Millrose Magic

The Millrose Games returned for its 114th installment and from a Masters perspective it was record breaking, three times over.

Billy Joel said it best and he’s right, there really is a New York state of mind. This is my 4th consecutive Millrose Games. Each trip into the city known as the “Big Apple” has a special aura all its own. This year’s pilgrimage to the Uptown Mecca on 169th & Fort Washington was all about overcoming the struggle.

I’ve learned that you can’t beat Mother Nature, you can only seek her permission to proceed. So proceed I did into the forecasted nor’easter at 4am amidst 30mph gusts. The falling snow fell sideways and at times what appeared to upwards as well defying gravity. The plan was to drive the hour and 45 minutes from south Jersey into the city, however I thought better of that the night before with the uncertainty of the impending storm.

After surprisingly fewer white knuckle moments than I expected, where the plows hadn’t reached a stretch of highway, I finally pulled into the relative quiet of the parking garage at a NE Corridor train station. I boarded the train slightly tense, texted my relay compatriots that I successfully made the biggest obstacle of my journey, and used the hour and twenty minute ride to try to catch up on some sleep and relax my mind for the morning ahead.

I love arriving at Penn Station. No matter the time of day there is a palpable vibe that lets you know you’re in an east coast city. And not just any east coast city, you’re in “The” east coasty city, New York City. Standing on the platform the jazz aficionado in me could hear the influences that compelled the “Duke” to write “Take the A train”, which is what I boarded to head uptown.

I have a few mantras that seem to dominate my life, like “When in doubt turn left”, I use that one when hiking. One of my favorites is, “There are no coincidences.” So when I looked up to see a lady sit across from me with “CPTC” on her backpack, I knew serendipity has struck. She eventually looked up and asked if I was headed to Millrose as she saw my spike bag hanging from my backpack.

We talked about the Nor’easter, the challenges of making it to the city in such a big storm and our respective track clubs. It was like talking to an old friend though I’d never met her in the course of my masters track and field journey. Though we had never physically crossed paths our experiences where almost of a shared consciousness. If you are a masters track and field athlete you are a part of the collective, you are part of the village, you are family.

There is one thing she said that stuck with me during our discussion. As we talked she explained that she spent three hours the week before travelling to and from the track. She had to make a special trip to meet a teammate who couldn’t practice with the others due to scheduling conflicts, just to get in a few handoffs. As she told the story she said, “The Armory is home to me.” Ocean Breeze is fresh and airy, the latest version of the track in Albuquerque is clinical in its warehouse like convention hall. The Armory though, the Armory feels like home. It’s a sentinel of the Hudson, instantly recognizable from the outside, tight quartered on the inside, forcing you to rub shoulders and elbows with your track brothers and sisters. Its, “Home”.

We walked together through a few drifts and along the familiar brick of the building to the “PAL” entrance all athletes have to come through. From there we went our separate ways and after a long morning, though still early, my heart was warmed and spirits recharged. I quickly located our teams organizing “Guru”. If you know anything about the Germantown meets you know the Tafts know how, in my old church vernacular, “To do things in decency and in order”, hence their guru status.

I was a little behind due to the weather so I went right up to the track to shake out and begin the warmup process. The process goes as follows, you begin the warmup on the track, soaking up the energy emanating from the hustle and bustle of athletes and teams. This usually culminates with a quick change into your spikes to sprint off of a few turns, feeling the buttery track surface beneath your feet carry you.

The second floor warmup hallway, with its Mondo floor makes the cozy, and that’s being generous, track upstairs feel like an arena. The hallway is part two of the warmup process which is a necessity because once you hear, “Men’s 4x400 relays upstairs race ready”, you know that you’ll still stand around for thirty or more minutes before you step onto the track. So you must spend the time in tight quarters, timing yourself through the cue of bodies, up and down that hallway, getting as race ready as you possibly can.

By the time you hear the call you’re past ready to run and now the anxiety begins to creep in. Some walk up the stairs to track level spikes on. Some, like myself carry their spikes and go barefoot. Perhaps like me, they have an OCD about dulling their spikes on hardened surfaces unnecessarily. We soon find ourselves all standing in the cue, color coded like regiments, waiting patiently as the 60+ teams are preparing to go to battle ahead of us.

The 60+ race is usually mixed with men’s and women’s teams and that race never disappoints. From the gun the CPTC-Tracksmith men’s team took the lead with a strong lead off leg from Alston Brown. At the exchange Steve Snow was right behind CPTC with Mass Velocity who is perennially in the mix. At the end of the first exchange it seemed GPTC, another masters powerhouse, was going to have to do a lot of work to make their way back into the mix from the 4th position.

Mass Velocity moved into first with a great 2nd leg from Tucker Taft and GPTC arose from the depths to 2nd position to make their presence known thanks to Duncan Smith. The race was on as GPTC fought off Mass Velocity over the next two legs after taking over the first position. Out of the shadows from 5th place the women’s team from CPTC-Tracksmith rode an absolute monster of an anchor leg from Jennifer St. Jean to move into the 3rd place position and stay there.

Next up was the men’s 40+ and 50+ races which is also combined. After watching the 60+ race we only wish to live up to the precedent that our fellow athletes have set prior to us. I like to believe that they look at us with pride, the next generation, especially after the race that was to come.

If you have been around masters track long enough you know John Curtis and Mark Williams and you know they are going to be tough leadoff legs to race with. Of course they were a part of the front runners after the first 300m of leg one yet is was Patrick Kane of Mass Velocity who found a burst of acceleration down the backstretch and around the final turn placing his team in the lead with Garmin Runners and GPTC giving chase.

The shake up took place on leg two and a fast leg from Scott Burns put GPTC into the lead followed by Garmin and GPTC’s 2nd team. The only movement on leg three took place as Quinn Pack of MVTC overtook the aforementioned GPTC team two and moved back into the 3rd place spot. The race would finish with GPTC first team in first place banging out a new meet record. Garmin runners followed in 2nd and MVTC in third with a pending American M45 club record, knocking 6 seconds of the previous one.

The records were falling like gifts at a taping of the Oprah show because Mass Velocities 2nd team in the M55 category, also set a pending world record in their 6th place overall finish with nothing short of an astonishing anchor leg from Meirwyn Walters.

There are many ages and levels that compete throughout the day at Millrose, yet I don’t think very many, if any can lay claim to a meet, American, and world record all in one race. There is just something special about the hearts and souls of masters runners on stages such as Millrose. We dig deep into the well of experience, desire and love for the sport to deliver for our team mates, families, fans of the sport, and ourselves.

Many of us hang around later into the day to watch the televised portion of the meet knowing that just hours before we helped lay the groundwork for what is to come. It was another special Millrose and riding the train back downtown to Penn Station I had already begun to have dreams of the 115th Millrose Games and what special things they may have planned for a monumental year.

From Penn Station I took the train southward into New Jersey and was relieved to see the orange hues of sunset which replaced the haze of snow from earlier in the day. I spent the time reviewing images on the back of my camera that I had taken, as I had pulled double duty competing and covering the meet photographically with my press pass.

Looking at my images, my heart raced, reliving the agony and the elation through the frozen moments in time that visually told the story of the 114th Millrose Games for us as masters. Meets like Millrose often leave me pensive, asking myself questions like, “What does it mean to be a master?” I arrived at the conclusion that it has nothing to do with age and everything to do with heart, and the “Masters” proved it today, there’s no denying it.