JUNE 2010 THE INSIDE LOOP TOM BYRNES AND FRIENDS

JUNE 2010

THE INSIDE LOOP

TOM BYRNES AND FRIENDS

Thanks to Geoff Vincent for the shoutout about PPTC runners at May 8th and 9th’s North Face Endurance Challenge up in Bear Mountain. Check the race results section for all the details, who went, who ran what, and their times! On the roads, on the trails – Go PPTC!

So did you see any of the filming for the soon to become an academy award winning movie about the Smurfs shot on location in and around the center transverse May 12fth. Hard to miss it if you run through there, there seemed to be smurfs and smurfettes everywhere and anywhere.

Thanks to Doug Olney for the news that Louie Rios reported that he ran 474 miles in the Sri Chinmoy 10 Day Race that was held from April 19-29 in Flushing Meadow, Queens, Interesting event this is, as Louie himself will attest to. Like the tee shirt says, “ sleep, eat and run” for ten days. Way to go Louie!

Thanks to Coco for the news on page 5 of "This Running Town", inside the New York Runner
magazine, on Doug Olney. As she reports, “Seeing his name and everything, I almost spit out my coffee!”

Doug Olney actually celebrated turning 51 Wednesday May 19th by running the Brooklyn Half on Saturday and then biking a metric century the very next day, Sunday. His Brooklyn Half time (1:50:25) was off because he says he didn't run much in April and early May due to IT, knee and hamstring problems. He says he decided to run, all injuries considered, because he wanted to wear the shirt, and finish intact - that was the important thing for Doug..

The next day, Sunday, he biked the Bloomin' Metric 100 km, (actually 64 miles) , in Fairfield County, Connecticut. It took him about 4 1/2 hours including the rest stops, which Doug says for him is pretty good because the 30 miles in the middle section of the ride had a lot of rolling hills. “Whatta way to celebrate” and not even entering a new age category! Happy birthday Doug! I couldn’t tell if Bobby Fisher had brought the birthday cake and was trying to catch up to Doug but he was there too and rode the full distance. Bobby had kicked off the month with a 65 mile metric century ride at the Five Boro Bike Club’s Montauk Century ride .

A BIG congratulations from Coach Tony to ALL our PPTC'ers who ran the Brooklyn Half with a very special congrats to our Woman's Team for placing third, Congrats to PPTC men as well who also did exceptionally well! Congrats to Matthew Frey who was again the top PPTC finisher.PPTC had 10 runners finish among the top 10 in their age groups, including a first place finish by PPTC’s 76 year old Rosa Nales. Frank DeLeo just missed being in the top 10 grouping --he got an 11th—but still a great run! And THANK YOU to all of the PPTC members who lined the course and cheered PPTC on. It’s always awesome to hear "Go PPTC" while running through our lovely park and the streets of Brooklyn.

Ok, Ok, so who’re the PPTC members who became grandfolk early Sunday morning May 23rd.Better to have them tell the world themselves. Mazel Tov!

The Prospect Park Track Club is glad to announce the umpteenth annual Al Goldstein Summer Speed 5k Series. This series of 5 races goes off every other Wednesday. If you missed the kickoff on May 26th then try your best to catch it June 23rd’ , July 7th and 21, and August 4th and 18.The number of athletes on May 26th was a great sign of the times to come with 67 runners turning out, even on the hottest evening in a while. Special thanks to Clair Doherty who somehow managed to bring a bevy of the lovely ladies teaching at PS 295 in Park Slope, Mike Ring mentions having had some great help so our thanks to Tom, Anne, Ami, Kate, Juan, Veronica, our MC Al Goldstein,

Yoshie, and Kate.Each race starts and finishes near the Oriental Pavilion in Prospect Park at 7pm. You can enter the park at Lincoln Rd. near the Prospect Park stop on the B/Q and the Franklyn Ave Shuttle. You can also park in the ice skating rink parking lot or perhaps if its more more convenient outside the park in that area. Take your bike and lock it to the iron fence which surrounds the pavillion with supervised bag check as well. The 5K course is a little less than one full loop of the park (the entire loop is 3.35 ) and is marked every ¼ mile. The race fee is $5 and there is no preregistration. Students in high school and younger run 2 for the price of 1. There are no "t-shirts" or other race giveaways but PPTC does go at least 3 deep in all the standard age and gender categories so the chances are good for going home with some hardware. PPTC would like to thank JackRabbit Sports, 7th Avenue between Garfield Place and Carroll Street, for their continued support.

Mucho thanks to Geoff Vincent who’s been busy with the PPTC Race Calendar beefing up the triathlon, duathlon, and multi sport event listings ,even including some "splash and dash" with no bikes allowed listings.

Let’s hope that Jack Stetch former PPTC president from back in the day heals well from his knee injuries. Jack mentions that his next marathon will be the 150th he’s run!!!!!

Sorry to learn that Gary Wang showed up to the Fort Hamilton Army Base at 6PM May 25th for the 5K race and was turned away by the uniformed guard because he had no picture ID and so wouldn’t be allowed on the US ARMY BASE . If you’re thinking about one of these every other Tuesday nite 5k’s, make sure you check out what you need to get allowed in to the base to do the race. Gary made the best of a bad situation and got back to Coach Tony’s workout in the park and then the following night came in third overall in the first 5k of the Summer Speed Series. A man on the move!

PPTC’s volunteer extraordinaire Juan Rivera mentioned his ups and downs at the Big Sur Marathon and how God willing, he was planning to run two marathons in the same month in Europe this fall. Four a year on his agenda, go get ‘em Juan!