On Track For a Successful Summer

Sunday I raced my final track meet of the season, and it was a blast.

Back in July, I raced my first masters track meet at CU Boulder since my failed comeback attempt last year. I beat my target times in the 100m, 200m, and 400m, and, most importantly, didn’t get injured! I returned after two weeks of sprint training and improved on those times while winning a gold and two silvers at the Colorado Masters Track & Field Championships. Then, Sunday, there was a final meet of the season. There I raced only the 100m and 200m, and improved my times further.

Results

My records this outdoor track season are:

• 100m – 14.29s
• 200m – 30.43s
• 400m – 1:13.9

Looking Back

Those aren’t particularly impressive, but they have me feeling good after not much training. I can compare them to PR times of my past:

• 100m – 13.2s (2014)
• 200m – 27.7s (2014)
• 400m – 1:03 (2015)

However, that doesn’t seem like a fair comparison, looking back 10+ years – before kids, before spinal surgery, and 20 kg (50 lbs) lighter. There is a way to normalize results by age, though, called age grading (AG), and so that is a more useful way to measure whether I have been improving, falling, or holding steady:

Event	2014	AG	2015	AG	2018	AG	2019	AG	2025	AG
100m	13.2s	72.58	13.7s	70.39	13.7s	71.81	13.9s	71.28	14.29	72.19
200m	27.7s	70.73	28.5s	69.20	29.4s	68.39	28.6s	70.76	30.43	69.13
400m	64s	68.43	63s	69.97	65.5s	68.57	65.2s	69.43	73.9s	63.64

It’s neat to see that my 100m sprint has remained relatively steady. My 200m has slipped a bit, and my 400m has slipped a lot. That feels right to me, as I can feel my form breaking down toward the end of the longer sprints. The good news is that sprint endurance is trainable – I just haven’t been training it for the past five years!

Looking Across

Another lens through which to analyze my performances is how they compare to my age group peers. In 2014, I was ranked #375 (out of 532) in the world and #61 (out of 120) in the US for the 400m, so in the middle of the pack. I didn’t have rankings for the 100m and 200m, because they weren’t electronically timed. By 2019, my time was a little slower, but I was in a similar position – #39 (out of 63) in my new 40-44 age group.

This season I finished #39 (out of 42) in the US in my new 45-49 age group in the 400m, #48 (out of 52) in the 200m, and #54 (out of 61) in the 100m, so near the bottom of the field. That’s to be expected, coming out of five years of not training/competing for track. I’m back now, though, and I look forward to getting back in better competition form before next season.

Final Thoughts

A few more interesting take-aways from these few 2025 track meets:

• In the Colorado Masters Track & Field Championships, the same guy beat me in the 100m and 200m. He likely would have beaten me in the 400m, too, but he scratched out of it, so I won the gold. As I get older, half the game is just showing up. As the saying goes, “You can’t win it if you ain’t in it.”
• In one of my 100m races, I recorded peak power output of 850W! If I can drop some weight while maintaining that same power output, that will substantially increase my speed.
• ChatGPT analyzed my Garmin data and estimated that I ran my first 40 yards of my 100m race in 5.6s. That’s a lot slower than the 4.9s I ran in high school and the 4.7s I ran in college, but it’s a lot faster than the 6.0s I ran a few weeks ago before shifting into track gear. I’m encouraged by the improvement!