Welker Hill
I used to love to run. As a kid I could throw a softball farther than only half of the girls, and my inability to throw a wadded-up piece of paper into a wastebasket from any distance verged on the comical. But I was always the fastest kid in my class.
When I was six, I went to a summer camp with hundreds of kids aged five to eight. One of the counselors was a track star at one of the Boston-area colleges, and he used to lead all the kids on runs around the soccer field. I would try to challenge his lead and naturally he would pull away with ease. I was very interested to know if he was running his fastest when he led us around the field, and of course he said no, not even close; so I asked him to show us how he ran when he ran his fastest. One day he announced a demonstration (mentioning my name, which made me feel like it was exclusively for me) and he ran a fast lap alone. Some of the kids didn't even pay attention, but I was entranced. I never forgot the sight of that counselor on the far side of the field, under the dark wooded hillside, feet hardly touching the ground, fleet as a gazelle.
Later, we had a camp-wide footrace among all the kids, also one lap around the soccer field, and I came in first.
In high school I went out for track and on the very first day the whole team ran a 440 around the football field. The best 440 runner on the track team, who was also the fullback on the varsity football team, pulled out ahead. I kept pace with him just to challenge him, and he put his head down and ran like a locomotive, determined to put me in my place. We soon got way out in front of everyone else (because they weren't racing). I toyed with him all the way around and then sprinted ahead of him in the last thirty feet, beating him easily. What I remember most was being astonished by how bad my body felt just a few seconds after I stopped running! And that after a walking "warm down" lap all the way around the track I still felt almost as bad. The quarter mile (now the 400 meters) is a brutal race.
Unfortunately the track coach was young and inexperienced. (He was an English teacher.) Seeing a future 440 star for his team, he worked me far too hard. It wasn't just the work everyone did—he singled me out for special training because I was "gifted." I would come home and fall asleep before dinner. I told him I wasn't serious about competing—I just liked to run—and I warned him three times that I would quit the team if he didn't stop running me to death. He didn't believe me at all—he just smiled when I mentioned it—and didn't let up.
So I quit.
He didn't believe that, either—for years he would ask me when I was going to come back to the track team. I never did—I ran cross-country instead—but as an adult I've always regretted that I didn't have a more experienced track coach in high school, someone with the wisdom to bring me along like I needed to be brought along. Looking back, I would have liked to run track in high school. You're only young once.
I was a miserable cross-country runner, and never should have run distance. In short races, though, only three people ever beat me in a footrace. One was a classmate named Neil Yashiro in the 100-yard dash. Neil was short and muscular—a gymnast—and he would explode out of the blocks and have two or three steps on me right from the start, which I couldn't always make up by the finish line. He never beat me in the 220. But Calvin Malone did—he was the school's standout track star and in my grade. I ran my hardest against Cal in one 220 and simply ran out of legs before he did. That's the only time I saw the good in training. It's also the only time I ever recall running out of speed.
Even in my own neighborhood there was one kid who was as fast as I was whose name was C.B. Harper. Although we never ran a straight race, I always had a tough time catching him when we all played keep-away in our front yard. But then, he had a tough time catching me too. C.B. was quick. I always reasoned that C.B. was an indicator that I wasn't as fast as I thought I was—how could I become anywhere near the fastest kid in my school, much less the State, if I was barely the fastest kid in my very own neighborhood?
That reminds me of a story I might have told here before. I have an Indiana relative by marriage named Dan. Danny was a great baseball player as a kid, but he was discouraged by the fact that he wasn't even the best player in his own family—his same-age cousin and best friend Donny was always a little better. Just a little better, but clearly better. So, Danny reasoned, how could he be so great, if he wasn't even better than Donny?
The kicker is that Dan's last name is Mattingly—and his cousin Don's number 23 was eventually retired by the New York Yankees. Dan says, "How was I supposed to know I was comparing myself to Don Mattingly? When we were 11 he was just my cousin Donny, the same as me." Neither C.B. nor Cal went on to greatness as runners, though, as far as I know. Cal is now an attorney and a grandfather many times over—I got to have dinner with him a year or two ago.
'Having lost but once your prime'
I ran throughout most of my youth just to keep in shape, but eventually let it fall by the wayside—probably during the stretch when I was drinking alcoholically. As with a whole lot of things during that time, I don't remember. Then, in the Fall of 2014, I tried to get back in to running. My girlfriend at the time was a marathoner. I went to the YMCA with her one morning and enjoyed sprinting repeatedly around the indoor track.
...Which turned out to be an enormous mistake! My knees hurt so much a day later I thought I had damaged them permanently. I could barely walk. They ached badly for two months before slowly returning to normal. At that point I did what I should have done from the first, and started reading up on re-entry running—"re-entry" being a common term for resuming something in older age that you did when you were young—a "re-entry woman," for example, is a woman who re-enters the workforce after raising her children.
Following the advice I read, first I conditioned my knees by walking every day for three months. Then I started interspersing very short jogs in with my walks. Next, I gradually lengthened the jogging sections and inserted more of them into the walk, always paying close attention to how my body felt. Only when I'd been doing that for a number of months did I try to add any speed to the runs. It got so that I could do an old-guy semblance of a sprint for a hundred or two hundred feet. Of course my old speed had long since departed.
This is the best way for middle-aged former runners to resume exercising. By middle age, the primary focus has to be injury prevention. The walk/jog/walk—always taking responsibility for how your own body feels, and laying off when you detect any pain—is a great way to exercise. There's a book that explains it, although it lays out a more serious and more competitive program than most seniors may be interested in. (There's evidence that most marathoners actually run faster times if they mix in some walking.)
But I just couldn't manage it. My brain knows I'm 35, but my knees for some reason think I'm 60. (Calendar age: 60.) I stuck with the attempted running up until last Fall, but my knees just don't like it—I would continually get pains or aches in my knees and have to lay off. It got so I was laying off more than I was exercising.
What to do? Just walk? Bike? Get a stationary bike?
Nineteen waterfalls
Out of the blue, the answer came just recently when my son was here visiting. We took a trip to Watkins Glen—not the famous racetrack but the scenic gorge. I was completely unprepared for what we found—it's gobsmackingly spectacular, a very steep, very deep rocky gorge with, count 'em, 19 waterfalls. The paths are well built (and well peopled), but feature lots and lots of stairs—enough so that I was worried about whether I'd be able to handle them all.
But I did. When I was huffing and puffing up the last long set of stairs at the end of our three-mile or so tour of the Glen, my son (who is a rock climber and very fit) said, "too bad you don't live closer—you could come here every day and walk the stairs."
That's what lit the lightbulb over my head. No, I don't live close to Watkins Glen, but I do live right under a steep hillside—the Finger Lakes mostly sit well below the elevation of the surrounding countryside. All the downhill roads around here have switchbacks—S curves—built into them to lessen the steepness for cars.
So now what I do is walk up Welker Road every day, up the hill to the high meadows. Adam Sauder's pick-your-own-fruit and vegetable farm (the farm pictured in this post) is a mile and a half from where I live, so it's three miles there and back. Which doesn't sound like much, but there's 520 feet of elevation change in the mile and half between there and here. (Yep, there's an app for that.)
The last rise before the high meadow
It's perfect, turns out. Like the prettiest, most scenic Stairmaster ever conceived. Walking up the hill gets my heart pounding even more efficiently than running, but the road rises to meet your feet so it's even lower-impact than plain old walking. And, so far (knock on wood), easy on my knees, which are holding up just fine. The hardest part on my body is probably walking down the hill again! It's steep enough in places that you think about the grip of the soles of your shoes on the pavement.
Of course, I don't know yet if this will be feasible for enough of the year—we've had a gorgeous month of June here, with glorious and, more to the point, cool weather. It's probably the absolute best time of the year to be walking up that hill. But for now, I think I've found the perfect exercise for my age and stage in life. It's different for everyone, of course.
I'd write more about this, but I'm late for that very walk. Rain is forecast for this afternoon, so—not unlike most older people generally—I've got to get out and get a little exercise while the getting is good.
Mike
(Thanks to Xander)
"Open Mike" is the sometimes off-topic Editorial page of TOP. It's supposed to appear on Wednesdays but there were already enough posts yesterday. Off-topic posts are labelled "(OT)" for those who don't want to read them.
Original contents copyright 2017 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
TOP/Yale Spring Photo Book Offer
(Ends June 30th or when supplies run out)
(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:
Roger Overall: "The cover of the book about running you linked to made me laugh. 'Finish a half marathon in a few months.' How slow do you have to go to cover 13.1 miles in a few months?"
Hans Muus: "Great piece, Mike, especially for someone like me who, even as a young boy, never managed to do anything impressive with a ball, but loved to run—the LSD type of thing (long slow distance, that is, nothing acid here). And when I got to the link 'there's a book,' I said to myself, 'Jeff Galloway?' And indeed there he was, some thirty years after I thoroughly enjoyed his Galloway's Book on Running I think it was called. Thank you for a very nice refreshing of my memory. I gladly forgive you in advance for your next two, no let's make it three pieces on cars, coffee and billiards."
Eric Rose: "Good for you Mike! I walk on average about 40 km a week. A combination of steep hills and gentle stuff. Have been doing this since March and have lost 20 lbs. and feel a lot better. Keep it up!"
Matthew L: "The magic to exercise is finding something you like to do. Congratulations."
TDE: "I sense a 'one camera, one lens, one year, one hill' convergence on the horizon."
Mike replies: It's tempting....
John Lehet: "Yeah, that's pretty much my fitness program. Sometimes I don't get very far from home. Sometimes I drive someplace and walk a bunch with cameras. The other trick of course is to carry a couple of camera bodies and lots of lenses to increase the load. Mere walking with your body weight isn't enough. You need gear."
Mike replies: You're as bad as me!
JohnMFlores: "As old motorcycle racers like to say, 'The older I get the faster I was.' Ed Whitlock recently passed at 86. He was the fastest old distance runner on earth, holding age records for everything from 5k to marathons. He trained in a cemetery near his home. Probably not as hilly as your daily walk so there's hope for you yet. ;-) "
John Camp: "I'm one of those fortunate people who had lots of older male relatives who I liked, and who apparently liked me. So I got to talk to them a lot as I watched them die (I'm now 73, they're all gone, the WWII generation).
"One thing became very clear to me as they died off: at any age, but especially after you're 60 or so, you must avoid injury. The problem isn't so much the injury itself (unless it's awful, of course) but that an injury can take you out of exercise. My father was a life-long walker, but in his mid-70s, developed plantar fasciitis that made walking terribly painful. In the year it took to recover, which he mostly spent sitting, he probably lost five—I'd see him every month or so, and could watch as his body lost conditioning.
"A favorite uncle was a life-long smoker and drinker. He went first of that generation, and you could literally see and hear the effects of smoking on him, as it tore up his lungs. (His example made me quit when I was 34.) That's a different kind of injury, and maybe even worse than the obvious ones, like breaking a leg. But his brother, also a life-long smoker and drinker, had a stroke in his late 50s or early 60s, recovered, but had to give up smoking and drinking. Despite the stroke, he outlived his brother by years...living a healthy life in his 60s apparently was a major benefit. He simply stopped hurting himself. I'm not in bad shape (I walk a lot and do yoga) but some friends have tried to get me into mountain biking. I won't do it, because mountain bikers hurt themselves. I'd rather sound like a wimp that do what my father did, which is sit down for a year...."
