Speedendurance.com

Too Old to Run 400 meters? Try 47+ at M35, 49+ at M40

Posted: 19 Jul 2011 12:15 AM PDT

Many thanks to Ken Stone who covered these 400 meter races on his MastersTrack Blog.

It always inspires me to see a 35 year old running times capable of winning some College meets, or a 40 year old capable of winning local OPEN meets. Or my fellow countryman Michael Sherar running 51 point at age 47, after 3 rounds, and winning the silver medal in the process. (I do live in Italy, but I have to compete for Canada)

Age is just a number.

I remember my first M40 400 meters competition back in 2003, I was sandwiched between Sunder Nix and Elvis Forde in my heat. These were guys I watch on TV back in 1984!

If you ran track in your youth, and still maintained some fitness over the past 15-20 years, then why not give Masters Track a shot? Hopefully you haven't gained too much weight, and you have some form of flexibility.

Sure, you'll need to cut down the training volume as in the past, and get back to doing weights and plyometrics. But just watch these videos and you can see that anything is possible once you COMMIT to running the 400 meters.

I would set aside a nice budget for physiotherapy and massage work. Recovery and regeneration is more important now than ever. For a complete series of article on training for Masters track, click on the Masters category.

Congrats to everyone who made it to the starting line. Woody Allen once said, "80% of success is just showing up". I wish I was there. Full results here.

See you all in 2013 (WMA or WMG?)