DANVILLE — Over two hundred of the fastest Masters road milers in the country will head to the small town of Danville, California in the East Bay of San Francisco for the 2024 USATF Masters 1 Mile Championships this weekend. Inaugurated in 2013, this is the tenth edition of these USATF Masters 1 Mile championships, the first to be held on the West Coast, and the largest gathering for the mile thus far. The host race, the Devil Mountain/Mile of Truth, will send three waves of Masters Championship runners off in near perfect conditions. They will complete two circuits of a downtown city block with hundreds of spectators cheering them on. Under sunny skies with light breezes, the upper 50’s to low 60’s temperatures are conducive to fast times. At last year’s championships, six age-division American records were broken. Two of those record-setting athletes, Christian Cushing-Murray and Mike Madsen, return to defend the 55-59 and 50-54 championships and records, respectively. Tom Bernhard’s 5:18, the 65-69 American record (AR) in the road mile could fall if Jacob Nur and David Westenberg both have ‘on’ days and push each other. Sonja Friend-Uhl, the 45-49 AR holder, could lower Doreen McCoubrie’s 5:18 AR. Sue McDonald holds the women’s 60-64 world record at 1500M outdoors at 5:02.68 and in the 1 Mile Indoors at 5:30.73. She is chasing the 5:44 road mile AR of Masters Hall of Famer, Kathy Martin. Carol Mikkelsen, at 85, is the oldest female competitor. She could break the 85-89 AR of 15:25 set last year by Joyce Hodges-Hite. The women’s race starts at 9:25 AM. Elizabeth Camy, the silver medalist at the Masters 10 km championships this April in 36:42, steps down in distance to compete for the road mile championship. Jessica Ponds was the second woman across the finish line at the Westminster Mile in Maryland in April, clocking 5:09. Kristin Rohde finished fourth overall and first Masters at Portland Oregon’s Shamrock Run 5K in March, with an 18:36. Rohde finished twenty-two seconds behind Camy at the Club Cross Country Championships in Tallahassee last December. Others who could challenge for the podium include Courtney Quirin, a strong open runner who returns to competition as a Masters athlete after a few years away; Megan Syal who finished first among all women at the Livermore Half Marathon this spring in 1:25:34; and Sonja Friend-Uhl, the 45-49 American Road Mile Record holder at 5:07, now running out of the 50-54 division. Because of the strong entries, the men’s championship had to be split into two waves to keep the field from being overcrowded. The three fields are similar in size. Men 60 and over continue the excitement at 9:35 a.m. It should be a dandy race between Nur who holds American records for 65-69 at the 5K in 17:00 as well as at the 10 km, 10 mile and Half Marathon. He goes up against Westenberg who holds the 65-69 Indoor American mile record at 5:10.61. Kevin Ostenberg, who finished fourth in the 60-64 division at Club Cross Country and just won that division at the Carlsbad 5000 with a 17:25, will push those two and could take it all. John Borthwick, Jeff Mann, and Raymond Rodriguez could break into the top three. The Masters finale is the Men 40 Plus Wave at 9:45 AM. The favorite is Fernando Cabada. His open career included a win at the US 25K national championship hosted by the Riverbank Run and sub 2:12 marathons at Berlin and Houston. He won the Masters 10 Mile Championship in Sacramento last year with a 49:03 effort. Pushing him will be Neil McDonagh, who finished second in the Masters race at the 2023 USATF Cross Country Championships and was first Masters athlete at the Pearl Street Mile in Boulder CO in 2022 at 4:35. Mario Fraioli is the defending Mile of Truth Masters Champion at 4:38. He took the Masters crown at the B.A.A. 5K on April 13 at 16:00. Others who could be in the podium mix include Jesse Chettle who has 5K times very close to Fraioli’s and Madsen who has the road mile savvy. Five-year age division championships will be hotly contested as will ten-year team divisions. Submitted by Paul Carlin