David Pitches likes to fly under the radar, a tendency he chalks up to the stoicism and gravitas of a Scottish heritage.  His 5'4 ½" 132-pound frame definitely enables him to dart past racers unrecognized-as he is all too apt to do-but his athletic prowess and interminable running feats keep him in the constant burn of that damn FRNY spotlight.  Apologies in advance, Mr. Pitches , if this profile further irradiates you.

When Pitches joined Front Runners (was it 1986 or '87 ... who can remember, really?), he rode the social coattails of his life partner Dan Elliott, who was strictly A-list with the club connections and role in the famous Runnettes drag revue to prove it.  "Dan was the well known member," says Pitches .  "I was pretty much just his partner tagging along - Mr. Diffident Reticence."  While he may have started both his running career and his FRNY journey from behind the scenes, Pitches would eventually light up the sky like a comet hurtling through the atmosphere at jaw-dropping speed.

Throughout his young adulthood in Yonkers, New York, Pitches did not partake in organized athletic endeavors.  But in the idyll of late 50s Westchester County, he maintained a respectable level of fitness and conditioning by avidly bike riding, tree climbing and woods roaming.  The 60s then ushered in some attractive alternatives to aerobic exercise, with Pitches surfing the wave of the decade's excesses with psychedelic aplomb.  "There was lots to do and smoke and drink," he says, "peace marches, demonstrations, Vietnam, the draft, they asked - I told, college buildings to occupy, music to zonk out on-Cool, can you dig it?"  Um, sure.  

After the hurly-burly of the 60s, Pitches moved to New York City and adopted the life of a hard-working young architect in the gritty enclave of the East Village.  The cadence of his existence volleyed between long nights chain-smoking at the drafting table and wanton exploration of the iniquities of the other Village.  "The bars on Christopher Street were where the action was," he says, "Gay hippies!  Cool guys, hot guys with long hair and bell bottoms, dancing up a sweat - far out, far fuckin' out!"  The hard living did exact a toll.  One day Pitches discovered his boyish vim had withered when a dash across Second Avenue to beat oncoming traffic nearly reduced him to roadkill. He decided it was time for a change and joined the West Side Y.  

At that time, the exercise regimen at the Y was a tame variation of calisthenics with an emphasis on knee bends.  But then Bob Glover came from upstate to shake things up.  "Bob was and still is a man with a mission," says Pitches .  "Bob was a marathon runner and thought we should all be marathon runners and badgered and cajoled and tricked a bunch of us into doing various NYRRC races."  Though Pitches managed to quit smoking and clock a very respectable 3:17:47 in the first five-borough NYC marathon in 1976, he crashed mentally after the ordeal was over and retreated to his former life of hard work and hard living.  He did, however, continue to cycle on his own for physical activity.  

A few events in the early to mid-80s conspired to nudge Pitches back onto the competitive racing scene.  In 1982, he met Dan Elliott at Oil Can Harry's on Ventura Boulevard and formed a lasting romantic partnership.  Despite Elliott's active involvement in FRNY, Pitches would shy away from the club and competitive running for many more years.  In 1987, he quit smoking for good and also discovered triathlons as a beautiful way to keep active and fit while seeing the country on weekends.  With an eye toward staying in shape in the off season, Pitches participated in a few winter races during these years.   He always signed up under the FRNY name but was far from devout in his affiliation, still preferring to play the tag-along spouse to Elliott's lead role.  That being said, and despite his primary focus remaining on triathlons, Pitches had found his way back to the racing circuit by the late 80s.

Throughout the nineties, Pitches kept to an annual diet of six to eight triathlons with a sprinkling of three or four winter races. A quick survey of the whopping 140 NYRR races that Pitches has run (and remember the database excludes the marathon and only archives times from 1987 on) shows an interesting spike about eight years ago.  After racing just three times per year as a 51-, 52- and 53-year-old and only once at 54, Pitches went on to race 85 NYRR races over the next eight years-an average of almost 11 per year.  Why the change of heart?  In his mid-50s, Pitches realized that he was becoming quite competitive in his age group and developed a trophy-lust that simply had to be sated.  

As part of his augmented training program, Pitches became more of a Front Runner fixture than in years past. Smart and dutiful adherence to the club's workout regimen has yielded Pitches a curio cabinet worth of hardware.  In 2007 alone, Pitches has placed in the top five of his age group in a gasp-inducing 21 of 24 NYRR races.  After spending much of his early 50s at about the 70th percentile mark for age-graded performance, Pitches ratcheted up into the mid- and then high-70s.  This April 1st he smashed into the firmament of "national elite" status by running a 41:45 at the Scotland 10K Run and besting the 80th percentile.  ( Pitches has run this race in a kilt in years past, but hopefully donned racing duds for this fine performance.)  He followed that up with four more national-elite level finish times before the end of the year.

So more than thirty years after his first marathon, Pitches brings more enthusiasm and determination than ever to each run.  He admits that he has in no way done it alone.  He credits the more competitive and professional approach to training brought in under the Michael Orzechowski administration and exemplified by runners such as Kelsey Louie for much of his own increased dedication to the sport.  "There were real athletes who had been trained by real coaches and did real events," says Pitches .  "That's something I never had or did in my misspent youth."  Of course, Pitches has been paying the club back in spades, leading the FRNY SuperVet contingent to its fourth place finish this year, the best of any club division.  

And though Pitches holds his status as a gay man "at the top of the list, for all the world to see what we can do" as his proudest accomplishment, he gets much more than a powerful sense of purpose and well-deserved encomia from this sport.  "Running has sort of been the one constant in my life," he says, "a refuge, a place to go, sort of like Alice going through the looking glass, to another world."  In the end, running is just that, an individual journey that can lead you anywhere if you're willing to open yourself up to the possibility.  Far more intriguing than Alice's dalliances with Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, the other side of the mirror has offered Pitches a world replete with PRs, sleek young runners angling toward the finish line and a Front Runner family to share it all with.  

   

Random Data

Dream Job? - A 26-year-old dancer with the Paul Taylor Company

Favorite NYC architectural space? - Grand Central Terminal: "a wonder of organized multi-functional inter-modal urban infrastructure with the most gracious and light-filled main hall."

Best Movie of 2007? - No Country for Old Men

Vacation Itinerary? - Spain and Portugal ... "Portugal is still poor enough to be wonderfully seedy."

On the arc of his generation and his running career - "I began running in the early 70s ... Looking back on it, running was a place to find refuge and rest and rejuvenation from the world.  The times were culturally and socially such a massive explosion of the tightly restrained world of the 50s that I grew up in.  It was both wonderful and exciting and exhilarating and exhausting.  In the end the lives we are able to live as openly gay men and women now, unimaginable to my generation, could not have come about without all of this.  So running became my sea anchor in the storm."