Even so, on August 6th Newark’s CRR Steve Tague placed 15th among his 158 age-group (60-64) competitors in the Olympic-distance triathlon at the U.S. Triathlon Nationals in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. That’s top ten percent!
The second of four Delaware finishers, Tague completed the .75K-swim, 40K-bike, 10K-run event in 2:23:43, placing 460th out of 2,737 overall and 360th among 1,521 men.
Tague’s swim time was 23:57, his bike time was 1:06:53, and his run time was 49:04. Transitions in between each were 2:28 and 1:21, respectively.
Having improved three positions from his 18th place in his previous attempt at nationals, he is confident that he can do better next year.
The 2020 pandemic Olympic Games came to a close on August 8, 2021. Now we can look forward to the 2024 games in just three years!
For many, the extra year of training and preparation for these games was a hindrance; for others, it was a blessing in disguise. There were certainly a lot of surprises along the way. It seems the rest of the world is catching up with the USA in many sports.
In particular, the men’s track and field team, with a few notable exceptions, did not have the broad success that most of us expected. The USA women’s T&F team performed better, relative to their competition.
Champion gymnast Simone Biles brought a stark new awareness of the mental aspect of this level of competition, dropping out of the gymnastics team competition and a few of her individual-specialty apparatus events due to her unreadiness mentally.
CRR Sam Parsons competed in the World Championships in Doha in 2019.
How difficult, both physically and mentally, it is just to get to the Olympic stage was highlighted in a pre-Olympics article in the New York Times, which focused on this subject and featured CRR Sam Parsons.
Parsons, who trains with Colo.-based Tinman Elite and was competing for a spot on the German national team in the 5,000m (his mother CRR Christina Parsons is German), had been battling a nagging injury leading up to the German trials. Unfortunately, with little more than a lap left in his quest to qualify, he had to pull out of the race—his Olympic dream deferred.
The good news, father CRR George Parsons tell us, is that his son is recovering well physically and is staying positive, despite the disappointment.
Another almost-made-it was Michaela Meyer, who won the NCAAs this year but finished fourth at the Olympic trials. Meyer was a former UD student of CRR Bill Rose.
Yes, the world does seem to be catching up to the USA in many respects. Could this be the natural evolution of globalism, or is there something behind this?
CRR Matt Robinson
We’d like to think that the efforts of (self-proclaimed Creek Road Runners CEO) CRR Matt Robinson are making a difference for other nations that may not have the coaching expertise that we enjoy in this country. He literally coaches Olympic coaches.
This effort is funded by the International Olympic Committee’s Olympic Solidarity Fund, which designates money generated from Olympic broadcast rights to sport development and education programs around the world.
In the runup to the Olympic Games this summer, Robinson was interviewed by a University of Delaware UDaily reporter for the following article.
There were several notable finishers among the Creek Road Runners who ran the Fusion 5 Miler here in Newark on July 31.
CRR Andrew Weber turned in another impressive performance, winning the men’s masters division and finishing 3rd overall in a neat 30:00. Six minutes per mile at age 41 is nothing short of outstanding.
CRR Bill Rose won the 60-69 age group, finishing 18th overall in 34:53. Though he didn’t place in his 40-49 age group, CRR Dan Weile bested Rose on the day with a 34:09, finishing in 16th.
CRR Doug Repetti continues to run well among the 70-and-overs, winning this über-seniors category in 41:55 and finishing in a very respectable 57th out of the 186 competitors.
A shout-out to CRR April Anderson, who placed 2nd in the 70-and-over age group in 1:12:26.
Newark’s CRR Steve Tague is fighting that nemesis—age. The 62-year-old trains in swimming, biking, and running for times like this, when he can test himself against other triathletes of his age and younger. On June 5, he competed at the Rock Hall Triathlon Festival in nearby Rock Hall, Md., and won his age group in the Olympic Sprint Triathlon, finishing 60th overall among 368 participants.
Though his overall time of 2:30:14 seemed reasonably similar to the 2nd- and 3rd-place finishers in the 60-64s, Tague actually blew them out, with a top-ranked 1.5K swim time of 28:37 and second-ranked 40K bike and 10K run times of 1:08:12 and 50:42, respectively. In fact, if one were to total the three event ranking times in his age group and use cross-country scoring, he would have a 5 to his nearest competitors’ 11 and 12. His two transition times were likewise faster than his age group’s 2nd- and 3rd-place finishers, who hailed from West Chester, Pa., and Chesapeake, Va., respectively.
Tague was not particularly happy with his run time (at an 8:10/mi. pace), so he hopes to improve on that in future such events. Then, there’s that “Father Time” thing. No, it never gets any easier.
CRR Sam Parsons, son of CRR George Parsons and CRR Christina Parsons, is ramping up his training in an attempt to make the German national team for the 2021 Summer Olympics. His mom is German, so Sam, who also speaks fluent German, can compete for her home country. The key, however, is qualifying, which gets tougher every four years.
Recently, Parsons clocked in at 13:23.3 in the 5,000m race at the American Track League/Sound Running track meet in California, just a second off of his PR, set in 2019. Qualifying for the Olympics is based on the best of either a qualifying standard—at this distance, 13:13.5—or on a points basis (performances gain “points”). In the case of this latest meet, Parsons earned 1156 points—1126 “performance points” based on his finishing time and an additional 30 “place points” for his 4th place finish in the race. As a result, his average increased to 1138 points, ranking him 40th in the world at the 5K distance.
Parsons, who trains and runs for Boulder, Colo.–based Tinman Elite, will compete at the German Nationals on June 5. Creek Road Runners is proud of its international running superstar, a Newark native, and wishes him sehr Glück.
