Another year, another age group.

There is a subset of marathoners who embrace aging.  This group is composed of Boston hopefuls – runners who are close to qualifying, but still need to shave a few annoying minutes from their finish time.  Starting at age 35, when you celebrate a decade or half decade birthday you may receive the greatest gift of all: The Boston Bump.  That’s an extra 5 to 15 minutes added to your qualifying times. 

I haven’t reached the bump yet, but that new age box is watching me from the not so distant future.  I am rebelling against this future age adjustment.  Not because I don’t support the age-graded qualifying standards (I do), but because I’m delusional and I think I’m ten years younger than I actually am.  When someone asks me my age it takes me several long seconds to respond because my instinctual reply is not equal to my true age.  There have been times when I actually had to subtract my birth year from the current year in order to generate an answer.  Mentally, I’m light years away from the age bump.  In my mind I can hold my own against the 18 year olds.  In my more lucid moments, the desire to beat those darn whippersnappers gets my tired old legs moving.  Plus, according to realage.com, I’m a 22.7 year old whippersnapper myself.  I think I’d still be a teenager if I got a dog, gained weight, and didn’t have such an aversion to vitamins (I prefer to get my nutrients from food, but real age doesn’t give you age points for that – pills over produce). 

I have developed my own (not empirically tested) theory on marathons and aging.  Many studies have shown that physical activity (like training for and running a marathon) slows down the physiological and psychological aging processes.  Crossing that finish line is like dipping your toes in the fountain of youth.  A Gatorade filled fountain of youth.  I propose that for every marathon you properly train for and run (special emphasis on the training) you can subtract one year from your chronological age.  So, if you are 42 with five marathons under your feet, Happy 37th Birthday!