Ascension!
In Again to Carthage, the sequel to John Parker’s Once a Runner, Quentin Cassidy, the fictional Olympic Silver Medalist miler turned marathoner, suggests the allure to racing is “when you’re a competitive runner in training, you are constantly in a process of ascending.” He muses this is true in various endeavors as we age, including running prowess, but eventually things level off – and then decline. Moving “up” to the marathon gave Cassidy another chance to ascend and a driving force in his obsessive training regimen. Parker is a compelling author, who draws on his own experiences as a competitive runner and the last couple of chapters of Carthage are riveting. Unless we change sports, the time will come when we run (literally!) out of options to move up. For any given distance, our times will erode. Assuming running is an important part of our lives, this is the masters runner’s dilemma. Our success and happiness in life depends upon finding ways to accept declines in those things we love to do and feel competent doing. In The Master’s Athlete, Peter Reaburn suggests age-grading (AG), developed by Alan Jones and adopted by World Master’s Athletics (WMA), serves to provide such an opportunity. An AG% is the ratio of one’s time compared to the … Continue reading