AT&T Running & Fitness Team Members,
For the 2nd year in a row, the AT&T Running & Fitness Team won the United States Corporate Athletics Association (USCAA) Half Marathon Championship!
As most of you know, the AT&T Running & Fitness Team is a cross business unit organization of current employees and retirees who have been participating in local and national events since
1978. The team has two major goals - maximize participation and involvement, and win championships!
The Corporate Championship was held in conjunction with the Myrtle Beach Marathon/Half Marathon on February 18, 2012. AT&T was followed by GE and Booz Allen Hamilton with Michelin and Texas
Instruments rounding out the top 5.
The AT&T team finished 5th in the marathon as several runners were not able to attend. GE took top honors followed by Texas Instruments, Booz Allen Hamilton and Lockheed Martin.
The weekend extravaganza was host to 1800 and 3600 runners in the marathon and half marathon respectively. The runners had perfect marathon weather with a temperature of 45° for the 6:30 AM start.
Just to clarify again how the USCAA team scoring works - you can enter an unlimited number of runners in each race. Your individual score is based on
WMA (World Masters Association - formerly WAVA) tables which compare your time versus the world record for your age and gender. This levels the playing field and for example allows a 53-year-old
female to score as many points as a 27-year-old male even though the male has a faster time.
The team score for the marathon is the sum of your top four WMA scorers. Because the USCAA Half Marathon only includes about half as many runners at this time, the team score only includes the
sum of your top two WMA scorers. Since these long races are very unpredictable due to how you feel, injuries etc. it is extremely helpful to have as many people in each of the races as possible
and as much depth as possible.
Congratulations to Richard Stotlar who had a fantastic WMA score of 90.09 in the half marathon! As a point of reference this doesn't mean that he is in the 90th percentile of all runners of his
age and gender in the world, it means that he has run 90% of the world record. There may only be a handful of 70-year-old runners in the world that have run faster than Richard! 90% or better is
considered world-class. He had the highest WMA score of any USCAA runner in the marathon or half marathon. At 70 years old he ran a 1:29:37 half marathon (a 6:50 per mile pace that was 1 minute
and 6 seconds faster than last year)!
Steve Kohorst was the other scorer for our championship half marathon team. Steve is 61 and ran 1:30:29/ WMA score of 81.66! Ricardo Rodriguez gave us some additional depth running 1:31:00 with a
WMA score of 68.32. Ricardo was disappointed with his time but it may have had something to do with driving all night from Atlanta due to some last-minute issues. He gets the team dedication
award!
Last year the AT&T Half Marathon Championship Team was led by Richard Stotlar, Yvonne Joyce, and Lowell Mutchelknaus.
In addition to the corporate results, Richard and Steve did extremely well in the overall results. Richard finished 1st in his age group more than 22 minutes ahead of 2nd place (more than 3 miles
at Richard's 6:50 pace) and Steve finished 3rd in his age group.
Due to last-minute injuries and other conflicts, the marathon team only had 3 runners and was not able to field a full team. However, the team had some great individual performances. Chris
Crawford, the USCAA and AT&T marathon coordinator from Dallas, Texas led the Marathon Team. At age 50 Chris ran 2:58:26/WMA score of 78.15. At age 72 James Hill from Buda, Texas ran
3:46:41/WMA 76.69. Anne Marie Ayres from San Ramon, California ran a PR of 5:50:49 after losing 40 pounds over the last year.
In the overall marathon results James finished 1st in his age group despite falling flat on his face 15 yards from the finish line…I know many of you can relate to this as James was leaning
forward and lost his balance and couldn't get his feet underneath him. He got up and finished the race getting a roar from the crowd greater than the first-place finisher!
In a 5K with 450 runners that was held the night before the marathon, Lou Putnam finished 1st in his age group ahead of 14 other old-timers. His bionic knee served him well.
Many thanks to Chris Crawford for his work as the USCAA Marathon Coordinator and the AT&T Marathon Coordinator.
The 2013 USCAA Marathon/Half Marathon Championships will be held in Carlsbad, California on January 27, so I believe we will have many more AT&T participants.
The next two major events for the team are the Penn Relays in Philadelphia, PA on April 27 and the USCAA Corporate Cup Relays National Championship in San Ramon, CA on July 14-15, 2012. We can
enter an unlimited number of runners in the 5K and 10K road races in San Ramon - thus it is a great opportunity to join the AT&T team. We also have numerous relays on the track with all age
groups and some field events. We expect to win the championship in San Ramon!
By the way, we can always use volunteers to support the team. If you feel you can spare some time performing specific duties like developing flyers or collecting data for a specific race, etc.,
let me know.
Happy running and spread the word so that we can continue to expand our Running & Fitness Team network across the country and around the world.