Albert and We

Time is relative.

Without studying equations or considering theories, as we age we feel time gathering momentum as it slides by in an accelerating blur. When we were 10, each year was 10% of our life; 5 years was half of our entire lives. At 60 each year is only 1.67% of our accumulated being. We feel these later years as time's quickening pace, in a race where the finish line is finally...final. As we age we catch ourselves saying...crickey, it is nearly June already and we just celebrated New Years. When we were children it took forever for Santa's annual visit.

I've heard people as young as 40 blame aging for why they are inactive, and recently I read about a 60 y.o. talking about slowing down because of age. Yeah, and the sun is burning out, summer will come and go, and the sky has been falling for as long as I can remember.

And yet there are those like Ed Whitlock who ran a 2:54 marathon at the age of 73; at Boston there is a long list of aging marathoners. We have the local legend and great good guy Bill Boulter, someone we all admire and hope to emulate with a whole lotta luck.

Time is relative. As is life.

 Whitlock setting the current 70+ world marathon record of 2:54:48 at the age of 73 at the 2004 Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon

Again, setting aside disease - much of what exercise would prevent along with a reasonable diet - these are excuses, nothing more than allowing gravity to score the win. Yesterday I had to step aside on our small community wetland bridge to allow a golf cart to pass, not the first time this has happened. Golf carts are illegal to drive on pedestrian paths, but this law is ignored by my neighbors and the police. I would rather push my one-footed butt along on a skateboard than to give into the epitome of laziness.

We slowly become desensitized to what makes us human. The ability to outlast any land animal on the run. Our unique physical design where training stress tears down the body only to build it back stronger. The innate yearning to reach for the stars and step foot on other worlds.

Maybe we cannot yet cure the common cold, but we put a man on the moon in 1969 and you, my friend, can walk around the block. You can run a 5k. And with time, almost anyone can run or go the marathon distance.

Like Fauja Singh. 94. Here.

Ask anyone at the Achilles Track Club.

No excuses. No quitting. And for everyone's sake, most importantly yours:

NO WHINING. 

Get on with it.  Live.