2022 PA MUT Runners of the Year: and the nominees are...

We have three special awards at the end of each season: the Female and Male Runner of the Year (RoY) and the Volunteer of the Year. Like the Oscars, there is always some good suspense, given the quality of the nominees. One of the hardest part of the selection job is actually making sure we have a fair collection of performances, a challenging task especially as some of our USATF Pacific Association members do not run locally. Not to mention more than 7,000 members in our local database, across all our Track and Field disciplines!

To see who we picked, please consider joining us on Saturday evening for our recognition banquet. Heads-up, registration closes at 5 pm Pacific this Wednesday afternoon!

Below is an impressive list of notable achievements we considered in our selection.

Women

• Beverley Anderson-Abbs

• 2nd at Rio del Lago 100-mile

• 1st at Jed Smith 50-mile in 6:37:02 (6 minutes from the W55-59 AG American Record she already owns)

• 1st at SPASM Lake Chabot Trail Run - 50K

• 1st at Redwood Trail Run (Summer) - 50K

• 1st at Oak Mountain - 50K

• Meghan Canfield

• Set the W60-64 50-Mile Road World Record at the 100K Nationals

• Devon Yanko

• 1st at Brazos Bend 50 Miler in 6:25  (2nd fastest women time ever)

• 1st at Javelina Jundred 14:36:10 (Second fastest w time ever, behind Camille Heron’s course record)

• 1st at Continental Divide Trail Run 50K

• 1st at Ram Party 50-mile 

• 1st at Umstead 100-mile (improved CR by 44 minutes)

• 1st at Arches Ultra 50K (second best time; only 6 minutes behind CR)

• Katie Asmuth

• 9th at Western States 100-mile

• 1st at Bishop High Sierra Ultras 55K

• 1st at Black Canyon Ultras 60K

• 1st at Sean O’Brien 30K

• Anna Kacius

• 7th at World 100K Road Championships; Team USA Gold Medalist

• 2nd at 100K Road Nationals (8:12:38)

Men

• Chikara Omine

• 1st at Ruth Anderson Memorial Endurance Run - 50M, setting a new American Masters Record at 5:05:41

• 1st at Dick Collins Firetrails 50 - 50 Miler (new course record by 30 minutes)

• 1st at Skyline 50k Endurance Run - 50K

• Jonah Backstrom

• 1st at Jed Smith 50K in 3:18:36

• 4th overall, 1st Masters at 100-mile Road Nationals

• 1st at Folsom Lake Trail Run - 1/2 Marathon

• Tim Tollefson

• 1st at Way Too Cool 50K (3:13, 4th fastest ever)

• 1st at American River 50M

• Rajpaul Pannu

• 2nd 50K Road Nationals 3:04:58

• 1st Tunnel Hill 50-mile 5:08:41 (2nd fastest time ever)

• 49th at 100K Road World 7:23:19

• 4th at 100K Road Nationals

• 2nd at 50K Road Nationals

• Ian Sharman

• 1st at Three Sisters Skyline - 1/2 Marathon

• 1st at Smith Rock Ascent - 50K

And, to make the process more objective, here is a scoring sheet I designed when I took over the leadership of our MUT committee back in 2017, from this post:

Criteria	0	3	5
Body of Work	No race result	5 significant MUT achievements	10 or more significant MUT achievements
International / National	No result in international or national competitions	Significant results at international or national level	Podium at international competition
Pacific Association MUT GP focus	0 PA race/result	4 or more PA GP results	7 or more PA GP results
Performance range	Single distance / format	Significant results in two distinct formats / distance ranges	Significant results across sub-ultra trail, and 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0 ultras
Historical performance (CR, AGCR)	No CR setting	Some CR setting, or CR-worth/close performances	Consistent setting of CR / AGCR across body of work
Age graded performance	Too old to get close to the podium, or too young for age being a factor (20-35)	Rocking the Masters division	Still killing it enough to make the podium or top 10

Hoping to see many of you on Saturday night... live, then!