Last week I wrote about a new challenge I’ve set myself – to maintain my times for various distances to within twice the current world record. In other words, for my times to be less than 100% in excess of the world record. To track this challenge, I’m going to record all my best times each year and graph them like below.

This shows my all-time PBs from the past (blue line), my PBs at the age of 60 (grey line), and my current PBs so far at the age of 62 (yellow line – these will improve over the course of this year). They are represented as percentages above the current world record for each distance – 100m, 400m, 1K, 3K, 5K, and 10K. I haven’t run a 10K time trial so far this year, so the yellow line doesn’t extend further than 5K yet.

Some interesting points – my younger times were best for the shorter distances, with the best result being for 100 metres. I was a sprinter in those days. However, my 100m and 400m times for 60 years+ are my worst distances, with 1K being best. This shows how I’ve transformed myself from a sprinter into more of a long distance runner, simply by running lots of long distance and running virtually no sprints.

The good thing is, I’m below the 100% level (that is, twice the world record) for all distances. The question is, how long will I be able to maintain that? Age 65? Age 70? Older? Let’s see how it pans out over the coming years.