Found this article amusing & self reflective in attitude. I've never won a trophy but that's the
goal every raceday for me. I only hope I "place" before I reach my 70's for crissakes. Heck I hope
to live to be 74, let alone run and race.
Thu, Sep. 25, 2003 Fire-in-the-belly competitor, 74, runs to win Silas Lyons The Tribune
SANTA MARGARITA - Just to be contrary, someone should make Don Dunn the spokesman for
senior fitness.
Once and for all, we could dispense with the platitudes and condescension and get right down to
sweat and grit.
He'd be a welcome relief from the pablum about "older adult athletes" -- the last people it's still
OK to patronize, if you read news stories and listen to advocacy groups.
You can save your "Everybody Wins" T-shirt for somebody else.
Dunn, a 74-year-old retired teacher whose gravelly voice frequently shoots to a crescendo for no
apparent reason, spends more time at the gym than Arnold Schwarzenegger (especially these days).
I first met him last summer when I volunteered as announcer for Pismo Beach's Stride with the Tide
run, which has 5K and 10K races. (Full disclosure: My wife is the event's coordinator.)
Dunn was fired up about beating Bill Denneen, the well-known environmentalist from Nipomo who on
that particular morning was the only other male 5K racer in the 70-plus category.
It was because of Dunn and Denneen's complaints to the city a year before that there was even a
70-plus category at all. But that didn't make them compadres -- Denneen had protested the old
65-plus category with a sandwich board sign, and Dunn didn't like his approach.
The idea of a rivalry between these two men piqued my interest, and it helped when I heard that Dunn
and his wife enjoy drives on the beach in their 2000 Ford Explorer. Getting vehicles off the sand is
one of Denneen's dearest causes.
But it turns out the rivalry was all on Don Dunn's side. Denneen later told me he'd walked much of
the course.
In characteristic style, Dunn took the race very seriously, training for weeks with runs on the
beach and on the gym treadmill, shaving minutes off his miles.
He won it, by a generous margin.
And because he's not a cliche, Dunn didn't soft-pedal his win.
"I beat 'im!" he hollered, when I called to ask about it. "He's an environmentalist, you know?"
Another great reason to make Don Dunn a spokesman is that he doesn't need a microphone.
"I don't do it for fun," he told me recently, voice already on its way up. "When I enter a race, I
want to place!"
We were sitting in his closet-sized media room that opens into the garage, and a selection of his
running medals was spread out for my inspection on the table between our recliners.
He was dressed in a bright red shirt and denim-style shorts made of polyester that hung past his
knees. He wore running shoes and turquoise-rimmed glasses.
Dunn, a competitive athlete in high school and college, picked up running again at age 48 because "I
was weighing too much."
"The old competitive spirit came back," he said.
You've got to love a spokesman with good sound bites, and Dunn's got those, too:
"I jog for fun. But I run for the trophies."