Several ultrarunners of yesteryear were seen flashing their speed at the Hyannis Marathon Sunday whilst I picked up a few water cups at mile nine. Most used it as a good long training run for Caumsett 50K next week or the Umstead 100 in three.
  Martin Tighe is 52 now but still plenty speedy. He ran a 2:40 and looks about the same as when he was running the Nifty Fifty under six hours, or the North Pole Marathon, which he won back in 1998. (once ran 85 miles in 12 hours on a treadmill for the Guinness record folks)
  Also 52 is Jim Garcia,1999 Boston Charles 100K Challenge Cup champ, who ran a 2:56.
  Former national 50K champ Dan Verrington is 48 and turned in a 2:43, while former national mountain running champ (and Nip Muck record-holder) Dave Dunham checked in with a 2:58.
  There were plenty of others: Lee Dickey, who seems to race about every weekend as he approaches 60; already 60 is Bob Eckerson, as he closes in (within three now, I think) of 100  26.2s or ultras; Dream Camp pied piper Mike Brooks, high fiving me on his way through and promising a battle at the NJ 3-day; Dima Feinhaus, who paced his son to a successful debut in the marathon;local ultramen Mike McKenna, Ken Lemerise, and George Graeber.

~ Pete Stringer

  During the winter I spend a lot of time reading and researching stuff that interests me. Runners make great subjects to study. They are more interesting as a group than about any other. Independent thinkers abound! The minimalist fad that is so popular now is nothing new. Yesterday I went down to the Falmouth Library, which has the Cape Cod Times & Boston Globe on microfilm, and spent about six hours fascinated with April 19th doings up in Boston.
  Canadian 1926 & ’29 winner Johnny Miles’ father is shown forever tinkering with his son’s shoes with a paring knife, shaving off yet another slice of the already paper-thin soles.
1932 champ Paul DeBruyne of Germany wore the Australian made kangaroo skin racing flat that weighed 4 and a half ounces.
1949′s winner Karl Leandersson of Sweden is quoted as saying how he loves training barefoot "as it does much to strengthen my feet."
1951 winner Shigeki Tanaka of Japan led four of his countrymen to top ten finishes wearing a weird looking bifurcated foot-glove resembling a mitten. Photographs of the day made the Japanese men appear to have claws. "It affords a better grip to pull the stride," they explained.
Then of course, in 1960 Abebe Bikila won his first Olympic marathon over the streets of Rome running barefoot.
  This was all before the great Lydiard insisted all his Olympic winner Kiwi runners wear those next to nothing New Zealand slippers to both train and race in.
  I kept reading on, finding my tunnel vision for the marathon giving way to a larger and larger world view. Took notes and more notes, just like cramming for a test back in college. Reading microfilm is about the opposite of Googling, as it purviews the whole paper, page by page. A veritable time machine. I had to read where war was declared, when the Olympics was cancelled in ’40 and ’44, Kennedy ever so narrowly beating Nixon, etc. (A president from… Cape Cod?)
  I think the choicest morsel I had all day — from my provincial view, anyway — was reading where little old Cape Cod had TWO runners finish top twelve at 1926 Boston. J.Foxcroft Carleton from the Sandwich A.A. and Christpher Bolekos from the powerful and famous OSTERVILLE ATHLETIC ASSOCIATION !
  As they say, you could look it up, Al.

  I live on a road where there is an Audubon Conservation Land park not a half mile away with lots of trails and wildlife. This pristine area has not changed one iota in the 69 years I have been living here.

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  Yesterday I took  advantage of the weather and did my 7th annual solo run for my fave organization Big Brothers Big Sisters Cape Cod. Good timing for the weather, bad timing for the scant two weeks recovery from the Cape Cod Marathon, where I had a 4:32, which is all I can expect at my age, it seems. But also because I ran into a detour in Brewster on 6A which added about four miles to the course, as well as the time spent in me futilely trying to circumvent the length of the detour by getting across the adjacent marsh (the boggy brooks and streams of a marsh always look more fordable from a distance that they actually are up close!)

Cape Cod Marathon dealt its usual tough course & slow times Sunday to all its victims.

Amongst ultrarunners spotted there were:
Mike Menovich (Challenge Cup 100K) — 3:26
Zsuzsanna Carlson ( CCFrozen Fatass champ) — 3:29
Bob Eckerson (Western States) — 4:00
Pete Stringer (Leadville, etc.) — 4:32
Lee Dickey (101 miles at ATL, etc.) 4:34
Rosemary Rusin (Vt100) — 5:02 in her 25th Cape Cod Marathon!
Kim Walsh (N/50) — 5:07
Sean Coutinho (Vt50) — 5:08
Jack Whitehead (Maine 50) — 5:19

  Bob Jensen announced that the 2011 edition of the Cape Cod Frozen Fatass 50K will be held on Feb. 12th this year. Start time is 7:30, a half hour later than usual. All the fun stuff remains the same, including the race against the incoming tide, pointy rocks, swirling dunes, free seaplane parking, and new & improved dancing girls.
  Speaking of which, when I was finishing the marathon Sunday on my weary old legs and my normal delusional brain, I THOUGHT I saw a dancing female gorilla at mile 25.5, replete with a chiffon tutu, ankle bracelets, and playing a ukelele…wots this? me brain tried to function but no answers were a-coming. It was only when crossing the finish line that my darling cute "it’s all in fun !" jokester wife Jane unveiled herself of the top and revealed her winsome smile and planted the congratulatory kiss.
  For someone who thought he saw a marching band at mile 92 at Western States back in 2001, you would think I would be getting used to having these visions..

~ Pete Stringer

  I have been running a beginner’s walk/run class at the local high school for a dozen years now. That is, a Spring class and a Fall class, both comprising 12 weeks, wherein we start at the level that most middle-aged couch potatoes can handle, and move on up incrementally from there. I call it my caterpillar-to-butterfly metamorphosis show, acted out in 12 progressive stages to a final curtain closing three mile road race, often coinciding with one of the several Turkey Trots hosted on Thanksgiving Day in various towns here on the Cape.

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  Ultrarunner Michael Wardien won the Hartford Marathon yesterday in 2:24:38.
  What was very refreshing for me was that Bob Jensen of Cotuit, age 57 or 58, qualified for Boston by running 3:42. This was a sweet reward after many years of trying to qualify, and represented a personal record by a full 30 minutes. He said his secret was losing another 16 lbs. "Jiggling is definitely out now," he said.
  Many of you know Bob as the colorful laugh-a-minute co-race director of the Cape Cod Frozen Fatass 50 K that we hold every winter here over at Sandy Neck.
  He is a great believer in the "if at first you don’t succeed"… code. He attempted quite a few 100s before I had the sweet pleasure of watching him come up Rt. 66 in Oklahoma (next-to-last!) back in 2006 and finish his first 100 after MANY tries at Vermont and Umstead, etc. Bob has been the volunteer crosscountry coach at the St. Francis Xavier middle school in Hyannis for many years, and runs t he most fun practices I have ever watched in sixty years of observing running programs. One only has to watch 42 kids play the running game of Lambs & Lions in an afternoon track practice to fully appreciate how skinny kids, fast kids,average kids, and yes, slow kids and fat kids can ALL have a blast while practicing their running together.
  There is plenty of sweat and huffing and puffing involved, but no work!
  Pete Stringer