Hidden in Plain Sight

It might seem strange to hear me say it, but on a visceral level I find great age-group performances in athletics a little underwhelming. When I watch an older runner or thrower or jumper do something amazing for their age, the amazement is kind of detached, abstract compared to, say, the breathtaking excitement of watching the fastest sprinter in the world blow down a straightaway leaving a world-class field in his wake.

I remember more than twenty years ago attending the Millrose games in NYC and watching a race that was a novelty at the time: a "masters mile," or mile race for invited athletes who were over 40. In the race were some of the heroes of my youth, including Jim Ryun and Peter Snell. I expected to feel awe, but all I felt was "aww", as in, "aww, isn't that great that they're still out there running." In that race, Ryun finished well back, running, I think, 4:40. The race was won by Web Loudat in 4:20-something, an athlete I had never heard of before. Afterwards I thought, "well that was interesting."

As a spectator sport, age-group track and road-racing often lacks that "wow" that you get when you see a young athlete out on the edge of what is humanly possible. It's just not the same to watch a 50-year-old set an age group world record. It's exciting, yes, but it also involves a mental shift to make allowances for diminished capacity (and expectations). I have never watched such a performance without thinking about how that athlete performed in his or her prime, and how the age-adjusted performance compares.

Please don't get me wrong: I am very grateful for the whole notion of "age-adjusted" or "age-graded" performances. They are very helpful in getting a lot of us out of bed in the morning and provide ongoing motivation to see whether we can "improve" our relative standing as our absolute performances continue to trend down with grim inevitability. But even tremendous age-graded performances are hard to notice in an event with young and old together.

Take for example the race I just ran, the Yankee Homecoming 10-Miler. In that race, the top age-graded performance belonged to the living legend, 62-year-old Larry Olsen. His time of 63:43 is the age-graded equivalent of a 50:29, a time that would have won the open race. But Larry was hidden in plain sight in that race, an older guy shuttling among the second-tier of younger guys, never close to the front of the race. What if he had run five minutes faster, a time that would have been the open equivalent of 46:31? It would have been a run for the ages, an American age-group record, and yet it would have gone virtually unnoticed by spectators lining the streets of Newburyport to watch the old, toothless guy chug along in 26th place, just ahead of my training partner Terry (who at 44, is no spring chicken).


Larry legend at the Newburyport 10M (photo Ted Tyler)

Here's another example: last fall, 51-year-old Joan Benoit Samuelson showed up to run the New England Open Cross-Country Championship. She finished the 6K race in 12th, ahead of a bevy of very talented young women from the BAA, GBTC, and New Balance racing teams. Her time -- 21:56 -- converts to an age-adjusted time of 18:57, a performance that would have put her more than 40 seconds ahead of Ireland's Mary Cullen, who dominated the race. Yet, to most of the people watching the race, Cullen's race was breathtaking, a tour-de-force of take-no-prisoners front-running, while Samuelson's transcendent effort was an afterthought.

In an August 4 post on his Runner's World blog, Amby Burfoot muses on age-group performances in general, and provides a list of some of the performances that stick in his mind as most impressive. That's the thing though, they are impressive in the mind. No so much in the flesh, where even the greatest of great age-group performances is likely to bring unwelcome thoughts of mortality.

So that's the bottom line I guess: when we watch Usain Bolt or Kenenisa Bekele, Kara Goucher or Allyson Felix, we revel in the eternal youthful sunshine of infinite possibility. These athletes, it seems, can do anything. And that means that human beings can do anything. But when we contemplate the latter-day exploits of a Larry Olsen or a Joan Benoit-Samuelson, we can't help but be reminded that even the great among us slow down, although some have managed to to resist the ravages of time better than others.

Still, I'll take my inspiration where I can get it. I used to enter races with the expectation that I would win. Now when I enter a road race, I never expect to win, and am always surprised if I finish near the front of even a small race. Since that's the reality, I find it enormously inspirational to think about Larry, and others who continue to train hard and race tough. I assume he knows that younger runners and spectators don't know how good he is, but I think he probably doesn't care. He's happy to run incognito, still pursuing an idea of excellence that is less about place and time and more about fighting, fighting, fighting, and never surrendering.