Second leg: former champion bodybuilder Dinah Anderson takes a new approach to fitness. Now she's on the fast track to world-class competition and fitness

UNLIKE MANY TOP ATHLETES WHO HANG AROUND THEIR SPORT TOO LONG, refusing to acknowledge that they are no longer at the top of their game, Dinah Anderson chose retirement as soon as she felt her competitive hold slipping. "It was too hard to prepare for a show and not do well," says Anderson, who had won the Texas, the junior USA overall, the USA middleweight and the American championships during a 10-year bodybuilding career.

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So, at 37, she devoted herself full-time to an already successful career as a personal trainer. "Half of my clients have been with me for 15-20 years," she says. "I've trained moms whose children are now training with me."

The majority of Anderson's business comes from her Share Program, in which, she says, "two to four people work out together for an hour. Some weight train, some work at cardio, some stretch."

Before her 51st birthday, Anderson found a similar training approach--and a new competitive challenge--with the Houston Gold, a squad of eight seniors honing their track and field skills under the tutelage of Will Blackburn, an assistant coach at the University of Houston.

Anderson's goal is to qualify for the over-50 Senior Olympics in either the pentathlon (high jump, shot-put, long jump, 80-meter hurdles, 800 meters) or heptathlon (same as pentathlon, plus the 200 meters) multi-event competitions. "I don't excel in one particular event, but I do well in most of them," she says.

In preparing for this daunting goal, Anderson has discovered a more multi-dimensional way of training that has pushed her overall conditioning levels to personal and professional highs.

"In bodybuilding, we trained for a look," she says, "but it wasn't functional. Now, with track and field, we're combining weight training with core training. I'm learning speed and explosive movements, and in the past six months, I've been doing yoga for flexibility. I'm making up for things now that I didn't know when I was younger." She's doing well: Anderson competed in her first senior competition this year and placed first in javelin and third in shot-put.

Anderson's early days did include a multi-dimensional upbringing. She played badminton in the backyard with her father and tagged along on hunting trips in the woods surrounding the small Wisconsin town where she grew up. In 1971, as a high school senior, she won Homemaker of the Year, as well as an overall high school sports letter ("the first year they gave letters to women," she says) for her participation in basketball, track and field, volleyball and diving.

The restless young woman soon began a decade of world travel and job-hopping: hotel manager in London, construction worker in Virginia, supper club manager in Texas. "I'd get an itch, and it was time to try something new," Anderson says.

At around 27, Anderson noticed that she was losing some of her muscle tone. After three months of weight training, she decided to enter her first bodybuilding contest, Miss Alamo City. "I just threw together a routine," she says. A fellow competitor took one look at the blonde-haired, fair-skinned novice and told her to go home because she didn't stand a chance. "I knew nothing about tanning," Anderson says. "I was like a blonde albino." Anderson assessed her adversary's advice, but ultimately dug in her high heels and stuck it out to win first prize, beginning a string of victories in local and national meets before she turned pro in 1984.

She loved the life of a woman bodybuilder. "Back then, the camaraderie with the girls was great, and there were lots of promotional opportunities for us," she says. But she admits now that although they looked great, they weren't in the best of shape: "We were so careful not to burn off muscle that we didn't run much, if at all. Our cardio conditioning was awful."

In those days, there were no weight classes, and Anderson cut a spare 114-pound figure competing against women 20-40 pounds heavier. In 1990, she found the load to be too great. Finally, she packed it in and headed to the home she found in Houston, where she lives with her husband of four years, Bob Barnard, and where she was recently appointed to the Mayor's Council on Health and Fitness.

Now, Anderson trains tirelessly, trying to make up for lost time in her new sport. "I'm retraining my muscles," she says. "As a result, I have to deal with some new injuries, such as a partial tear in my hamstring. Yoga has helped a lot by stretching me out."

An hour-and-a-half yoga class once a week is just a small part of the adjustment she's made to a more integrated workout program. She used to lift weights five times a week, but now she only lifts three times a week, devoting four days to a rigorous track workout that involves agility drills such as hurdles, sprints, javelin throws, long jumps and high jumps. And she used to devote no time to cardio work, but now she spends 30-40 minutes three days a week on the elliptical machine or the stationary bike.