Everybody has a scoreboard, whether it is dollars earned and accumulated, trophies won, fish caught, golf score, square feet in your house, grand kids, ACT score......... Masters athletes have their own scoreboard, and it is a Master Ranking web site that accumulates times from all the meets globally and compiles them for comparison. I found this site last year and it keeps up with all the big meets and any USATF event as well as some of the NSGA events. You get an overall ranking versus the US or global competition and an 1 to 100% score to rank you against a hypothetical 100% maximum.
I have been watching my progress on this site and I think this is where I should finish the year as a 60 year old in the outdoor season.
How do you get faster? In my case it is a couple of things I need to change--lose weight and eat better. I am already working on eating less meat, less sugar, less processed foods and more veggies. I ran the last meet at 192 pounds and that weight seemed to be fine, I had good speed and recovered quickly. Next year I want to try 186 to 188 as my racing weight. That will make my body fat around 17 to 19% and that is pretty lean for my age. Better food and being disciplined is the key here and having a garden out the back door is huge to control my diet better.
I made some major changes in my stretching and pre race routine very late in the season this year. I thought I had a really good program, but my lower body stretching was causing an overstretching situation in my lower back and it was popping out of joint. I started working with Lloyd Robison and we basically went thru his entire catalog of stretching to eliminate the risky behavior that I had been doing for years. Now, my stretching is done away from the track and the track warm up is much simpler and lends itself to a quicker warm up. Big meets have multiple delays for weather and injuries and the new warm up routine can handle these sort of delays much better. You spend a lot of time just standing around and waiting for something to happen--hours many times and you need to stay ready. I will continue to tune this program and currently my muscles are quite loose and pliable. I will continue to get a massage every two weeks. Geoff Skene has done some great work for the last several years and he can also get rid of a lot of airplane neck as well.
I learned a lot about my body this season and I think I made some major strides in my mental side of the sport. I belong at this level--I can make the finals and mix it up for a medal and that is all I can ask. I have become a better and more patient racer on the track and in the queue. . Waiting is a major part of a sport and you must be able to just let some of the delays and crap slide and concentrate on what I can control-- me. I also raced 3 major events with injuries--twisted knee, sore back and calf injury. In each case, my times were not really impacted negatively to the extent that I was not competitive. As I continue to race, injuries will be just be something you need to manage, I think I managed the injuries at Baton Rouge and going forward I will better at running thru injuries and just racing. My body can tolerate a lot of minor dings and I just need to shut up and race.
You cannot race in these events without support from your family. Linda is a great cheerleader and does some fantastic videos of my races. Her support is a big part of my success. Plus, she is a cute race wife to have around at the meets and is fun to travel with to the venues we visit. I have been talking Spain next year and she was on board immediately with that idea. We are talking going to Germany after the racing and making this a real vacation, I hope we can pull if off. AUTOBAHN is calling!
Rosemary came over to Baton Rouge and it was her first time at one of my races and I think she enjoyed the racing. I want to thank her for working on my calf muscle. The calf still has some swelling 6 days after the injury and I am willing to wait a month before I give it a try again, and I think 4 weeks will be the minimum time to heal. I have some sort of damage very deep in the tissue-the Achilles is unaffected.
I have met dozens of very competitive people at these events and that has been a real joy to talk with these Champions and look forward to seeing them at the next meet. I have met some racers my age that live in the area and hopefully Linda and I can have some house guests and talk racing and everything that goes along with the aging of racers.
I have been watching my progress on this site and I think this is where I should finish the year as a 60 year old in the outdoor season.
- 50 meters, 91.55%, 7.33 seconds, 14th in world, 12th in US. The US is basically the only country to run this event.
- 60 meters, 93.63, 8.26 seconds, second in world, first in US. The event is rarely run outdoors in the US. But I like to think I am second in the World this year.
- 100 meters, 88.71%, 13.19 seconds, 36 in world and 15th in the US. The 13.19 is my new PR as a Masters athlete.
- 200 meters, 88.04%, 27.26 seconds, 31 in the world and 11th in the US. Another PR this season and I backed up this time by running several races within a few 0.01s of that time.
- 400 meters, 85.44%, 61.89 seconds, 26 in the world, 8 in the US. This time is the fastest since my first 400 in 2010 when I entered my first Senior Games and did not know how to run the race. I reviewed the video on this race and my split was 30.2 seconds. I need just a bit faster first 200 to run my age.
How do you get faster? In my case it is a couple of things I need to change--lose weight and eat better. I am already working on eating less meat, less sugar, less processed foods and more veggies. I ran the last meet at 192 pounds and that weight seemed to be fine, I had good speed and recovered quickly. Next year I want to try 186 to 188 as my racing weight. That will make my body fat around 17 to 19% and that is pretty lean for my age. Better food and being disciplined is the key here and having a garden out the back door is huge to control my diet better.
I made some major changes in my stretching and pre race routine very late in the season this year. I thought I had a really good program, but my lower body stretching was causing an overstretching situation in my lower back and it was popping out of joint. I started working with Lloyd Robison and we basically went thru his entire catalog of stretching to eliminate the risky behavior that I had been doing for years. Now, my stretching is done away from the track and the track warm up is much simpler and lends itself to a quicker warm up. Big meets have multiple delays for weather and injuries and the new warm up routine can handle these sort of delays much better. You spend a lot of time just standing around and waiting for something to happen--hours many times and you need to stay ready. I will continue to tune this program and currently my muscles are quite loose and pliable. I will continue to get a massage every two weeks. Geoff Skene has done some great work for the last several years and he can also get rid of a lot of airplane neck as well.
I learned a lot about my body this season and I think I made some major strides in my mental side of the sport. I belong at this level--I can make the finals and mix it up for a medal and that is all I can ask. I have become a better and more patient racer on the track and in the queue. . Waiting is a major part of a sport and you must be able to just let some of the delays and crap slide and concentrate on what I can control-- me. I also raced 3 major events with injuries--twisted knee, sore back and calf injury. In each case, my times were not really impacted negatively to the extent that I was not competitive. As I continue to race, injuries will be just be something you need to manage, I think I managed the injuries at Baton Rouge and going forward I will better at running thru injuries and just racing. My body can tolerate a lot of minor dings and I just need to shut up and race.
You cannot race in these events without support from your family. Linda is a great cheerleader and does some fantastic videos of my races. Her support is a big part of my success. Plus, she is a cute race wife to have around at the meets and is fun to travel with to the venues we visit. I have been talking Spain next year and she was on board immediately with that idea. We are talking going to Germany after the racing and making this a real vacation, I hope we can pull if off. AUTOBAHN is calling!
I have met dozens of very competitive people at these events and that has been a real joy to talk with these Champions and look forward to seeing them at the next meet. I have met some racers my age that live in the area and hopefully Linda and I can have some house guests and talk racing and everything that goes along with the aging of racers.
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