Back in my very first post I said, “There’s more to life than Parkinson’s.” My symptoms are currently in what I’d consider the moderate range – mainly gait- and balance-related issues. But I can still get around pretty well, and I still have enough energy to explore other interests. So, from time to time I’ll drop a “rabbit hole,” a non-PD post, as a change of pace. Here’s my first (not counting the one I wrote about my Covid experience, written last month while in the feverish grip of the virus…).

To paraphrase (and mangle) the British poet Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892), “In the Spring (a young) an old man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of (love) tossing cannonballs.” Yes, that’s right: this coming Sunday, June 4th, will mark my return to senior shot-putting — after a five-year absence — at the Sonoma Wine Country Games in Santa Rosa, California.*

As I mentioned in my “About Me” post, in 2013 I ranked in the top 50 worldwide in the 60-to-64 year age group. This was helped in large measure by the fact that 99+% of guys my age grew up and quit shot-putting a long time ago. But still…

Senior track and field is a hoot. As you’ll see if you ever attend a meet, there’s all kinds of emeritus-athlete stuff going on. It starts early in the morning: you’ll see gray-hairs (and no-hairs) stretching, jogging, throwing heavy things, warming up for the pole vault, doing run-throughs in the long jump pit. Old friends gather in the stands over coffee and stopwatches. Complaints of sore joints and pulled muscles are met with knowing laughter. I love this stuff.

I’m not expecting too much from myself this year. I don’t like to make pre-meet excuses, but hey, here they are: My training schedule, laid out with such precision in early March, has been sabotaged by two rounds of Covid, Achilles tendonitis, a family medical emergency, the ravages of age, and, well…Parkinson’s. I’ve only been able to throw the shot twenty times or so, and my coordination and timing are way off. So, if I drop the shot on my foot and break it (the foot, not the shot), you’ll know why.

Okay! Enough with the moaning! I’ll post updates as the track season progresses (or doesn’t…)

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*The reason for the five-year hiatus is pretty simple: you hit a new age group every 5 years. I turned 70 this year, meaning in June I’ll be among the youngest competitors in the 70-to-74-year-old group. One thing that senior track teaches you is that it’s good to be “young” – almost all the records are set by athletes in the first year of an age group, before the march of time marches right over you. I competed at 60 and again at 65; not wishing to witness my own interim deterioration, I took a five-year snooze both times before coming back. I’ll probably do that again once this track season is done, resurfacing (hopefully – knocking on wood as I write this) as a boyish 75-year-old.