Jess H. Brewer

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HISTORY

For a review of my running career prior to joining Kajaks, see my private T&F page. The history below starts just before I moved to Richmond and joined the Club.

• 2002: a slow year. Best 400mH time was 73.70 (ouch!) and best 400m was 62.00 on Leg 2 of 4x400m relay in 4:04 (BC M55 record). Sorry, guys! You would've done better without me.

• 2003: things can always get worse. In February I had a prostate biopsy (due to increasing PSA) that revealed cancer. For those who know what it means, it was "Gleason 7". Not good. So I opted for aggressive treatment (and also lots of "alternative" stuff - ask me about it if you want to know the details) and endured a summer of chemo and androgen ablation (read, "no testosterone" - a chance to get in touch with my feminine side and discover why feminists refel to "testosterone poisoning" - again, ask me about it if you want to know more). Moved from Vancouver to Richmond in April. Trying to stay competitive in the sprints earned my knee a torn meniscus. Chemo sucks, but it beats the alternative. I joined a study to see if a thrice-weekly weight workout at the gym helps prevent loss of muscle mass and bone density on hormone therapy (apparently Yes) so didn't entirely lose fitness. Had the prostate out on 9 Oct 2003 (that was the worst part!) and regained control of my bladder within a few months.

• 2004: no running with the bum knee until I got it fixed (orthoscopically - it was neat to watch the video!) at the end of July and got back on the track. Expanded to over 190 lb during gym-only period. Joined Kajaks and started the long climb back up to competition.

• 2005: I wonder if chemo has done permanent damage. It didn't seem to bother Lance Armstrong that much, but cycling is not sprinting. Never got under 28.72 in the 200m or 63.90 in the 400m; ran 72.80 in 400mH for a silver medal (M55) in the World Masters Games at Edmonton in July, but I had run 72.38 in June in the Pacific Invitational at Langley. Still, better than nothing.

• 2006: in Jan 2006 I turned 60, and in April (at the SFU Open in Coquitlam) I set a new Canadian M60 record of 18.12 in the 100mH (the old record was 18.8). However, the meet organizers were singularly unhelpful in getting the record recognized, and I was still trying (on my own) to get signatures from the starter and the timers in June when my record was smashed by Warren Hamill at the BC Championships in Langley. He ran 17.24 to my 18.42; all that sprint training actually made me slower. Go figure. I ran 53.00 in my first 300mH race the next day, not very impressive. The rest of the 2006 season was downhill.

• 2007: Over the winter I managed to put on 5-10 lb and get totally out of shape. Starting around February I gradually eased back into a regular schedule and worked my way back toward competition. The previous year was such a disappointment that I resolved to return to my quarter-miler training regimen (gradually) and forget that "power sprinter" stuff. It ain't me, babe. Speed is a means to an end, not an end in itself. By the end of May I still hadn't dropped that extra spare tire, engendering some sympathy for guys my age with huge "beer bellies" - maybe it's not so easy to get rid of one once it takes root. But I did manage a 53.04 for 1st in M60 300mH at the BC Championships on June 17 in Langley.

• 2008: An even slower year: 53.53 for 1st in M60 300mH at the BC Championships on June 21 in South Surrey, followed by 54.78 (still good enough to win) at the Trevor Craven (Swangard stadium) on July 6. On Sep 14 I tried my hand (or, on this case, feet) at 5 km in the Garry Point Terry Fox run - managed 24:09.00 and concluded that 5K was a lot harder than I remembered. I resolved to do it more often, to build that base back up.

• 2009: My first year of half-time teaching, so that I got to spend Jan-May in Bokeelia, Pine Island, Florida, where it was warm enough to work out regularly. No track, unfortunately, so it was all road running and weight workouts (Cape Coral had a great gym, fairly cheap). There was a more or less deserted straight stretch of road behind our house, so I did lots of spring work on asphalt; it didn't wreck my shins or knees as badly as I expected. I ran a 5K in 24:37.38s on Jan 24 in the Colusa BUG Chase at Colusa Nature Center, Ft. Myers, FL, which was good enough for 3rd in M60. And so I came back to BC in May fairly fit, and went on the do a little better than in recent years: at the Trevor Craven on July 4 & 5 I ran the M60 100mH and 300mH in 19.37 and 52.46, respectively, coming in last for gold - a depressingly common occurance lately. Then at the Canadian Master Championships in Kamloops (Jul 18 & 19) I actually got to run against other people and scored double gold again (see 1996!) with 19.36 and 51.62 in the M60 100mH and 300mH, respectively. Meanwhile for some reason I decided to try the 800m for the first time in my life, and at Hershey Harriers meets I ran 2:53.33 and later 2:45.57 which was actually less painful than my 67.43s 400m on Aug 4 (in which I pulled Andy Aadmi along for his M70 BC record of 67.47). The last Hershey Harriers meet was held at Swangard stadium on Aug 19; there I tried the triple jump for the first time since college, and managed 8.42m, which encouraged me to go again in the BC Seniors Games on Sep 17 & 18 at Minoru. There I TJ'ed 8.57m for silver (behind John Hawkins), won the M60 400m in 68.88, took silver in the 200m in 30.17s (behind John Winfield) and bronze in the 100m in 14.66, my best of the year. I had run a faster (30.11s) 200m at a Hershey Harriers meet on Jul 28, but never did break 30 in the 200m; otherwise a pretty good year!

• 2010: This year I spent Jan-Apr in the Yucatan (on the beach between Progreso and Chicxulub Puerto) and again did a lot of road running and gym workouts, but this sleepy Mexican port town had a track (clay and rocks, but flat and 400m) which is more than I can say for most places these days, so I got in a bit more sprint work and came home "almost fit". Unfortunately this meant I missed the World Indoor Championships in Kamloops in early March. :-( The BC Masters Championships in June were no great boost to my ego: 30.77s in the 200m was only good for 4th; 20.89s in the 100mH was a personal worst, another gold medal for last place; my other gold-for-last was 51.82s in the 300mH, not quite as humiliating, but... yuk!

• 2011: Got off to a good start this year thanks to the Richmond Oval letting me practice hurdles on their indoor straightaway in Jan-Mar, so I pulled off a win (for a new BC indoor M65 record of 11.02s) in the 60mH, another gold (and BC indoor record, I guess) with an embarrassing TJ of 8.32m, and one last gold in the 400m, where a ran a tactical race against the great Tony Badowski, not realizing he was just getting over the flu, so my time was a mediocre 68.35s. What the heck, I'll take it. Then I went off to Florida for 2 months to acclimate to heat, in anticipation of baking at the WMA Championships in Sacramento in July; unfortunately I had only roads to run on, so barely managed to maintain conditioning & strength. When will I learn? I did get a nice trophy for 1st Overall Senior Grand Master in the Lovers Key Turtle Trot 5K with a 24:15.50s on a course with quite a bit of soft sand. Back home, I still managed to set new (though embarrassing) BC outdoor M65 records in the 100mH (20.18s) and the 300mH (51.77s) and ran a slightly worse 200m (30.94s) than last year [hey, it was cold & rainy; everyone ran slow!]. So I was almost justified in expecting better performances in Sacramento. Here's how that went: 50.02 in the 300mH for 5th place and a new BC record; 18.90 in the 100mH for 4th and a new Canadian record; and I anchored the 4x400m relay for another 4th place and a new (but not a very impressive) Canadian record. (We'll do better later).

WEBSITE

But, hey, you probably didn't click on this item to hear this much detail about my personal exploits and travails; so let me offer something that might actually be useful to someone: A PDF file showing plots (and second-order polynomial fits) of the Age-Graded Tables for the Men's Intermediate Hurdles.

Try my Age-Graded Table Lookup utility. Just enter your event, your age and your performance and the AGT utility will calculate the equivalent performance for a 20-25 year old.

Masters T&F enthusiasts will certainly want to visit the masterstrack.com site.

Or you may want to check out my MTF site where you can (if you like) add your name to my little auxillary Masters T&F People database and/or use my Kajaks Performances database, where you can log in and enter the particulars of your performances to keep a lasting and accessible record thereof. Non-Kajaks members can use my MTF Performances database, which works the same way but is open to all MTF enthusiasts.