Preamble . . .

Distance accomplishments come to those who mature into them. Thus, it should surprise no one that the longer the distance raced, the more mature the successful practitioner. It’s almost a dictate of nature. A toddler intent on taking its first steps doesn’t actually take steps. The kid launches itself across the room from the launch-pad parent to the recovery/catch parent at a sprint. At the other end of the spectrum, a 110-year-old codger is asked how he lived to be more than a century of age. “I paced myself,” he says.

World-class marathoners are into their mid-30s before they really peak. Carlos Lopes was 39 when he won the 1984 Olympic Marathon. In ultramarathoning, the success of the mature runner is even more pronounced. During 1996, several handfuls of 50-plus-year-olds won ultra races outright.

And while young women in the 20- to 35-year-old age group are invigorating the sport of marathoning, the median age of marathoners continues to creep up. The 1997 New York City Marathon featured 30,427 finishers and a median age of 38. Distance running is one of the only sports in the world where you aren’t sent out to pasture as you age—you’re merely sent up to a longer, more outrageous distance.

M&B’s special section takes a long, varied look at people who have been going long in more than one sense. From Timothy Martin’s essay written on the eve of his turning 40 to Roger Robinson’s memories of the best-of-breed among masters marathoners, from Keith Williams’s scientific examination of how aging affects distance running to Bill Childs’s personal examination of age-grading racing performances, from world-record-holder John Keston’s unique experiences at the front of the pack at the Turin Marathon to Jeff Hagen’s review of why older runners do better the longer they live and the longer they run—there’s plenty of proof positive that if you keep on running, some of your best years are yet to come, and occasionally they can be downright gold-plated.