I was a distance runner in HS. A lower back injury at age 10 would cause some pain if I tried to build muscle for heavy lifting, jumping, and sprinting.
So I would run the mile and 2 mile.
An L4-L5 microdiscectomy at age 46 gave me a back I hadn’t had since the injury. I soon found an exercise routine to be fun, and was easily sprinting faster than when I was a teen.
At age 54, while working out in the parking lot of a truck stop, another driver said I looked faster than his son, that was at the time, a HS sprinter. I told him: “I hate jogging, so I get the running portion of my workout over with as fast as possible.”
I considered trying the senior olympics, but never followed through.
Sprinting is fun, isn’t it? Competing against others is even better; it’s like a brief intense rush. You should run in the senior Olympics at least once just to experience it. It’s a different feeling than competing in a distance race-I was in cross country in high school as well and it wasn’t just my lack of talent in CC that made it less thrilling;-).