|
|
|
|
||
|
||
|
|
||
| SEARCH | SUBSCRIBE | ||
 |
Over the Hill and Back Again. Many Times
Dixon Hemphill of Fairfax loves the runner's high. For Paul Lackey of Arlington, running is as natural as breathing. Rockville's Bill Morrison first ran to improve his tennis game; now he craves the camaraderie of his fellow joggers. Walt Washburn of Vienna thrills in heading downhill at top speed. Bill Osburn in Bethesda thrives on the competition, and Ray Blue of Oxon Hill considers the 30 miles he logs each week simply the best stress reliever ever. Typical endorsements from lank-limbed pavement pounders, right? Not exactly. These come from runners all 75 years and older. Long past the age when most people hang up their running shoes and pack away their jogging shorts, these guys each run at least 30 miles per week, more than the average American adult or child walks. Nationally, older runners like these represent less than 1 percent of the finishers in road races, according to the USA Track & Field Roadrunning Information Center in Santa Barbara, Calif. This year, a 90-year-old woman completed the London marathon. In the Boston Marathon, 51 of the more than 13,000 entrants were 70 years and older, including four women. Only one of these women and 27 of the oldest men finished the Boston race. How do these runners keep going at an age better known for joint replacements and sore limbs? Nearly all discovered the sport in middle age or later, which may have helped them defy the odds and keeps their interest in running high. Good genes are also at play. "Some of this is the luck of the draw," says 70-year-old Walter Michael Bortz II, a past president of the American Geriatrics Society, who ran the Boston Marathon last week with his 71-year-old wife. "We are mechanically sound. Arthritis results from bad kinetics. If your joints are splayed or warped or rotated, then the vector is not aligned." But the latest evidence also suggests that arthritis or other injuries need not be career-enders for runners. "By keeping your muscles strong, you tend to keep your joints strong, too," says Bortz, a professor of medicine at Stanford University. "The new word is: If you have arthritis, then exercise." The 70-year-old runners who do just that in Washington have all suffered various injuries and other health problems -- from colon cancer and heart murmurs to a serious traffic accident -- that have sidelined them for varying amounts of time. But they view those times as intermissions -- not curtain calls -- to their running careers. Not surprisingly, all are very competitive, sometimes running in up to two 5K (3.1-mile) races per week as well as the occasional marathon (26.2 miles.) One of the newest members to the age group -- 75-year-old Melvin Mattson of Gainesville, Va. -- took up running in his early fifties when he became bored going to the gym. Last week, Mattson finished the Plaza America 5K (about 3.1 miles) in Reston in 26 minutes, 19 seconds (making him first in his age group), about 30 seconds ahead of his 40-year-old daughter, Mary Eward of Reston. "There's no other sport that I can think of where you can compete in the same race with world-class athletes," Hemphill says. "I can't play basketball with Michael Jordan, but I've run with Olympians in a couple of races. I love it."
FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Global Action on Aging distributes this material without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C § 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
|
