CRR Dave Edwards, professor of kinesiology and applied physiology at the University of Delaware, has been inducted into the National Academy of Kinesiology. His area of expertise deals with the effects disease and other factors, such as diet and exercise, have on vascular physiology. He is currently the principal investigator on a National Institutes of Health grant and is consistently published in leading physiology and clinical journals. He also started a Renal Rehabilitation Program to serve patients with kidney disease.
His department chair says, “Dave Edwards is an outstanding scientist who has contributed seminal research to understanding the physiology of exercise…. It is a well-deserved honor to be inducted into the National Academy.”
Creek Road Runners add our collective congratulations too!
Joan Bennett asked that Creek Road Runners be made aware of the upcoming memorial service, as Creek Road Runners were such a part of the second half of the life of her late husband, CRR Bob Bennett.
A service of Celebration and Thanksgiving for the life of CRR Robert “Bob” Bennett will be held at 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, October 9, at St. Thomas’s Episcopal Church, 276 South College Avenue Newark, Delaware.
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.
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.
In an exclusive article published in the News Journal this week about the most influential Delawareans in seven categories, CRR Charlie Riordan was one of the 15 individuals highlighted as being most influential in science and technology.
Not just a runner, Riordan, who joined the University of Delaware faculty in 1997, “oversees the university’s research office, six university-wide research institutes, and ‘core’ facilities.” Under his leadership, “more than 1,500 faculty, staff, and students have been approved to return to their research work since early June. Riordan is an internationally renowned inorganic chemist” (and all-around nice guy).
Creek Road Runners congratulate him on this recognition.
