You and I Are Too Old Not to Enjoy Beating the Pants Off the Competition

You're Too Old to Spend the Rest of Your Life on the Couch: Let's Adventure!

Photo by Jacob Rice on Unsplash

“It’s never too late to be what you might have been.” ~George Elliot

Early this morning I came across a story about a British Colombian swimmer, Betty Brussel, who this January set multiple new records for her age class: 100-104.

You will forgive my glee that such an age class even exists, but it’s a sign of the times. Yes, there are enough of us who age into this category in the first place.

Second, that there are enough swimmers, competitive swimmers, for there to be a competition.

All of those things give me a lot of hope for all of us.

Here’s the story:

We’re competitive, especially in the West, and we love beating the competition. As the Olympics wind down, I spend a touch of time each day reviewing the YouTube shorts. I love to watch the various teams whip the shorts off the competition, running so fast or flying so high that it sucks the breath right out of me.

And then I cry. I cry, in joy, to see such talent.

As for Betty, my emotions are very different. Betty is well aware that the weight of her years means that she has very little time left to her. Yet she proudly heads to the pool, works out, puts in the time and continues to compete.

Why?

“When I swim, I feel so happy” she told an interviewer in this story.

Betty, like so many late-in-life athletes, didn’t start swimming until she was nearly 70. At an age when too many of us are sliding into obscurity in our recliners, she discovered that she loved the pool.

Betty turned 100 last month.

Why is any of this important?

As a late-in-life athlete myself, who turned to extreme adventure travel for fun at the age of 60, I’m interested in people who remade themselves physically at a time when so many of us are giving up and slowing down.

Ernestine Shepherd, the oldest female bodybuilder at 88, had never touched a weight until she was fifty-six. She is enshrined in the Guinness Book of World Records. Not bad. Among my female bodybuilding friends, she is a goddess.

If you Google bodybuilding over 70, the results might stun you. Even if you believe, as many do, that this kind of gym work is nothing but ego (you’d be dead wrong, just saying), the results are impressive. What really impresses me is when people make the decision post-sixty, and realize remarkable results.

The body is an extraordinary miracle. When we invite it to do more, it does more. When we feed it well and work it hard, it rises to the occasion, even after years of abuse.

Some people like Joan MacDonald have turned themselves into influencers and online sensations as a result, albeit I’m not a fan about the influencer aspect of it. There are good reasons. In Joan’s case, she just happened to have a fitness expert as a daughter who happened to have a training facility in Mexico.

While I give all the credit to Joan for doing the work to get where she is, unless you can afford a trainer several hours a day some six to seven days a week, please don’t expect the same results. Besides, do you really want to spend that much time at the gym?

Perhaps even more importantly, why would you do it? For health reasons, sure. But just to look like her? Kindly, that’s not the win.

The win is better health, vitality, and extended good years of life. Pushing that pesky finish line out as far as we can so that we can keep playing.

I just wrote a story about Diana Coogle, who for the year of her 80th birthday, hiked some 868 miles to celebrate the occasion.

We get news stories about the people who stand out. But what about the folks we never hear about? These are your neighbors, the ones kneeling in their yard planting next year’s roses.

They are the quiet folks at Whole Foods and Natural Grocers, peering at the vegetables and loading up on free-range chicken breasts.

They are the grey hairs and white hairs among us, utterly invisible to society, yet taking care of themselves and working hard to give themselves better health, more options and a shot at beating the odds- the true competition, mind you- to live as long and as well as Betty Brussel.

Society often overlooks them entirely, yet they are out competing against time.

They are you and me.

If there is one Olympic competition we’re all in, it’s a race against time.

All of us will pass life’s finish line at some point. However, those who are willing to run the tough short races along the way may well see more successes than failures.

That’s where we can possibly beat the pants off the competition, especially if the competition (life’s vicissitudes) doesn’t always play fair.

Photo by Louis Hansel on Unsplash

Fellow Substacker

Jim the Geek

and I started talking about nutrition a few years ago. Jim spent much of his adult life looking like the Michelin tire man. After he retired he threw himself into health research. Now, years later, he and his wife walk miles every day, eat a single meal per day. He is no longer obese and all his numbers are where they should be.

Jim and others influenced me to rethink my position on keto. He’s also been the source of a lot of reading, much of which I’ve shared here and elsewhere (for those interested, a list is coming). Jim’s no athlete. However, he and his wife, like most of us past seventy, are in a race against time, with the race being defined as how well we live within the time we are given.

They are largely winning it, small success by small success, by taking better care of themselves.

As my friend Melissa pointed out, there have been plenty of failures along the way. My hand is way up here.

Jim, like me, abused his body. We were both born with particular proclivities which like all of us, affect how well we move through life. When we combine our unique physical challenges (such as allergies, disease likelihood or in my case, hemophilia) with bad habits, it’s like trying to do a Diana Nyad from Cuba to Florida with a piano attached to our ankles.

I did some serious redirecting of my diet recently when my lab numbers indicated that things weren’t as good as I thought they were. I’m a kidney stone former, and as such my kidney health is key. Back in spring, my uric acid levels, my A1-C (due to stress levels), BUN score and the like were all outside healthy norms. That was the result of calcium supplements and too much dairy, unique to this particular body.

Immediately I got to work with the doctor’s direction. After just a few months, I just got my new numbers back. I won that race. I’d changed my diet, the dietary change resulted in dropping some five pounds or so that I won’t miss, I sleep better and don’t feel so logey. Even better, with the uric acid levels lower, my joints are a lot happier.

The numbers are well within healthier limits.

It was a sprint, but that kind of sprint is what allows me to train for the marathon.

The marathon if you will, is the length of time we get to live really well.

The other day my friend Melissa, who just turned 66 this month, was discussing her exercise routine. Just for fun she decided to see how many classes she’d attended over a fairly short period of time. They ranged from weight training to stretching.

It was 168 classes. She was stunned. Pleased with herself, in that gentle way she has.

That’s how you win against time, race by small race. Win by small win scattered among all the inevitable failures. You train. You eat well. You socialize. You make it fun.

This morning she mentioned that there were plenty of women in her group who had at least 500 classes under their respective belts. None of them look like Bella Haddid. Never will. That’s not the point. The point is health, functional fitness, the joy in movement and creating options through good choices.

Betty Brussel, a medalist, doesn’t look like a swimsuit model, either. That’s not the point.

I was curious about how many hours I’ve toughed it out just in the gym, to say nothing of all the sports and running and hiking and biking and all the rest. The number, after fifty-one steady years of lifting weights, was around 65,000 hours.

That’s quite an investment in the bank for an aging body. When I had twelve surgeries within the span of just five years, that work paid off. It’s the interest we get to live on after investing in our bodies over the course of our lives.

Deposit photos

This is the race we cannot win, but we can bloody well do two very important things:

• In many cases, push out the finish line with better habits

• In nearly all cases, improve the quality of how we run the race as we approach our individual finish line

Betty Brussels turned 100 in July. Many of you are facing down a finish line that’s closer than mine.

Too many of us are doing little more than marking time by passing it passively, watching other people do great things on our screens. That only moves the finish line closer. In too many cases it also affects the quality of how we get there.

The way I see it, we were all born to be athletes, however we choose to define that. The race we run is life. How well we run it depends on a great many things, but above all, the moment-to-moment choices we make about food, movement, good company and a reason to keep going.

I hope your finish line is a long, long way off, and you remember to cheer yourself along the way. Let’s beat the pants off the competition, even if the competition is us.

Let’s play.

The author at 68, just before I did a serious face plant into the mat. Two seconds of looking epic, then an epic fail. Like life.

Thanks for coming along for the ride. The world is so very full of terrific stories of people living well. I hope you enjoyed this one. If so please consider

Know someone who needs a gentle reminder that time goes faster as we age? Kindly consider

Either way, thank you.