As I’ve gotten older, I have begun to understand the fascination with finding a fountain of youth. Tales have been spun of waters that contain the promise of youth since at least Ponce De Leon. Young folks feel like they are immortal; older ones want to feel that way again. Though many tales have been told about the fountain of youth, no one has yet discovered it, or a chemical cocktail that stops aging, but that doesn’t stop each of us from trying our hand at maximizing our own longevity.
My own cocktail is a mix of close family and friends, low stress—now that I am retired, good nights of sleep, good food, and lots of exercise. How well does this work? It certainly hasn’t stopped me from aging, but I have been seeking out quantifiable measures of my successes and failures. If you’ve been reading my zone training blog, you’ve seen some of the measures I’ve put forward: miles run, pace in Zones 1 and 2, and the effects of my training and eating habits on my weight. My Garmin also comforts me by reporting that I have a fitness age that is fully 10 years lower than my actual age.
All of this is useful feedback, but to me, racing is the most rigorous test of how close I am to sipping from the fountain. This past Saturday, the Baldy Blitz provided my first race test: 4,000 feet of climbing to the top of Mt Baldy in 3.9 miles, then spin around and dash back down. I was a bit uncertain as to how I’d perform before it started: it was warm, with a high of 80 forecast, Canadian wildfire smoke, though diminishing somewhat, still filled the air and worst of all, I had a lousy pre-race night of sleep.
At 9AM the gun went off, 69 of us crossed the timing mat and the sufferfest began. I had planned to monitor my heartrate throughout the race, but I knew that it would be higher than I where I thought it should be given my lousy night of sleep, so I largely ignored it. We climbed 1700 feet to the ridge in the first 1.1 miles then kept climbing along the ridge. The first short downhill came after 2,000 feet of climbing when we surmounted the first small peak, then it was up again until we had climbed nearly 2700 feet in the first 2 miles and had surmounted a second larger peak. Mile 3 was a mix of small ups and downs after which we began the final climb to Baldy summit.
I knew I was doing well throughout the climbs. I had started in the first half of the pack and few folks had passed me. More importantly, I felt strong. My previous best time to the top was 1:06:09 in the 2021 Blitz. I got there in 1:00:50 this year, the 36th runner to the peak.
I was thrilled, but I still had a long steep downhill ahead. I pushed as hard as I could but I still got passed by a few younger racers. I seemed to lack the top gear they had. My previous best downhill time was 1:02:12 also in 2021—the course in 2022 was buried under ice and snow making it a bit slower. This year, I completed the downhill in 1:01:06, finishing 39th overall.
Thirty-ninth out of 69 doesn’t sound that impressive, until you consider that I was the oldest person in the race. I earned the prestigious “Top Geezer,” beating the one competitor in my age group by nearly 32 minutes. Okay, so that may not be saying much, because I didn’t know the fitness of the other geezer. So, I looked at the results more closely: I beat all 5 50–59-year-old guys and 6 of the 12 40–49-year-old guys. The oldest person that outran me was 45, and he beat me by 18 seconds in a footrace as we closed in on the finish.
I didn’t feel like I had drunk from the fountain of youth after the race. The word I kept repeating while I recovered was “grueling.” However, I did feel that the results indicated that my training was working. I improved my previous best time by more than 6 minutes and I did so under more difficult conditions than existed two years ago.
My zone stats also caught my eye. I saw that I ran in Zone 4 for almost 2 full hours. I didn’t think I could hold that zone for that long. In retrospect, it’s a good thing I ignored my heartrate during the race, I would have been inclined to slow down during the climbs for fear that I would burnout.
The first test of my training is now behind me and the second, much harder, test is June 10th: the Old Gabe 30K—19 miles of trail running with 6400 feet of climbing. I have not been training at this distance or with this much elevation change. A drink from the fountain of youth might not be enough for this race. Time-travel, another fascination of us humans, might be in order to zip me from the beginning to the end while avoiding all the suffering in between. I’ll let you know how it goes.
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