The Power Of Mental Resilience

Dr. Kenton Brown, 80, winning a gold medal in the 60-meter dash at The World Masters Indoor Championships last March. Geezer Jocks will find some helpful advice from the good doctor in this 5-minute read. Photo by Rob Jerome.

By Ray Glier

If you are a runner and the sort that tries to gain a mental edge over an opponent at the Start Line, here is a tip:

Don’t try and play mind games with the favorite in the race if the favorite happens to be a psychiatrist. 

He has a good idea what you are up to.

Ken Brown, 80, has been a world-class Masters sprinter for 14 years, which means he is favored in many races. Some competitors are tempted to look for an edge against a preeminent runner, like Brown. It might work against some, but for decades, he was a practicing psychiatrist, which means Ken’s bull malarkey meter is better than yours or mine. 

“Someone will say to me before the race, ‘Oh, you know you’ve got this race won’,” Brown said.

It may, or may not be, a bid to make Ken lose his focus. The hope is to make him detour from his routine of “imaging” the race before the gun goes off.

“I ignore it when somebody says it,” Brown said. “Nothing is won until you race.”

Ask the Russians who played in the 1980 Olympics hockey tournament about that. Ask Georgetown in its 1985 hoops loss to Villanova. The list of “It aint over til it’s over” goes on and on.

Brown doesn’t want to be added to that list this summer. He is No. 1 in the world in 100 meters (14.11 seconds) and 200 meters (30.49) outdoors heading into the USATF Masters Outdoor Championships in Huntsville, Ala., July 17-20. 

A week after the USATF nationals, Ken will be in Des Moines, Iowa, for the National Senior Games where there will be about 30 competitors in the Men’s 80-84 age bracket in the 100 and 200. 

Chances are, Dr. Brown will not beat himself, even with your help.

**

When he started running competitively in 2009 in tennis shoes and no training, Brown had no thoughts about turning into a Masters star. He didn’t run track in high school in Tulsa, Okla., and played tennis for two years in college at Notre Dame where he completed a degree in pre-med.

The racing Ken did when he was younger was like the rest of us___down the street or across a field against other boys in the neighborhood. 

His start in Masters track was innocent enough. A friend saw him scoot to first base out of the batters box in a softball game and thought Ken should enter this thing called The Texas Senior Games. And away he went. Brown won races in his first meet.. He had turned 66.

“The monster grew and occupied a lot of time,” Ken said. 

The imperative here: when someone you trust says you have a knack for something, study it, think about diving into it, no matter how old you are and no matter the activity. You might be glad you did.

**

A few more things on Dr. Brown.

Ken, who has won three gold medals in sprinting in the World Masters Athletics games, has one other intangible going for him because of his career in mental health. Calm. 

Where the calm really helps is it allows Brown to conceptualize each race before the start. He is not easily distracted. 

“I ‘image’ the races all the time, how they are going to go,” Ken said. “In the worlds one year there was a guy from Germany who had actually had a faster time than I had earlier in the year (200 meters) and so I knew I had to be at my best.

“I just decided how each part of the race was going to go.”

Brown won that race against the German, but where imaging didn’t help was in races against the great Charles Allie.

“I finally beat him in the National Senior Games (2022), but he was coming back from prostate cancer and still in treatment,” Ken said, followed by a soft chuckle.

That's another reason you won't sneak up on Brown. The humble runner respects ALL competitors.

**
I think it’s important to find a Geezer Jock’s bedrock in these stories. For Brown it is something his father said to him during a frustrating moment for young Ken.

“I was maybe 5 or 6 and he saw me struggling with something,” Brown said. 

“A Brown never gives up,” Herman Brown said.

That culture is why Ken does not look for excuses to cancel planned workouts. He sticks to a regimen. It's a strong lesson for us all.

One workout is key to Brown’s success. Ins and Outs. They train him into knowing when to find that top gear in a race, or transitioning to maximum velocity with lengthened stride.

“You might set up a 120-meter course divided into 40 meters,” Brown said. “The first 40 you'll do at 80%, the second 40 you accelerate to 90%, and then the third you'll drop down to 80%.

“And then you flip it. The next time around, you start out at 90, you decelerate the middle 40 to 80, and then you accelerate again in that last 40. It's training for having to accelerate in the middle of the race.” 

Brown learned these mechanics and drills with the help of David Patrick, an Olympic hurdler (1992, Barcelona),  who has coached Ken for 13 years.

Coaching is one way Ken “optimizes” his natural speed. Another way are the other competitors. He wins a lot of races, but Brown understands some speed is drawn from those chasing him, or him chasing others.

What I noticed from studying photos of Brown racing is his muscle mass. Look at the photo above and see how much thicker his legs are than the other runners.

Here is another key. You naturally expect a psychiatrist, like Ken, to be in touch with his emotions. Brown is also in touch with his body and the older we get the wiser most of us are about self-diagnosis, the better to avoid injury. Mostly.

“I get plenty of rest so that I recover, and then I try to know what my limits are,” Ken said. “You have a different ache and a different pain every week and most of them come out to nothing, but it's knowing what the difference is. 

“Pain and discomfort would stop some folks from doing what they might have planned to do on that day. But if my assessment is 'it's nothing', then I'm just going to go ahead and do what I typically would do, whether it's running track, or playing softball, or going to the Y, whatever.”

Dr. Brown doesn’t play mind games with himself that can get him hurt, nor does he deny himself the joy of activity. At 80 and still going strong, take that as expert advice.