Tiffeny Parker had not trained in two years when she threw the javelin at the World Masters Athletics Championships in Daegu, South Korea, in August, and came home with silver.
Parker is 38. She took up the heptathlon after her freshman year of college and made it to the United States Olympic trials. In her early 30s she moved into bobsled, spent four years in it, and finished with that sport in 2022. Then she did the thing everybody tells you to do. She finished a bachelor’s degree and three master’s degrees, took a corporate job and left athletics behind. “I decided I’m going to go into real life,” Parker said.
Real life is now two jobs. She runs executive leadership coaching through her own company, Side Tracked, and she works with doctors in a functional health practice. “I get a chance to help people feel better,” she explained.
What she did not do is stay retired. She came back with two years of no training behind her, took silver in Daegu, and stayed in South Korea about a week afterwards. The medal is also not the plan. “I had this crazy idea that I was going to come out of retirement for the elite section, which is still the plan,” she said. “My goal is to get healthy and really get back to the heptathlon.”
She is 38, she holds four degrees, and the thing she is training for is the seven hardest events in track.
