Books by Hal Higdon 

Introduction: MOTIVATION We Define Our Own Goals and Levels of Success

IN 1977, I TRAVELED TO GOTHENBURG, SWEDEN to compete in the World Masters Championships, a track and field meet for older athletes. I ran well, winning the 3,000 meter steeplechase and setting a world record for my age group: M45. I also placed third in the marathon and fourth in cross-country. But the hero of the championships was Duncan MacLean of Scotland, who won the 100 meters in what was then the oldest age group: M80.

MacLean's time of 21.27 was not what grabbed everybody's attention; it was his age. The Scot actually was 91 years old! Although even older participants would appear at future Championships (a 100-year-old runner competed in Australia in 2001), McLean was the oldest at the time and also was ahead of his time. What impressed me about MacLean, who once had worked as an understudy for the famous singer, Sir Harry Lauder, was not his age, but his youth!

He looked young--not so much on the track, but away from the track. One evening during the Championships, my wife Rose and I visited Liseberg, an outdoor amusement park, and spotted MacLean walking with Australian Cliff Bould, an M65 competitor. They hardly seemed like geriatrics. They strode through the park with a vigor that belied their age. They moved young--and that's something you can't fake. Coloring your hair and removing the bags under your eyes with plastic surgery may give you a surface look of youth, but if you fail to pay attention to what's beneath the surface--your physical fitness--you'll give your age away as soon as you move.

As I continued to compete as a masters runner through the next three decades, I used Duncan MacLean as one of my role models. I wanted to be able to move with the same fluidity and still be able to compete when and if I reached his age.

Moving Young

That probably is part of your motivation too as a masters runner, whether or not you might express it in those precise words. And although you may or may not yet have a Duncan MacLean to serve as a role model, physical fitness certainly ranks high on your list of reasons why you run or compete as an athlete. I can say this with some certainty, having surveyed a broad group of masters runners regarding why they ran. In a questionnaire printed both in National Masters News and on my Web site, I asked the question: "What is most important to you about running?" The questionnaire suggested eight reasons, including the opportunity to provide your own reason.

Among the approximately 500 who responded, nearly everybody (93 percent) chose physical fitness as an important goal. Other categories that respondents considered important were relaxation, camaraderie and looking good. Only a few (2 percent) were motivated by setting world, national or other records, but nearly two-thirds of respondents (63 percent) cited setting Personal Records as important to them.

Regardless of your reason for purchasing Masters Running, I can help you reach your own personal goals. This book is the result of more than a year's intense research and writing, but it might more properly be called the result of a lifetime's pursuit of physical fitness and my own personal love of running as a sport.

Unlike many masters athletes who embraced running as a sport in their thirties--or even in their sixties--I began young. I went out for track my second year in high school for the single purpose of winning a letter. I continued running through and after college, because I realized I was good at it. My peak came at the 1964 Boston Marathon. Despite finishing in fifth place, the first American, I cried, knowing that I probably would never again muster the effort and energy to equal that performance. Time to retire, I thought.

That was 1964. I was 32 years old. I didn't realize that a lifetime of competitive athletics lay ahead of me. The American long distance running scene at that time was the province of a few hundred dedicated runners, who showed up each year at Boston to test their mettle against the world's best marathoners. Few road races existed outside New England. Few track meets existed for any but student athletes. Within a year after my fast run at Boston, I cut back on my training, content to continue in the sport at a lowered level of expectation.

At about the same time, a San Diego attorney named David H. R. Pain switched from handball to jogging and thought it might be fun to organize a "Masters Mile" for the few others his age that he spotted running in Balboa Park. He talked Ken Land, a California promoter, into adding a mile for runners over 40 at a local track meet. The year was 1966. The masters movement had begun! In 1971, having just turned 40, I ran the 10,000 meters and marathon at the first National A.A.U. Masters Track & Field Championships, limited to athletes over that age. So started my second running career.

The Key to Continuing

That career continues today, but like the respondents to my questionnaire, I would definitely check physical fitness as the most important reason for continuing into my seventies as at least a somewhat competitive athlete. Personal Records? Every time I move into a new five-year age group, I can set Personal Records for that age group. Or set single-year age PRs, for that matter. We define our own goals and levels of success. Although I have won four gold medals in world competition, winning another one hardly seems as important to me now. But I both define and refine my goals from year to year, sometimes from month to month. Another World Masters Championships approaches as I write these words, and with a bit more motivation and some additional training, I might not do too badly. Last year, I was ranked ninth in the world in my main event (the steeplechase), and I know I can do better than that.

It is the intent and purpose of Masters Running to make you a better runner. In the pages that follow, I will discuss the running lifestyle and its importance for longevity and overall good health, describing research by doctors such as Ralph S. Paffenbarger, Jr., M.D. and Kenneth H. Cooper, M.D. that suggests that by exercising regularly, we can increase our lifespan from six to nine years and improve the quality of that life. I will describe longitudinal research by exercise scientists such as Michael L. Pollock, Ph.D. and David L. Costill, Ph.D., who followed the careers of not only elite, but non-elite, runners over a period of decades, tracking what health habits allow them to succeed, or cause them to fail. You will learn how to blend rest and recovery with tough training. All the experts suggest that the best way to improve is to add speedwork to your training, but as a masters athlete, should you do it?

And if you cross-train, what are the best alternative activities-from cycling to swimming to walking to pumping iron in the gym-that will make you not only a better competitor, but also a healthier individual? We'll also look into the effect of nutrition on performance and how to both prevent and heal the most common injuries plaguing masters runners. I'll offer examples and anecdotes from my own running career and also from the careers of other masters runners. Finally, both at the end of this book and along the way, I'll be offering tips and training schedules for masters runners, men and women. Our needs do differ from those of younger runners.

This is not the first book I have written for older athletes. In 1977, at the start of the first running boom, I wrote Fitness After Forty, which landed me an interview on the Today Show and became a minor best-seller. It was aimed at a somewhat more general audience than a smaller book I wrote later in 1990: Masters Running Guide. Published by National Masters News, that second book was aimed at a much more specialized audience, those who mostly competed in masters track & field. So much has happened in the sport of running and in the area of longevity since the publication of those first two books that when Rodale Press asked me if I would like to write an entirely new book aimed at the increasing number of older runners, men and women, interested in improving performance and maintaining good health, I was quick to say yes.

This, then, is Masters Running. I know it will help you achieve your goal, whether that goal is succeeding in competition or living as long (and as well) as Duncan MacLean.

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