Andy’s BLOG 07/03/2026

Fellow Striders,

          I ran a “Masters-Open” Meet on Saturday (June 27), in Sherman Oaks, which is fairly close to my home, but there were almost no Masters runners except me. It took until today for my times to be listed in the mastersrankings.com.

          The meet was called Sprint Showdown. In both the 400 and 800 most of the runners were youngsters in Middle School with a few high school and also college freshman runners. I was the only Senior. The 400 went well: I was 0.1 seconds slower than in Pasadena a month ago where there was strong competition. I was 3rd and Ed Rose was 1st there. In Sherman Oaks, I was the only 400/800 runner above teenage. So I was pleased that, having run totally alone, my time was just 0.1 second slower than Pasadena.

          The 800 was similar. There was just one heat with 2 college freshmen (both running under 2:00), 5 middle school runners who ran between 2 and 3 minutes, and me at 4:06.73. The first place winner, in 1:52.83, actually lapped me right at the end of my first lap. Nonetheless, my time was 13 seconds faster than  Pasadena, so I was happy with that. As always I was very impressed with the youngsters. The 5 middle school kids encircled me as we were waiting to go on the track. “How old are you?” they asked as a group. I said “89”. And they were all amazed, asking “Are you actually going to  run?” (as opposed, I guess, to walking). We had an interesting chat while waiting to go on the track. As I came running down the final stretch I was pleasantly surprised that those 5 youngsters, who had all finished, were cheering me on. Then, as I came off the track, they each gave me a High-5. The old man had actually run!

          My rankings in mastersrankings.com were as follows:

400: as more races are run, I dropped from 4th to 6th in world rankings, dropped from 1st to 2nd in U.S. ranking, and stayed 1st for 89 year olds.

800: with my lower time, I remained the same: 3rd, 1st, and 1st.

Andy