No longer a kid, Bill Iffrig has started making concessions to age.
He is, after all, 72 years old, and for that reason he is done with marathons, those 26.2-mile endurance feats that are grueling even for youngsters in their 30s and 40s. Races of 5 kilometers (3.1 miles), 10 kilometers (6.2) and half-marathons (13.1) are more his thing.
Other than that, Iffrig is still plugging along with a training regimen and race times that would be the envy of many in his sport, regardless of age.
Give up running altogether? Fat chance.
“It’s not easy to keep running,” admitted Iffrig, a 1953 graduate of Everett High School and a lifetime Everett resident. “There are days you don’t feel like getting out there, especially when it might be cold or windy or raining a little bit. Sometimes you have to kick yourself in the rear end to get out the front door. But once you get out and get going, then you’re fine.
“My philosophy has been, ‘Don’t stop doing something.’ Because once you stop doing something, then you stop doing this and you stop doing that, and pretty soon you’re not doing anything. Once you stop, it’s going to get harder and harder to start doing something again. So I try to keep going.”
Iffrig usually runs three or four days and roughly 25 miles a week. One of those days is a long run of 10 to 12 miles. Another day might include speed work on a high school track. He sometimes runs with friends, other times by himself.
He runs for his health and he runs to compete, and on both counts he excels. Iffrig is extremely fit for a man his age – heck, he’s fit for a man of any age – and he competes at the highest levels of running.
This past fall, he raced at the USA Track and Field cross country national championships in San Francisco and he dominated his age group, winning the masters men 70-74 division with a time of 44 minutes, 48 seconds in the 10-kilometer event. The next closest runner was nearly four minutes back.
The past three years, Iffrig has also placed first for his age group at both the Vancouver (B.C.) Sun Run and Spokane’s Bloomsday Run, both very popular races with many thousands of runners.
“I’m pretty competitive,” he said, “and since I started racing more I found out I can be pretty good. So I’m out there to beat anybody I can, in any age bracket. And since I turned 60, I’ve been cleaning up. It’s really been fun.”
As a boy, he added, “I was never a great athlete or anything, so this has been nice.”
Iffrig, a retired mason worker at Kimberley-Clark pulp mill in Everett, started running back in the late 1970s mostly as a way to train for another of his passions, mountain climbing. There are, he said, about 100 peaks in Washington of 8,000 feet or higher, and he has climbed about two-thirds of them, including three summits of Mount Rainier by three different routes. He has also climbed Alaska’s Mount McKinley, the highest peak in North America.
In recent years, Iffrig has tapered his climbing a bit, but not his running. He keeps a running log, and in his lifetime he has totaled somewhere around 40,000 miles.
He competes with the Snohomish Track Club, and at the San Francisco race the Snohomish TC team of Iffrig, David Pitkethly of Bellevue (70) and Ben Grevstad of Lake Forest Park (72) won the three-man team title in the 70+ age group.
As he continues to win races, Iffrig is also winning fans.
“When I finish a race,” he said, “there might be a guy who comes up to me and says, ‘I really admire you, you’re doing great, you’re an inspiration to us.’ It used to surprise me they’d be willing to come forward and say that, but I hear it a lot and it makes me feel good.”
To run as long and as well as Iffrig takes dedication, of course, but also good health. In this, he has been blessed. His knees, in particular, are good, “and that’s been amazing,” he said. Otherwise, he added, “I don’t have any problems at all.”
And as long as that continues, Iffrig figures to keep running.
“Sometimes I actually feel kind of foolish,” he said with a smile. “I mean, a guy my age, still out there running around. I don’t know what the neighbors think.
“A few years ago I was thinking, ‘Maybe when I get to 70, I’ll hang it up.’ But right now I’m having so much fun, so why would I quit? As long as I’m still enjoying it and am able to do it, I guess I’ll keep it up.”
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