The Inside Loop – January 2015
A good crowd of PPTC runners and friends gathered at the Knights of Columbus Hall in Windsor Terrace in the morning hours of the first day of the new year to meet and greet and then get on with the business of getting the new year off on the right foot at this year's Harry's Handicap. Many thanks to Race Director Matt Strawn, PPTC President Tom Meany, Linus Ly, past president Anne Perzeszty, all around go-to-guy Julio Zavala, James Israel, and Trish McNaughton for all their time and energies spent on handicapping and then getting the event underway, getting this year's participants up and out the door to the starting line for the 3.35 mile inside loop of our park's inside loop roadway. Although forecasted as a cold frigid first morning of the new year, 2015's running seemed to be one of this events better days with complaints about the temps and wind at the start line and along the course minimal.Hey, it was January First and the sun was out! Twenty five medals, new and still wrapped, were bestowed on the first twenty five runners to cross the finish line at the award reception coinciding with the what seemed like PPTC's version of an all you can eat late breakfast/ brunch buffet. And If participants didnt go home with a medal, at least they had the opportunity to go home with resolutions to start the year off on the right foot still intact and perhaps weighing a few more ounces then when they arrived.
A review of the race results will show whom ran what so if you hadn't planned on starting 2015 by hooking up at PPTC's first event of this new year, add it to your list of resolutions on the ''do-this'' side and hope that this will be the one that above all you'll keep.
Click here for the results from Harry's Handicap
If for whatever the reason you can't make heads or tails of the data, please feel free to call the Race Directors 24/7 Hotline and b-------- and moan to them. For a quantity of cash in small bills in a plain unmarked envelope.........................
On a much more somber note, thanks to Lennie the Kid Nemerovsky and Richie Inanmorato for recalling thoughts of the late and great PPTC members Paul Soskind and past PPTC President Bobby Fisher whom PPTC lost in 2014. Their personages, their lifetime accomplishments, and their devotion to our club and to the sport will never be forgotten.
The last month of the old year also had PPTC losing another one of its long time friends and one of USATF's most noted and colorful officials, Brooklyn native Warren Ring. Warren joins Jake Korn and Mr. Louis Vazquez Sr. in the halls of track and field's hallowed kingdom, men who were there at the start and the finish lines of PPTC events in the 70's through the 90's and without whose officiating and camaraderie our sport would not be what it is today.
The Plaque Is Back!!!! Maybe it was just me but for a time I didn't seem able to figure out where PPTC's commemorative plaque for Harry Murphy had been placed, given the Park's Department repairs to Harry's Wall and the patch of garden area below and to the right and left of it. Harry's plaque is now mortared into the concrete at the right of the base of the Wall, to the right of the garden area as you face the Wall. Check it out on your running loops inside and as you read the words inscribed, be still - you never know what you might hear in the silences of the day.