Nancy Simmons can be proud that in 2024 and at 65 years old she not only ran her first regional track event ever, winning both events that she competed in, but that she also took home a silver medal at her first international track meet.
In June, the Tiburon resident ran in the Bay Area Senior Games to get one track race, her first, under her belt before competing on the national and world circuits for the experience. She had registered for the World Masters Athletic Championship event scheduled for August in Sweden, so any track racing she could run prior to that event was a bonus.
Fortunately, prior to the Worlds, Simmons was also able to compete close to home at the USA Track and Field (USATF) Masters Outdoor Championships held in July in Sacramento, where she won both the 5,000- and the 1,500-meter events. Next up was the Worlds in Gothenburg, Sweden.
“The Opening Ceremonies for the Worlds were on August 12 and racing went through to August 25 with some 8,000 athletes from 114 countries in three different venues, it was huge!” Simmons enthused. “I raced in the 5,000 and came in fourth, then I got the silver medal in the 1,500 so I was super excited.”
As a senior athlete Simmons is not only winning almost everything she enters, but she is doing so with impressive times. At the Worlds she ran the 5,000 in 21:09 minutes (a 6:48-per-mile pace) and at the Sacramento 5,000 event she ran the distance in 21:00 minutes (a 6:46-per-milepace). Her time at the Worlds in the 1,500 was 5:38 minutes, losing out to first by just three seconds. Equally as inspiring as her fast pace is that she took up running later in life.
“I got divorced in my early 50s and I needed to reinvent myself, find things I wanted to do, and have a new social circle,” Simmons said. “I had always been a jogger but the people I met running became some of my closest friends. The miles you spend running with people is such uninterrupted beautiful time; the conversations play all the way out with no distractions and a natural flow to the conversation, so I gravitated toward running for a lot of different reasons.”
Looking back, Simmons noted that once you start a new sport, you don’t know what you don’t know.
“When I went out to the track for the first time, I didn’t know that the track was 400 meters, it was completely new to me,” Simmons laughed. “I didn’t even know what shoes to wear for different races!”
But once she engaged in competitive running – initially on trails – Simmons started winning. In 2012, she won the runners’ section the first time she raced the Dipsea which qualified her for the Dipsea invitational section in 2013 when she won a black shirt. But, as she explains, the strategy running track is very different from the strategy on trails.
“Track is a completely different kind of running,” Simmons said. “After doing a lot of trail races I started running road events, but I couldn’t figure out the strategy for track running until I was exposed to it. My training was adjusted from longer races on trails or road to shorter faster track workouts – I do a track workout every Tuesday morning and instead of 1,200s, I do a lot more 800, 600, 400s – shorter distances.”
Simmons had a three-four-month preparation schedule leading up to the Worlds including the local events she ran in June and July. She incorporated strength work, mobility and stretching, and plyometrics, which has universally become a core method for improving running speed and is getting more attention amongst runners, focusing on increasing power and explosive movement by incorporating jumps, hops, bounds and skipping into a session.
“Nutrition, sleep, taking rest days, and working on my head-game preparation, which is a scary thing, were also key components of my preparation,” Simmons explained. “I wanted to run my best in Sweden to see how I would do racing with the best of the best. I wasn’t going to cut 15 seconds out of a race anywhere, but I was going to find one second in a lot of places – all those little aspects of training are important.”
Local runner and coach Tim Fitzpatrick, who through the sport has become a good friend of Simmons, cites the benefits of training with a dedicated community.
“Marin is a competitive running environment and great training ground to prepare for national and international events because there are a lot of super fit age-group runners,” he said. “For Nancy to be running within a community that is 100% supportive has been really helpful,” Fitzpatrick said. “She is super talented with a great work ethic and will do whatever it takes.”
Continuing to run competitively as one gets older is knowing how and when to pace oneself, Simmons noted, adding with good humor that sometimes giving in to the age factor just has to happen, “I think we all want to train up to the line and not cross it and get injured, and that line keeps moving as I get older so I’ve had to make a decision to be a little conservative and maybe give up some time in a race to make sure I did get to the start line, that I didn’t over train – the priority is to get to the start line!”
Running has become a personal journey for Simmons, just to see how good she could become, which is what makes it fun and interesting for her.
“I love learning about all these different pieces of running which is why I switched from trail to road to track,” Simmons commented. “Sure, I like to win but I like to run a great race and know the course in my head or know the competitors so of course I was going to figure out track racing – it’s the way I roll.”
