Can I help you get fit and stay active as you grow older? Maybe ... read on!
"Suddenly I became aware that being 90 and healthy and able to run around and play with my grandkids was a pretty big deal. It made me think about how fortunate I am to be healthy at this age. I've been thinking a lot about this subject."
When I started to read about how to write a blog -- and I'm not sure I'm doing it correctly right now -- they say the writer, that's me, needs to set out their qualifications.
Well, I'll tell you very briefly that at one time I was the Canadian high school champion several years running in several sprint events. Also I won the U.S. Interscholastic Indoor 440 yards in Madison Square Gardens, New York in 1952. That same year I was on the Canadian Olympic team and later that year started college in the United States. I've been here ever since and became a U.S. citizen.
While living in New York City I ran my first NYC Marathon in 1979 in 3:30:30, and the next year a few minutes slower. I ran another marathon in Port of Spain, Trinidad about 10 years later. So I know a lot about training, running, aches and pains, feet and muscle problems and how to keep your mind focused.
But my most important qualification is that I eventually figured out a way to stay fit and healthy and live to age 92 (so far) and I expect to be around a lot longer. I look forward to every day and I usually have something interesting to do.
A theme for my idea of getting and staying fit is that every workout or exercise session has to be successful -- you have to feel good about it -- no matter what you did and I'll explain that later.
The other basic thing about my workouts is they have to be short, simple, and they have to achieve at least some, even if its very small, of what you want to achieve. And that's a topic for later also.
All of this is what I'm going to write about in this blog. Come along and join me as I write about how I got from there to here!
I'm getting old ...
but I'm not old yet!
Whether you are in the prime of life, in mid-life, aging a bit, senior, older, or, like me, really up there in numbers, my personal experience might offer you some ideas about how to stay healthy, vibrant and fully engaged with life. Getting old doesn't mean your life is over! It's just the beginning of the second half of your life!
Answering questions about how I stay fit
I'm often asked what I do to stay fit and I usually say that I exercise and watch what I eat, no details. This blog will fill in all the details and I think that as you follow along, you'll probably find some surprising things -- one of which is that exercising is to me more of a state of mind and after you hear what I have to say about it all, you may come to believe it.
The fact that I'm 92 and live my life every day as I did many years ago never really crossed my mind until a couple of years ago when my family threw me a huge surprise birthday party with balloons, a great big cake, and all sorts of things! Some of my family had come a long way to be here, little kids and all! I could hardly believe it!
Suddenly I became aware that being 90 and healthy and able to run around and play with my grandkids was a pretty big deal. Every other birthday up to then became a non-event! So when this happened something made me think about how fortunate I am to be healthy at this age and I can't really figure it out. I've been thinking a lot about this subject.
We all know that exercise is important --
but how to get started?
I'm quite sure that most of us know deep down that exercise is very important for our health -- we see it everywhere on tv and we've been hearing it since we were little kids.
Then there's the matter of weight, most of us could lose a few pounds. It's endless the number of times we hear this. So we all have this lingering feeling about health. We know it's the right thing to try and be healthy but exactly how to start is the problem and then how to keep on going with it.
And I wonder if it all becomes such an overwhelming thought that it becomes almost impossible to figure out what to actually do, and when to start, and what's the cost, and where to find a place to physically do this. And so its put off and put off. But we keep thinking we should do it. To get rid of this nagging thought and maybe to remove the bit of guilt attached to all this we have to make a start. We have to make some sort of plan. We don't want to get sick.
I've been evolving my routine for 60 years
Some of this went through my mind about 60 years go. Before that I had been active in all the usual sports in high school; in fact we had sports in those day in grade school. Then in college and after. Then I had to get a job, I was married with a family so not so much time to do anything other than try to pay the bills. Then one day I thought I'd better do something about my fitness -- I hadn't done much in the past few years. So this might be where you are today.
Back then I thought a lot about this whole thing about fitness and tried different ways to get started and eventually came up with a routine that has more or less been pretty consistent over the years. That's what I'm going to tell you about in this blog. Come along with me!