Know When It's Time NOT To Quit

Mike Lebold leading the pack in an 800 before left knee, or driver's side, replacement surgery. He tried to jog after the surgery and it hurt. He had a decision to make. Photo by Rob Jerome.

*This story is about a reckoning for a Masters track athlete. It does not have an ending…yet.
*You will know when it’s time NOT to quit.

By Ray Glier

Mike Lebold, 68, a five-time national champion in the 800-meter run and a member of two world-record setting 4x800 relay teams, was walking to his local UPS store just a few blocks from his apartment. It was early April in San Diego. Mike decided to jog. He didn't get very far before his left knee throbbed with pain.

“What is going on?”, Lebold said to himself. This was not the layout for a comeback to being a track athlete again. 

It had been six months since knee replacement surgery and Lebold began to think his Masters Track running career was over because the pain would strike with the easiest of runs.

“As soon as I went from walking to trying to jog, the pain would just go through the roof,” Mike said. Lebold saw it as a sign he was done as a competitive runner and he would focus on his art.

Mike is a fascinating artist, and art is just what he would do, he said. 

And this art:

Mike made these Mexican nutcrackers.

“At least I could walk without pain and a limp again. And I could ride the stationary bike without pain,” said Lebold, who Geezer Jock first profiled in February, 2025. “And I had my art, so I thought, you know what, maybe I just become a senior citizen fitness influencer kind of thing.”

He could be an influencer…no doubt. Click on this real quick (18 seconds).

Then again…put Mike in your shoes. 

How many of us said no more Tuesday night hoops, or think no more three softball tournament games on a Saturday, or ‘I’m done’ with bike jaunts of 40 miles? And then we find out how much we miss it.

Mr. Lebold found out he missed it. His downcast about running lasted all of three weeks.

“I needed to give it a shot and see if I was really done,” Mike said.

That’s you and me. Are we really done flinging the bowling ball down the lane because of a twinge in our shoulder? Get granular with your activity. Break it down.

Maybe you are done and it is time to find something else.

Mike wasn't done. On May 1, a Friday, Lebold went to the place that helped ignite his terrific track seasons in 2023 and 2024. The 100-step staircase at the San Diego Convention Center. 

During the Covid lockdown, when authorities closed gyms and tracks, Mike went to The Grand Staircase just about every day and ran those steps 60 times…for one insane workout. It was Lebold’s Shangri-La, a place where you are content.

“I made a lot of friends there,” Mike said. 

Eight days ago, when he did the steps with his new knee, Lebold did one step at a time. No pain. Mike did them again. No pain. Then Lebold got bold and did two steps at a time, like he did during his Covid workouts. No pain.

This week, Mike did the steps, but instead of coming down the steps, he stayed at the top of the landing where you can take in the scenic vistas of San Diego Bay and the Pacific Ocean beyond. There is open area of concrete. He sprinted about 100 meters on that concrete. No pain.  

“Now, all of a sudden, I'm beginning to chart a way forward to that first competition,” Lebold said. “After that first workout, I was reticent to go out on a limb and say I’m competing again, but after two workouts and the fact that the knee is not swelling up at all, I thought ‘maybe’.

“I kept telling myself ‘let's kind of not get too excited yet’, but my knee is not swelling up at all.”

Mike thinks he will run in Pasadena in June and try and qualify for the 2027 National Senior Games in Tulsa in M70-74 when he will be among the youngest in the age cohort. He turns 69 in August. He will also get set for the USATF Masters track meets.

The last time Geezer Jock saw Lebold in a national meet he was finishing last in the 800 in the M65-69 in the 2025 USATF Masters Indoor Championships. Mike was a shell of himself because of a torn ACL and torn meniscus in the left knee. He tried to wrap it, brace it, apply warm packs, and took a cortisone shot. He tried to overcome a major issue with the knee using sheer willpower as a healing agent.

Lebold finally relented and had the surgery….and his exuberance to be the fittest 68-year old on the planet nearly derailed him. 

He was in Colorado with family this winter and wanted to regain his cardio fitness. Mike was pulling weighted sleds at altitude and doing other preposterous workouts a 68-year old maybe shouldn’t do. He thinks he aggravated all the hardware in his titanium replacement left knee. That’s why it hurt to jog to the UPS store in April.

“I put undue stress on it,” Lebold said. “I was limping with pain again. I did it to myself and it took a few weeks to get over it.”

There are all sorts of imperatives for us in Mike’s story. While it’s ok to gear down don’t waste a second chance. Know when it’s NOT time to quit. 

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