Our moles report: “Team Canada Women 50 broke the World Record in the 4X800 Relay at the first day of the Canadian Masters Indoor Championships in Toronto, running 10:32.66. That broke the existing USA record of 10:38.97 set last year. Pictures will be posted by Doug Smith on ontariomastersathletics.ca soon!” Actually, Doug posted the shot below on his Facebook page. The team is Donna Dixon of Calgary (50), Karen Gold of Toronto (50), Laurie Meloche of Regina (51) and Patty Blanchard of Moncton (55). Moreover, a great newspaper article a couple days earlier telegraphed the WR attempt.

Here are the fast women who stole the WR from Team USA. We gonna allow that? (But I need their IDs, left to right.)

Here’s the excellent piece written by Kerry Gillespie:

When Karen Gold first stepped on the running track at York University, she turned a lot of heads. The other athletes talked about her, but not to her. She was, most obviously, not one of them.

“I got to the track,” recalls the Toronto marketing executive, “and these elite athletes kind of looked at me like ‘what is that mother doing on the track?”

That thought crossed her mind on occasion, too. Starting to run track for the first time within sight of a 50th birthday isn’t exactly the normal course of events.

Karen Gold pictured in Toronto Star. (Tara Walton photo)

She is part of a small but dedicated group who compete in masters athletics (track and field) for those 30 to 90-plus years of age.

“I felt slow,” says Gold of her first few months on the track in late 2011. “But I didn’t give up.”

Saturday, Gold and three teammates hope to set a world record in the 4x800m women’s relay, 50-59 age category. They’re racing at the Canadian Masters Athletics Indoor Track and Field Championships, March 16-17.

The current record, held by an American team, is 10:38.97. To put that in perspective, it’s a fair bit slower than the Canadian university championship record of 8:41.66 but it still amounts to running a little over a 3 minute kilometer — a pace few can muster at any age.

But Gold, Calgary’s Donna Dixon, 50, Regina’s Laurie Meloche, 51, and Moncton’s Patty Blanchard, 55, on paper anyway, can run it. But nothing is ever certain in sports. And, as one runner points out, to have four of them turn up healthy, at this stage in their lives, is already a minor miracle.

To break the record, they have to average 2:39 a leg. That’s a time Gold couldn’t run at 49 when she started track. But now, at 50, she can.

“It’s shown me you can really improve at any age and get faster if you stick with it,” says Gold who figure skated as a youngster and ran marathons after turning 40.

She’s unlikely to see improvements on the track for much longer. Her relay teammates who all ran seriously as high school or university athletes aren’t getting faster. They’re getting slower. That’s a fact of life with older runners, especially those competing in short distances. The human body’s ability to build and maintain muscle declines with age.

“I won’t lie,” says Meloche. “It’s disappointing to see the times go up. But there’s nothing you can do about it. That’s just the reality of how the body works.”

Meloche, an elementary school teacher and mother of two, had an 800m personal best of “2:20-something” in high school. Now, it’s 2:37.

Accepting that inevitable decline is easier for some than others.

Continuing to train hard for times that only get worse is a “challenging mindset” says Paul Osland, who ran for Canada in the 1988 Summer Games in Seoul. In addition to being a regular masters competitor, he’s also the volunteer president of Canadian Masters Athletics.

“That’s why a lot of very competitive runners don’t run in their older age. Either they’re totally burnt out . . . or their ego can’t take that they’re running a lot slower.”

The vast majority of masters athletes — there are 1,500 of them across Canada — are people who’ve come to the sport later in life or were a rung or two below Olympic status in their best days, Osland says.

It’s similar to a road race. “The top 50 people are way up there and then you’ve got 3,000 behind.”

Masters track, though, is a tiny subset of the growing movement of older people deciding to run anything from 5K charity races to full marathons. The world championships (they’re in Brazil this year) can attract as many as 10,000 competitors, but the Canadian indoor championships will have about 250, says Osland.

There are no entry standards for masters events. Anybody who wants to leap over hurdles or triple jump their way into a sandpit can. But that doesn’t mean people are sauntering across finish lines. A masters meet is social and welcoming but once the starter’s pistol goes off, the competitive drive they all share comes alive.

“You stand on that starting line again and it’s intense. You think ‘what am I doing here again’ but once you get into the race you’re fine,” says Dixon, who trains four or five times a week.

“There are people with serious goals for themselves despite the fact that we’re getting older and a little slower.”

Dixon, a corporate lawyer, started running track at A.Y. Jackson High School in North York. She finally hung up her cleats after graduating from University of Toronto’s law school.

She discovered masters athletics after her second child was born. The timing couldn’t have been better. “It was my goal to get back in shape and see what I could do.”

Her 15-year-old daughter inherited her passion for the sport. “She runs similar to me, but she’d probably hate to hear me say that.” Her 17-year-old son prefers hockey and soccer. “He thinks us runners are kind of weird.”

Relays are Dixon’s favourite. “I couldn’t set a world record on my own but if you put a team together it’s possible.”

The team’s undisputed star is their oldest member, the 55-year-old Blanchard. Her 800m personal best of 2:07 still stands as a New Brunswick record.

That time is now a distant but fond memory for the school teacher. As a 50-year-old she set a new indoor world record of 2:25. “Now I’m a lot slower,” Blanchard says. The fastest I went last summer was 2:35.”

That kind of time could give the relay team a 4 second cushion.

“I’ve run all my life, everything from 800m to half marathons,” says Blanchard, who represented Canada on cross country teams at events in Japan, China, Spain and Madagascar.

Gold doesn’t have that kind of experience; she’s never even passed a baton before, but she’s certain her “A-type personality” honed over a lifetime in business will see her through.

“I don’t think I could do anything now without being competitive. I can’t play a game of monopoly without being competitive.”

So far, her mind over matter attitude has paid off on the track with improved times and respect.

The young elites on the track, who once stared her down, talk to her now. “I was like ‘oh my god, she’s talking to me,’” says Gold, recalling the day an Olympic-potential 100-metre Olympic sprinter sought her out.

Gold knew then she must be doing something right.