Blog: The Weekend Warrior on… Getting older
I was happy about this conversational diversion because the previous evening, despite having a torn glute, I’d managed to dredge a new PB for my local 10-mile time-trial up from somewhere (22:35mins, in case you’re wondering). The presence of my tormentor meant I had a new audience for the story, having already carped on about it to everyone else I know.
Upon hearing of my achievement he replied: “It’s amazing you’re still setting PBs at your age.” As backhanded compliments go this was worse than being called a Nuneaton beauty queen. But before I had time to join in the witty banter by laughingly smacking him with a right uppercut, he delivered the killer blow: “It just goes to show that getting old need not be a barrier to performance.” That one really stung.
Age-related injuries are all the rage at the moment and my friend Neill Morgan has recently been under the surgeon’s knife to get two new Achilles tendons fitted, which is a bit like putting carbon wheels on a wheelie bin. Meanwhile, my injury has forced me to realise that, unless I can invent a flux capacitor, my best sporting days may soon be behind me.
This is a difficult notion to comprehend because there are still so many athletic goals I want to achieve, such as covering 100m in under 10secs, which I’ve only managed once before when I fell off the end of Brighton pier on a stag do.
Even before my injury I was feeling my age due to watching the para-swimming at the Commonwealth Games and realising I was slower over 400m than a man with no arms. But now that my ‘you’re getting on a bit’ injury is making my running so slow that I’m being outpaced by plate tectonics, I’ve started wondering whether I should scrap the Ironmans and start targeting races that reflect my decrepitude.
