When I'm 59

Sometimes all it takes is a quick e-mail to remind me why I love running.

I’ve mentioned my friend Mike in this blog before. He’s the co-author of my Monterey Herald column, but that’s not his primary vocation. For as long as I’ve known him, his main preoccupation seems to be figuring out how to actively defy the aging process.

He’ll try any food, drink, or supplement that’s been found to prevent disease or slow the body’s natural rate of aging. But he doesn’t look for shortcuts. His knows his best weapon against growing old is his running, and he works harder at it than almost anyone I know.

He also happens to have a great genetic predisposition for running – which, when combined with his work ethic, makes him a very tough guy to beat. When we started running together, I was 26, and he was 50 – and it took me almost five years to finally beat him in a race.

We’re still competitive with each other, but it’s more of a friendly thing now. We don’t often enter the same races, and when we do, we each want the other person to have as strong a race as possible.

Which brings me back to the e-mail.

I decided to not run the Big Sur Half-Marathon last month, so in the course of a routine e-mail exchange before the race I asked him what time he was shooting for. I got the following response:

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I'd like to run 1:18 in the half. HA HA. Not realistic.

Longer story: Two years ago I ran 1:26:55 which was the 55-59 course record and last year 1:26:50. Unfortunately [another runner] ran 1:26:40 last year which is now the course record for 55-59. I don't know if he is running this year or not. Or any other 55-59 years olds who might be faster.

So I would love to run 1:26:39 or faster. I'm going to try to run 6:30's for as long as I can. That gets me around 1:25 I think. But my recent 10K time of 39:15 indicates I would run about 1:28. So we'll see.

Another factor is that Bryan [Mike’s 31-year-old son] is probably ready to beat me. He hasn't beaten me in an official road race yet. I'll start faster than him so when he catches me at some point in the race it may spur me on to run faster for awhile. We'll see.

ABSOLUTELY PERFECT DAY would be sub 1:26:40 and finishing with Bryan.

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It’s only a few short paragraphs, but they speak to a lot of things I admire about Mike.

Somehow, his times at this race have improved from one year to the next, which – last time I checked – isn’t supposed to happen at age 59. And while he may not be competitive with the best 30-year-olds, he remains one of the fastest guys in his age group. He usually looks to take down the course record at various races, and frequently succeeds.

He raises his game for big events, regardless of objective data that tells him he shouldn’t run so fast. He's extremely competitive, but uses it solely to optimize his own performance, rather than wishing poor results upon others. This guy won’t even let his own son beat him without putting up a strong fight, and using the occasion to make himself faster as well.

And when I read his response, my first thought was this: that’s EXACTLY how I want to be when I’m his age.

Fundamentally, running means much more than the races we’ve run or the PRs we’ve posted in our best years or the competitors we’ve defeated. At the core of the sport is the simple goal of continually making ourselves better – physically (staying healthy), physiologically (improving our performance), and emotionally.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re 20 or 60. And that’s what Mike’s e-mail reminded me of.

The half-marathon turned out mostly the way Mike predicted. He ran 1:26:28, or 12 seconds faster than the old course record. His son passed him in the later miles on his way to a 1:24 finish, defeating his father for the first time in an official race, but pulling several extra seconds of speed out of his old man in the process.

Unfortunately, the same guy who set last year’s age group mark ran 1:25:05 this year to set a new record. Mike won’t get another crack at the record, as he turns 60 in early 2007. But he’s already talking about rewriting the 60-year-old course record books, a goal which seems firmly within his grasp.

That’s the kind of fire I want to keep burning. I want to still be a racer when I’m 59. I want to continue challenging myself to be as fast as I can be. I want to race against my children and only relinquish a victory when they truly earn it.

And even if our head-to-head competitions will be done by then, I want to keep racing Mike.

Personally, I hope he puts up some numbers next year that last a long time. Like, maybe 25 years or so. I’d like to flip through a race program sometime in 2031 and see his name next to the course record. Then I’d work my tail off to take the record down.

It’s very unlikely that I’d succeed, but even if I did, I have a feeling Mike probably won’t even mind.

After all, he’ll be too busy trying to break records in the 85-to-89 age group to worry about some upstart 60-year-old.

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(postscript: I e-mailed this article to Mike for approval before posting it, and he wrote back: “The only thing you left out is that I still plan on beating you.” So there you go.)