As I’ve taken to combating sedentary laptop life with regular evening walks with my better half, the thought occurred: Is this old age? Is walking the extent of my fitness regimen from here on out, and are my running days over?
Because it wasn’t really so long ago that I was in decent shape for a 50-something. I remember it well, training at Long Beach for a sprint triathlon, dutifully swimming up and down the beach, in late August through the gentle bumps of little jellyfish, sporting the sand-scuffed swim goggles I’d found, very roughly approximating a half-mile distance using my car’s odometer and telephone poles as sighted from the water.
The 5K run in the beating-down sun would in theory be the easy part. The long bike leg? Feh, I’d get to that later after untangling my 1993 Specialized mountain bike from the rakes, beach chairs, and push mower in the shed out back.
But in one of many acts of parental self-sacrifice, I skipped that competition, and it turned out everything training-wise thereafter, for a weekend upstate to watch my daughter compete in a college cross-country meet. And I’d gladly do it again. After all, she’s the real athlete in the family.
They say walking’s about the best thing you can do for yourself. Sure, but what about getting your heart rate up? Isn’t that why so many doctors run?
Heck, I remember as a middle schooler watching Dr. Merritt White (to keep it local, of course) pound the pavement for the 26.2 miles of the hilly Boston Marathon. Merritt Jr., my Bridgehampton School classmate, joined him to run the last few hundred yards to the finish.
Maybe all is not lost. Speaking of things medical, every time I give blood at the Sag Harbor Firehouse the clinician comments approvingly on my low blood pressure and, last month, even my mannish red blood cell count. And then, vascularly, I filled the bag in five minutes flat and was off wolfing a complimentary Italian hero.
About walking, my wife says the step counter on her phone has absolutely spurred her on. You know, the O.C.D. human desire to meet numerical goals and check off boxes.
Now I may have a new goal of my own, as I just noticed online that whoever’s behind that Long Beach triathlon has wisely gone small, adding a “super sprint” of a 300-meter swim, 2-mile run, and 6-mile bike.
Doable? The countdown has begun. I have two months to get ready.