Calling all fast women
Old Mill Run offers $250 cash prize for busting 40 minutes
For many years, it was expected at the Old Mill Run. The women’s winner of Tuolumne County’s oldest 10K race would break the 40 minutes. In fact, for the better part of two decades, 40 was no barrier at all.
Female winners posted sub40 times in the 1981, ’84, ’85, ’86, ’87, ’88, ’89, ’90, ’92, ’95, ’96 and ’98 Old Mills. In several of those races, multiple women crossed the finish line under the Big 4-0h.
But since then, inexplicably, 40 minutes has become a seemingly unassailable barrier.
In the 21 Old Mills held since Mary Coordt won with a time of 38:42 back in 1998, 40 minutes might as well be the wall at San Quentin. No woman has scaled it, although well over a thousand have tried.
Veteran runner Joan Ottaway got close in 1999, with a winning time of 40:34. And she was then 55 years old. So did Julie Taggart, who notched a 40:43 in 2000.
Since then, women’s winning times have been edging toward an hour: Jill Jodie notched a leisurely 55:47 in winning the 2017 race. And New Zealander Sarah Butcher posted 51:55 in becoming the first foreigner to win an Old Mill in 2018.
Last year, Erica Gorgas got a notch closer to 40, winning in 45:12.
And not one woman has broken 40 minutes since inauguration of the new course in 2008. Riva Muehlbauer set the course record, 41:37, in 2015.
The overall best Old Mill time by a woman?
Laurie Crisp’s seemingly unassailable women’s record of 35:15, set back in 1986. That’s 20 full minutes ahead of Jill Jodie’s — that’s enough time to discuss (and maybe even solve) the world’s problems over pizza at the St. Charles Saloon.
But Crisp, now Laurie Clare, was running at a different level.
This woman qualified for the Olympic Trials Marathon, and no other female has been in the same time zone as her Old Mill record — which has stood for an incredible 38 years.
Last year I put the odds of anyone breaking Clare’s mark at 100-to-1. This year, I might make the odds even longer.
Meanwhile, Mike Spencer’s long-enduring 1996 men’s mark
of 31:32 has itself lasted 27 years. But last year Sonora High runner Broen Holman edged to within nearly a minute of Spencer. And he was just 17.
So Spencer’s mark may be on the critical list. Not so Clare’s.
But, to make things interesting in Columbia on April 20, the Old Mill Run is sweetening the women’s pot by adding a $250 to the winner’s prize if her time is under 40.
So the women’s winner now stands to haul in $750 if: 1. She wins the race. 2. She breaks Riva Muehlbauer’s course record, and 3. She breaks 40 minutes.
But what if the runner-up also breaks 40? Good for her, but the extra cash will not follow. Only the winner is eligible.
And if that winner is an
out-of-town ringer and underthe-radar world-class distance runner, she could add yet another $250 to her haul by busting Clare’s seemingly unassailable mark. Thus leaving Columbia with a cool grand in her running shorts’ pocket.
That’s very unlikely, highly improbable and nearly impossible.
But, sure, it could happen: Alicia Monson now holds the U.S. 10K record — 30:04. And she lives in San Juan Capistrano, which is only 393 miles from Columbia.
A much longer shot might be Agnes Ngetich of Kenya, who holds the current 10,000-meter women’s world record of 28:46. She’d make Laurie Clare look like a snail.
But Nairobi is nearly 10,000 miles away, and we
Old Mill organizers are not willing to pay Agnes’s fare. As for men, we won’t pay passage from Uganda for world record holder Joshua Cheptege (26:11) either.
So, talented local runners, you still have a good shot.
In conclusion, know that the discussion above has very little to do with the average Old Mill Runner, who will likely come to Columbia on April 20 to break his or her own personal record, or maybe to spring past a friend or neighbor to the finish line.
And win nothing, leaving Columbia with only a T-shirt and a grin on his (or her) face after a race well run.
Still, who can put a price on that?