Plaques and photos honoring the father of masters track adorn a hallway at the San Diego home of Linda and David Pain. Although David hasn't taken part in track in decades (knee problems led him to  the bike, where he become a world-class masters cyclist), he keeps close tabs on his baby and maintains contacts with other pioneers of the movement. His wife (seen below) has helped him grow in the Age of the Internet.

Photos by Ken Stone

The Columbus of Masters Track: David Pain of San Diego

Published this day to pay tribute to David H.R. Pain on his 80th birthday

By Ken Stone

David Pain was in jail.  The man who ignited a worldwide movement of middle-aged and older runners, jumpers and throwers was cooling his heels in a downtown San Diego lockup. 

His crime? Trespassing on a slower sport.

Tossed in a tank with the Saturday night drunks, Pain began chatting with a cell mate. What are you in for, man? asked the inmate, a veteran of county jails across the country. Pain’s nonchalant reply: jogging on a municipal golf course.

It was more than that, of course.  Pain, then 48, was a prominent civil  lawyer in affluent La Jolla, a San Diego coastal community. He’d been having a running feud with city authorities there over his use of the scenic oceanside Torrey Pines course.  Municipal Code 63:03 stipulated: “No person shall make use of any municipal golf course without having obtained a ticket authorizing such use.”

But Pain carried no clubs. He favored running shorts over gaudy slacks. And he balked at having to get permission merely to run the perimeter fairways. Course management had tried to shoo him away before. The war simmered. So on the first Sunday of 1971, with his miniature poodle Suzy happily trotting alongside, Pain took the offensive.

He went for a jog.

A course employee in a pickup truck confronted Pain and tried to pin him against a fence. Then the police came, ultimately five officers. While the cops tried to arrest him, Pain jogged around the squad car. They took him to the parking lot “and a sergeant from the La Jolla substation started screaming and yelling at me, spitting in my face, getting red-faced and doing whatever they could do to get me mad,” Pain recalls.

A newspaper account the next day said Pain was called a ding-a-ling and troublemaker. Finally, officers  handcuffed him and stuffed him in the squad car.

Suzy would have none of it. When the sergeant ordered an officer to grab the dog, the leashless canine chomped her needlelike teeth into the cop’s hand. When the officer jerked it away, his hand sliced wide open.  More problems for Pain.

The poodle was quarantined (no rabies found). Suzy’s master, who carried no ID with him, was collared and thrown  into County Jail. A little over four hours later, Pain’s son came to bail him out. But Pain had only just begun to fight. The next day he called a member of the San Diego Track Club, who happened to be the city editor of the local Evening Tribune,  and related the story. The newspaper sent a photographer and reporter down to the pound and bailed out Suzy. Monday’s afternoon paper carried a photo of Pain smooching  his pet and a story relating his vow to press the case to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary. The story was picked up by a wire service, and it made headlines nationwide, even reaching Sports Illustrated.

At trial 10 months later, Municipal Judge Charles Snell asked the city’s attorney: “Well, would you have sold Mr. Pain a ticket, had he offered to buy one, knowing that he was not going to play golf but to jog on the course?”

The attorney replied:  “No, we wouldn’t sell him a ticket.”

That’s all Snell needed to hear. The ordinance was valid, the judge ruled, but it applied only to golfers. Since the city has no provisions for granting use tickets to runners, it couldn’t charge a jogger for failing to have one.

Pain was ruled not guilty of the misdemeanor of not having paid a greens fee because the course management wouldn’t sell joggers tickets anyway. Pain pleaded guilty to violating the leash law.  

An eagle for San Diego runners

Still, local runners were unleashed. San Diego’s park board declared  the public golf course open to joggers as long as they didn’t interfere with the golfers.  Soon, Pain teamed up with other joggers, including  Auggie Escamilla, a local youth counselor,  and began regular workouts Sunday mornings.  

Such was Pain’s spirit and savvy. No law in the land could stop him from exercising his right to run. And societal strictures couldn’t handcuff him either. 

Feisty, creative and aggressive — a woodchuck always getting something done — Pain would eventually be dubbed the “Godfather of Aging Jocks” by running author Hal Higdon. 

Like Bob Hope, another legend whose career has been quintessentially American, Pain came from England.  David Holland Rose Pain was born July 31, 1922, in Taplow, Buckinghamshire. In 1928, his family emigrated to Windsor, Ontario, where they stayed for about a year. Later they moved to the New York/New Jersey area. And in 1932, at the height of the Great Depression, the five-member Pain family packed a Hupmobile and drove west to Los Angeles, a journey over Route 66 that took them a month.

At North Hollywood High School,  David had his first taste of track, clocking a modest 2:15 for the 880 yard run. It was a taste he wouldn’t savor again for 25 years.

In spring 1941, his senior year at North Hollywood High, he became a U.S. citizen and joined the Naval Reserve. On Memorial Day 1941, his unit was called to active duty. He would serve mostly stateside for five years, sandwiching studies at Occidental College and UCLA.

Just before receiving his officer commission, World War II ended. He entered USC Law School in fall 1946 and earned his law degree three years later. After passing the California bar exam in 1949, he was admitted to practice law before all state and federal benches, including the U.S. Supreme Court.

Pain comes to San Diego

During his college years, he met Helen Ballwanz. They married and moved to San Diego in 1950. He has four children and seven grandchildren by his first marriage. Since 1979, he has been married to Linda Sheldon-Pain.   Pain became the senior partner in the civil-litigation firm of Pain, Cluff and Olson and retired in 1987 at age 65 — after 38 years. He continues legal work, however, by volunteering  services for organizations such as the Senior Olympics.

In 1991, Pain was surprised to get a letter from his high school alumni association. Was he the David Pain who left in 1941? Not long after the war,  rumors had surfaced that Pain had been killed, and the alumni association had stopped searching for him. When “presumed dead” Pain showed up for his 50th reunion, his appearance was a shock to classmates.

The sports establishment by then knew all about David Pain shocks.

His health club received the first of these. In the San Diego of the mid-1960s, track was for youngsters. So Pain began playing handball and racquetball at a local health club and soon became its commissioner. He organized competitive trips to Los Angeles and San Francisco.  But he became disillusioned when the Board of Directors rejected his request to install different side walls to alleviate the damage done by the paddle ball. He quit the club and started jogging with his dog (his Labrador retriever, Mitzi). This rekindled his interest in track and focused a competitive drive that led to the masters movement.

Although Pain was the prime global mover of track and field for over-40 men (women were rarely in the picture at first), older adults had been entering long-distance events for some time. The Los Angeles Seniors Track Club, for example, conducted many over-40 road runs.

Launched in early 1966  by Howard Barnes, a junior high school coach and avid distance runner,  the Seniors TC quickly swelled to more than 100 members and spawned branches based in San Francisco and San Diego. Escamilla, a member of the San Diego Track Club, was instrumental in organizing the San Diego Seniors Division for long-distance runners  — mostly in their 40s and 50s. He patterned its program after the one  Los Angeles.

But Pain took the crucial step: bringing these runners to the track.

The historic first masters miles

In early 1966,  Pain invited Escamilla and Les Land to a meeting. Land was director of the elite San Diego Invitational Track and Field Meet.

Pain proposed: Why not have a special mile run for men over 40? He coined the term masters to describe these athletes.   

On June 11, 1966, the first-ever masters mile was contested at the 2nd Annual San Diego Invitational at Balboa Stadium. Among the 14 entrants were Pain, Escamilla,  Leo Bulick  and 60-year-old therapist Mike Kish. Salesman Jim Gorrell Sr., 44,  won with a time of 4 minutes 47 seconds, followed by Escamilla, 43, and Charles Short, 40. 

On July 1, 1967, at the third Santa Monica Invitational Track & Field Meet,  Escamilla edged Short and John Lafferty (49) in a field of 17 milers. And at the second annual San Diego Indoor Games, the top five finishers led by winner Gorrell in 4:43.1 were under 4:55 in a historic over-40 feature mile.

But masters miles weren’t enough. Track and field boasts dozens of events, and why should would-be older sprinters, jumpers and throwers be denied? Pain had an answer for them.

After much planning and tedious work with Pain at the helm, the first U.S. National Masters Championships were conducted  July 19-20, 1968,  at San Diego’s Balboa Stadium,  the recent scene of many world-class competitions and Jim Ryun’s American mile record of 3:55.3  as a high school senior.

Jointly sponsored by the San Diego Track and Field Association, the Los Angeles Seniors Track Club and the San Diego Recreation Department, the meet had Pain as general chairman and Ralph Smith,  a well-established elite-event majordomo, as meet director. It would be the first of five consecutive National Masters Championships held in San Diego.

But what should the age cutoff be? Pain noticed that most of the interested athletes, like himself, were in their 40s — and that runners in their 30s still competed in open meets. 

So 40 would become the entry point to masters competition. Later, Pain noticed that the wives and girlfriends of masters entrants were about five years younger. So age 35 became the rubicon for female masters.

National masters meets debut

The first national masters meet offered a relatively skimpy menu by today’s standards:  100-,  220- and 440-yard dashes, half-mile, mile, two-mile, three-mile and six-mile runs, 440-yard and mile relays, three- and six-mile racewalks, the shot put, discus, javelin, long jump and triple jump. What about the hurdles, high jump, pole vault and hammer throw? 

With limited chances to hone those skills, too few masters athletes were expected to enter those events. So they weren’t offered at first.  And unlike  the five-year age groupings of today,  everyone over 40 was lumped together for competition.

Most of the 186 competitors were in their 40s, with a few in their 50s and 60s, including U.S. Sen. Alan Cranston of California (a dedicated sprinter), Olympic discus silver medalist Fortune Gordien and former javelin world-record holder Bud Held.

The meet also offered a marathon (well ahead of the running boom of the early 1970s).

Masters decathlons would arrive in later years, but the first nationals had a sextathlon.  Twenty athletes between the ages of 40 and 49 took part in what was dubbed the Masters Six. The events were the 100, shot put  and 880 on Day 1, and 440,  long jump and mile on Day 2. A cumulative point system determined the winners.  The first meet’s high scorer was Willis Kleinsasser, the father of current masters distance star Ruth Wysocki. But the real victor was masters track and the new excitement it generated.

Among the first masters nationals competitors was Jim Hartshorne of the Buffalo Athletic Club in New York, who ran the 880 and won the mile. Excited by this experience, Hartshorne helped introduce the masters concept to upstate New York,  successfully lobbying  for masters miles in the area’s open meets.  Another measure of the first meet’s success: Some of these pioneers still compete 30 years later.

The second U.S. Masters Championships drew 200 athletes (July 3-6,) 1969 and introduced several changes. For the first time, 10-year age groups (Division I 40-49), (Division II 50-59) and (Division III 60 and over) were established. The high jump took the place of the triple jump (which would eventually be restored).  And Pain included three events for women and girls -- the 100- and 440-yard dash and mile run. However, they had to be relatives of entrants!

Many years later, Pain would tell graduate student Linda Matthews of Central Washington University: “I am mortified to see that we did such a sexist thing, but it didn’t seem to be at the time.  .  .  . It's just an example of the conditions that prevailed.”

Word of the San Diego meets spread far beyond American borders, Pain wrote, “and before we realized it, individuals, and then teams, were coming from Australia, Canada  and Great Britain. Our first such visitor was Cliff Bould of  Perth, Australia, who somehow heard about what we were doing and traveled some 12,000 miles to compete. This flood of foreign masters dramatically demonstrated a worldwide desire for competition and willingness to travel virtually any distance to find it.”

Foreign masters at the U.S. nationals raised the levels of competition, Pain noted. They also sparked similar efforts overseas, thus advancing masters athletics and creating a worldwide movement.

Said Pain: “It was an idea whose time had come.”   

The New World Beckons

In the early 1970s, Europe was the New World.

Primitive in age-group track, the Continent and British isles offered masters virtually no opportunity to sprint, hurdle, jump or throw -- only some cross country and road runs.  Then came Pain.

In August 1972, his intrepid crew crossed the ocean blue.  The San Diego lawyer, Columbus in reverse, led a mostly American and Canadian missionary force -- setting a slew of world age-group records in former Olympic stadiums, partying like royalty, running afoul of local customs (if not laws) and leaving their hosts a legacy of cherished memories.

Most important, the United States Masters International Track Team converted Europe to the cause.  Pain planted the masters flag in six nations, and veterans competition there would soon blossom and flourish.

Organized by David and Helen Pain, the USMITT traveled at a time of triumph and turmoil. That summer, the Munich Olympic Games would thrill the world and then shock it with the Palestinian attack on Israeli athletes. The resulting massacre nearly aborted the tour. But it -- like the Games -- would carry on. Both became milestones in sports history.

European tour not painless

Planning for the trip was not sweetness and light, however. Like Columbus, Pain ran up against errant attitudes. Why use age groups? Could older athletes run sprints? What if  the “professional” athletes among Pain's group “contaminated” their amateur hosts?

But key Europeans were intrigued with Pain’s concept of track and field for athletes over 40, and his correspondence over time with people from several countries encouraged him to pursue a masters plan of world domination.

And only two years after the first masters meets in California, David Pain began plotting the conquest of Europe.  His army:  the USMITT. It mustered for the express purpose of competing against other countries and spreading the masters movement.

But first came a smaller incursion.

In October 1971, David and Helen Pain traveled to England,  Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Germany, and made contact with “veterans” running organizations  to lay the groundwork  for a masters campaign. Only one major hurdle had to be overcome. 

Most European vets competition consisted of cross country and long-distance runs, up to a marathon. No age-oriented activity existed in short distances and field events.  After considerable effort, the Pains prevailed upon most athletics directors to include the shorter races, field events and relays.  No formal arrangements were made for women’s events on the tour -- but some were ultimately held.

The Pains left for London. There they rendezvoused at Heathrow Airport with Ron Franklin, an outstanding British distance runner, who took them to the Hotel James a few minutes from Buckingham Palace. The next day they met with a six-member British committee for four hours.  They agreed on a cross-country event at Epping Forest followed by a two-day meet.  Most crucially, they agreed to stage T&F competition in 10-year age groups for three divisions (40-49, 50-59 and 60-69) and perhaps a 70-and-over group if entries warranted.  That set a pattern for the tour.

The Pains flew to Munich and met with Urban Miller and the Athletik Sport Vereino club director. They inspected a track under construction.  A slate of events similar to that planned for London's Crystal Palace was proposed. Initially, Pain had a difficult time trying to persuade the ASV director to hold three divisions of 10-year age groups for the events. The German director insisted on having only a “Best in the World” competition for each event with no age considerations involved (one age group 40 and over). German sports clubs were accustomed to competing this way. Common practice called for athletes to be grouped by ability only -- Group A for the elite best, Group B second best, etc.

But Pain’s persistence prevailed. Ten-year age groups were adopted.  A two-day meet would be followed by a  “World Veterans Marathon” -- the only marathon on the tour -- and 5000- and 10,000-meter championship races  in four 10-year age divisions.  Minimum qualifying times were established.

The Pains left rainy Cologne and drove to Copenhagen, Denmark, where they met with representatives of the SNIK Track Club, which agreed to sponsor a 9-kilometer cross-country event in the famous Deerhaven Park. No arrangements were made for T&F competition.

Then they ferried to Gothenburg, Sweden, where Mayor Hans Hanson introduced them to Roland Jerneryd, the municipal athletics director, and his enthusiastic assistant Helge Johannesson. The receptive Swedes agreed to a full two-day T&F competition, including the racewalks. The meet would take place at Slottskogsvallen Stadium, which in 1977 would host the second world veterans championships. The 1972 touring team would be the guests of the Viking Track Club, established in 1909.

Next was Norway. In Oslo, they arranged an orienteering competition. A major sport in Norway, orienteering is as popular a summertime sport there as cross-country skiing and ski jumping are in the winter.

On to Sweden. They drove to Stockholm and met with representatives of the Stockholm Sports Federation and the Swedish Marathon Association to set up veterans competition. Distance runs of 5, 10, 15 and 20 kilometers were scheduled for one of their beautiful royal parks. T&F competition later was slated at Stockholm's 1912 Olympic stadium.

Finland was the final stop. A cruise ship took the Pains to Helsinki, where they met with representatives of the Finnish Track and Field Federation and the executive director of the HKV Club. The Finns were most enthusiastic about the planned tour. They agreed to conduct a one-day track meet in Paavo Nurmi stadium, home of the 1952 Olympics. Tour members also would be invited to visit and explore their famous Vierumaki Sports Training Camp in the interior north of Helsinki.

At every stop, detailed travel and housing arrangements were arranged. A smaller Canadian contingent would tour along with the U.S. team throughout the Scandinavian countries, and Pain coordinated this with Canada’s Don Farquharson.

It is no surprise that the masters concept appealed to the Canadians, Swedes and Germans. The Canadians hosted  the first official World Veterans Athletics Championships in Toronto just three years later. The Swedes followed in 1977 with the world veterans games in Gothenburg, and the Germans hosted the 1979 world meet in Hanover. Australians also embraced the idea of masters competition and started the wheels rolling there.

The floodgates were open.

But sadly, a European tour the likes of 1972’s was an exception. Thus the Pains and their USMITT contingent were more like the Apollo astronauts than the seafaring Columbus and crew. No human has walked the surface of the moon since December 1972. No American masters track team has toured Europe since September of that year.