V 12 No. 41 Two Book Reviews and a Look Back at Another and a Nat. Record Girls' HS PV

 

1st  Kenna Stimmel, Margaretta HS14' 6",   2nd Ainsley Hamsher, Orrville 12' 8",  3rd Colleen Steinmetz, Ansonia 12' 0",  4th Brooke Holloway, Worthington Christian, 11' 8", 5th Lauryn Auchmuty, Columbus Grove, 11' 8",  6th Lillian Finke, Madison Plains,  and 7th Riley Heitkamp, Ft. Loramie

June 5, 2022

Yesterday the girls' national high school pole vault record was broken by Kenna Stimmel of Margaretta HS  at the Ohio state meet in the Div III section.  She cleared 14' 6".  But that wasn't all.  She also ran on her team's winning 4x100 relay, got second in the 100M  in 12.10 and was third in the 100 hurdles in 14.98.    Look out Katie Nageotte!

Richard Mach, in Flint, MI our favorite prognosticator has already strongly suggested that this will be an incredible track season coming after two years of pandemic conditions.  Most athletes will be well rested and ready to break a lot of records.  This week we also saw two high school boys break 4 minutes in the mile in the same meet.  

Gary Martin a senior at Arch Bishop Woods HS in Philadelphia, and Connor Burns a junior at Southern Boone HS in Ashland MO both broke 4 minutes in the same meet, at the Festival of Miles in St. Louis, MO.

Martin's time was 3:57.89 bettering his previous 3:57.98 and Burns' time was 3:58.83

                                                   Martin and Burns after their race

Are they getting NIL for that Hoka gear they are both wearing?

So back to why I originally tried to write this piece before it all got erased.  I've recently read three books on running which I will give mention to briefly.

"26.2 Miles to Happiness, A Comedian's Tale of Running, Red Wine and Redemption"  by Paul Tonkinson

As the title states, Paul is a comedian whom you can find easily on youtube.  He writes of his attempts to break three hours for a marathon, but he has a number of hurdles to overcome,  first a love of wine and drinking it, his career, and his psychological burden of an unhappy childhood.  He has several near misses in getting that three hour goal, but finally finds the way through therapy and counselling to get past that unhappiness and trauma and find nirvana.  It's an easy read, at times you will laugh, and other times ponder what made all of us run.  A  friend tells him that all runners are running away from pain, and in Paul's case it is probably true.  What about you?  It's a fun read about an above average runner but not too far above.

Next up is "Marathon Quest" by Martin Parnell.  This is an entirely different kind of book, but again Martin is running away from the pain of loss when his wife died.  His son after a few years of grief suggested he try running a marathon.  He got into it and did he ever.  He ran 250 marathons in one year.  Some were official marathons and others were just 26.2 miles of running and walking around a short course.  Often he went to a school, and kids ran with him and they helped him to fund raise for a program called Right to Play which helps children in developing countries find opportunities to play sport but also to learn to cooperate and problem solve with each other.  He discovered this program while riding his bike from Cairo, Egypt to Capetown, South Africa,  yes Cairo to the Cape.    This bike ride is what caught my attention initially and convinced me to pick up the book at the library.  I had once met a young German in Zimbabwe who had left Cairo on his way to the Cape in a totally unsupported ride. He was completely on his own.  I only remember that his skin resembled the shoes I was wearing after his three months on the road.  Martin did have some support on his ride which was with about 15 other riders and he admits that he didn't ride the whole route but did get 10,000 kilometers under his buttocks.  His record of running the 250 marathons is sometimes painful and repetitious to read, but it is still an incredible feat and much of this was done in the winter in the province of Alberta in Canada.  His first day out it was -31C outside.  Believe me that is balls freezing.  He does provide some good info on how to dress in those conditions.  He mentions also that he asked himself several times during the year if he was crazy.  Interviews with a psychologist concluded that he was sane.  His goal was to raise $250,000 for Right to Play and he did this.  He mentions that he passed a physical at the end of his year and all was well despite a pretty sore shin which hobbled him at one point.  A few years later he had a stroke and lost his speech for a week but managed to recover and continues to do some remarkable running.  He talks about this in a second book "Running to the Edge".  And then he got into another situation supporting some Afghani women to train for a marathon in that country.  It's called "The Secret Marathon".   

Now after writing this piece today, I happened to be watching the CBS news tonight, and there was a small report about a South African woman  Jackie Hunt-Broersma who has recently run 104 marathons in 104 days.  Again I imagine these are not all official marathons,  nevertheless.  What makes this unique however is that Jackie is running with a prosthesis on her left leg.  She lost it to bone cancer a number of years ago.  Somehow this marathon distance has gotten into peoples' vocabularies for being a great accomplishment.  Personally on one leg I would be more than satisfied with a 5km.  Jackie has done this to raise funds to buy prostheses for other runners.  She's raised $100,000 and can now equip twenty more injured but not disabled runners.  You go girl.

Here are some pictures of Jackie from the CBS News program.  

I did mention a third book I've been reading and it is one that has already been reviewed last Nov. 17 by Paul O'Shea.  It is Bruce Kidd's   "A Runner's Journey"   Paul has done such a good job of reviewing this book that I will put his work here again.  I can only say I fully agree with what he has written now that I've had the book.  Bruce was an incredible high school athlete and international runner, but his life did not stop when he got off the track.  He has been involved in sport administration on the national and international levels and describes the history of the Olympic movement and Canadian sport administration seen from the inside.  He is a strong defender of athletes' rights, women in sport, and diversity in sport.  There has been in incredible turnover of sports organizations in Canada in the last 50 years since he competed in the 1964 Olympics.  He has researched history of sport and has a Phd. in the field, he has been an advocate for better facilities, gender equality and he has told the story from the inside view.  I can't recommend this book enough.

Here is the link to : Paul O'Shea's Review

You are right about record-setting meets this spring.  The state meet in Ohio was possibly the best ever with a national record, numerous state meet records, some all-time Ohio records, and plenty of others right behind the record holders.  Possibly the most interesting was the Div. II girls mile, won by Elizabeth Whaley of Cincinnati Indian Hill in 4:43.  She had run 4:37 at the Regional and was on her way to running much faster at the state when she stepped on the curb and fell with 350 meters to go.  She got up and finished, still setting a state meet record with second place not far behind.  Midway through the meet I was musing about which had been the best mark thus far, only to have to change my mind as the meet progressed.   Bill Schnier

Kidd was like from a different planet.  His times were off the charts.   He was thought of as an alien because his times just couldn't be what they were    Precocious at a time when precocity in track and field was not yet culturally supported.   Then came Ryun. And then there was Gerry Lindgren.   And in 2012 we've a 17 yr old running 1:42.53 in The Games behind Rudisha and Amos.  And yesterday, in Rabat, a 15 yr old Ethiopian girl finishes 6th in the DL’s 3000 m 4 secs behind Mercy Cherono, the winner in 8:40.  The explainer is cultural pressure, immense early talent, accelerated maturation and being in the right race. The youngster, Abebe, was within a second at the bell.  And her 17 yr old country woman, Eisa, finished  a sec back of the winner in 3rd.     

Kenna Stimmel:  A heptathlete-to-be.    Once heard some years ago, but didn’t look into it that in the ultra-distance races women are more suited as the relative differential in time seems to shrink as the races get longer when compared to the male finishers performances. Wonder …,, if that were to be true, then that kind of endurance is also being seen in the ability to recover quickly in explosive events; then go again.  The ultra data is out there.  Waiting to be analyzed.   

Richard Mach