In mid-March, under everyone’s radar, Olympic decathlete Kip Janvrin resumed competition in the 10-event grind at age 44. He’d made a deal with the combined event athletes he coaches that he’d enter the dec at a meet in Texas if enough of them did well at indoor nationals. They did, so Kip went back to work. Results of his first decathlon in more than four years are here. He scored 6,657 points at Angelo State in Texas — a preface to his 6,807 last week at Emporia. A couple days before posting his Emporia result, a masters mole informed me that Kip was back. So I sent Kip a bunch of questions. His reply is below. The bottom line: Coach Kip is conflicted. He loves doing the decathlon but also has work and family obligations (wife and two sons). He also has high standards. He doesn’t want to compete if he’s not as good as he’d like to be. So resumption of his masters track career is “cloudy.” But what an amazing story.

In 2007, Coach Kip (center) posed with his Central Missouri 4x400 relay team, which won silver at the NCAA DII Championships.

Kip Janvrin, responding to a series of questions, writes:

I guess you could say I am back in the game, and here is how it happened. I have a great group of combined-event athletes on my team at the University of Central Missouri. As the early part of the season started, we realized that we would have a strong group of guys at the Division II indoor national meet in the
heptathlon. So this group of athletes made the deal that if five qualified for the national meet, or three were All-America, then I had to compete the following
week at the Angelo State decathlon.

So we had five guys high on the list so it looked like I would have to do the decathlon. Well, I hurt one as he tore his ACL pole vaulting, so now I had a technicality that kept our qualified number to 4. Once we got to Nationals, one of our guys that placed fifth the year before became injured and dropped out. So we were now down to three sophomores and they placed 1st, 4th and 6th. So that is how I came to become an active athlete again.

Being a college coach allows me to do many things with my athletes. I have always enjoyed running the intervals with the team and loved that challenge of
pushing through workouts. Those intervals allowed me to run the great 800 at Drake in 2007. That run took quality training and a commitment on my part to
make the pace happen and train to hold the pace. For me that was one of my highlights from the Drake Relays as I had the chance to run in front of so many
people and they realized early that I was shooting for the Relays record. After that race I really had no goals in track and field and was much less serious
about my fitness.

My competitive outlet became golf and basketball. Golf against older guys that kicked my butt, but were great to be around and taught me more about life and
golf. The basketball was against much younger people and I still liked to show my athleticism. I would play golf 2-3 times per week and basketball 3-4 times.

On February 8, 2009, I was playing intramurals against college kids and stepped on a foot (of one of my former track athletes) while trying to take off for a
layup on a fast break. I have had lots of ankle sprains and tried to walk it off. It swelled immediately and I went home quickly to the couch and ice. I
spent the night there and did not sleep as it throbbed. I spent a week on crutches before consulting with a doctor for X-rays. No broken bones but plenty
of new and old damage to the ankle. He recommended playing easier activities.

I was done running with the team now and could not play golf. After three weeks, I played basketball but was ineffective as I could not guard anyone and did not want to go in the lane where I could get hurt again.

The Fall track team arrived and I slowly ran a few intervals with the team. I started to play regular basketball again over lunch and felt like my strength
was coming back. Over the holiday break I did a little faster sprinting and some plyometrics as I realized I might need to do some preparation for a
decathlon. I had lost much speed and explosive power but I still tried to do some basic takeoff drills and even had a couple short-run pole vault sessions.
When the team came back from break, I was more involved in the training aspect of some practices and was still playing quite a bit of basketball and realized my ankle was getting closer to 100%. Since I had not competed in a decathlon in 4 1/2 years, I was very rusty and had no expectations.

As the Angelo State meet got closer and I realized that I would probably be competing, I did just enough to make sure I did not get hurt and embarrass
myself. We drove (with 5 heptathletes, 5 decathletes, and 4 coaches) from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to San Angelo, Texas, to compete. My team was excited to see me do things as this group had only heard stories of my competitive background.

You can see from the results that it went OK. It was hard for me as I really did not know if each event was good or bad for my current ability. I always
felt I could do better but during my career I also learned to have acceptable performances and don’t ask for too much. During this meet I had two guys and one girl have automatic qualifying marks for DII nationals and two provisional marks. So it was a success.

Three weeks later, I needed to take some more of my athletes to another meet and I had recently added a post-collegian to our group and wanted to see him
compete. We entered a meet at Emporia State University that we had been going to for years. I had always wanted to do this meet as the facility is nice and
the conditions usually good. I asked my athletes if I could compete, and they said sure. My first two events were better and the next three very close. Day
2 started with a better hurdle race and a similar (but disappointing) discus with a better pole vault. The javelin was about the same and I needed to run
4:40 for 6800 so I did and got the 6807 score. Between the two meets I did not do much training but stayed pretty active. Under great conditions with good
competition, I think I could get close to 7000.

My future is cloudy. I have boys 12 and 14 that are very active and keep me busy. Through much of my career the decathlon was priority 1 and my wife
supported that. I had asked her to help me train through 1996 and then I would become a family man. Well, she realizes that I have much competitive energy and that I am easier to get along with if I am active. I do not want to sacrifice my time with my kids and their activities for my pleasure. I almost left the
Emporia decathlon after my two decathletes NH’d the pole vault to make my sons’ baseball game. That being said, I don’t think I will be in Sacramento as it
is a baseball weekend. I do enjoy all the events but consider myself a “decathlete” and that is the event I want to contest. I would love to find a
meet after July 8 on a good facility, with good winds, and competition. I guess getting the 45+ record would be nice, but I do not feel it necessary.

Not sure if I want to be competing actively or not. I am busy and when I do compete I want to compete at a high level. To do that takes time and
preparation. That is all hard on the body and takes away from family, golf and basketball. It is hard to accept competing when the performance are only
getting worse. But I do enjoy challenging myself.