Winning a 5-mile race at 57

Chris Webber blasted around the turn onto Railroad Avenue and sprinted toward the red-and-white checkered finish line tape, 150 yards away.

"I was running scared," he says. Scared that someone from the pack of 430 other runners stretched out behind him in the 17th annual Wantagh Snowball Run would suddenly come streaking around the corner and nip him just at the finish line of the 5-mile race. His fears were unfounded, as he broke the tape in a time of 28 minutes, 43 seconds -- a minute and a half ahead of the second finisher.

Webber was the winner -- at age 57.

"It's impossible," said Mike Polansky, president of the Greater Long Island Running Club, the largest running group in Nassau-Suffolk. "Fifty-seven-year-olds don't win road races. Simple as that."

Well, this one did -- and it's quite an achievement. "Most road races are usually won by postcollegians, younger men in their 20s and early-30s," explains Andy Karr, a statistician for USA Track and Field, the governing body of the sport. "Occasionally, a master . . . someone 40 years of age and older . . . will win a race. But it is very rare for a master's runner who is over the age of 50 to win a race outright!"

Webber sees his victory in the 5-mile race on Dec. 12 as less a triumph of the aged than an affirmation of age-old wisdom. "It's that saying about preparation meeting opportunity," says Webber, who lives in Sayville. "A lot of the fast younger guys weren't [at the Wantagh race], so it opened the door for me."

Others see the victory of a 57-year-old man in an endurance athletic event as validation of some new scientific views on aging.

"We knew from a lot of studies that if you keep training hard, your V02 Max . . . your body's ability to use oxygen, which is the prime measure of fitness . . . does not degrade," says Dr. Vonda Wright, professor of orthopedic surgery at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and one of the country's leading experts on senior fitness. "So this 57-year-old, who has continued to challenge himself, not only had the benefit of wisdom and experience that no doubt helped him in the race, he still has most of his fitness."

Webber's fitness as a racer has been well known in these parts for many years, dating to the late 1960s, when he was an All-County cross-country runner and standout wrestler at  John F.Kennedy-Bellmore High School.

He continued as a standout cross-country runner  at the College at Brockport. When he returned home and went to work for the U.S. Postal Service, he began training with a cadre of the best runners on Long Island at the time, including Gary Muhrcke, the 1970 New York City Marathon winner and owner of Super Runners shoe stores, whose team Webber was invited to join; Alan Oman, who qualified for the U.S. Olympic Trials in the marathon, and Mark Bossardet, another Olympic Trials qualifier who later became an executive at Nike and Reebok.

Webber won the first Long Island Half Marathon in 1984 and regularly logged impressive finishes at prestigious local races, such as the Great Cow Harbor and Shelter Island 10k runs.

In the 1990s, though, he was unable to compete consistently because of Achilles tendinitis (a problem he half-jokingly attributes to "those Earth Shoes I bought from Thom McCann in the '70s").

He cut back on the mileage and, along with his wife, Gayle, focused on raising their three children. In 1999, while playing in a touch football game with other postal employees, he found he was able to sprint down the sideline without pain. "I said, 'Wow,' maybe I can really start training and racing again."

Over the past decade, he has re- emerged on the local running scene that he once dominated. Now, he runs 40 to 50 miles a week, and tips the scales at 145 pounds -- his high school wrestling weight. Two of his children -- daughter Lyndsey Cunningham and son Eric -- sometimes compete in the same races he runs. "As long as I can beat 'em, it's still nice," he said, chuckling.

Webber, who will turn 58 in March, doesn't expect to be winning another race outright. "I'm more than happy to compete against guys in my own age group," he says. "I like races where everybody's there . . . fast women, fast young guys, fast older guys. I want to see the whole gamut and know the sport is healthy . . . and that I am, too."