Press Release from USATF:Indianapolis, IN – USATF announces the 2010 USA National Team for the International Association of Ultrarunners’ 24-hour Run World Championship, to be held in Brive, France on May 13-14, 2010.
WOMEN
Suzanna Bon, 45, Sonoma, CA. Bon is one of two mothers of 5 on the national team. A former elementary school teacher, she ran her first ultra in 2003 and has specialized in trail races, collecting numerous victories and course records. Her road ultra debut was a stunning 134.7-mile victory at the San Francisco 24 Hour Race in 2009.
Jamie Donaldson, 35, Littleton, CO. Donaldson is a middle school math teacher who has been the USA’s top finisher at the 24-Hour Run World Championship the past two years, finishing 4th in 2009 world title race in Italy. She was runner-up to Kami Semick for Ultrarunning Magazine’s Ultrarunner of the Year in those years and was a USATF athlete of the week in 2009. She is a 2-time winner and women’s course recordholder of the Badwater 135 mile race across Death Valley. She recently ran 21:01:28 to break the American track record for 200km.
Debra Horn, 50, Cleveland, OH. Horn is a partner in a Cleveland law firm. She recently broke the American Women’s 50-54 age-group 12 Hour record with 72.96 miles. This will be Horn’s fourth consecutive National 24-Hour Run team. In 2009 she was the #3 scorer on the U.S. Women’s team which won the silver medal at the World 24-Hour in Italy, and she followed that with a bronze medal performance at the 2009 USA 24-Hour Run Championship. When not running or practicing law, Horn is a member of the Mayfield Curling Club’s national champion team in the winter Olympic sport of Curling.
Amy Palmiero-Winters, 37, Hicksville, NY. This mother of two is the Sports Programs Director at two different organizations on Long Island and is also a coach and motivational speaker. An ultrarunner for less than half a year, she won her first ultra, the Heartland 100 Mile in October, for which she was selected as USATF’s Athlete of the Week. In only her second ultra she won the Arizona 24-Hour Race overall with 130.04 miles and secured the final spot on the women’s national team by less than a mile on the last day of the qualifying window. In 1997, following 27 surgeries for a motorcycle accident, Palmiero-Winters had her left leg amputated below the knee. She has subsequently become a single-leg below-the-knee amputee world recordholder in over a dozen events (including the marathon and Ironman distance triathlon). She runs with a custom-designed prosthesis, and she has made history by becoming the first-ever amputee to qualify for an open, able-bodied USA National Team.
Jill Perry, 39, Manlius, NY. A relative newcomer to the sport of ultrarunning, Perry is the second mother of 5 young children on the team. She runs her own coaching service for running mothers when not training herself. Perry won the 2009 USA 24-Hour Run National Championship with 136.3 miles, moving into the top 10 all-time U.S. women. She is also the course record holder at the Umstead 100-mile in North Carolina.
Anna Piskorska, 37, Blandon, PA. A native of Gdansk, Poland, Piskorska became a U.S. citizen in 2006. When not running, she works for Occupational Health and Urgent Care in Reading, PA. A runner for only 4 years, Piskorska quickly gravitated to ultra distances. She was women’s silver medalist at the 2009 USA 24-Hour Championship with 132.6 miles.
MEN
Serge Arbona, 45, Baltimore, MD. Arbona is a self-employed handyman and father of two. He has been running and winning ultramarathons for almost a decade, with a racing range from 50km to 6 days. In July 2009 he won the “20 in 24” 24-Hour Race in Philadelphia with a total of 146.28 miles. This is his first national team.
John Geesler, 51, St. Johnsville, NY. Geesler is the Maintenance Supervisor at at textile mill. The 3-time USA 24-Hour Run Champion and 5-time national team member returns to the team as an athlete, following one year as team manager. He is the current 48-hour American Road Record Holder with 248 miles. Most recently, he was silver medalist at the 2009 USA 24-Hour Run National Championship.
Michael Henze, 40, Neenah, WI. Henze is the Plant Controller for a packing company, and is relatively new to ultrarunning. Henze once weighed over 300 pounds before taking up running and dropping over 1/3 of his body weight. Since taking up long distances he has never finished worse than 2nd in an ultramarathon race. In June 2009 he won and broke the course record at the FANS 24-Hour with 147.41 miles.
Scott Jurek (pictured above), 36, Seattle, WA. Jurek is a physical therapist and running coach who is best known for his unprecedented 7 consecutive wins and course record at the prestigious Western States 100-mile Endurance Run over the Sierra Nevada mountains. He has also won the 135-mile Badwater Ultramarathon in Death Valley, the Hardrock 100 Mile Race in Colorado, and the classic 153-mile Spartathlon (from Athens to Sparta) in Greece, where his winning performance is still second only to that of the legendary multiple world record holder Yiannis Kouros. Jurek has been named a Running Hero by Runner’s World magazine and three times was voted Ultrarunner of the Year by Ultrarunning magazine. He is prominently feaatured in the NY Times bestseller, Born to Run, by Christopher McDougall. This will be his first time as a member of the 24-Hour Run National Team.
Phil McCarthy, 41, New York, NY. McCarthy is a classically trained pianist, singer, and composer. He won the 2009 USA 24-Hour Run National Championship with 151.49 miles. He has a personal best over 154 miles, set in the 2007 World 24-Hour Run Championship where he led the USA team with a 4th place individual finish. In 2008 he finished 2nd in the invitational Surgeres 48 Hour Run in France with 235 miles. This will be McCarthy’s 4th consecutive 24-Hour Run National Team.
Dan Rose, 33, Washington, D.C. Rose is a Special Event Coordinator for the Library of Congress. A cancer survivor, he began his running career following treatments at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, by running the Boston Marathon to raise funds for the institute. He makes his first national team by virtue of his 3rd place finish at the 2009 USA 24-Hour Run National Championship with 139.22 miles. In November of 2009 Rose ran the length of the hilly 142-mile Horse-Shoe Trail from Valley Forge, PA to just north of Harrisburg, PA, under 33 hours.
TEAM MANAGEMENT STAFF
TEAM LEADER
Roy Pirrung, 61, Sheboygan, WI. Pirrung is recently retired from the Kohler Company, after 36 years of service. He has previously served as team manager while also being a scoring team member (hence affectionately known as the team’s “player-coach”) for the first 7 previous editions of the 24-Hour Run World Championship. He was the winner of the inaugural USA 24-Hour National Championship in 1988 and is a former American Record Holder for both the 24-Hour and 48-Hour runs. He has competed internationally since 1989, including three top 6 finishes at Greece’s Spartathlon. He is a member of the USATF Masters Hall of Fame.
TEAM ASSISTANT LEADER
Mike Spinnler, 51, Hagerstown, MD. Spinnler is President and Team Coordinator of the Cumberland Valley Athletic Club. He has served on five previous USA National Team Staffs, including the past 3 years with the 100Km team. He has been Race Director of numerous road races, ranging in distance from one-mile to 50-miles for the past three decades. Since 1993 he has served as the Executive Director of the JFK 50 Mile, America’s oldest and largest ultramarathon, of which he is a former winner and course record holder. Spinnler was named the 1997 National Junior College Athletic Association’s “National Coach of the Year” in Women’s Track and Field.
TEAM PHYSICIAN
Dr. Andy Lovy, 75, Kirksville, MO. Dr. Lovy graduated from the Chicago School of Osteopathy in 1962 and in his first practice served as the team doctor for two teams in West Virginia. He later lectured in the physical and emotional aspects of sports medicine at the Toledo Medical Association and the Czech Republic Annual Convention of sports medicine. He has also been a guest lecturer at the medical meeting of the Boston Marathon. He has participated in 191 marathons and 192 ultras since 1983 and has served as the 24-Hour Run National Team physician 4 of the past 5 years. He is a highly decorated U.S. Army veteran, having served in Vietnam as a combat physician working with MEDEVAC helicopter units.
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