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: So far (as of 11 Feb) I have managed to put on 5-10 lb and get totally out of shape. Today I couldn't run my way out of a wet paper bag, but I am starting to get back into a regular schedule and working my way back toward competition, slowly but surely. Last year was such a disappointment that I have resolved to return to my quarter-miler training regimen (gradually) and forget this "power sprinter" stuff. It ain't me, babe. Speed is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Update, 27 May: still haven't dropped that extra spare tire; I'm beginning to have more 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 my times seem to be dropping despite a general low fitness level, so I have fantasies of being in reasonable shape by the Canadian & US Championships in July & August.

More later on 2007 . . .

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 PostScript 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 use my MTF Performances database, where you can type in your age, event and time (and optionally your name, the date, the meet, the conditions and some comments) if you want a record kept of your performances - this has interesting possibilities as a statistics-gathering tool....