Al Sheahen, the former editor and publisher of National Masters News, was inducted into the National Masters Hall of Fame in 1998. Although he was an outstanding masters hurdler, he made his greatest contribution to the movement with his service and leadership, including helping chart the Age-Graded Tables.

Photo by Ken Stone

A masters journalist for the ages: Hall of Famer Al Sheahen 

The following profile of Masters Hall of Famer Al Sheahen was written in early 1998 -- and doesn't reflect recent developments such as the new Age-Graded Tables or changes in leadership at National Masters News. This article is being posted here for the first time. Sheahen also has taken part in an online interview. 

By Ken Stone

For an accountant, it’s a surprising admission: “It’s better to finish a project at 95 percent . . . than try to get 100 percent and never get it done.”

But nobody can accuse Al Sheahen of failing to get the job done.

Editor and publisher of National Masters News. Lead creator of the WMA Age-Graded Tables. Treasurer of WAVA for 10 years. Former secretary-treasurer of USATF Masters. Author of a book and articles on welfare reform. Competitor in 10 world veterans track championships.

Sheahen made the project-finishing remark while running for president of the World Association of Veteran Athletes in 1997. He lost. But the delegates who met in South Africa (and instead elected Sweden’s Torsten Carlius) had to be impressed with this Los Angeles-area gentleman who has witnessed and played a part in many of the formative moments of masters track.

Unlike some witnesses, Sheahen has rarely kept things to himself. The sport first heard his voice in pieces for David Pain’s U.S. Masters International Track Tour newsletter. Sheahen’s National Masters News -- “the official world and U.S. publication for masters T&F, long distance running and racewalking” -- has explored the masters universe since 1977. Over the years, the monthly tabloid moved from New York to California to Oregon. But since 1979, when bachelor Sheahen took the reins, the newspaper has remained an unshakable supporter and chronicler of masters track.

National Masters News -- called NMN by many -- evolved from a publication Bob Fine put out for his Masters Sports Association in New York. The paper’s history pretty much tracks the history of MT&F -- and one Al Sheahen.

He was a sales executive for Sony Corp. between 1963 and 1969. Then he spent five years in marketing, advertising and as a political consultant -- counting among his clients presidential candidate George McGovern in 1972 and fellow Democrat Jerry Brown in 1974 (who won the California governorship that year).

From 1975 to 1980, Sheahen was general manager of a 42-member paralegal firm. Since 1975, he has worked as an accountant.

Shy and soft-spoken in person, Sheahen nevertheless has expressed bold views over the years on social and welfare reform, culminating in numerous articles he wrote for newspapers and such magazines as America and Commonweal. In 1983, Gain Publications issued his definitive word on the subject -- a 278-page book titled “Guaranteed Income: The Right to Economic Security.”

Then and now, the welfare of masters track also has been his priority.

Sheahen became active in WAVA politics in 1975 in Toronto, where the first world met was held; he ran for WAVA treasurer in 1987 in Melbourne -- and was re-elected four times. Under him, WAVA’s savings grew from $87,000 to $200,000. And in 1989, “I strongly encouraged the Japanese to bid for the 1993 championships at a time when they were undecided.”

The Japan meet, attended by more than 12,100 athletes from around the world, is still hailed as the best ever.

He was the official announcer at six WAVA world championships and numerous U.S. national masters championships and other masters meets. He was a member of the WAVA Stadia Committee for 10 years. He was president of the Southern California Masters T&F Committee for three years and secretary-treasurer of the U.S. Masters Committee.

“When I have to make a tough decision, I ask myself: What’s in the best interests of the athletes?” Sheahen wrote in a letter to WAVA delegates in 1997, saying that instead of seeing the athlete through the eyes of the WAVA council, “I see the council through the eyes of the athlete.”

So what was does this writer and editor see as his most significant contribution?

A book full of numbers.

In the early years, meet directors and athletes tried mostly in vain to figure out how to compare performances by competitors of different age. A 45-year-old miler may beat a 65-year-old by a minute. But whose mark is really superior? Can your time be translated into one that might have been accomplished in your collegiate prime? How about a formula for comparing a 56-year-old female pole vaulter to an 83-year-old male hurdler?

Such a formula is Sheahen’s legacy: the WMA Age-Graded Tables.

Masters runner and columnist Joe Henderson once praised the tables as “one of the most comforting books ever written on running” because it provides a reasonable way of rating one's athletic performance at any age.

Jonathan Beverly wrote on the Road Runners Clubs of America Web site: “This seemingly benign document can create considerable emotion -- a comfort to many aging runners, a cause for some and --for a few -- a contention.”

The book offers two ways for judging marks. Runners, jumpers and throwers can multiply their actual time or distance by an “age factor” to get a good idea on what the mark would have been in their prime. And athletes can use an “age standard" to calculate a “performance-level percentage.”

With 100 percent generally being assigned to the world record for that age group, a percentage over 90 is considered world-class for that age. Over 80 percent is national-class and over 70 is “regional-class.” Such percentages now appear regularly in masters results, especially the bigger meets, helping athletes (and not least of all their families and co-workers) better appreciate the marks of an 80-year-old sprinter or a 55-year-old hammer thrower.

Joe McDaniel, editor of Oklahoma Runner, once said of the tables: “It is the only fair way to determine awards for masters prize money. . . . There will never be a perfect way to give awards (to masters in different categories), but nothing will ever come any closer than the WAVA system.”

Sheahen told Beverly: “From an individual point of view, you can chart your progress year after year. While you may run a minute slower at 50 than at 47, your performance level percentage might be two points higher, so you’ve actually improved.”

How were the tables set? Since the mid-1970s, masters athletes such as Phil Partridge and Bob Stone tried to provide age-grading formulas and tables using various trial-and-error methods. They sought a way, especially, to score multi-events such as the decathlon, where athletes of widely varying ages went head-to-head. Finally, Sheahen took on the task. In 1988, he chaired the WAVA committee that developed the tables that led to the ones in use today.

Sheahen worked with Chuck Phillips (who had produced “Dr. Track Age Standards” in 1983), Gary Miller, Rodney Charnock and Pete Mundle to decide the numbers, tapping years of research by Americans Partridge, Stone and Jim Weed, Germans Walter Fuchert, Adoph Koch and Wilhelm Koster, Australian Roy Foley, Canadian Ian Hume, and Victor Trkal of Czechoslovakia -- among others.

In 1986, National Masters News is credited with staging the first completely age-graded masters track meet, in Los Angeles. Three years of research went into WAVA’s tables before their publication in 1989.

A later revision -- resulting in the tables used today -- took a year and a
half of sometimes heated debate, statistical analysis of existing records,
hundreds of phone calls and faxes and thousands of documents. Record-holding masters decathlete Rex Harvey supervised the field event tables and Sheahen oversaw the running and walking tables. Racewalk champion Beverly LaVeck helped. And distance runner Norm Green checked their figures. The revised tables appeared in 1994.

The current tables are “pretty solid,” Sheahen told writer Beverly. “They’re
backed by 30 years of experience and thousands of actual results.” Later, he confessed that recent world records in the open ranks make the tables ripe for revision yet again.

And how does Sheahen himself rate? He’s an accomplished hurdler, having taken fourth in the 1975 and 1977 world meet 400m hurdles and made the long-hurdles finals in 1979, 1987 and 1997 as well.

In 1997, Sheahen at age 65 took third in the 300m hurdles and fifth in the
100m high hurdles at the USATF National Masters Outdoor Championships in San Jose, California. His 55.26 in the longer race is worth 80.58 percent -- a national-class performance. His high hurdles mark of 20.08 fell just short of national class at 76.79 percent.

No matter. Sheahen is a world-class figure in the evolution of masters track.