SHORE AC'S RICK LEE:AN AMAZING, AMAZING RUNNER

   By ELLIOTT DENMAN
   “Running has been an amazing/amazing sport to me,” the Masterful
Rick Lee tells you.
  And a growing list of Masters long distance running devotees will tell
you that Rick Lee is an “amazing, amazing runner.”
  Has there ever been a stretch of Marvelous Masters Marathoning
(and stardom over other distances, both longer and shorter) to
match Rick Lee’s in 2023?
  By  year’s end, he’ll have run in (appropriately) 52 races and meets.
They’ve been spread over three continents and were as long as 55 miles
and as abbreviated as 400 meters. And, almost always, as USA
Masters 60  number one .
   Look at these sizzling 2023 clockings: 
     Most recently, 7:55.24 at the brutal JFK 50-mile
road-and-trail test of heart and soul –and sole – from Boonsboro to Williamsport, Maryland on November 18.
   And, just before that, 2:55:18 : at the TCS New York Marathon Nov. 5; 3:29:30  (an American record) at the Marine Corps 50K in Arlington, Va. Oct. 29,
passing the marathon mark in 2:54:48;   2:48:17 at the Bank of America Chicago Marathon Oct. 8, and 2:51:46 at the BMW Berlin Marathon Sept. 24.
    Add ‘em all up and that’s about 152 miles miles of brilliant racing.
   He wasn’t exactly resting on his laurels on his “off” marathoning weekends this fall, either.
  Not at all.  He’d run a 1:15:06 in the USATF National 20K in New Haven Sept. 4, 43:25 in the Hook Or Crook USATF Masters National 12K at Sandy Hook on Sept. 17;  and 1:22:22 in the Atlantic City Half Marathon on Oct. 22.
   And for a little “speed work,” he blazed a 5:10 to win his age group title in New York’s Fifth Avenue Mile Sept. 10.
     By current American standards, all those performances would have been quite excellent for any younger guy.
    But Rick Lee, a five-foot-five, 107-pound,  gingerly-striding resident of Bayville, Berkeley Township, New Jersey, is 62 years old.  The solid majority of  those performances represented USA M60 (men’s 60-64) divisional triumphs.  And for those rare occasions he didn’t get to beat his domestic and international contemporaries, he was right on their heels.
   Marvelous, sizzling, brilliant.
    He’s clearly earned the right to toot his own horn, as they say.  But you’ll never, ever catch him doing that.  
   “Rick Lee loves to run and challenge himself,” said USATF Masters guru Paul Carlin, the man universally known as “The Running Professor.”
   Rick Lee will tell you that it’s all just  labor of love, a pastime he first took up seriously little more than three years ago…and look at him now -- virtually unbeatable by his fellow  senior runners.
    He’s also the very-very proud representative of the Shore Athletic Club, a club whose roots date back to the 1930s, whose rosters have included three USATF National Hall of Famers, John Borican, Eulace Peacock and Maren Seidler, and a long array of Olympians, National champions, and Masters Hall of Famers.
   While Shore AC has a record dating back nearly 90 years, its new and shining star is a relative newcomer to this distance running game.
    Many of Shore AC’s other stalwarts have been “ around the block”  a few times, as they say.  Comparatively speaking, Lee (who’ll mark his 63rd birthday March 10, 2024) is a novice to many of his clubmates.  Some of the club’s age-group-racing  kids have been at it longer than he has.
     He’s tireless. He’s terrific. He’s never lost stamina.  His calendar just runs
Into occasional gaps - out of marathons to run.  “It’s never been a chore,” he tells you.
    These days, on the World Marathon Majors level, the planet’s top-echelon  26.2-milers almost always limit themselves to two big marathon starts a year.  And just a handful to  three of them.
    Well, Rick Lee ran five of them (and two were “ultras”)  in a stretch of eight  
weekends this autumn.
     “I understand perfectly why those guys (the elite professionals, many with roots in East Africa) do that,” he tells you.
     “They get paid for what they do. They’re already pushing their limits. To many of them, too. they’ve been running (or walking) long distances all their lives. As kids, to  go to school and back. If they’re asked to go out and get firewood, so they can cook dinner, they get it. If they’re asked to fetch grass, so they can feed the cow, they get it.
    “I totally respect these runners.”
   But it’s not him.
    Born in South Korea, he came to America at an early age.  A graduate of Elizabeth (N.J.) High School, and the New Jersey Institute of Technology, he’s had to work long and hard, up the societal ladder, finding his way in the world.
    He used his engineering background to establish his own firm, focusing on formulation, calibration, instrumentation  and quality control in the petrochemical field.
    So, as his own boss, he can now plot out his own working hours and travel schedule.
   Early mornings are for training hours.  A typical week sees him running 70 to 90 miles – comfortable miles - either on the trail runs he prefers – usually wearing  a weighted vest – or in a weekend race.
  “I am not a picky eater,” he says.  “I love to cook. But no hamburgers, no French fries, and like that. But most everything else.”  In appropriate servings. And periods of fasting.
  His major recreation for many of those pre-running days?
 Leisurely piloting his 32-foot sailboat around nearby and historic Barnegat Bay.
   His “significant other”  for the past five years has been Clarina Azarcon.
   She’s been his traveling companion and running partner, too – and shares this marathoning passion with him.
  With all this running under his belt, it’s not as if he’d been  twiddling his thumbs on those non-marathoning weekends, either.
   He simply turned sprinter – relatively speaking.
    And  kept on winning…and winning (almost always in the M60 bracket but quite often against the younger guys, too.)
     In between, he stuck to home cooking in leading the Masters parades at Shore AC’s historic Takanassee Lake 5K Races in Long Branch in July and August.
  But the July 20-23 weekend was a little different.
   All he did was enter seven M60 races at the USATF National Masters Championships  in Greensboro, N.C. and take golds in five of them.  He was totally tireless, in the meet that was open to athletes of all ages,  from 25 to a century-plus. His firsts came in the 1500 meters (4:52.41), 5000 meters (18:00.5), 10,000 meters (37:22.29) and in his debut as a 2,000-meter steeplechaser, that event, too (7:33.36)  For good measure, he ran on the winning M60 4x800 relay team (9:31.06.)  He placed seventh in the 800 (2:26.44) and
only in the 400 (1:04.13) did he miss the top echelon.
   Backtracking further, June 9 saw him take on his biggest 2023 challenge of all, the classic 55-mile double-marathon-plus   Comrades Marathon race in South Africa, Durban “down” (net altitude loss) to Pietermaritzburg, with its starting field of 16,000.   Those final miles were a huge challenge but he still battled home in 7:48:55 to place fourth over-all in M60.  Only one other American M60,
Avi Moss, had the courage and get-up-and-go to enter this one,
  As expected in this race – the African continent’s biggest  event – Africans led the way.  The Comrades champion: South Africa’s Titi Dijana in a course-record 5:13.58.
    April?  That was Boston time, of course.  In his third straight Boston M60 win, he cruised home in 2:46:36.
  His 2022 campaign was brilliant, too.
   After leading Boston M60s in 2021 (his rookie year as a 60) in 2:49.57, he led all M60s again in 2022 (2:47.58).
   But his big-big-big one of 2022 surely was late March’s seven-day, not-for-Boy Scouts 160-mile Marathon Des Sables (Marathon of the Sands) through the Moroccan Sahara.
   As would-be entrants are formally warned:
   “Finishing it – or simply running in it – is no joke.”
     Its most brutal descriptives:  “Temperatures well over 100 degress (Fahrenheit.)  Plenty of blistering sunshine.”
   Not a man to be scared away, Rick Lee still ran the legendary MDS  (cumulative time) in 12 hours, 38 minutes, 7 seconds.
  One primary Rick Lee target remains:  Californian Brian Pilcher’s USA M60 marathon record: 2:42:42  at Chicago 2016.
  Some bottom lines:   Does Rick Lee have any special running gifts? What are his secrets?  How long can he do all these things?
  Answers:  (a) None. (b) None. (c) Hopefully forever.