Raging While Aging: The good, the bad and the ugly

Atop Baldy with Forest

This is more introspective and melancholy than what I usually write; just mixing it up a bit.

I never wanted to grow old.  It’s not that I wanted to die young, it’s more that, like probably everyone else, I’ve wanted to stay forever young.  I’ve been trying.  For as much of my life as it’s been possible, I’ve been outside exercising, I’ve been eating right, and I’ve been conscious of my health more generally. 

Lately when I’m out trail running, I regularly hear that I’m an inspiration.  I am polite, I say thank you.  Heck, I even get into it sometimes and say things in return: “this is what’s possible at 67.”  Mostly, though, I know that being inspirational means that I’m no longer growing old, I’ve arrived. 

I am not alone in the inspirational set around Bozeman.  There are others my age outside exercising: skiing and mountain biking especially retain quite a few aging aficionados. In trail racing, there are only a few of us, and in races where I am not the only geezer, I typically get my butt kicked by geezers who are way more inspirational.  I still also enjoy backpacking and my partners, when I can find any, are often decades younger than me.

While still being out training, racing and backpacking may make me inspirational to younger folks I find myself thinking about the future.  Sure, 67 sounds old for these pursuits and sure, I could drop dead any day now.  I could, however, live for 10-20 or more years.  How do I fill those years?  Raging While Aging or not, at some point I am going to have to slow way down or even stop.  It may be that I just get too old and slow to race: I’ve seen it happen!  It was in the Twilight Runfest, which is held each year in mid-July in Rockville, Maryland.  The race is run in the evening after the sun goes down so the temperature is off its peak, but humidity is inversely related to temperature; the air was so thick we almost needed snorkels to breathe in the four years I ran it about 15 years back. An 8K in those conditions meant that the sweat pouring down our legs had reached our shoes in the last few K.  We all sloshed across the finish line.  I remember walking back to my car after a good drenching from standing under a firehose shower that had been set up just past the finish—it felt so good!  I stopped on the sidewalk clapping and hollering as the sweeper truck drove by, lights flashing, old guy slogging it out right in front.  I envisioned a spinning street sweeping broom in the front of the truck threatening to sweep him up and drop him like cordwood into the truck bed.  I wondered at that moment; would this someday be my fate?

It could be that I’ll get injured before I get so old that the sweepers in a trail race, sans truck, need to walk me in the last few miles.  I hope not.  I use poles when trail running to help keep me from going ass-over-tea-kettle when I trip over any of the infinity of rocks, roots and stumps out there, and to ease some of the pressure on my knees.  I’ve also gone from someone who was not very in tune with training methods and my body’s response to my workouts, to stretching, strengthening, tracking data and paying careful attention to any new pains that arise. 

My current issue is my right foot.  I crushed it in a motocross racing accident when I was 16.  I’ve had it operated on twice, most recently in November, 2023.  It was much improved for most of last year, it’s not so good this year.  An orthopedist who checked out my foot says I don’t have any mechanical issues.  He has recommended custom made orthotics.  If they help, I'll consider that a win.  He held out his hand to me as I was leaving, and said “Don’t stop,” as I shook it.  It felt good to hear that I’m not doing damage to myself, and to have yet another doc encourage me to keep pushing.

Training causes some pains, but it alleviates others.  In the past decade, arthritis pain in my lower back has been part of my reality.  Experiencing arthritis has given me a sense of where the idea for the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz came from.  It’s my guess that one of the writers had back pain and felt like if he could just get a couple of squeezes from an oil can around his disks, his pain would be alleviated: I guess this, because that’s exactly what I crave—oil or maybe a wedge of Styrofoam.  I now only feel substantial pain in the fall when I take a few months off from training, and it takes a few more months for the pain to fade out once I restart with the new year: a strong back goes a long way to minimizing back pain—at least for the type of pain that I experience. 

Trail running in Tuscany

Regular Physical Therapy workouts to strengthen my back and control the pain, have been part of my reality for almost as long.  Until recently, I thought I was doing PT because my disks were old and dried up and no longer supported my spine.  That’s part of it, but the more important issue is that muscles weaken as we age.  If we don't work to keep them strong, we add stress to our spine and pain builds. As a side note, backpacking is a wonderful sport for alleviating back pain:  it strengthens lots of muscles involved in supporting the spine.

Even if I don’t get sweeper slow or injured, I could just call it quits at some point.  That’s both the easiest and the hardest thing to do.  In my mind quitting has to come with a new beginning.  Something must replace training for races and backpacking, or the loss might be unbearable.  When I retired, nearly three years ago at this point, I took a few months to read up on modern training methods, then I started training anew.  I had wanted to write adventure stories for a long time, so I did.  I’m still doing that and I’ve been working through draft after draft of my first novel—it’s amazing how many drafts it takes to get something right when you start off having no idea what you’re doing: I’m on the final draft, no really, it’s done, it’s really done, well almost. 

I loved my work, but I haven’t missed it because I’ve filled the void retirement created with writing and with training at a level I would not have been able to manage otherwise.  How will I fill the training space when the sweeper truck arrives, when my right foot or some other body part gives out, or I just hang up my running shoes?  My guess is that more writing will be part of it, but without adventures to write about, I’m not sure what I’ll have to say.  

Trekking around Cinque Terre

I know that I’m fortunate to continue raging as long as I have, and I don’t see the end in my immediate future.  But the sense that it’s coming is in my head; the day will come when the comments change from ‘you are’ to ‘you were’ an inspiration.  

None of us have this aging stuff figured out, and we never know what twists and turns lie around the next bend.  We plan, we adapt, then we plan and adapt some more.  Mostly we hope that our planning and adaptations allow us to lead a full life that meets or exceed our expectations.  I never wanted to grow old, but so far at least, I’m happy.