?" - Mike Fortunato

[Reply - Upon re-reading my course materials, I see where I went wrong. Although the 11th step is considered having reached the maximum velocity threshold, the definition of the max velocity threshold is when the athlete reaches 80% of their max velocity, which occurs at the 20 meter mark (see chart #1). It's at the 50 meter mark where absolute top speed is reached and then begins to tail off (see chart #2). Hope this helps. - LL]

CHART 1


CHART 2

"You might want to put a link on the "results" page of links to: http://www.mastersrankings.com/ This gives the rankings, and now has a fully-automated way to submit results for a meet. I am currently ranked number 1 in both 200 and 400! Of course, I am also ranked last, being the only person in my age group who has submitted indoor results so far... ;-)

By the way, we have had pretty good turnouts at the Reggie over the past few weeks. We are now getting together a bit later on Tuesday nights (7:30PM), since the high-school meets have started. I think folks are planning on perhaps practicing Thursday nights for the next couple of weeks, due to Christmas and New Years falling on Tuesday.

One of our new members, Darin Brown, has been at several meets recently, setting the pace in the 800 and the mile. I have taken some pictures of his recent runs which I will try to upload to the web some day soon." - Tucker Taft

"Hi Larry, Rusty but injury free 800m on Sat at the BU Terrier Invitational. 2 min 6.1 sec - gets me ranked 2nd in the country behind my training partner Jim Watts of Beverly, MA. There seems to be numerous Mass Velocity runners near the top of the indoor rankings." - Ian Smith

[Editors Note: Ian Smith was kind enough to compile this list of Mass Velocity men and women who are ranked in their respective events.]

It's Time I Passed The Baton

I'm selfish. I admit it. As my daughter likes to tell the boys on the Commerce track team (only half-jokingly, I suspect) I created Mass Velocity because no other track club would have me. While that's not entirely true (I was a member of the Sugarloaf Mountain Athletic Club for a few years), there is a grain of truth to it.

I had been going to many of the SMAC's indoor and outdoor all-comer meets for many years in the 1990s. I was extremely overweight and did no training prior to competing, but track has been a part of me since my first meet in the 6th grade, so I would enter a sprint whenever the opportunity arose. It was the convergence of entering my 50s and the September 11th tragedy that led me down the path to the creation of what would become the Mass Velocity Track Club.

Over the years many of you would suggest to me that if I could just take off a few pounds, it would probably result in better times. As many of you know, I have always been struggling to do just that, and the gains I've made (or more accurately, the losses) have been slow in coming, but I keep trying.

In high school I was the right weight for a sprinter, but over the years of marriage and children, I lost track of the pounds and had no idea that track was a sport for people of any age. I heard but did not heed all the calls to loose weight and ended up with an early onset of type II Diabetes – and other health problems.

But the events of 9/11 deeply affected me and about two months later I walked into the Springfield YMCA and decided that it was time to change my life, my eating habits and to exercise. And over the next few years I lost over 60 pounds – and made my way out onto the track at Springfield College to participate in the Massachusetts Senior Games, now that I was old enough.

I didn't know anyone and the first friendly person I met was Bob Marchetti. Bob knew the ropes and was kind enough to tell me about other state senior games, about USATF, and pointed out some of the local stars of masters track and field. I started going to other track meets, continually injured one muscle or another and started meeting the same nice people at every meet.

So I selfishly decided that since many of the people I met were like me – not particularly great, but not terrible and they were all nice people to hang out with, why not create a “virtual track club” as a way to stay connected. In the spring of 2004 I collected a handful of e-mail addresses, created a little web site, and came up with a clever club name.

I started asking anyone I met at the meets if they wanted to be on the e-mailing list and it grew and grew. Honestly, I don't know if it was my idea or not, but at some point there was talk of turning the virtual club into a real USATF club. That meant, money for club membership, officers, uniforms, dues, formation of relays, scoring points. This was a big undertaking but I was motivated and I found the time.

The first official debut of Mass Velocity was in April of 2005 when a “rag-tag” MVTC team competed at the Penn Relays. Less than three years later, almost every master sprinter in New England is a member of our club, including every almost every female master sprinter. Our team has over 80 dues-paying members and a mailing list of hundreds. We have members from every state in the northeast and some from far, far away. We have competed at Penn every year, at the Millrose Games last year, and have two consecutive third-place finishes at last year's Masters Indoor and Outdoor Championships. Our club has world champions, national champions, great runners and plenty of just mediocre ones as well. I had no idea that Mass Velocity would become the club it has become - it just sort of happened.

But now it's time for me to stand down as your president and leader.

Once again a convergence of factors is at work. Two years ago I ran my best 55 meters, beating Dom Rappazzo (NY Adirondack area) for the first time. Earlier that very same day I was at the Connecticut USATF Indoor Championships at Yale and made it into the 60m finals. It was one week prior to the Indoor Nationals. But as I crossed the finish line ahead of Dom, something happened to my left knee and it would never be the same.

I have Osteoarthritis in both knees and the meniscus in my left was torn. Surgery repaired the tear but the OA has only become worse to the point that I have moderate pain when just walking. I have tried everything and continue to look for relief. I have only so many meters left in my knee. If I practice, I might improve but I use up whatever I should be saving for meets. Over these past two years my times are simply getting slower and slower and the pain just keeps getting worse. I have decided to call it quits for this Indoor Season and will give it one more shot come the Outdoor Season. I may have run my last race but that won't keep me away from track or track meets.

It's interesting to note all my overlapping track serendipity. It was the YMCA that helped me regain better health. With better health I started sprinting and went to the local HS track to practice with the kids and it is where I met, then Commerce boy's head coach, James Morton. It was at the meet I injured my knee that James asked about joining Mass Velocity to run at Penn. James has become one of MVTCs highest profile members. My daughter is now the Commerce boy's head coach and where I volunteer my time as an assistant coach. James is now the president and CEO of the Springfield YMCA and has created an indoor track program for the city's youth – and I am the Y-Speed program coordinator. As my dad has always said "it's a small world!"

I am still going to be at almost all the track meets, but instead of having time to meet and greet Mass Velocity members and prospective members, and get ready to compete, I am now busy keeping busy with dozens of kids from the Y-Speed program. As soon as Y-Speed ends, the high school outdoor season begins. I have less time now to give to my work (yes, I actually try to make a living as a computer consultant and web designer) which has been strangely growing, despite giving less of my time to my business.

It's time for others in Mass Velocity to step up and keep the club growing. Tucker Taft and Bob Segal have done just that. Bobby has been communicating all practice information and Tuck is our Penn Relays coordinator.

The Newsletter is an important way we keep this club of folks from far-flung places stay connected. I would love to have someone express interest in helping me do it with the goal of doing it all by themselves when they felt ready. Maintaining our web site is another time-consuming job that I haven't been keeping up with. Is there anyone out there who would like to lend a hand?

I remain committed to track and field but as I transition into a youth coach, the time I have to give to my Mass Velocity teammates has become limited. Perhaps I'll start a new track club for runners like me – the motto will be “Not Far or Fast.”

It's been a great ride – I've made dozens of new friends, had a great time at track meets, had lots of laughs, and helped build a great track club. I'm not going away – you'll see me at the track, possibly in the red and white sometime this summer. But my role with this great team must change and now it's time for me to hand off the baton. Stick!!!

Peace, speed and good health,

The Mass Velocity Newsletter is an open-access publication under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. Users may freely copy, distribute, and display its contents, but must give credit to the original publication source and author.