tldr; New PhatOldMan 1500 PR in the National Senior Games 65-69 age group.

I qualified, and registered for three events at the National Senior Games in Birmingham.  My events are the 10K road race, 5K road race, and the 1500 meters on the track.

The senior games are held every 2 years, and this was the 30th anniversary of the games.  You qualify for Nationals by competing at one of the state games.  I did my qualifying for the 10K and the 1500 at my home state of North Carolina and the 5K in neighboring state South Carolina.

Even though I qualified for the 1500 I debated whether or not to register.  The 10K was scheduled for Saturday morning, the 5K on Monday evening, and the 1500 sandwiched between the two on Sunday at noon.  And I just don’t have the leg speed to compete in this event.

While I felt pretty confident that I could get at least a ribbon in the road races (they give awards down to 8^th place) I had no such expectation in the 1500.  At best I could look for top 15 out of the 42 that were registered just in my age group.

We were scheduled to start at 11:30, following seven sections of women’s 1500 races, as well as the men’s 80 and up, 75-79, and 70-74.  A casual glance at the schedule showed there was going to be delays.  They simply did not allow enough time for some of the heats.  And the 65-69 was the largest of the age groups with 42, and was split into three separate races.  My seeding placed me in the middle of the second heat.  To even place in the top 8 I would need to win my heat by such a margin that I could also make up much of the seed times in the third (the fastest) heat.  I had no illusions of doing that, based on the seed times.

I arrived at the track about 10:30, just in case it did get off according to schedule.  Plan was to do a couple mile warmup and be ready to go.  When I checked in they confirmed that we would likely be delayed close to 45 minutes or more.

And then it got interesting.  Seems that we had a large number of no shows and were down to a total of 21.  Initially they were still going to run three heats.  I checked to see how many of heat 3 were there, and the magic number was 6.  That meant if I could win my heat, and no one from the first heat ran a really strong race, I had a shot at a ribbon.  Of course, the seed times are based on times in the qualifying state games, and some of those would be well off of real capabilities.

Then it turned into a real race – to make up all the time lost on the schedule they combined us into one race.  No worrying about how anyone did in another heat.  They renumbered all of us and I went from 7^th seed in heat two, to 10^th overall seed.  This was based on my state time of 6:04.87

It was hot, 85 degrees and a full sun that made it feel even warmer.  We began lining up at about 12:30 – a full hour behind schedule, and another hour standing in the hot sun.  The warm up I did at 11:15 was long since gone.  The gun went off.

I knew there would be some initial jockeying for position so I just settled into a comfortable pace along the inner edge of the track, didn’t want to waste any energy early on dodging those that went out too fast.  DW was in the stands and she kept me up on my position.

When we came up on the 300 meter mark I was in 12^th position.   That's me in the white singlet and white hat in the middle of the third pack.  I felt comfortable and was sure some of those out ahead would start coming back to me.  I passed one on the back stretch and was now in 11^th when we passed the end line.  I stayed comfortable, and decided to only pass on the straights;  and did that again on the back stretch – DW informing me I was now in 10^th for the bell lap.  That's me at the end of that group of 4 with 450 meters to go.

At this point the top 10 were essentially in three groups – a lead runner with a 30 meter lead, a pack of three, two more about 30 meters back from them, and then a group of 4 another 30 meters or so back.  I was the 4^th in that group of 4 in the 10^th spot.  (see above) Again on the back straight I made a move.  I passed one runner on the inside but was then blocked in.  The runner in front of me moved up just enough to give me an opening and I moved in front of the runner on my side (bumped him a little) and made my move;  going around the final turn I could see I had opened up about 5 meters.  I was now in 7^th, and the 6^th place was a good 20 meters ahead of me.

Now being chased instead of chasing.

I heard DW yell that someone was moving up so I picked up the pace in the final 50 to keep my 7^th place spot.

I’ve been smiling like a Cheshire cat all afternoon.  Final time was 5:53.55 – about a second faster than my previous best from more than 2 years ago.

The awards were a little bleak - I think the other winners were off cooling down  That's me on the right.

OK, pizza and beer after the meet, now resting up for my 5K tomorrow night.  Calling for rain and thunderstorms.  Oh boy.

Awesome performance!  And ugh, running in the middle of the day must have sucked.

Nice bit of racing. Do your splits reflect that you were pretty even and the others came back to you, or did you pick up the pace to run them down?

Bit of both I think.

I didn't take splits during the race but looking at the charts in Final Surge (that's what I use with my coach) it looks like my splits were:

First 300 = 1:13 (about 1:37 for 400)

2nd lap = 1:36

3rd lap = 1:35

4th lap = 1:30

Nice race! Even for a short race, that has to be tough racing in the middle of the day in the heat.

This is good stuff!  RACING!  Nice job, bluesky, and congrats on winning that ribbon!  

Best of luck on the 5K tonight.  We expect more glory.

 

Nice, looks like you still have easily another couple seconds or more in you.

Yes, and if I had it to do over again (and with the benefit of perfect 20/20 hindsight) during the second lap I would have closed the gap and moved up to the second group of runners you see in the top photo.  That's where I ended up anyway (in fact I passed one of them later).  It might not have changed my overall finish position, but it would have shaved 4 or 5 seconds off my time.

It's unfortunate that there are not enough (any) competitive type track events anywhere near me on any kind of a regular basis.  I could get into racing more of the 1500 up to 3200 on the track.

 

Yes, and if I had it to do over again (and with the benefit of perfect 20/20 hindsight) during the second lap I would have closed the gap and moved up to the second group of runners you see in the top photo.  That's where I ended up anyway (in fact I passed one of them later).  It might not have changed my overall finish position, but it would have shaved 4 or 5 seconds off my time.

 

It's unfortunate that there are not enough (any) competitive type track events anywhere near me on any kind of a regular basis.  I could get into racing more of the 1500 up to 3200 on the track.

Ditto for the road mile. It's hard to take lessons learned from one race to the next because the event itself is so few and far between.

Great job! This is super cool. It would be awesome to be able to do this kind of thing when I get to that, um, level of maturity. I have been spending my time focusing on marathons, mostly out of stubbornness, but I really enjoy racing shorter distances more. Hard for me to imagine competing at that level.

 

Yeah. I think it would be cool to try racing a mile at some point. But events that are not dog & stroller fun runs are hard to find.

Too bad I just missed this:

 

4 donut stops? lmao