At 79, I am starting my training for hurdles competition next year, when I will enter a new age group (M80-84) and be “the kid” again, perhaps for the last time.  As a rule, the older we get the faster we go downhill: my performances as M50-54 were actually better in an absolute sense (not age-graded) than as M45-49, but every 5 years the gradient gets steeper.  Unfortunately, the number of competitors also shrinks with age, so making smaller age groups (like M80-81) is not feasible.  So next year is a big year in my competitive career.

Given that, I was dismayed to learn that the “run-up” to the first hurdle in 80m “short hurdles” and 60m indoor hurdles will now be shortened from 12 m to 11 m.  The spacing between hurdles will also be shortened from 7m to 6m, which will be a relief, but I don’t think World Masters Athletics understands how important the “run-up” is to the rest of the race.

The crucial challenge in hurdling is to maintain one’s speed and “make one’s steps” — i.e. arrive at the next hurdle with the correct foot coming down in the correct place.  If one’s speed is inadequate, then one must either increase one’s stride length to “make” the next hurdle (thus losing still more speed due to the ineffectiveness of an excessive stride length) or shorten one’s stride length enough to add an extra step (thus losing still more speed due to the ineffectiveness of a shorter stride length).  The former is colloquially known as “long-jumping”; the latter as “chopping”.  The latter also requires hurdling with alternate legs.  Both lead to an unrecoverable loss of speed.  Neither will result in a good performance.

Therefore the most important part of the race is the “run-up” to the first hurdle, in which one must develop enough speed to “make” the second hurdle easily while still accelerating, so that one has even less difficulty “making” the third hurdle, and so on down the line.  The least important part of the race is the “run-out” after the last hurdle, which will now be increased to 25m in the 80m “short hurdles” and 27m in the 60m indoor hurdles — that’s nearly half of the entire distance!

The “run-up” will be shortened from 12m to 11m in January 2026, just in time for my first race.   For the last two decades I have been struggling to reach top speed in 12m; now I have even less room to accelerate!  If you have ever run a sprint, or even read about sprinting, you know that no sprinter ever reaches top speed in less than about 20m.  Hurdles races are therefore an exercise in accelerating over the hurdles from an inadequate initial speed to a speed that renders hurdling practicable.

Okay, perhaps that is the whole idea — perhaps hurdling is and should be a challenge to “do the impossible”.  I have taken some pride in approaching it with that attitude in the past, and I suppose I will do so again next year.  However, you may… no, you will find that the number of M80-84 competitors willing to take on that extremely risky challenge may be dramatically reduced from the number who would gladly compete in the short hurdles if you raised the “run-up” distance by a few meters “stolen” from the pointless 25-27m “run-out”.   I personally would like to see a 16m “run-up”, but I’ll take whatever I can get!

World Masters Athletics isnot very interested in the opinions or arguments of individual athletes, so if you agree with me you will need to ask your local athletic competition-governing body to consider passing this idea “up the chain” so that it might someday attract the attention of WMA.

— Jess H. Brewer, 04 Mar 2025