We piled into the Volvo estate with Rhode Island plates and tore up I-95 towards Harvard University. If there's one thing guaranteed to get college athletes out of a lab assignment it's the suggestion of a road trip.
It feels like years ago now – and it is. Twenty-two years, to be exact. That hasn’t taken from the lasting impression of Eamonn Coghlan’s performance on the Harvard indoor track that afternoon. It has, in some sense, improved with age, if not in Coghlan’s mind then definitely mine.
George Bernard Shaw always said we don't stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing. Or use it or lose it, as they say in the adult entertainment business, although that message is very often lost in sport. One of the lasting barriers, it seems, is age itself. Even as those barriers continue to be broken.
Back then Coghan was 41, past his prime, some might say over the hill. But he'd set himself one last goal in his athletics career; to become the first man over the age of 40 to run a mile in under four minutes. His 3:58.15 that afternoon possibly even ranks as one of his best (he ran 75 sub-four miles in all). It lasted 18 years as the first and only sub-four mile by a man over 40, until Britain's Anthony Whiteman clocked 3:58.79, running on an outdoor track.
Only last year was Coghlan's time finally bettered, by the American Bernard Lagat.
Steady decline
The greatest certainly in any sport is that speed and endurance will decline steadily with– or indeed before – the onset of middle age. After that, sporting achievement is rarely greeted with anything other than mere curiosity, in the realm of athletic renegades raging against the dying of the light.
Why anyone would want to keep competing into old age has always been a sort of grey area (that pun well intended) and the benefits have often been questioned too.
Coghlan still sees the benefits, still credits that run in Harvard as one of the most fulfilling of his career. So he's suitably qualified to look into the lives of some of those still competing into their seventies and eighties as part of a new six-part television series, Super Fit Seniors (starting on Setanta on April 11th).
Such as Phonsie Clifford, from Limerick. Now aged 86, he only took up running in his sixties, has completed around a dozen marathons, typically winning his age group category, and shows little sign of slowing down. Likewise the cyclist, rower, weightlifter, sailor and motor racing driver Coghlan meets over the course of Super Fit Seniors.
“The one thing that really emerged was their spirit,” says Coghlan, on a time-out from his Seanad election campaign trail. “And this idea that growing old is mandatory, but growing up is optional. They all thrive on competition, not against each other, but against their own self. They found something to aim for, and that also gave them a far greater outlook on life. Even at that age they didn’t want to be just sitting around.
“But I also think it’s an inspiration to our youth, who can be a bit lethargic these days. If you’re not fit in your twenties and thirties it’s unlikely you’re going to be fit in your seventies and eighties. There’s probably an important message in there for young people too.”
The medical profession remains mostly curious about this message too, and whether masters athletics – as it is popularly known – should be actively encouraged or not, although there is fresh research to suggest Phonsie Clifford and company are doing their bodies a huge favour.
A study published in last week's Journal of Applied Physiology compared a group of masters athletes, all aged in their eighties, to a group of the general population of the same age. The athletes, according to the study, are "the crème de la crème of ageing", with about 25 per cent more leg strength, and 14 per cent more total muscle mass.
Joe Gough
None of this will come as any surprise to Joe Gough, the 63-year-old from Dungarvan, who isn’t so much extending his athletics career but turning back the clock on it, not so much embracing the ageing process but defying it. On Wednesday, Gough won the 800 metres at the European Masters Indoor Championships in Ancona, Italy, to add to his growing gold medal haul over the distance.
Last summer in Lyon he won World Championship gold, also in the over-60 category, and two years ago set a world indoor record of 2:14.06.
Not that any of this has come easy: Gough was also part of the World Indoor Championships in Portland, Oregon last month, one of just six athletes invited to take part in the masters 800m, a promotional event approved by new IAAF president Seb Coe in his quest to liven up live athletics. It certainly worked, as Gough was involved in one of the most dramatic finishes of the weekend, tumbling over the line in second place, only inches behind Britain's Ray Wilcox.
His time of 2:16.01 was impressive too, if not in Gough’s mind then definitely mine.
Ireland has so far won four other gold medals in Ancona, and what sets athletes like Gough apart is not just showing the commitment and dedication of athletes half their age, but their breaking down of that last barrier.
For a country famous for punching above its sporting weight, we’re equally able to punch below our age.
