Exercise

Any article on healthy aging can be assumed to speak positively of the impact of exercise, but sadly tends to admit to the downside of the same thing. To explain my position I am an 86 year old with an 85 year old wife. We are both committed, more or less, to exercise. In my youth, by that I mean prior to reaching 60 years of age, I was an avid runner. I discovered the marathon in 1978 and undertook massive mileage in preparing for one race after another. Unfortunately that was before the foot fetishists of the the running world invented fancy shoes for running, and you could move from race course to squash court, tennis court, or yacht without changing your sneakers. Up to 100 kilometres a week in tennis shoes was not a good idea, so it is not really surprising that my knees said to me in 2000, stop running. So I switched to a bicycle.

That was not the end of it. As time went by, even going up and down stairs was a painful knee challenge. The only solution was to find a way to live on one floor. The house had to go, as descibed elsewhere, (see Moving on) this proved surprisingly easy to do. We have two bederooms in the apartment, and because my wife hs the fallacious belief that I snore we have one each for sleeping. My wife has the larger room, so in there we have a stationary bicycle for me to ride on and one of those treadmills for Sheila to walk on. In front of the two of them is an “intelligent TV screen” . This shows Murder She Wrote when my wife is alone on the treadmill. or Dad’s Army when I am on the bike. 8:30 to 9:00 am will normally see this going on when I am willing.

We have coffee at 10 am, and then Sheila heads out for another hour on the trails or with a friend while I vegetate. After lunch, weather permitting we will go out in the car and I will ride my real bicycle while Sheila hikes again. If the weather does not permit we head for the YMCA’ where we spend anhour on appropriate machines and in the steam room.

After our evening meal Sheila will, head out for a walk round the third floor accompanied by various neighbours of varying capability for half an hour or so. She then adds up her days mileage, something in the order of 11 kilometers, which in my opinion is more than enough.

Sheila is in training for a 5 kilometre race, I am not, the main outcome is somewhat painful and advantageous to Voltaren.