A 'Dude' Came Back To Track His Way

No longer "just a dude", Brent Cushenbery is back racing for all the right reasons: his health, his friends, and the love of the Masters track community. Photo by Blake Wood.

By Ray Glier
 
Five years ago, in a moment of self-awareness and self-scrutiny, Brent Cushenbery, 65, schemed a return to competitive track & field….with conditions.

It was 2020 and a friend showed Brent a video of the 8k run Cushenbery had just finished. Overweight and out of shape, Brent shuffled across the finish line. Once a NCAA Division I cross country runner, and ultra runner in his 40s, Cushenbery felt ashamed that he had to walk a few yards during the race, strained to climb an "itty bitty hill" and finished ahead of just two runners.

“It was pathetic, I thought I was going to have a flippin’ heart attack,” Brent said. “An old, fat man shuffling along. I was just a dude, not a runner. It woke me up.”

He was 60 years old and Cushenbery vowed to get in shape.

And then he said this to himself. 

“Forget about everything you were as a child or as a youngster because you're not a youngster anymore, you are not that great athlete anymore. Don’t compare yourself to what you did as a kid.”

This thought was key to everything because without it, Brent might have tried a comeback based on what he did as a college athlete and become frustrated. That never turns out well. It’s a bridge that collapses on many athletes who try and get back to their former glory when they age into Masters track. 

When Cushenbery runs the 60-meter hurdles and 3000-meter run next week in the USA Track & Field Masters Indoor Championships in Gainesville, Fla., he will be ok with a middle of the pack finish in the 3000. Brent could be out of medal contention in the hurdles and that is fine, too.

He will follow the advice he would give others whose ego is a barrier to enjoying the sport in their 60s.

“I would tell them they gotta give themselves a chance to come back,” he said, “meaning you gotta forget anything you've ever done in the past, and you just have to slowly come back.”

The lack of introversion is why Masters track is missing some competitors. Some runners and throwers say “Golf is enough exercise” and that is a legitimate reason to not come back, or pick up the sport for the first time. Plenty of others don’t want to come back because they do not want to be a shell of their former selves. 

Cushenbery wanted to come back a lean, mean, fighting machine…and accept what came.

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Here is just a little of his story in 3 more minutes of read time.
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Brent gave up running in his 50s to pour himself into his career as a school superintendent in northern California. As obsessive compulsive as he was as a runner, he was equally obsessive compulsive as a boss of schools.

“I literally had done everything in running and I kind of lost my spark,” Cushenberry said about why he dropped out of track. “And so I spent long hours in management, and was just into my career and my staff, totally.

“If you would have asked me who was in the Olympics and who was the world's best, or America’s best distance runners, I could not even have told you. I mean, I completely left it behind and didn't look back.”

Brent retired from his school job at 58 and took over the family’s commercial fishing business trolling for salmon up and down the Pacific coast from California to Washington. His weight hit 165 pounds. He had a slightly bulging stomach.

Fisherman Brent before he got back into shape.

Then Mike Lebold, a college teammate at UC-Santa Barbara and still a friend, coaxed Brent into that 8k team event at Balboa Park in San Diego.

“Do the bare minimum, just finish the race for my team,” Lebold told Cushenbery.

Brent finished. He beat only two runners. Then came the despair and then the defiance and then the vow to get in racing shape.

“I didn't try and get it back all at once. To start with all I did was a 10-mile loop. I did it every other day,” Cushenbery said. “I'd run one day, 10 miles, take the next day off, completely off. I did it for a little over a year straight. It took me a whole year to sort of get in enough shape to actually start really training.”

It was peeling an onion and knocking off rust. All throughout that process, the obsessive, compulsive runner returned. Brent also took up Pilates for agility/mobility and made the steeplechase his specialty. 

When Cushenbery moved to Flagstaff, Arizona a little over a year ago, the jets really came on. He was training now with world-class runners who came through Northern Arizona University to work at 7,000 feet, a near-optimal altitude for runners.

When Geezer Jock caught up to Brent for a phone interview he was just finishing a Stretch Lab. The man is now a dog with a bone. He runs for the SoCal Track Club.

“My passion is so, so fired up,” Cushenbery said. “I can tell you now I'm more passionate about getting out the best in my body now than at 20 years old, 30, 40, 50.”

He didn’t mention how rabid he was as a teenager. According to the AAU record book, Brent was the fastest 17-year old in the U.S. over 20 miles (1 hour, 58 minutes and 46 seconds). Cushenbery ran on trails in his hometown of Rescue, CA., which is in the foothills of the Eldorado National Forest. 

Brent’s specialty is the 2000 meter steeplechase, which he will have to wait and race outdoors because it is not a sanctioned indoor race. In 2024, at the USATF Masters Outdoor Championships, he was 5th at 9:03.77 while the winner, Richard Morrissey, went 7:42.26 (M60-64).

Cushenbery won a steeplechase race in the Balkans in 2024 involving runners from 12 countries. He says he is getting better, not slower, which usually comes with getting older.

In Gainesville, Brent feels his steeplechase prowess will make him competitive in the 60-meter hurdles (M65). He attacks the hurdles in stride making up for what he lacks in foot speed.

“On flat ground there are faster people,” Cushenbery said. “But when you add the 33-inch hurdle, I can do better than other 65-year olds over the hurdles. So, we’ll see. Maybe I can do well.”

Brent figures he will be “middle of the pack” in the 3000. In his first-ever indoor meet in Chicago in 2024 at the USA Track & Field Masters Indoor Championships, he finished 9th at 12:55.20.

Cushenbery will fly across country to compete next week, likely without getting a medal, which shows you how tucked away his ego is.

Two things strip out the need for a medal, he said.

“A lot of people don't realize how welcoming Masters competition is,” Brent said. “At the worlds last year, there was as much cheering, if not more cheering, for those in last place than in first place. It's a completely different vibe.

“And we're so appreciative that we can still go out there and compete. You have to really feel blessed to even be able to compete. Some of our college teammates tell Mike Lebold and I ‘You're running for us. We can't run anymore’.”

Cushenbery can still run, for sure, but he is no longer "just a dude." He's a guy who is comfortable with trying hard and living with the results.