Beginning our 14th year and 1,200+ postings. A blog for athletes and fans of 20th century Track and Field culled from articles in sports journals of the day, original articles, book reviews, and commentaries from readers who lived and ran and coached in that era. We're equivalent to an Amer. Legion post of Track and Field but without cheap beer. You may contact us directly at irathermediate@gmail.com or write a comment below. George Brose, Courtenay, BC ed.
One of our long time readers Charles Hunsaker is to be honored at this year's college all-star Hula Bowl. Congratulations, Chuck. Earlier Bill Schnier reviewed Chuck's book "Angels in Combat Boots". Here is the link to that post. Angels in Combat Boots - Review
After USMA Women's first win 20-40 vs. East Stroudsburg
Press Release:
January 13, 2024
The Hula Bowl’s Military Ambassador Program also recognizes and honors distinguished military personnel!
Hula Bowl Military Ambassadors have distinguished themselves in both military and civilian careers. Like the players on the field, this year’s Military Ambassadors were also outstanding collegiate athletes. Last year’s Hula Bowl honored 50 years of Title IX, the law enacted in 1972 to prohibit discrimination based on gender in education programs or activities, creating a pathway for exceptional growth in women’s sports. The 2023 Hula Bowl made history by having the first all-female crew to officiate a college football game. As we approach the 50th anniversary of women attending our service academies, this year’s Hula Bowl takes great pride in recognizing its 2024 Military Ambassadors: Lieutenant Colonel (retired) Charles Hunsaker and representatives from the first West Point women’s cross-country teams.
Coach Hunsaker’s cross country and track resume includes an NCAA championship team, two NCAA runner-up teams, 22 All-Americans, and two individual national champions. Twice he was selected as the Division II Cross country Coach of the Year. Coach Hunsaker was the first cross country and track coach for women at the U.S. Military Academy, serving from 1978 to 1981. Called an “unsung hero of women at West Point during the early years” by members of his teams, his leadership, courage, and commitment to the success of his female athletes, both as military cadets and runners, was instrumental in overcoming institutional and cultural barriers and helped to integrate women fully into the service academy. His coaching impact with a startup program was immediate as his first teams garnered success, winning the Collegiate Eastern Championships in 1980 and finishing in the top ten in the National Championships. He was selected as the Eastern Women's Cross country and Indoor Track Coach of the Year. Coach Hunsaker chronicled this journey in his book, “Angels in Combat Boots.”
Joining Coach Hunsaker as Hula Bowl Military Ambassadors are team members from the first few years of women at West Point!
Coach Hunsaker said, “I spent 21 years in the Army, and I loved all of it, but my time at West Point was, without question, the highlight. To be able to teach and coach as such a special place, to be able to work with such a special group of young women and to help women cadets be accepted into the academy that had been all male since 1802 was definitely the highlight. When I got my first coaching job in a small rural junior high, I never imagined I would have such an unbelievable opportunity. To be honored with this group is just extraordinary”
The Hula Bowl is the Nation’s premier College Football All-Star Game. The Hula Bowl is an event where all NFL, XFL, USFL and CFL teams will be represented by top scout players during Hula Bowl week.
100 of the top senior athletes will be selected to play at the Hula Bowl in Orlando, Florida. This is the ideal venue to showcase their talent up against the best the game has to offer. Our players will be coming in from across the United States, Canada, Australia and JAPAN
Geoff Pietsch passed away December 24. We met through this blog and wrote back and forth for at least 5 years. Geoff was so knowledgeable about our sport and so honest and insightful on many subjects away from running and track and field, that I could turn to him anytime for advice and comment. His thoughts have often been expressed in this blog.
Geoff lived, taught, and coached in Florida and I think we were initially connected by mutual friend Bruce Kritzler. We shared our Germanic origins, our love of running, and our interest in the world outside of sport. He often sent articles that were of mutual interest, and he connected me with many others of similar background. A month or so ago, he sent his final message that doctors had given him a few months to live. It was a farewell message, and I responded in one of those 'what can I possibly say?' replies and told him that he would be in my thoughts to the end and after.
Here is one of those last messages.
George,
The end is near for me. Oncologist says two months max. chemo might have extended a little - so I could spend it having chemo. NO! At home hospice ahead but no pain yet. But discomfort.
So glad I got to know you!!!
No need to post on website of course.
Lots of wonderful messages from former students and runners. Moving! I always tried really hard to make them idealists.
Author Ed Abbey's father, Paul Revere Abbey, had a great epitaph, which he adopted.
HATE INJUSTICE, DEFY THE POWERFUL, SPEAK FOR THE VOICELESS.
You could put on your site.
Thanks for being you.
Geoff
In the time of our acquaintance we discovered that we had both run in the 1978 Boston Marathon. He ran well, perhaps his PR? 2:33:55 in 259th place. I blew up that day and finished exactly 1000 places behind him in 1259th with a 2:51:50. Perhaps we ran close by each other in the early stages, but we never knew. I still have no idea of my splits. I do remember walking off course after Heartbreak Hill, but very little of anything else that day. I do know I did not take a bus or subway to get to the finish.
As proof of our respective finishes, I'm pasting some pages from the 'Racers Recordbook' which was sent out to all the entrants of that day in 1978. 2047 men and 29 women broke three hours in that cool and cloudy environment. Hometown boy, Bill Rodgers won the men's race in 2:10:13 and Gayle Barron of Atlanta won the women's race in 2:44:52
You can find Geoff's name at the bottom of this page. He was 40 years old.
Back Cover, Bill Rodgers on Podium
My place, 1259th
Happy Trails, Geoff
Comments from Geoff's friends:
Geoff was one of those who were there when it was all happening in that long ago running world of the 60s and 70s.. As a teacher, coach, and athlete, he was talented, eloquent, and steadfast, and the world is a smaller place without him. RIP, old friend.
John Parker
(author of 'Once a Runner', ed.)
I received this email this evening.
Geoff was at the reunion on Friday night last year and was so excited to be there.
He had great stories about his time training with the FTC and just his time competing in the 1970s and 80's. He coached at Miami Ransom Everglades for many years until he retired to Gainesville in the late 90s.
He was a great champion of the sport and I knew him from my days running in the early 80s against his team. We got lucky one year and beat his team for PK Yonge first and only state championship in school history.
He compiled the rankings during his time as head coach and wrote a personal note about me to my coach which I have kept.
Ricky Quintana
Thanks for giving this insight into a person I had heard of but never knew. We are losing too many of our running pioneers. Bill Schnier
Geoff would show up for morning 7mi run with Barry Brown in the late 70's, when he brought his high school team to Gainesville for the Florida Relays. He loved to talk track and running! He always had a place for me to stay when I was in Miami, always without a car. When I was going to visit Phil and Karen MacHarg in Venezuela (and Brazil), he arranged a place for me to stay closer to the Embassy, so I could get a visa.
About the same time I was leaving Gainesville to coach, Geoff was retiring here. I would run into him when I came back for track meets. And anytime I read the Gainesville Sun I would see a letter to the editor from Geoff. His thoughts were always well researched, accurate, and championing the underdog. He said they limited him to one letter every two weeks!
Early November he told me he wouldn't be able to see the ncaa region cross country meet on UF golf course. He said he had a constant stream of doctor visits and was too weak to walk the course. I sent him photos and video from the race. Figured if he couldn't come to the meet he was in bad shape.
Stumbling around the internet today I found this Youtube film of Steve Cram and Sebastien Coe running the course around the Great Court at Trinity College, Cambridge U. that was a scene in "Chariots of Fire. Not a lot of volume on this and the clip is over 14 minutes long so you may want to jump through some of it. It is noted that this occurred on October 29, 1988. Prince Charming (William) is there, starting to lose his hair already. The race was organized as a fundraiser for a children's hospital. Jolly good.
Ben Cross and Nigel Havers, actors in the film ran the course in 35.78 by my watch, approximately 20 seconds faster than Coe and Cram, so I wonder why they weren't at least on the national team.
I thought I was done with posting articles this year and could relax and enjoy the Equinox, but no, those bloody aging ultramarathoners grabbed some headlines in The Guardian yesterday. I can't say that my athletic endeavors ever pointed in the direction of ultra running, but these guys are definitely impressive. If it weren't for ultras it makes me wonder what kind of mischief they would be creating.
In the past it was artists, poets, and writers who could be productive and continue to improve right to the end. Now the geriatric ultra folks are taking it to the limit. As noted in the article one runner was still performing at world class level in the sprints until a few months before his death. What a blessing to an individual. I hope he still took a bit of time to look around and perhaps enjoy a good book, because there is still a limit.
Up to my parents' time, people had to work thirty to forty years in a factory or push a plow to get to the end of their 'productive' lives. If they were lucky they made it to 65 and got Social Security. Then it was consignment to the poor house or the American or Canadian Legion posts to quaff beer and wish they were still young. Even today the ultra boys and girls are a select few. There must be many more who would take up such an endeavor if only their joints had not been replaced with titanium rods and screws, their spines crushed from years of running, or their spouses threatening dissolution by abandonment. Having done divorce mediation for twenty five years I'm sure keeping one member of a family unit out of the house seven days a week has saved a few marriages as well. And the lad will come home too exhausted to expect any other kinds of 'favors'. But consider, if a guy is 80 years old and still able to run 100 miles, there must be some testosterone still floating through his system. I think one of the benefits of staying fit even at lower levels than ultra running, gives one a better chance of surviving the various illnesses that are bound to strike during a normal lifetime.
After you go through this article I've added a bit about another of the great octogenarian distance runners, Ed Whitlock.
Best to all of you for 2024.
Ten-minute miles are the new eight’: the senior ultrarunners pushing the envelope
Not only are more runners doing ultramarathons in their seventies and eighties, they’re also going faster
On a bone-cold morning in November, Wally Hesseltine, far from his cozy California home, was lying prone in southern Illinois – beside a trail of crushed gravel – his right knee bruised and bloodied. The initial 95 miles of the Tunnel Hill 100 footrace had unfolded with the swiftness of a fleeting breeze. Brisk, beautiful miles under a collage of crisp autumn foliage. The 80-year-old hadn’t fallen once. But the last five miles presented a particular problem. They were all downhill.
He couldn’t feel it, but he could see it – his upper body drooping like a glove without a hand – his hunched shadow sinking into itself until he finally dove into the soft grass. Little is known about “the leans”, a temporary but debilitating condition that can crop up in older ultrarunners. The phenomenon is oft observed but poorly understood. The same is true of Hesseltine.
Buoyed by the clamber of voices in the distance, the octogenarian picked himself up – dashed toward the finish line – tripped on the timing mat and went airborne. For a moment it was over, the love-hate battle with time. He was now the fastest 80-year-old to ever run 100 miles.
Columbian novelist, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, once wrote: “It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams.” Not only are more runners doing ultramarathons in their seventies and eighties, they’re also going faster.
In May, Jeff Hagen, 75, knocked an hour off the 50-mile record for his age group. But it wasn’t enough. Gene ‘the Ultra-Geezer’ Dykes, also 75, bested that by an hour – in the same race – smashing seven master’s records from 25 to 100 kilometers in a 12-hour period. And the record Hesseltine eclipsed in November? It was so new it had yet to be ratified. Four years ago, ‘Fast Eddy’ Rousseau set it at 32 hours. This spring David Blaylock brought it down to 29. Hesseltine got it to 26 and along the way beat 51 of the 179 finishers, most decades younger than him. Leaning back in his chair at his California law office, he jokes, “Ten-minute miles are the new eight.”
A myriad of suggestions exists to explain the growing presence of older athletes. A predominant theory over the last decade has been that we are merely unlocking abilities carried over from our ancestors. That as Homo sapiens evolved as a nomadic species, we hunted game over long distances, our advantage being our ability to sweat. The energy and speed of the young were beneficial in the last sprints for the kill, while the elders’ tracking knowledge proved essential in pacing the animal over longer periods and bringing up the rear with supplies.
Exeter professor and ultrarunner Dr Julian Jamison doesn’t see a correlation. “The hunter-gatherers weren’t living till 80,” he says and suggests a mix of patience, pacing, training and hereditary elements. However, he admits “the number of datapoints is still so small in ultrarunning. We simply don’t know.”
Many ultrarunners have long subscribed to the idea of putting “miles in the legs” while avoiding injury, and science tends to agree. Three papers in the last decade have shown the benefits of cumulative distance in older ultrarunners. They pace better, take better care of their bodies, and have less injuries than their younger counterparts at both marathon and ultra distances. By racking up more miles, our endurance base strengthens and makes us capable of much more than previously imagined.
Seven hundred ninety-six: that’s how many ultramarathons Rob Apple has run. But you’ll usually find him at the back, an example of the law of diminishing returns. “I remember when he was fast,” says Lazarus Lake, the mastermind of The Barkley Marathons, his voice warm like gravy. “I tell people, if you want to run well at 70, start late.”
Dr Hirofumi Tanaka agrees. Director of exercise physiology at the University of Texas, he was at the World Master Athletics Championships in March, in part to see Japanese sprinter Hiroo Tanaka. The retired teacher burst out of the gate in the 60-meter dash as if his lane was on a conveyor belt. Head down, arms and legs churning like pistons, he ran out of the camera frame of the other runners. His time? 10.95 seconds. The 92-year-old has held world records at 100 and 200 meters and didn’t start running until he was 60. Sister Madonna ‘the Iron Nun’ Buder, completed her first Ironman at 55, her last at 82. Hiromu Inada finished an Ironman at 87. He started at 70. Gene Dykes was 56 when he ran his first marathon. At 70, he logged a 2:54. Jennifer Russo started ultras at 50. This spring, at 57, the mother of three ran 300 miles in three days, a mark no American woman has reached at any age.
None of this surprises Tanaka. “Older people are getting closer to younger performances,” he says. “They are closing the gap.” He’s seen a dramatic shift in Spontaneous Walking Speed – professorspeak for the pace at which we do everyday tasks. Not long ago, 70 was the magic age when times would begin to decrease. Now, it’s over 75. His research has also shown the older the age, the greater the improvement we can expect to see with training. And that, he says, applies to and should encourage all of us. He attributes much of the phenomenon of elite masters to what he calls “a Formula 1 approach” – a pit crew of coaches, trainers, and various equipment for recovery.
But none of these theories explain Wally Hesseltine. He’s run 180 ultramarathons, broken his pelvis in a skiing accident, his nose in a fall, and tore a rotator cuff on the way to the bathroom. He also didn’t start late. When he began running on 8 June 1981, IBM was launching the first personal computer. Now, he runs with an iPhone so his wife can track him and pick him up.
after newsletter promotion
What he does have is what he calls “compulsive obsessiveness”. Five days a week, he’s at his law office, handling manslaughter cases and white-collar drug crime. After work, he runs three to 10 miles, showers in the office, and goes home for dinner. No TV. No social media. Instead, he reads. In 1990 he assigned himself a list of great books. “I was going to attack reading,” he says and devoted himself to at least 25 pages a day. Now, he’s read over 6,000 books. He did the same with music, memorizing CDs of the 1,000 greatest hits of classical, blues and country.
Dr Tanaka has observed similar personalities in other elite aging athletes: an optimistic, goal-oriented outlook on life, good relationships, positive attitude. They are often talkative, funny and, while serious about their running, they don’t take themselves seriously. And few are more quick-witted and humorous than Fast Eddy Rousseau. At some point in last year’s GOMU 48-hour race, he quipped, “I feel like I’m dying, but I’m afraid I won’t.” He finished 100 miles, stumbled back, nearly fell, grinned, and began making jokes. This June he lost his wife, had a stroke, underwent surgery to clear out a carotid artery, and was diagnosed with AFib. “All the things that happen to old runners happen to all old people in life,” says Lazarus Lake. “The ones that keep going just get more out of it.”
Despite setbacks that could have a normal 84-year-old in a nursing home, Rousseau plans to be at the USA Track and Field 100-mile road championship in February. Hesseltine hopes to be there as well. But each time, there’s a nervous feeling, a worry. Maybe this is the race when I show up and I’m the only one left in my age group.
One runner who won’t be there is master athletics champion David Carr. The Australian died in June at the age of 91. Just three months before, he was in Poland, in lane five, for a 400-meter race. Canadian Running called it “the comeback of the year (maybe century)”. In lane six was his biggest rival, Hiroo Tanaka. After the first loop of the 200-meter track, the Japanese runner was more than 30 meters ahead. No one, certainly not Carr, could’ve predicted Tanaka would reach a lactic wall. But when he did, Carr reacted as he had as a boy, instinctively. A runner in front of him had slowed. There was an opening. So, he called on whatever he had left and in the final stretch closed more than 20 meters of ground on Tanaka for the win. He then did what he was always taught in sports; he approached his competitors and shook their hands.
There’s something about seeing it, runners at ages we equate with our grandparents, that has us grasping for life hacks. And maybe, that’s where we miss the point. Maybe what they are showing us is how to be more in the moment. For Wally Hesseltine the moment is another chance to go long – deep - into the extreme where legs burn and lungs pray for air – into parts of himself that beg him to stop. And maybe that’s what we’re all so scared to death of. Stopping.
Ed Whitlock
A young Ed Whitlock (1970's) on the left, judging by
the Tiger Jayhawks he is wearing, and in
later years.
As mentioned at the top of this post, I have a few comments about Ed Whitlock, the Canadian who set so many middle and long distance records up to the marathon. I had the honor of running against Ed in the early 1970's when in his 40's he began a comeback into track. Ironically he looked very old even then. But he had wheels and could generally out kick me in 1500 meters finishes even though I was ten years younger. Ed ran almost up to the day he died. He set a world record of 3 hours 56 minutes 38 seconds for the marathon at age 85 only 5 months before he died from prostate cancer. Here is a list of some of his masters accomplishments as shown in Wikipedia: (some of these may already have been surpassed). Can't always be certain on the Wik.
World age group records set by Ed Whitlock
The Milton, Ont., native held 36 world age class records on the road and track.
In addition to the records above recognised by World Masters Athletics, the Association of Road Race Statisticians keeps single and group age road records. Whitlock's age group records recognized by ARRS follow.[24]
These folks must have wealth to travel and race as they do.
Guys like Buddy Edelen, Ron Daws, and me lived hand-to-mouth, worked in education or service, travelled to races in old cars, camped out or slept inside said cars.
Some of us never had leg speed to lose.
All we have is passion to move as far and fast today as we can. No therapeutic modalities but sleep and a hamburger. Jay Birmingham
