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Under perfect weather conditions in the Valley, several MM'ers dropped down to the lower elevation to run the Women's Running Magazine Half Marathon in Tempe and the TV3 Pheonix 10K (USATF State Championships) Sunday Nov 6th. PR's were the order of the day! Brenda Laurance ran another PR half - a terrific 2:14.14! Brenda was all smiles at lunch after! Lisa Pozzini our Chi instructor ran 2:15.02 (I am sure that is a PR), and had the largest team signed up that included 47 women (Brenda and Deborah were part of the team!) Deborah Baker ran a 2:21.05 PR!!! Deborah and Brenda have worked so hard to get faster. They are both an inspiration to me. They make the speedwork sessions, they make the Peavine runs, weekend runs, I have even seen them training in my neighborhood (driving all the way from Chino to Prescott) to get hill training by themselves. You can get lucky in a race and have a great day but in the long run, you either pay your dues or lower your expectations and it is obvious which direction they have both chosen. Congrats to 2 of the nicest MM'ers of all time. Patricia Wiercinski (The better half of the Patricia/Wayne team) ran 2:31.48 and a PR too? I don't have confirmation on that yet. Patricia will ALWAYS be the "better half" of that team! Snicker... Diana Polk, president of one of the Elks chapters and who we have not seen in a long time 2:41.27! Congrats to all from our club. In downtown Phoenix in the flat, fast, furious and fun TV3 Phoenix 5K/10K Team "Sneed"; (Susan and Jim), Tom Hahn and I were in attendance. The timing company (same one uses in our July 4th race here) has had some issues and we only have Gun Time to report so far - hopefully they will get chip times today... Susan ran a 1:20.17 10K and Jim ran a 41.10 5k gun time. Both knocked a few minutes off of the their Fire Dept times from 3 weeks ago...bet those were PR's too!! Tom was a big star at 44:13 (he had 44:05 watch time). Tom finished 20th of 131 in his age class and 168th of 1636 overall while fighting off some stomach issues! Now Tom who was a high school running star does not claim this as a "modern day" PR because he ran a 43 in Skull Valley but the running gods would say it was a PR because races like Boston (point to point and downhill as is Skull) do not count for all time records because you can get favorable conditions over a race that starts and stops in the same location - so we will give Tom an "asterisked" modern day PR!! Tom's comeback is rocking! I also had a very good day but I am anxious to get my chip time because my goal was to run a modern day PR (45+ minute 10K) and my watch time is just under 46...Gun time was 46:35 but I started well behind Tom. I was 6th of 39 in my age class, 236th of 1636th overall running a significant negative split. Not bad for the old guy and I didn't fall once while dodging runners in the first 1.5 miles! YEAH!!! Ken |
