I am several years past 60. Every decade after 30 is slower and more fragile. Why? Beyond metabolic changes, injuries are more likely, and many never heal. Having said that, luck either due to genetics or the cosmos smiling on you plays a big role too. As I tell people you can do things to move the odds up and down, but you cannot make them zero or one. There are couch potatoes that smoke every day and live into their 90s. Others are fit, eat right, and pass in their 20s. Just luck. Still, the fit and eat right crowd has a better chance of making it into their 90s, and the smoking couch potatoes of passing in their 20s.
In 2001, I attended a lecture by Walter Bortz, MD, author of Dare to Be 100, The Roadmap to 100, Living Longer for Dummies, Next Medicine, Occupy Medicine, and a few more longevity books..
Bortz was an active marathoner and ran Boston at age 83. He was eventually forced to stop running due to a nerve issue in his legs. He died in 2023 at the age of 93 after a period of declining health. No cause of death was given.
To fight aging, you need to swim against that current every day of your life. Some days you will be more successful than others. Some days you can actually reverse aging for a while. The current eventually wins, but you can stay far healthier to advanced age if you have the discipline to fight the current with your mind, body, and spirit.
This author has a lot of information that is absolutely legit. Thank you for offering it!
Everything he says so far (I’ve thumbed through 80 percent of the book) is correct, without being stated so harshly that ppl in high places would think he is threatening the profits of mainstream medicine.
I have not yet read what he has to say about nutrition (and may disagree with it when I do read it), but for anyone who thinks they might be willing to read his work:
His take on human health is not the usual horsecrap. Mainstream sources all agree that sitting on a couch (at a desk, in a car, at a restaurant) is “normal”. And that anyone who goes for a ten minute walk is “improving their health”.
Bortz says that the millions of years before farming, humans had nothing to do BUT move during daytime. That is our biological “normal” and this bit about hunching over our keyboards while Netflix entertains us, is the massive, massive deficit in movement. Mainstream had it all backwards.
Animals like wolves only age in one direction (wolves have not figured out how to “reverse” aging either), but they are living with the same movement levels that are probably pretty similar wolves a million years ago. Modern humans have mucked up the matter so massively that we don’t know the difference between “unavoidable signs of aging” and “decline in functioning that stems from being so wildly underactive relative to our species’ needs”.
Not sure if anyone else is interested in this, but I thought it was gold. The book I have of his, is Roadmap to 100.
Again, thank you for the recommendation, and I second that recommendation!
Death is a relief once you get past a certain age. A lot of people probably get tired of their body breaking down and welcome death something they once might have feared.
And death doesn't have to even feel scary. The prospect of death. If you die truly from old age and degradation your brain will probably be to the point where mentally you're incapable of fearing death or at least contemplating the afterlife in a deep way. I have to think, using a sad case, that dementia or Alzheimer's patients might be in that situation. On one hand your mind is gone, but on the other hand, in a beneficial way, your mind is gone in that you can't really even think about your impending death. So some may argue that there is both tragedy in that your mind is gone and beauty in that your mind cannot contemplate death anymore.
One way to analyze this is to compare racing times of aging men with growing youth. I've compared the world record 400m times by age to get these roughly equivalent ages. 41 = 13 48 = 12 54 = 11 65 = 10 69 = 9 72 = 8 76 = 7 78 = 6 86 = 5
This played true in my family, as my son at 11.5 years became faster than me at 53.9 years. As you can see, there's a big age range for older men who can keep up with 10-yr-old boys until age 65, after which the drop is steep. While this particular analysis is from world records, I've watched this curve be reliable and useful even more generally.
You could just use age-graded performance charts in situations like this. That is a better indicator of your relative change in performance over time. If your times placed you in the top 10% of people in their 40's, but only the top 20% in your 50's, and then 25% in your 60's, you can say that your 50's were your biggest dropoff period.
This is interesting, although of course everyone ages at different rates. At 72, I think my 3 month old granddaughter and I would be a good match, since neither of us run! I have significant osteoarthritis in both knees and osteoitis (bone inflammation) in hips. On the other hand, no coronary occlusion or significant cardiovascular abnormalities. I keep trudging on , doing “interval” walking on a in inclined treadmill.
I am wondering (and too lazy to do it myself) if this holds true for a longer distance like the mile. I ran 5:02 in 8th grade = 13 years old. I think i can do it now, but haven't yet. I am 60.
1 MILE 5 6:33.3 Daniel Skandera USA 2 Nov 07 Santa Rosa CA 23 Jul 13 6 5:44.5 Daniel Skandera USA 2 Nov 07 Santa Rosa CA 5 Aug 14 7 5:20.3 Daniel Skandera USA 2 Nov 07 Santa Rosa CA 9 Jun 15 8 5:12.1 Daniel Skandera USA 2 Nov 07 Santa Rosa CA 9 Aug 16 9 5:02.5 Daniel Skandera USA 2 Nov 07 Santa Rosa CA 27 Jun 17 10 4:46.6 Daniel Skandera USA 2 Nov 07 Santa Rosa CA 24 Jul 18 11 4:36.04 Archie Sideridis AUS 18 Oct 11 Melbourne 9 Feb 23 12 4:35.66 Quenton Lanese USA 4 Mar 11 Mercer Island WA 20 May 23 13 4:22.33 Jackson Miller USA 11 Jun 09 Saint Louis MO 1 Jun 23 14 4:11.20 Angus Wilkinson GBR 16 Jan 09 Stirling 26 Aug 23 15 4:05.48 Evan Grime GBR 18 Nov 08 Loughborough 22 Jun 24 16 3:55.44 Cameron Myers AUS 9 Jun 06 Melbourne 23 Feb 23 17 3:50.15 Cameron Myers AUS 9 Jun 06 Eugene OR, USA 25 May 24 18 3:48.93 Niels Laros NED 17 Apr 05 Eugene OR, USA 16 Sep 23 19 3:48.93 Niels Laros NED 17 Apr 05 Eugene OR, USA 16 Sep 23
3:57.91 Bernard Lagat 40 USA 40-44 London, GBR 07/25/15 4:10.30 Davide Raineri 46 ITA 45-49 Milan, ITA 09/05/20 4:19.59 Brad Barton 53 USA 50-54 Nashville, TN USA 05/31/19 4:35.04 Keith Bateman 55 AUS 55-59 Sydney, AUS 12/18/10 4:51.45 Dan King 62 USA 60-64 Mission Viejo, CA USA 07/18/21 4:56.4 Derek Turnbull 65 NZL 65-69 Christchurch, NZL 02/29/92 5:19.75 Joop Rüter 70 NED 70-74 Rotterdam, NED 07/11/03 5:41.80 Ed Whitlock 75 CAN 75-79 Windsor, CAN 07/28/06 6:22.69 Manuel Alonso Domingo 81 ESP 80-84 Alicante, ESP 05/27/17 7:16.7 David Carr 85 AUS 85-89 Perth, AUS 07/17/17 9:42.99 Gunnar Linde 90 USA 90-94 Santa Ana, CA USA 02/09/19 11:56.04 Antonio Nacca 95 ITA 95-99 Novara, ITA 04/07/19 11:53.45 Fauja Singh 100 GBR 100-plus Toronto, CAN 10/13/11
40 is nothing, I set PRs in triathlon in my late 40s 50 starts to get noticeable by mid 60s you're off the cliff, older fatter and slower, time to read up on the consolation of philosophy
Times at a 5k I try to do each year, from age 50 - 2010 20:31 2013 22:37 2015 23:25 2018 24:27 2019 25:50 2022 26:45 2024 28:01
Training has remained much the same, as much swimming riding and running as I can fit into a work week.. except now I'm too tired to do long runs, try for one occasionally but it wipes me out for work and life the next week or more.
This post was edited 16 minutes after it was posted.
Reason provided:
added 5k times
40 is nothing, I set PRs in triathlon in my late 40s 50 starts to get noticeable by mid 60s you're off the cliff, older fatter and slower, time to read up on the consolation of philosophy
It corresponds with a general shift in social status. You're no longer known for who you were physically. The only old people who get attention are those who are old and wise, or those who are old and miserable, or old and abject bums living on the street as the old beggar. The old and wise can manifest itself either in being able to teach and mentor. For example, the old person even kids recognize is the old church elder like a priest, deacon, bishop etc. Or the old wise professor. No kid cares about the 65-yr old who can run a 5K in 21:00. You'll never carry the same reverence in the eyes of youth as a professor or church elder.
The old bum/beggar will have notoriety for all the wrong reasons but they will be known. The disgust of the city but they will be known.
For the rest of us, you're really only really relevant within your family at that point. Your role in the greater society is less reverent. A 70-yr old college professor has the ears and eyes of the youth. A 70-yr old retired insurance salesmen doesn't even though they may drive around in a flashy car. If you're old and cannot offer any actual value to the youth they won't care about you. You're cast into the dustbin. Even the Wal-Mart greeters have a slight bit of reverence in the eyes of the youth but the 70-yr old cashier doesn't.
Help us build the best running shoe review site for a chance to win a LetsRun t-shirt.Help us build the best running shoe review site for a chance to win one of 10 LetsRun t-shirts.