The Inside Loop: May 2013

Thanks to Kamen Yotov for the FB pic of his daughter, Julianne, of Sean Rice's Prospect Park Youth Running Club on her way to a 6:18 finish in the 1500, only her second track meet ever! If she stays healthy, this girl will see much success in the miles ahead. Some months ago, Linus Ly entertained the idea of making a day trip with PPTC friends to Boston to watch the marathon in person. He's usually not a sports spectator, in person or on TV, but many club members were scheduled to run and he wanted to cheer them on. He doesn't think that he'll ever qualify for Boston since his best marathon time is over 5 hours whereas the Boston qualifying time, for his age group, is like 3 hours and 20 minutes, or whatever nowhere near 5 hours. But Linus loves taking photos, especially if there are people he knows running in the race.

The morning of the Boston Marathon, he didn't feel like watching and instead went about his usual routine. Then came 3pm and social media was abuzz with news of the explosion near the finish line. Linus followed the news for hours, on TV and on handheld devices. He was nowhere near the site of the explosion, but feels he could have been there. It happened at an event for a sport he loves. Sure, living in New York and liking to run in desolate areas, or early or late in the day, any day anyone can be a statistic in police blotter, but it still gnawed at him.

Enough with the brooding, he thought, so the morning of April 16th Linus decided to resume doing what he loves. He thought of just running straight out and back, but then why not make a tribute to the people affected by the bombing as well? He'd been experimenting with GPS writing, or gwriting for short, and had gotten pretty good at it. Here's the route Linus took for April 16th's 7 km. (he would want to make 8 km, his usual daily distance, but the phrase is short and 7 km was all it took.) Always one to come up with clever names, Linus called this route "BOSTON BETWEEN US", because the letters fall between Avenue U and Avenue S.

On another recent run, Linus spelled out "matt ♥ olenka", for Matt Strawn and his still-new wife.

At this time, there are other members of PPTC, no names mentioned,who have discussed using Linus' GPS art for less than wholesome purposes and are trying to ascertain which obscenities they can spell out in the least amount of miles run but the success and/or failure of these endeavors will be left to future mention.

Thanks to Bethany Gumper for her thinking of PPTC as her orchestra, the Greenwich Village Orchestra, came to the final miles of its concert season the last weekend in April. This is always a great program, featuring a big-name opera star from the Metropolitan Opera. Bethany handles publicity for the orchestra, so PPTC members and friends have always been on the no-hassle getting the best of seats list and you can't beat the price. Watch for Bethany's generous offers in the future if you've missed partaking in the past.

PPTC was registered for Team Competition in this year's Boston Marathon!! I know Tyrone Sklaren ran as well ( with Gina on the sidelines cheering him on to finish strong)

PPTC was blessed this year in Boston. Not only regarding times and finishing places but in that Tyrone was about half mile from the finish with his wife Gina waiting to cheer him from the side of the street opposite the explosions while Doug Olney had been standing at the finish line area watching his sister finish about two minutes before the explosions occurred. If you do the math as far as who was where and when, let us count our blessings.

Friday night April 26th at the Penn Relays in Philadelphia the PPTC women's master's team of Maculene Etienne, Valerie Hing, Jan Vaughn, and Zoe Van de Wiele (with alternates Patty ChongTenn and Lynda Mules ready to run if needed) competed in the Female Masters 4 x 400 and came in with a time of 4:53.27. Hey, win lose or draw, PPTC was on the track having qualified for this prestigious world-renowned event in track and field.

May is Skin Cancer Awareness Month. Be sun safe! Keep the exposed skin areas on all parts of your body protected with sunprotective clothing (including hats), use lotion with SPF of at least 40, visit a dermatologist at least every six months for whole body visual scans, and stay out of the sun's rays between 10 am and 4pm when the sun's damaging rays are the most dangerous. Info on skin cancer is all over the place this month so check it out. You owe that much to yourself and your family.