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Running: Runner gets a helping hand
By Joe Shafran, For The Capital
This would never happen again in 100 years, but you´ll never guess who reached out and kept me from going all the way down when I tripped on a curb across from Severna Park High School on the morning of the Fourth of July.
I was caught by Yvonne Aasen, of Severna Park, who I call the great lady of running.
Thank goodness she was there. She not only saved me from possible injury but a lot of embarrassment, too. Amid all the excitement, I don´t know if I thanked her then, but I´m doing so now. We were both there to see the mile run that preceded the annual parade.
I also wanted to see first-hand if - as I predicted in the last column - there would be a cheering section of thousands for the runners. There sure was, and the crowd was spread out along the entire route. All were either waiting or standing or in their lawn chairs, sometimes three deep, to get a glimpse of the parade that followed.
I don´t know how much of the race they could observe with the first of the pack, Matt Galety, zipping by at about 12 miles an hour to finish in a few seconds over five minutes. He was followed by Scott Hilton at 5:22 and then there was another Galety, Stephen, 17, at 5:24.
STAYING IN STRIDE: Ron Bowman, who I thought was president-for-life of the Annapolis Striders until they began one-year term limits, has not gone into retirement. He still keeps the running world informed with his "Strider Stuff" e-mail newsletter, which is always loaded with good material. In his latest release, he reminds us of something we´ve all come to realize - that Annapolis is a running town with a sailing problem.
He goes on to say that the upcoming 30th Annapolis Ten-Mile Race on Aug. 28, has been named the 2005 National Road Runners Club of America Championship. That´s quite an honor and it speaks to a lot of hard work and dedication, year after year.
I see that another 10-miler on the Fourth, the Peachtree run in Atlanta, is televised by Fox 5. In the past couple of years, it´s been picked up by a web cam to go on the internet, where it can be seen by our troops overseas. I don´t know if a web cam is used in our race or not. If not, we need to get some of our high-tech people in the area to put their heads together and do it for the Striders.
Also, in his Strider´ Stuff, Bowman points out that Ham Tyler did a recent 100-mile run in the rounded out time of 26 hours.
BUSY STREETS: This summer seems to have brought out a surge of runners. In my own neighborhood, I have to be careful coming out my door for a run, so as not to colllide with one of my neighbors, Nathan Nudelman. He´s usually headed out for at least 13 miles with a buddy, Dr. Tom Hattar, who has an office in our neighborhood. And on my route, I see Ann Andrews, the field hockey coach at St. Mary´s, who´s always in training for a long run. And there´s also Nora O´Hara, a track coach at the Naval Academy, doing her run while pushing her two kids in one of those three-wheeled strollers. There are lots of others, too.
PRIVATE MATTER: I´m getting a complex. In a previous column, I wrote about running on private property - but only with the owner´s consent. Two days after the column appeared, I saw a sign go up on Bestgate Road indicating that a nearby church is petitioning the county to close one of my running routes.
The little-used public road will - if County Executive Janet Owens signs off on the meaure - become the property of the Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore. If and when it becomes archdiocese property and I want to run on it, the person I will have to talk to will be Archbishop William Cardinal Keeler.
I´m not kidding. His name is on the notice. I would have tried to reach him over the weekend, but I heard him doing an interview Friday on WBAL radio - either before departing for or from the Vatican. There, he said he was supposed to meet with the new Pope to invite him to come to Baltimore and conduct an outdoor mass.
There´s a public hearing coming up later this month on the closing , but I won´t object. If the Catholic Church needs that property, I´ll let it be. I´ll find another route.
However, the neighbors suggests that I not get an inferiority complex, it wasn´t anything that I wrote. They tell me the petition for the closing has been in the works for a year and, yes, the church - St. John Neumann´s Mission - does indeed need the land to expand its parking. So it looks like Annapolis is a house-of-worship town with a running problem, too.
OLYMPIC OPPORTUNITY: The other night, I watched a documentary on Maryland Public Television on the mid-1930s boxing exploits of heavyweight Joe Louis, whose heyday coincided with the Hitler era and the 1936 Berlin Olympics. One of the highlights of those Games was the gold medal running of American Jesse Owens, an African-American. It was the Olympics where Hitler supposedly got up and left the stadium rather than hand a gold medal to a person of color
One of Owens´ teammates in those Olympics was local runner, John Wall. His memory is celebrated in the annual Memorial Mile coming up a week from Saturday at the Broadneck High School track, which is directed by much of the Wall family. I´m thinking this must have been some running town even 75 years ago for a John Wall to qualify for the U.S. Olympic team.
Running Calendar
Saturday: Annapolis. West Annapolis Elementary School. 7:45 a.m. and 8:45 a.m. Women´s Distance Festival 5K and the Men´s 5K Run after the Women. See the Striders web site annapolisstriders.org.
Sunday: Columbia, 8 a.m. Women´s Distance Festival, 5k race and walk. Howard County Striders, at the Community College. Call 410-964-1998.
July 16: 8 a.m. Broadneck High School. John Wall Memorial Mile, part of the Annapolis Striders´ 2005 Summer Scholastic (age 19 and under) Championship Series. Visit annapolisstriders.com.
July 16: 4:30 p.m. Registration at 4 p.m. Bates School Track, Annapolis, Junior Striders track and field meet. Practice Wednesday evenings at 6 p.m. at Bates. Fourth meet is Aug. 27. Contact Roger Hebden, 410-533-5689.
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