Off Their Rockers

As we wrinkle, we’re supposed to get slower and weaker. Yet, with smart training, grannies and graybeards get stronger and faster. In the over-50 brackets, top competitors continue to set new records in track and field, swimming, cross-country, etc. Lesser talents break their own personal records.

At 61, in a 10K cycling time trial, I knocked 40 seconds off my prior best, from six years earlier. Wind conditions, road conditions, everything the same–except my legs and lungs had senioritis, and somehow overcame it. What a thrill, to outdo my earlier self, in spite of my age handicap. I felt like I’d taken a swig from Ponce’s watering hole.

I’m not the only one. Lots of fanatics in the geezer brackets train like Olympic hopefuls and race like they’re passing death’s door. We keep fit, not so much to stay healthy, but to defy caution and rebel against geriatric slump. To me, the most inspiring are top athletes, 50 and over, who break their own world records as they age.

I’ve found two so far: Klaus Liedtke (Germany) in the shot put and discus; Evaun Williams (UK) in the outdoor weight pentathlon. At 55, Williams racked up 4858 points; a decade older, 5574 points. How did she do it? If you know of other examples, please clue us in. Soon enough, we reach the a point when our personal records can’t be broken. They’re safe for eternity. What training giveth, aging taketh away.

Thirty-seven years after he was kicked off his college football team for fighting, Mike Flynt returned to Sul Ross State and made the varsity in 2007. He was on the field in pads, a grandfather, knocking heads with players younger than his own children; even the coach was eight years younger than Flynt. Will we see more of this, fogies with scores to settle, glories to relive, dusting off their old uniforms, returning to school so they can turn back the jock clock?

Madonna Buder, 78. Born 1930, joined a convent in her twenties, found her legs in her late forties, jogged behind the cloister in hand-me-down track shoes. Her wicked speed got people’s attention: she entered and won endurance races at local, state, national levels; competed in 200 triathlons and won most of them, dominating every age group she passed through; took up Ironman, where she holds age-group speed records for Canada and Hawaii. In her 70s, she outraced all the 55-59-year olds.

Sister Marion Irvine. An overweight grade-school principal and two-pack-a-day smoker, Sister Irvine took up running at age 47.  Her plan to burn “pent-up-energy” soon became a 70-mile-a-week habit. At 54, she ran a 2:51 marathon, fast enough to land her in the U.S. Olympic trials. She runs for the San Francisco track club, and has been induced in two halls of fame: Road Runners, Track&Field. Source: woohoo.org/runsf/stars.htm