This story was first featured in our January 2017 newsletter.
The Emmaus 4 Mile Classic turned 43 years old this year (2020) and we thought we’d share some details and photos of some of our earlier races.
The Emmaus 10K was started in 1977, shortly after the Emmaus Road Runners were formed. We had to get an insurance rider from Charlie Norlie’s father who owned Lehigh Valley Volks Waggin to give us an insurance waiver.
Charlie won the first race and then brought his college roommate from Princeton, Craig Masback an international class runner (see note at end of story) to run the race in its second and third years. Naturally, he won easily. It was an extremely tough course.
A 5K was added and for a number of years the runners had a choice of doing either. The popularity of the 10K waned and it was decided to go with one race, the 4-miler.
A Club member, Ed Thompson an Emmaus grad and Club member died suddenly from a brain tumor and it was decided 30 or more years ago to establish the Ed Thompson Memorial Scholarship in his honor. Years later Nicole Reinhart, a standout athlete at Emmaus, died in a professional bike race and an additional scholarship was established in her name.
The original course for the 10K took runners out on Cedar Crest Blvd. but the course was changed in its second year when some runners vocalized concerns about having to run up Cedar Crest for a short distance before finishing, approaching the high school from the opposite direction on Harrison Street.
Craig Masback
Craig is a retired middle distance runner who specialized in the 1500m. Masback became US Indoor champion in the mile run in 1980. He won two bronze medals in the 1500 meters at the AAA Championships, in 1978 and 1981, and another bronze medal at the 1985 Pacific Conference Games. He also competed at the 1985 IAAF World Cup. He also had the 2000 meters American record for many years and was one of the most noted in that area.
His personal best times were 3:35.28 minutes in the 1500 meters, achieved in 1982, and 3:52.02 in the mile run, achieved in July 1979 at Bislett Stadion in Oslo.
The 1980 U.S. indoor mile champion and former American record holder at 2,000 meters, Masback’s 1979 clocking of a 3:52.02 mile, one of his 30 sub-four-minute miles, ranked him as history’s sixth fastest miler at that time. His first sub-four-minute mile was run at the Iffley Road track in Oxford, England, where he was the second man to break the magical barrier. Twenty-four years earlier, on the same track, Roger Bannister’s legendary run shattered the four-minute barrier for the first time in history.
In 2016 Craig served as a track and field analyst for the 2016 Olympic Games.
