Actually, Mitch gives out almost no comps to the masters portion of the race (I believe he comps the overall M and F winner from the previous year). I know he turned down my comp request when I asked a couple years back (and I was definitely "top 10").
Three things:
1) Mitch is a bigwig at a bank putting on a great race in Paso Robles and running it like a pro. No one who participates in the race ever complains about the actual running of the race. If Mitch doesn't know Deena the runner from Dino the Flinstones' pet dinosaur, who cares? That's not his job. He puts on a great race. Would it be nice if everyone knew all the top distance runners? Yes. But that's not how it is. Deal.
2) Deena's a great runner and a class act. This incident means nothing when it comes to evaluating her character. If you think it does, you should evaluate your own character. Good lord, do any of you have lives?
3) Here's my only personal gripe with Mitch: he continues to refer to Eddy Hellebuych's 29:08 (or whatever it was) winning time from a few years back as if it's something to be proud of - when we runners (especially masters runners) know that it's a stain upon the sport (Eddy was busted a few short months after setting this and a few other American masters records). Mitch knows Eddy was found guilty (there was a big to-do the next year when Eddy competed as he awaited his hearing), but he still hasn't grasped how disrespectful it is to masters runners to have Eddy's performance held up as a prize moment in the race's history. However, whenever that starts to bug me too much, I refer back to #1 (see above).
Okay, hope to see some of you in Paso tomorrow! (Where I'll be competing again even though Mitch made me pay.)