Senior Olympian Sprinter

Life and Art are hopelessly intertwined and that is how is has always been.  The cavemen drew on walls with charcoal to celebrate their bounty and lives.  Fast forward to today and we have digital pictures in our pockets and purses by the billion--celebrating our bounties--this will never change.  Pictures of kids, pets, loved ones, beautiful sunsets, friends, parties, medals from track meets--this is a running blog.    Family portraits have always been a staple of "normal" life.  Every parent and grandparents have the head and shoulder portrait that they had made at the local Olan Mills.  These pictures were retouched to eliminate any defects and highlite the stuff that needed to be highlited.  I have some in my attic right now from deceased family.   Linda and I have never had the family "portrait" done because we just were not ready to take that plunge.  I had some work commissioned a few weeks back of Linda and it was s...

 We ran the Greater Nashville Senior Games last weekend at Brentwood High School.   I ran in 4 events and also high jumped in competition for the first time since 1975!    I won the 100 and 200 meter events and was beaten in the 50 by David Schmanski who was in the other heat and it was hand timed.  Last year I got beat in the same event by somebody in another heat..  It is hard to race them in another heat.  But it is just a qualifier.   I also ran the 400 in 80 seconds.  It was the fourth event of the morning  and I was getting fatigued at that point and I wanted to jump in an hour or so, so I did mail that one in.  Two gold and 2 silver for the morning was great meet already. I had been playing with the high jump at Ravenwood and was clearing 53 inches on a regular basis and wanted to give it a try.  The last time I had jumped in competition was in 1975 when Mike Baker, Dirk Cox and I won the Newcomerstown ...

I was chatting with Linda this week and I told her that I thought that my 60th year was my pinnacle year.   I explained what really incredible things had occurred to me this year and she agreed and then added her Pinnacle Year which occurred in her very successful high school years.   Did it take me 40 years longer than her to get it together ??  Ummmm....  June Rosemary arrived this year.      The first grandbaby holds an exulted place in everyone's family and she has taken that throne and it will never be relinquished.  I am very happy she is on that throne! Linda has made a massive improvement in her health and appears to be turning the corner on the pain that has plagued her of recent. I earned my first individual National event medal at the Senior Games in Birmingham.  That was a big bucket list item for me.  I also won a Gold medal at the USATF Outdoors Nationals in Baton Rouge in a relay.  Actually w...

I am still around.   But, I have been getting some serious rest in since the Nationals and I am at my peak of rest now.    Some how that sounds like a  Garrison Keillor line.  The Greater Nashville qualifier is coming up in two weeks and that means 4 races and high jumping in one day.   The times are now that important, but I need to have enough endurance to make it through each event and get qualified.      Last week I started to do a little running--indoors due to a lot of rainy crap from Irma-- and working on getting the muscles tightened back up for a day at the track.   My calf is doing fine and I needed to get going again because my weight is slowly creeping up.   Football on TV will not help, since the entire time you watch a game you need to be eating something-- healthy or not, feed that face.   I have two weeks to work on my sprinting and then I will switch to power and strength wi...

My daughter was curious about her ancestry--her Mom was adopted and little is known from that side of the ladder-- and I know a lot about my ancestors. So  we both did the DNA testing and my results were finished this last week.   I thought I was mostly from the UK and a bit of France, but it was a little different from that.  But my ancestry is 37% Great Britain, 29% Scandinavia, 14% Ireland, 9% Greece, Italy,  6% Iberian Peninsula---99% Europe.   The Vikings invaded Scotland, Ireland and England and that explains most of the DNA.   Ancestry.com had some interesting maps that indicated the folks with similar DNA settled a narrow belt from Pittsburgh. PA to Indianapolis, IN.  I broke out of this range years ago, but the vast majority of my kin is still in that area.   This mapping was interesting info about how the immigration of the US was actually done as the West opened up to the settlers. ...

It has been two weeks since we finished up in Baton Rouge and I had a calf muscle that was quite tender.   After two weeks of no running and no exercise that flexes the left calf muscle, things are much improved.  I made it to the gym today and worked on my core and upper body and just gingerly stretched my calf to see how it is healing.  I think I tore my soleus muscle and it is healing nicely and it is probably 95%, BUT I am waiting another two weeks before trying it out.  It is difficult to have the discipline to lay off.  Two more weeks of rest for the injury-- and that is final.   I have a funeral to attend this week near Baltimore, Md.  My Dad's brother married a women from that area and she died at the age of 78 last weekend.  I will fly over and attend. It has been nice to get some rest from working out, but it can get a little boring at times.   To cut the boredom, Linda and I have started to repaint the front fence.  I have...

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.  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 ...