In his first race of the season 93-year-old super veteran runner Hiroo Tanaka showed that he still has what it takes. Tanaka lined up in three events at the Prefectural Sports and Recreation Festival in Aomori. Tanaka trains four days a week most of the time, but this was his first race since November, 2023, an almost 8-month blank. "I'm not confident at all. Especially about the 400 m," he said pre-race. "I'll be trying to break 1:50."
But once the starting gun fired, Tanaka's sheer momentum couldn't be stopped. "I just focused on getting to the finish line without worrying about time," he said afterward. "I got there just before I was about to collapse." Despite not thinking about the pace he was running, Tanaka easily cleared his 1:50 goal with a stellar 1:43.02. Other runners gathered round to congratulation the legend of masters athletics. "Thank God it's over, thank God we're done," he said. "400 m is hard."
After the 400 m Tanaka also ran in the 100 m and 200 m. Although he plans to skip national and international-level competition this year and instead focus on prefectural meets, his performances in Aomori demonstrated that he's in good shape. "Instead of racing in hard competitions like I used to, I'm focusing more on my age and physical condition and aim to keep my mental and physical strength up for another year and a half," he said. That will be enough to give him a realistic shot at his long-term goal of breaking world records at age 95.
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translated by Brett Larner
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