How the Atlanta Track Club Won 'Club Cross' Masters
This year's USATF club XC championships drew a record 1,110 runners from 162 clubs
By John A. Kissane
As featured in the Web Only issue of Running Times Magazine
Most middle-aged runners know how it goes: the last few years of your 30s bring the depressing reality that personal bests are all in the past and that 'The Big Slow Down' is right around the corner. But for some, the way to mitigate the unavoidable is to focus on opportunities to compete as a master; to accept that while no one escapes the aging process it absolutely does not have to mean an end to serious, even elite-level, training and competition.
The Atlanta Track Club's Malcolm Campbell, who turned 40 last January, has had an outstanding 41st year, although coming into the USATF National Club Cross Country Championships on Dec. 10 he had a monkey on his back. Campbell had finished runner-up in four USATF national championship events beginning with the U.S. 50K in March of 2010, while he was still an open athlete. The other three were all in 2011, the most recent being the U.S. masters marathon championships on Oct. 2 in Minneapolis, where Campbell ran 2:25.58 to winner Tracy Lokken's 2:24.44.
Though pleased to again be healthy after a spring knee ailment that quashed his Boston Marathon plans, Campbell absolutely savored the thought of victory in Seattle. Plus, his Atlanta Track Club teammates had a score to settle.
When many runners hear "Atlanta Track Club" they immediately think of the Peachtree Road Race. No great surprise there, given that Peachtree is the largest - and certainly one of the best - 10K races in the world. But the ATC, founded in 1964 and currently the nation's second-largest running organization, has always counted national and even world class athletes among its membership. And at the national club cross country championships, that fact was brought home quite emphatically.
Read on here<http://runningtimes.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=24750&PageNum=1>.
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