Spartans Track and Cross Country Club

The discussion board is up, so if you were itching to post now is your chance. I’ve also sorted out the photo gallery so they are now organized by categories.

I’m currently moving the database to the new domain. It will be up soon.

Hey guys and gals, I’ve finished moving the site over the the new domain. Hopefully everything is working fine. I’ve been telling many of my friends about the site, and we should be seeing more hits to our site now that the URL is much easier to remember.

I still see many of the member still use the old email discussions. We should use our new discussion board we have now. Jerome has posted a couiple of interesting articles already. I know you other guys have interesting stories and insights as well. It’d be nice to share your wisdom with others.

See you guys at the track.

1. Feb 19 & 26 All Comers Track Meet – Los Gatos High School

2. FIND A LONG RUN PARTNER; LOSE WEIGHT; USE A HEART RATE MONITOR, and more – join the discussion page. Pleeeese. Go to Discussion.

3. RUN a race in nice weather – go to Local Race Listings.

4. RUN INTERVALS Monday and Wednesday at 6 P.M. (We are still at the Bellermine High track, even on holidays.) – go to Workouts.

5. GET INVOLVED – look for a team race and form a Spartans team for it.

Our Spartans domain name vote is finished. Unlike the US presidential election, wisdom and common sense did not prevail. Also unlike the presidential election, we had an unprecedented voting response – 110% of the eligible voters cast electronic ballots. Now, direct from the president’s specially appointed election committee, here are the complete, audited results:

1 gospartans.org – 10 votes – a “feel good” name for the masses
2 spartansrun.org – 9 votes – a brilliantly descriptive name showing who we are and what we do
3 spartansrc.org – 2 votes – a fine concatenation of our club name, Spartans Running Club
4 gokurt.org – 1 vote – obviously by a smitten groupie fan of our resident actor. Or a vainity vote by Kurt???
4 sparticus.org – 1 vote – the home of the Spartans; a great choice, not publicized enough to draw votes from the unwashed masses

That’s it.

gospartans.org

Given the huge electronic audience that this process must have drawn, some unscrupulous friend of Kurt’s has probably registered our first choice, expecting to sell it to the mighty Spartans and make a cool million. We will not play that game, if the first choice domain name is unavailable, a variation of it will be selected. If no variants are available, we will move to the second choice. Upon registration, you will have an easy to remember domain name to access our site.

Jerome

Saturday evening, our Spartans enjoyed a Holidays Dinner at San Jose’s Tied House Restaurant, micro brewery and sports bar. For a pictorial review, go to the photos page. Several wide screen monitors treated us to images of overgrown football players lumbering around bumping into each other, however, no track meets were on any of the “sports bar” monitors.

In keeping with a Spartan tradition, “Late or Lost, but Never Last”, 24 attendees arrived just in time to conclude the social hour. After all were seated to dine, our newest Spartan, Victoria Tran-Sood, and her husband Manush made their grand entrance, thankfully relieving more established Spartan members of being in the dreaded LAST PLACE. Victoria’s really late entrance fully qualifies her to be a SPARTAN.

As the many Spartan team members wolfed down delicious dinners, they recalled past exploits. From the cross country teams were Nick Butterfield, Pat Buzbee with his wife Fabia, Kurt Gravenhorst, Steve Radigan with wife Barbara and son Bob, Jerome Woehl with ladyfriend Teri, Art Sanchez, and Leroy Daleen. The ENTIRE woman’s cross country team was there – Susan Hu. Various road race teams were represented by Leonard Marrufio and Ken and Chris Irving. From the track pack were Huy Nguyen with Mai, and Bob Gilbert. Party people (only seen at parties) were there to spice things up – Gil Katzen, Camile Ortiz and her aunt Estella. And last, on the injured reserves team, Carlos Siqueiros.

Huy was given a hand (and running gloves for both hands) for his work on the new web site. Huy narrowly missed doubling – another award for getting lost. On the way to the Christmas Relays in San Francisco, he missed a turn and was on the way to Santa Cruz with his entire team until rediriction via a cell phone call. The coveted Lost Spartan Award went to Art Sanchez for consistency. This year, he again got lost. This time on the way to the Christmas Relays. This time he missed the very last turn, so rather than driving a short 200 yards to the parking area, he drove five miles, all around the course, to get there.

Two hands (running gloves) were awarded to Mike King as benefactor and Home Run teams captain. The final two hands award, for Cheers, was presented by Kurt to Teri for her almost single handed cow belling and cheering at the cross country races. Injured Carlos was in the running, but he lost on style points. Also considered was Carmen, Francisco’s better half, but she wasn’t present – scant hours before the dinner, a garbled phone message from Francisco said something about her being stuck in the shower and not able to come.

Jerome

At the January 8, 2005 Spartans dinner, these items of busines were completed:

1. Officers for 2005: President – Jerome Woehl; Vice President – Francisco Verduzco; Secretary – Kurt Gravenhorst; Treasurer – Patrick Buzbee.

2. Web Master – Huy Nguyen

3. Name change from Spartans Track and Cross Country Club to Spartans Running Club.

4. Intervals Work-out Location Change – move from Bellermine High to Lincoln High. Date to be announced after final details are resolved.

5. Awards: Effort – Huy Nguyen; Support – Mike King; Lost Spartan – Art Sanchez; Cheers – Teri Hottman.

Jerome

The fish and chips were good and everyone seemed to have had a great time. The pictures are up and you know where they’re at. As for you first timers its in the Photo section.

Thanks for the running gloves!!!

This was the big one; the Finals! 6.4 miles in the turf and dirt. All the hot shots were there, even the mighty Spartans. Wheezer Man had another new tune – a medley of old ‘favorites’. I hated it, but it worked for him – he soon was far ahead of me. Ratty Julious was there, showing great improvement. Obviously, to improve so much so soon, he is using some unsportsmanlike aid. I say we should be competing on just our God given natural abilities; not stoop to enhancements. Julious, you cheater – training! For shame. That’s not natural.

The impressive show was in the men’s open race. One runner immediatley jumped to the front, improving his lead with a sub 5 minute mile pace. We stood and watched; even in our wildest dreams we couldn’t run that pace for any distance. He was ‘only’ an ‘unknown also ran’ in the 5000 at the Olympics. Amazing talent out there. The Spartans wern’t quite as impressive.

A big contingent of 50’s Spartans allowed us to fill down and field a 40’s team as well. The cheer squad was small but fantastic; lead by Carmen, clanging the cow bell and snapping photos. The final results are on the PAUSATF web site, go there to see ALL the results and final standings. Suffice it to say, our best news was that we were there and we had a good time. We scored very well at lunch afterwords. See ya next year…

Jerome

Recent rains made a perfect course and then paused for a great day – sunny, cool and calm and a course that was damp, no dust no mud.

With some fill-in’s from the 50’s, the men’s 40’s team came in 5th out of 6 teams.
DAVID WOODRUFF, 46yrs, 13th in 40’s
BRIAN CONROY, 49, 24
JAMES CUNNINGHAM, 58, 27
JEROME WOEHL, 59, 28
KURT GRAVENHORST, 55, 30
DAVID PRINCE, 46, 31
FRANCISCO VERDUZCO, 54, 32

The men’s 50’s came in 2nd out of 3 teams.
PATRICK BUZBEE, 52, 3
SALVADOR MARTINEZ, 51, 5
PAUL TJOGAS, 51, 9
ART SANCHEZ, 51, 11