Boulder Road runners win; Degrado, Bell earn podium visits at masters 5 km champs. in Atlanta

On Saturday (26-Feb) nine (9) athletes and two teams from Colorado competed in the USATF Masters 5 km Championships in Atlanta, Ga.  All nine athletes represented the Boulder Road Runners.  The championship was the first national masters road championship in over two years.

The headline of the day for the Coloradans was the Boulder Road Runners M70+ team winning the team title and Tim DeGrado and Doug Bell earning visits to the the awards podium for their top-3 finishes in their divisions.

Bell, 71, of Greeley finished third in the men's 70-74 division to lead his squad to the M70+ team title.  He stopped the clock at 21:18.  Mike Wien, 70, of Boulder finished third running 22:29 and Richard Katz, 73, of Boulder rounded out the team scoring with his sixth place finish in 22:45.  The team's cumulative team time was 1:06:32 (22:11 average).  They defeated the Atlanta Track Club by 2 minutes 46 seconds.

The Boulder men's 60+ team placed third in a hyper-competitive division. They were led by Tim DeGrado, 61, of Arvada, who placed second in the men's 60-64 division running 18:05.  He was backed up by Kyle Hubbart (4th 65-69; 20:28) and Jeffery Barros (12th 60-64; 20:39).  The teams's cumulative team time was 59:12 (19:44 average) The winning team was the hometown Atlanta Track Club with a cumulative team time of 57:23 (19:08 average).

Colorado athlete scoring over 80% (national class) on the age-graded performance table were:

• Tim DeGrado - 88.78%
• Doug Bell - 83.28%
• Gary Ostwald - 82.30%
• Kyle Hubbart - 81.25%
• John Borthwick - 80.23%
• Richard Katz - 80.14%

 

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