Many things make Marin’s Dipsea Race special. There’s the colorful history, dating back to 1905. There’s the spectacular course, traversing 7.5 precipitous miles from Mill Valley to Stinson Beach. There’s the element of danger. But, perhaps most quintessential are the head starts (or handicaps), a wrinkle all but nonexistent in any major race anywhere.
By starting presumably slower runners first, it’s made champions of total unknowns, eight-year-old girls and a 72-year-old man. Head starts are at center stage for the 111th Dipsea Race, this Sunday, as handicapper Bill Rus has made the biggest changes in decades. (I’ll explore these changes, and how they effect the top contenders, in my “Predictions” column later this week).
Originally, the maximum head starts were 10 or 15 minutes. In recent decades, as younger runners were admitted and were joined by more older runners (in the Dipsea’s early years, runners in their 40’s were routinely labeled as “ancient”), head starts have risen to the present day’s 25 minutes.
Some years — but no longer — half-minutes were used. Racers given no head start were called “scratch” runners, setting off “in the place of honor.” The “Dipsea Demon,” Jack Kirk, once famously refused his head start minutes to join that group.
There were also years when no runner was placed “scratch.” Some years a single handicapper made each individual decision, some years it was a small committee. Newspaper accounts regularly described surprise winners as a “dark horse” or an “unknown.”
Beginning in 1986, after Sal Vasquez had won four consecutive Dipsea’s and appeared poised to win more, recent champions were docked head start time — a “Winner’s Penalty” which has been adjusted over the years.
The first scratch runner to break the finish line tape was Mason Hartwell, in 1917. Thirty-five years passed before that feat was duplicated, by Walter Deike in 1952. He was followed by Fernando Leon in 1958, Pete McArdle in 1962, Carl Jensen in 1966, and no one since. Note that several other runners have also won both the Race and the Best (fastest) Time Award, though without starting scratch. The last was Sal Vasquez in 1985.
A seismic shift in handicapping occurred in 1965. Unable to keep up with a flood of new entrants in the nascent years of “the running boom,” Dipsea officials began assigning head starts based solely on age (and gender when women were officially admitted in 1971).
The head starts were crude until MIT-trained math whiz Jim Weil took over the job in the late 1960’s. Weil, who held the post for 50 years, refined the tables so well that annual changes became infrequent, and small.
The shift to age/gender handicapped ended the era when just about everyone on the starting line thought they had a chance to win. Since 1965, only runners atop their age group had any chance to reach Stinson Beach first. No subsequent winner was “unknown.”
There have been other years before 2022 when handicapping was the lead story. In 1907, head starts were so generous that, still to this day, three of the four fastest clock times (actual running time less head start) ever are from that Race. It would have taken a scratch runner an impossible time of 40 minutes, 34 seconds to win. There was a similar issue in 1964, with the first four clock times all below an also impossible 43:26.
In 1959, Jim Imperiale was seemingly rewarded for years of service to the Race with the maximum head start of 15 minutes. There were only four other runners (all non-competitive) in his group, then only one other starter over the next six minutes. Imperiale won by 46 seconds.
In 1962, head starts were deliberately manipulated to give Pete McArdle, an Olympic marathoner, a chance to break Norman Bright’s 25-year-old course record. Handicapper Tommy Laughran, who flew McArdle in from New York for the attempt, gave only one runner, a perennial last-place finisher, more than a six-minute head start.
The plan was for scratch starter McArdle to have the trail all to himself from early on. Darryl Beardall almost ruined the plan, keeping up with McArdle to near the top of Cardiac, where he collapsed. McArdle won by more than two minutes, but missed Bright’s record by eight seconds
In 1966, only the second year of age-handicapping, the maximum head start was cut, for that one year only, from 15 to 11 minutes. That opened the door for scratch runners and they took full advantage, capturing an unheard-of six of the first seven places. Heading them was Carl Jensen, who remains the last scratch winner.
In 2012, Dave Mackey, a national class runner, was given a bib number with a wrong, larger head start. He crossed the finish line fifth, but was then disqualified.
