Our oldest blogger on aging and fitness!

by Winnie

I read Sam’s post this morning, the one about gradual loss of fitness due to aging. Or perhaps not exactly driven by aging. What is the reality?

I guess I get to speak as one who is definitely older (soon to be 75). My own experience strongly suggests that you don’t have to lose much.

As I may have mentioned before, I enjoy reading bicycle tour journals on the website, crazyguyonabike.com. At the moment, I am following a woman in her 70s who, with a group of friends, is riding the famous Land’s End to John O’Groats route. They have, so far, ridden 865 miles and climbed a total of 59,101 feet. Four days to go. Yes, I typed that correctly. There are four who joined this organized tour together; three of them brought their e-bikes, and one is riding a road bike with no assist. The e-bikes are limited by the restrictions airlines put on the batteries: apparently you can bring a spare battery, which has a much smaller range, but cannot bring the main battery (fire risk). So they are confining the pedal assist to climbs, some of which are close to 20% grade. Are these women professional athletes? Well, I don’t see anything like that in the journal. Looks to me like they are just women close to my age doing a seriously challenging tour.

In my own case, so far my only real restriction is bone-on-bone arthritis in one knee. It was diagnosed 13 years ago, and with good PT, it is only recently that I have had to adapt anything. I can’t do anything that requires me to bend that knee much. It has recently pretty much ruled out running. But in terms of strength & effort, things haven’t changed much. My heart rate seems to be about what it has always been. I can climb the hills on my bike – can let that go for a while & get it back. My activity schedule – I don’t think of it as a workout schedule, although there are plenty of workout elements – is my idea of fun now that I am retired. So, last week I rode my bike 100 miles, am working back to having at least one 60-mile day most weeks; walking with friends several hours most weeks; bird watching; some yoga; some specific strength training; a couple of replacements for running, including some rowing machine time and some fast walking up steep slopes;  and dance classes, 4 1/2 hours in a typical week.

I think back to my parents and grandparents. Fitness as we now consider it was nothing anyone talked about. Especially for women. One change that’s almost hard to believe now:  my father felt he had to give up tennis (never played much anyway) after one of his friends had a terrible heart attack. No doctor told him vigorous exercise was a good idea.  They were in their late 40s. But he was always a brisk and enthusiastic walker until he suddenly was unable to keep his balance (after he died, we learned that he had several minor strokes; they must have hit the spot that controlled his balance). My grandparents on one side travelled a lot, must have walked a lot, but never did anything like the gym time we now do, and running had not yet become a common activity. My other grandparents, well, my grandfather was never active, but my grandmother was always busy, always scooting back & forth between our house and theirs. Again, nothing we would recognize as fitness-related, but definitely more activity than most her age and era. She lived longer than the others and was active until within a couple of months of her death.

I look at their various activity levels when I think about my own. They make me realize how much difference our activities can make in our ongoing ability to maintain and improve our health and energy levels. When I launched my major fitness endeavour, over 25 years ago, my doctor asked how I found the time & energy for all I was doing. “Using energy creates more energy,” I told him. “May I quote you on that?” he asked.

Does aging even exist? Well, yes. There are definitely some changes I don’t love. For me, it is drier, more sun-sensitive skin, and a pickier digestive system (not bad, just don’t get along with a couple of things, mostly garlic). And flexibility has never been good for me & it is a bit worse, but workouts can really help that. My current assumption is that, as long as I am feeling well, keeping it up is the best choice. I feel stronger than I did 30 years ago.

Bio

I am a lifelong Californian. My mother and father were not born here but moved to the state as small children. I have two grown daughters and five wonderful grandchildren. I spent my working life working at, and eventually running, the family insurance business. My father had introduced many employee benefits – sabbatical starting in 1970, optional four-day work week in 1972, elimination of all official work time rules in 1974. Adults like to be treated as adults, and people tended to stay a long time, so it was a very pleasant working environment with key elements of trust and respect. I also served on a couple of independent school boards, one a strong academic school serving grades 6-12, one a school designed to start helping city kids who had suffered the ongoing effects of racism & poverty to find opportunities they might not as easily discover without support. I live at a Lifetime Care Community where I serve on the finance committee and chair the sustainability committee. I also plan to join the newly formed fitness committee. And for fun, I have ridden my bicycle across North America. Twice.