Worlds,2011 Sacramento,An Athletes Perspective

There are still another two days of competition left at this years World Masters Athletic Championships and come Sundays closing ceremony almost 5,000 stories to tell,here's mine.
Following my breakout year in masterstrack in 07 in Orno Maine I had no inclination to go to Rincone Italy for the 07 Worlds and truth be told Lathi Finland in 09 wasn't on my radar until after my 1,500m gold in Spokane Washington the following summer.
Sadly an achilles injury that May scuppered any plans I had to go to Finland and my recovery meant by the time the 2012 Indoor Worlds came about in Kamloops British Columbia I wasn't ready either meaning that Sacramento 2011 would be my debut at masters track at world level.

As we all know by now my training and racing has been hampered this season by my diagnoses of low ferritin levels in my blood,a mild form of anemia which may take 4 to 6 months to resolve so I was always going to be less than my best heading into Worlds and while the temptation not to go was great as I hate to compete at anything less than my best I felt I owed it to myself to see what WMA was like first hand.....in that respect I wasn't disappointed.
I forget the number of countries that sent athletes to Sacramento,I'm sure when the dust settles an official figure will be published but I got a real sense of just how global World Masters Athletics was on my first day there when I went to pick up my race number and credentials and saw 2 athletes from Mongolia doing the same.....MONGOLIA!!!!!

That first day at the Sacramento State track{where last years US Masters Nationals were held} also provided me w/ my favourite moment of the games,in order to collect my race number and credentials I had to show photo id at the booth,obviously w/ so many countries competing the booths were set up by continents when I showed my photo id and gave them my name and age group I was politely informed"I'm sorry Mr Forde,the United Kingdom booth is next door"!!!!! at which point I showed the cover of my American passport and explained that even though after almost 24 years here in the states 24 years of living in south east London hadn't been somehow erased,I guess the old adage is true"you can take the man out of south east London,but you'll never take the south east London out of the man!!!!"

Despite being unable to race at my best I'm glad I went to this years Worlds,America hasn't hosted an Outdoor WMA since 85 in Buffalo and who knows when it will again,originally I had written off Porto Allege in Brazil in 2 years time but am slowly reconsidering that,I may if my 10,000m time holds up just go for a few days to run that.
I do hope very much to run in Perth in 2016,granted I'll be almost 53 in October of 2016 but age is only a number....even if it does put me smack in the middle of the 50-54 age group,I guess it's a bit like the old saying"how do you keep the kids on the farm once they've seen New York" having tasted Worlds once it's almost impossible not to want that experience again