My Recent Athletic Endeavors While I Was On Vacation

My Recent Athletic Endeavors While I Was On Vacation

Doug Olney

I spent the July 4th holiday as I have done for the past 40 years, in Mattapoisett, Mass., where my family has a summer home.

On the 4th, I ran in Mattapoisett 5-mile Road Race for the 32nd time since 1976. (I missed running in 1977 and 2000; there is one guy who has run all 39 races). My time was 36:07, which is far off my personal best time of 26:25, but that was 28 years ago. In any event it was my 2nd-fastest time in the past 5 years. BTW, my mom, who is 74, decided to walk the race for the first time. She finished in 1:20, and ended up placing second in the 70+ age group and won a trophy!

Then this past Saturday, the 11th, I participated in Swim Buzzards Bay, a 1.2 mile open-water swim from New Bedford to Fairhaven, Mass. This event is a fund raiser for the Coalition for Buzzards Bay, a local advocacy organization dedicated to preserving the Bay and its surrounding environs. I swam the distance in 36:41, which isn't particularly speedy (the winning time was a record 20:40 and I was 79th out of 118 people), but it was my fastest time in 5 attempts by 50 seconds, and is almost 11 minutes faster than the first time I swam (the conditions that day were rather tough; this time the bay was like glass). Along with several others, I got a special award for completing the swim 5 times.

And finally today for a weekend double, I competed in the Mattapoisett Lions Club Triathlon. This a low-key sprint distance event: 1/4 mile swim, 10 mile bike and 3.5 mile run. My overall finishing time was 1:05:59, which my 2nd-fastest time in 4 attempts (the fastest was 1:03:11 in 2001). As usual I was in the back of the pack coming out of the water, but I passed some people on the bike and really gained ground during the run - mentally it helps to know that the final leg is your strongest event. I even placed 4th in my age group - this didn't get me anything however!

So even though I have graduated to a new age group, I can say that I still have something left at age 50 :-). Maybe it isn't all downhill from here....