Repping our generation

He was my teammate, classmate and good friend for four years at Marist, and he also happened to be the greatest Marist runner of that era. Pete Pazik remains the only pre-1990s runner to have broken 15:00 for 5km – his time of 14:35 from the winter of1986 stood as the school record for a LONG time. Well. Thanks to a tip from another great 1980s-era runner, I found out that Pazik is still getting it done at the ripe old age of 53. At Sunday’s Boilermaker 15km race, 53-year-old Pete (the fast one, not me) won his age group – no small feat in a big race like that – with a time of 57:34, 11 seconds ahead of the nearest age-group competitor. For those keeping score at home (and I know you are!), that’s a pace of 6:10 per mile on the hilly 9.3-mile course in his hometown of Utica. Current team members Riley Hughes (59:17) and Emily Burns (1:03:01) were also there on Sunday, and teammate Dan Hillman (battling a cranky knee currently) was there to cheer them on. Here is a photo that Pete sent me of him greeting his 7-year-old niece along the course, at around the 10km mark.