mile record

Age-group records may tumble tomorrow at the Fountain of Youth Mile at the Canby high school track in Oregon. And how I wish I was going to be on that track!

Maestro jazz trumpeter Nolan Shaheed is the one I'm going to be watching. Flying in from concerts in DC, he could push back the men's 55-59 world record (4:40.4, set by Australia's Jack Ryan in 1977). However, Kenyan superstar Henry Rono -- who has declared his intention of breaking that record -- is not going to challenge him. Henry will be running, but is nursing an injured hamstring and quad sustained running the 5,000m track race at the end of the Hillsdale College "Gina" Relays meet in Hillsdale, Michigan, a couple of weeks back. The meet ran late and the 5k kicked off at 1.15 on a cold morning. Henry covered the first 1600m in 5:44 and finished in 18:55.

Two big stories for me to come out of the Carlsbad 5000 today (Sunday)...

first, Henry Rono served notice that it's not all talk and he really is serious about his comeback, with a storming 17:48 in his first major race since, well... forever. The former three times world record holder was second in his age group behind the man who remains The Man to beat: 57-year-old Nolan Shaheed, who covered 5k in an astonishing 16:31.

Second, comiserations to my training partner Patty Murray, who ran a fantastic 17:05 in the masters women's race and lost the race by just TWO seconds!

Henry got a lot of positive media coverage praising his reinvention of himself as a world-class runner, this time as an age-group masters champion. However, a little puzzling was the mention of Henry's attack on the 4:40 world mile record for 55-year-old men, which some are saying he has scheduled for September at the World Masters Championships in Riccione, Italy. These being regular track and field title events, there is no mile race, just a 1500 metres.

Henry Rono, the former triple world record-holder who's making a comeback aged 55, will run the Carlsbad 5000 on April 1.

The world-class 5k road race staged in San Diego is dubbed "World's Fastest 5k" and has the distinction of being a place where world bests are set -- and for featuring separate races for masters. But although Henry will run with world masters mile record-holder Nolan Shaheed at Carlsbad, he is not predicting a super-fast time.

Henry has been getting some stick on the letsrun forum where he logs his progress reports, with some readers disbelieving that he is serious about racing at a high level again, and others obsessing over his weight and why he hasn't lost more despite running about two hours a day for nearly 8 months. He has only had one low-key race this year -- running 19:20 in Cincinnati in December.

He's still overweight, but former triple world record holder Henry Rono is on track for his attempt on the world mile age-group record (he'll be 55 in a couple of months).

He ran 19:20 for third in the M50 age group in the Jingle Bell 5k on a fast, flat course in Cincinnati, Ohio.

"I still have some work to do", says Henry on his letsrun.com thread. "I didn't know I have that much weight (30lbs). I look at the photo running along those two boys, I look like a heavyweight boxer, when I'm supposed to look like a runner as most Kenyan runners are. It is good to check yourself once in a while to see how your body progress in the weights lost, but I feel much better than six months ago.