Heart of America Marathon
Labor Day Columbia, Missouri

1974 Report

Lower 50's, cloudy, rain after the 3-hour mark, humidity not a major factor. The best weather conditions we have ever had. There was a lot of fresh rock on the gravel road; this and some extremely sloppy stretches cost a few minutes, so still not perfect.

Lynn Lee ran four years for Drake University. He is now a school teacher and had come off a fairly modest running program during the summer. As was true last year, Karl Naylor had the early lead which he held until Richard Caldwell took over on Easley Hill. Shortly thereafter Lee and Martin Smith moved to the front and waged a little battle until Lee took over for good shortly after eighteen miles. We had a record number of finishers, the most ever under three hours. Tim Hendricks, a four-time winner, had done a 2:32 marathon on August 4 in Omaha, finishing third, but then he had a mishap with a steam hose, suffered extensive burns on the inner aspect of his left thigh, and spent eight days in the hospital; obviously he was not in top form. The most outstanding story is the performance of Rex Frazer. Dick Hessler paced the CTC runners, but you could sort of expect a 2:47 from Dick or Don Granberg, Dean Neal and Ben Londeree being under three hours. But Frazer was something else - he not only won the over age 40 trophy, he also set an age 40 record, beating the 2:53:33 set by Alex Ratelle. In addition to the five CTC leaders, Joe Duncan had a PB - by six minutes. This was the first time CTC has ever had anyone under three hours in HOA-and there were five of them. Dick Carr, a 40 year old PR man from the Kansas State College of Pittsburg, won the first Annual Dave Schulte Trophy given for the best percentage improvement over the previous best HOA performance. Dick improved by 13.86%. Rex Frazer's performance was underŽscored by his 13.03% improvement as he almost won a third trophy. The Schulte Award is given in memory of Dave Schulte who died last December of melanoma cancer.