1998 Central Park
Track Club Annual Awards Dinner/Party
SOCIAL MIXER
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1: This party took place at
the Universalist Church at the corner of Central Park West and
76th Street. It wouldn't be appropriate to have religious
icons towering over a scene of debauchery, so the wall was draped
in retro-psychedelic style. When Peter Allen saw
this, he said, "So ... where are the drugs?" We
have cautioned people over and over again that our functions are
typically attended by various law enforcement agents and such
jokes are no laughing matter.
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2: There is a lot of hard work involved in setting
up the scene. On each table, there are candles and decorations.
If you think this is trivial, just visualize how long it takes
to light 100 candles. Audrey Kingsley and John
Gleason are among those whom you should thank.
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3: Ellen Wallop is at the reception desk, checking
in everybody. In the good old days, Ellen was famous as
a party animal. Now she is in charge of the set-up team
because she needs to get home early to relieve the babysitter.
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4: Now, the question is: Did Erika Maple-Ogita Yamazaki
pay full fare, or are there infant discounts? Frank Handelman,
Casey Yamazaki and Yumi Ogita offered no comments.
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5: Here is the triathlete caucus on the sideline: Ramon
Bermo, Ross Galitsky and Stephanie Gould.
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6: John and Devon Sargent probably had no
idea that they were being photographed. Surprise!
DINNER
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11: Stuart Calderwood is
absolutely stunned at seeing Sid Howard, who has already
accumulated half a dozen empty plates in his hand. Apparently,
the ability to consume massive amounts is not limited only to
triathletes. (note: We were just joking. Sid was on
the clean-up crew and he was just mopping up after others.
Now, where else in the world are you going to have a national/world
champion/record holder clean up after you?)
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12: This year, there was actually food left over.
Why? Triathlete Scott Willett was out of town attending
some trigeek coaches' conference, while triathlete J.P. Cheuvront
was running (and winning) the Delaware Marathon the next day.
That was why everyone else has a chance.
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13: What kind of cake is this? Shall we guess from
the appearance ... carrot cake?
AWARDS CEREMONY
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21: John Kenney delivered
the Presidential Address. He gave a piece of good advice
on how to balance running and family/career --- give it your best
shot when you are still young; it is too late when you have three
kids.
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22: Here are a couple of attentive audience members: Eve
Kaplan and Mary Beth Mulholland.
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23: Tony Ruiz was appointed the road-running coach
at the beginning of the year. He selected the award winners
among the road runners. Tony has been a runner with the
club for many years, so he told some jokes related to skin pigmentation
from the early days.
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24: Alan Ruben won the Best Male 40-49 award.
Whilst Alan did dominate the team (both Masters and Open), the
even more remarkable accomplishments are his list of PR's (including
going sub-2:30 at the Boston Marathon)..
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25: Sarah Gross won the Best Female 40-49 award.
As Tony went through the list of accomplishments of the as-yet-unamed-athlete,
Sarah still had no idea he was talking about her. While
Sarah probably did not think she had a great year, consideration
must surely be given to her courage (that is, not having the word
DNF in her reportoire, no matter the circumstances).
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26: Alayne Adams was a co-winner in the Open Female
Woman category. Alayne would later also win the Female Rookie
of the Year award, which was a genuine surprise to her since she
has been running for many years.
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27: Audrey Kingsley was the other co-winner of
the Best Open Female category. In Tony's words, "She
was not a good runner when she first joined the club", but
what impressed him was her continuous (and seemingly unstoppable)
progress towards elite status.
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28: Carol Tyler was the Most Improved Female Runner,
with a list of race times that showed a remarkably consistent
improvement this year. Carol probably still has a lot left
to move up, and she can look to Victor Osayi (not in picture),
who was the Most Improved Male Runner for the second year in a
row (although Tony would not recommend the 200m-400m-1 mile-5000m
one-day meets).
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29: Sid Howard, Rae Baymiller, Tony Ruiz and Alan
Ruben
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30: Sidney Howard and Brian Denman made
the presentations and accolades for the track runners and sprinters.
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31: Charlie Stark was the winner of the Sixth Man
Award. Even though only five people score for the team,
the sixth and seventh men can make the whole team significantly
better. As Tony made a list of this as-yet-unnamed person's
race performances this year, Charlie had no idea that he was the
winner. Then Tony said that this person ran 2:48 in the
New York City Marathon. "Wait, I ran that time and
there was no one around me. So he is talking about me!"
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32: Jack Brennan was the Male Comeback Runner of
The Year. At 49 years old and almost totally written off
by his buddies, he even led the team in races this year.
(When Tony cited that Jack had run a 1:26 half-marathon this year,
a heckler in the rear (namely, Jack's buddy Fritz Mueller)
yelled that it was a short course.) Of course, Jack would
not simply graciously accept the award and had to grab the microphone
to make a speech, specifically about the skin pigmentation issue.
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33: A club tradition is for the coach to nominate his
own team of the toughest competitors. This year, the team
consisted of Stacy Creamer, Peter Allen, Tom
Hartshorne and Sal Allah (not in picture).
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34: The Overall Most Valuable Person for the club this
year is Rae Baymiller. Her world record for Females
55-59 set at the Chicago Marathon and her other American records
establishes her as a global power. According to insider
information, Rae has also won an USATF award just the day before.
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35: The final award of the night was the Founders' Award,
being the sixth one ever given out in the twenty-six year history
of the club. The award was not running-related, and was
announced by Stacy Creamer. From her mischievous
smile in this photo, it is clear that she considered this
to be a major coup.
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36: The Founders' Award was accepted by Roland Soong
for the Central Park Track Club web site, in recognition of its
contribution to internal communication as well as external presentation.
The smiles on these three people (Roland Soong, Stacy
Creamer and Sid Howard) are frozen stiff, because they
are all waiting for the photographer Audrey Kingsley to
work her magic. When the award recepient was interviewed
afterwards, he said that he could not claim full credit for the
web site because he had lots of help from many others. Then
he added, "I had no idea that this was going to happen.
This was obviously a conspiracy against me on a grand scale.
These people will be sorry that they ever did this to me.
I will make them feel the full force of the Global Surveillance
System (TM)!"
DANCING
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41: The first people to hit the dance floor were Stuart
Calderwood and Stacy Creamer. We would have
been surprised if anyone else could beat them to it.
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42: Gordon Bakoulis and Alan Ruben can do
a dance number too.
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43: Tyronne Culpepper, Stuart Calderwood, Alayne Adams,
Margaret Nolan, Frank Handelman ...
- Missing photo: Tony Ruiz getting down
on the dance floor ... that animal! And our battery was
dead right at that moment!
OUR WORST NIGHTMARE
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51: When our cameraman looked into
his camera, he saw another cameraperson, Mary Ellen Howe ...
EEK!
Technical note: This event took place inside a dimly
lit hall. Our digital camera offered us two choices (that
is, after all, the definition of digital): (1) use the flashbulb
so that everyone shows up as albinos with red eyes, or (2) use the
existing lighting and adjust for brightness/contrast afterwards.
We chose the second option, because we were sure that no one wants
to look like 'albinos with red eyes.'
LIST OF AWARD WINNERS
- Overall Road MVP: Rae Baymiller
- Overall Track MVP: Ray Blackwell
- Best Open Male Runner: Carmine Petracca
- Best Open Female Runners: Alayne Adams, Audrey
Kingsley
- Best 40-49 Male Road Runner: Alan Ruben
- Best 40-49 Female Road Runner: Sarah Gross
- Best 40-49 Male Track Runner: Val Barnwell
- Best 50+ Male Runner: Alan Turner
- Best 50+ Female Runner: Irene Jackson
- Male Rookie of the Year: Eric Aldrich
- Female Rookie of the Year: Alayne Adams
- Most Improved Male Runner: Victor Osayi
- Most Improved Female Runner: Carol Tyler
- Comeback Male Runner: Jack Brennan
- Comeback Female Runner: Yumi Ogita
- Sixth Man Award: Charlie Stark
- The Coach's Pick of the Toughest Competitors
(= C.P.T.C.): Stacy Creamer, Peter Allen, Tom Hartshorne, Sal
Allah
- Outstanding performances of the year
- Alan Ruben, 2:29:54PR at the Boston Marathon
- Frank Schiro, Penn Relays 4x400m
- Rae Baymiller, 2:52:14 WR at the Chicago Marathon
- The Founders' Award: The Central Park Track
Club web site
Note: The awards were created by Harry Nasse.
The entire event would not have been possible without
the posses of volunteers. We don't have the entire list,
but we would especially like to point out that Mary Rosado
flew in earlier in the day from an out-of-town trip just so she
can come to work in the clean-up crew. That is 'above and
beyond' anything and everything.
SPATIOTEMPORAL DISLOCATION
Some of us have gone to races at the wrong time
and/or wrong locations (and we won't name names). But, as
Albert Einstein said, everything is relative, generally speaking,
and when you hear about this special case, you won't feel too bad
about yourself:
A certain individual was responsible for designing
the invitation to the Annual Awards Dinner. On the card,
he relocated the Universalist Church from 76th Street to 72nd
Street.
The same individual managed to show up at the
right place initially. Unfortunately, he came on Friday
instead of Saturday. Obviously, there was not a CPTC soul
anywhere inside the church.
We are happy to report that there was a happy
ending. This individual was able to recognize the warp in
the four-dimensional space-time manifold, and redirected himself
to the correct coordinates.
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