Excuse the delay

Excuses! Excuses! No, reasons let’s say, not excuses, reasons for losing the plot these last few weeks. And my apologies for it.

Reason 1: Holiday time, most of my dear old readers have been on holiday, I even met some while I was away!
Reason 2: AthleticsA. I went up to the British Track and Field Championships and came away with the gold – must have been the 35th year in a row. You’ll see on this page a photo of the one year at Blackpool when I nearly slipped up.
Reason 3: AthleticsB. The World Championships at Osaka. A week and a bit eyeballs out.
Reason 4: AthleticsC. Grandson Carlos - I had to cheer him on. He has been doing magnificently in his running - he just came first in his trials, which puts him number one on his new University of Arizona team. This is the big time! Well, almost. His coach, Coach James Li, was in Osaka coaching the US team in the world championships, and is also one of the US's Olympic marathon coaches. (Bernard Lagat won the 1500 and 5000 at the Worlds. He's coached by Li, Carlos's new coach!) Also, Carlos's other coach, Harvey, used to coach Mitch Silverstein, a top veteran runner.
Reason 5: Was at the unveiling of Mandela’s statue outside Parliament. A marvellously stirring day, especially for those of us who’d been in on the long years of battling apartheid.
Reason 6: And any other reason, to quote from the ancient rhyme: “Five reasons be there why to drink: good wine, or being dry, or lest one might be by and by – or any other reason why.”

So, to catch up with current matters. One thinks how much one has let slip by in that time. No one can stop the march of Time - none can so much as slow it down, none can even understand the workings of its machinery to discover where they might throw a spanner in. It goes marching along at its own steady cadence, as disciplined and determined as a regiment of soldiers... crunch-crunch, crunch-crunch, trampling over the lives of man and dog. In human society it acts as a travelator, carrying us on our journeys to Heaven knows where. But here we go back in time, to tell the history of what I like to call the Oldenballs movement.

It begins with the formation of the World Veterans Athletic Federation in the 1970s, the first effort to get the older generation in the sports picture, properly on the map. Papa Time will forgive me for being so pedestrian about all this, for he will remember that not a hundred years ago runners were known as pedestrians. But I was in at the beginning of the vets movement, after its false pre-war start in 1931, when we were very young, and soon to devote our lives to winning that war (myself in the Royal Navy). I can relate all that happened since its re-formation in 1946, still the first veteran club in the world. I myself get involved in 1972, just returned from the Munich Olympics. Already into my Fifties I was a mere spectator there. I came back wishing so hard that I could again be a competitor, a useful sprinter as I’d been at school. I could still challenge my grown-up son, Jeremy, himself something of an athlete.

Then I discovered from a story in the Readers’ Digest that an Over 40s movement did exist and its first informal international was a week away! I trained so hard that I came to the start line at Crystal Palace with muscles very sore, went at it too hard without enough training – no medals. At least I was able to connect with the British group, the Veterans Athletic Club and join them. What’s more I met the famous Tartan Flash, 87-year-old Duncan MaClean. I am going for his record next year, when I reach 87. Anyway I then got my regular competition – around Britain, in Europe and internationally and became a founder member of the World Vets and duly Chairman of the British Association. Met hundreds of fellow competitors world-wide, learned why sprinters are more vulnerable to heart attacks, and made friends with Jack Fitzgerald, now like me in his 80s and still hardly missing a week without running a marathon – has done over a thousand and can tell you the story of every one of them.

My next blog will go on with this history and will also explain how an osteopath has recently changed my life.

	Author:	Sylvester Stein (Sylvester Stein's profile, Sylvester Stein's blog)
	Posted On:	Sunday, 9th September '07, 1:00am
	Tags:	Running, Sprinting and Veterans
	Comments:	0 comments, go to comments