Charles Allie is 71 years old, and he is fast.
Advertising
Chances are, he is a much faster runner than you are — faster, in fact, than you ever were. Last year in Spain he broke his own world record in his age group for the 400 meters by more than a second. That is essentially a quarter-mile, one lap around a standard running track. He crossed the tape in 57.26 seconds.
Plenty of people, even when they are at their fastest, never come close to running 400 meters in less than a minute. Allie has been breaking one minute since he was a child. Now, he beats his competitors — the other fastest men in the world who are his age — by 30 or 40 meters.
He set the world record in the 200 meters for the over-70 group last year, too. Still not impressed? At the World Masters Athletics Championships, he dropped down an age division and won two relay gold medals with the 65-year-olds. In that division, he ran faster than just about everyone except his good friend Bill Collins, who was a top American runner in the mid-1970s.