Join me in my 2014 challenge: To get fitter this year than I was last. After trying to achieve the fitness of a 20-year-old in 2013 (by some measures I made it; by marathon measureI fell 3 minutes short), I will “re-do” key races this year, in an attempt to best last year’s personal bests. Redoing the exact same races is a fantastic way to measure fitness improvements.
Another runner on her own version of that challenge is sprinter Christa Bortignon (see picture below; she’s in the black T, to right of me), a 76-year-old sprinter who set seven world records and won 16 gold medals at world championships in 2013, earning her the World Masters Female Athlete of the Year Award. But is she resting on her laurels? In an email last week, Christa told me she felt sore after back-to-back personal training and sprint-training sessions. Clearly, this 76 year old is not letting turning 77 slow her down.
I explain the Do-Over Year challenge in my new running column, Going the Distance, to be published each month in The Globe and Mail. Targeting one race for a PB could lead to disappointment because so much can go wrong. A saner approach, suggests one of Canada’s top running shrinks, sports psychologist Kim Dawson, is strive for an improvement over the entire year.
Each month in the Globe and more often here, I will share what I’m learning along my journey. The goal is not only to get faster and stronger as I get older — and the book on that will be published by Rodale Books in October 2014 — but to keep up training intensity or, in other words, stay young by training young. Because my ultimate goal is to be running strong and long at 101 and having a blast doing it.
And one of the best lines of advice I received to achieve that came from ultra runner Pam Reed: “I run to protect my running.”
If you have advice, thoughts, questions, drop me a comment and I’ll do my best to address them in a column.
Happy running and happy holidays.
Competing in the World Masters Games 1/2 Marathon in Italy. # 73 pulled far ahead of me to take the bronze, but I managed a 4th in my age group.