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Dear Achilles Tendon,

You have done a sterling job for 57 years, and I hope you don't doubt for a moment that your support has been appreciated. You have been with me through thick and hinge, often a step ahead of me, and a rock upon which I have built the journey of my life.

But now, I know, you are suffering. Believe me, I feel your pain. No need to walk me through this.

I know also that you blame me. You think that my insistence on jogging for exercise is, well, past its use-by date. That's in public. In private, you think it's moronic.

Yes, old friend, I still hear things.

You think cross-training, swimming, indoor-rowing, gym work, pilates and many non-weight bearing alternatives are far more appropriate for someone my (our) age. And you may be right. But here's the thing. When it comes to exercise, I prefer fresh air to water, and I prefer outdoors to indoors.

Is that too much for a city-dwelling, office-bound bloke to ask?

And now my wife has organised a trekking holiday in New Zealand at the end of the year. Queen Charlotte Sound, at the north end of the South Island. It sounds like heaven.

But we have to hike for up to eight hours a day, and there's my problem. You. I've been trying to fix you for months, but it doesn't seem to matter how long I rest you, each time I try a gentle jog I spend days afterwards limping and resisting the temptation to overdose on anti-inflammatories.

Old friend, we aren't that old, are we? I'm really looking forward to this hiking tour. Please take pity on me. Stop being a heel and heal yourself.

Thanks,
The bloke upstairs

Hell

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: 50s, Exercise, Health, Achilles tendonitis

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Don't hold your breath waiting for a mid-life crisis

February 2nd 2010 10:40

Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.

- Samuel Ullman

What is, for most of us, the happiest period of our lives? When we are young and carefree? When we are old and wise? Surely not somewhere in the middle, in the roiling waters infested by that terror of the psyche — the mid-life crisis.

Yes. Just that.

According to research by Tel Aviv University psychologist Carlo Strenger, not only are our middle years our happiest but their nemesis, the mid-life crisis, is actually a myth.

Strenger and his team got into the heads of about 1,500 people before coming to this conclusion. "Most of them actually say that they are better off and happier and more balanced than they were when they were 20 years younger," he found.

The psychologist Elliot Jacques coined the term “mid-life crisis” around 1970. He had started with the fact that the average human lifespan was 70 years, and he surmised that the average person’s quality of life started going down after age 35. If that was the case, thought Jacques, it was natural to expect some extreme reactions as one contemplated mortality.

"Shiver with anticipation," as Frank sibilated in the Rocky Horror Show.

The surprise responses to Strenger's survey attracted the attention of a another psychologist, Peter S. Kanaris, of Long Island in the US. And he decided they had a point.

The 40s and 50s, Kanaris said, can be viewed as times of contentment. “People in mid-life have reached a time where they are a little more settled and established. Prior to mid-life, people are building families, paying mortgages, developing in their careers at a time when there is much more uncertainty than usual. This creates a great deal of stress.”

By the time we are middle-aged, he concludes, we typically have substantially lessened the financial strains on our lives.

So must we let go of the potential of a mid-life crisis? I mean, let's face it, the word potential there could be replaced by allure. Promise. Attraction, even already. We are talking about, y'know, young women and sports cars and revisitations of youth.

B.J. Gallagher, author of a book entitled It’s Never too Late To Be What You Might Have Been, pours cold water on all that, and agrees with Strenger and Kanaris. "A so-called mid-life crisis these days is really more of a mid-life transition," she says.

It's nice that such revolutionary and revelatory scientific endeavour brings us ever deeper understanding of life.

But what about my Ferrari?

New York Daily News

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: 50s, 60s, Life questions, Mid-life crisis

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The Pilates Kid

July 9th 2009 00:27

I'm starting Pilates lessons this Saturday morning. I don't really know what Pilates is — this was one of those bilateral decisions which my wife made on a unilateral basis — but I intend to do a little reading before Saturday.

In fact, I'm looking forward to it, not as the start of something but as the continuation of something started in the week after last Christmas.

I weighed myself that day when it all started and the scales read, in red, flashing numbers, 109 kilograms. Here I was, 55 years old and the heaviest, most sedentary, laziest, slobbiest I had been in my life. Not good.

Today I weigh 101 kilograms and I'm aiming, ambitiously, to return to a fighting weight below 90 kilograms. My brother, who is the same height and weight and drinks far less beer than me, weighs 87 kilograms and has a flat stomach.

I lust after a flat stomach.

I miss beer.

I have lost eight kilograms partly by eating less, partly by drinking less beer, and largely by moving my lard out on to the nearby river pathway three times a week and getting mobile.

I have done quite a lot of running in my time, and many years ago ran four marathons. I am acutely aware these days, however, of creaking joints, fragile muscles and susceptible tendons. When I started running seven months ago, I swore to myself that I would take things very, very, very slowly.

It has taken more patience than I have shown for the sum total of everything else I have done in my life, but it has worked. I started by walking interspersed with two-minute joglets during which I was regularly overtaken by elderly trees. After seven months, I have built up to 75-minute runs, and I have also built up the speed to the extent that the only trees that pass me now are some of the younger, more energetic ones.

The weight loss has been steady, but more remarkable and obvious has been the inch-loss. The stomach is far from flat yet, but I look like half the man I used to be. It's fun trying on old clothes. If I lose much more, I can start trying on some of my wife's clothes.

Most remarkable of all, however, is the change in the way my body feels. I have lost 10 years. I get into and out of chairs without thinking about it. It had become a groan to get in to the car, but no more. And, most stunning of all, when I bent down yesterday to pick something off the floor, I felt nothing!

I have been bending down and touching the floor ever since, reminding myself what I felt like when I was younger. It never occurred to me that I could reverse the aging process like this, although I suppose the truth is that I'm not reversing the aging process, merely hauling back the accelerated aging I had manifested by overeating, over-beering and lack of exercise.

So I feel great because, through slowly increasing my exercise program, I have avoided injury while strengthening joints and muscles and all the other bits which help us move. And Pilates, as my knowledgeable wife has explained to me, is going to improve that process even more. That's what it does.

I'm looking forward to it. There's just one question unanswered for me now: when can I start drinking beer again?
image: www.balanceinme.com

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: 50s, Exercise, Health

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Net discord

June 25th 2009 06:27

I just watched my daughter's tennis career collapse.

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: 50s, Vintage Sportsman

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Living, and caring, longer

April 22nd 2009 08:05

The New York Times web site has a section about issues relating to the aged and aging. They call the section The New Old Age (which they clearly borrowed from the name of this blog and I expect royalty cheques to start arriving any day).

An introductory blurb to the section says that, thanks to modern medicine, the over-80s is the fastest-growing segment of the population. This is positive in many ways, but requires adjustments from their children who are finding themselves involved in caring for aged parents for longer

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: 50s, 80s, Health

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The birthday card

March 12th 2009 19:26

It was my birthday yesterday and despite being ordered by CherylJ to post about it on the day — and I always try to do what CherylJ tells me to do — I failed because I was working all day and celebrating all night.

Such hard work followed by such hard play are not recommended for someone my age. I refuse to tell you what that age is, by the why, although I will give you a hint: I have had 55 previous birthdays

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: 50s

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What would I know?

March 4th 2009 22:10

competency training certificate IV work career older old

The processes and requirements of job applications have become sophisticated and streamlined. But is something getting lost along the way?

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: 50s, 60s, 70s, Jobs, Red tape

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The vintage sportsman

February 5th 2009 22:57

I had an idea, and suggested it, and Charlie agreed. Then I realised I had spoken without thinking, and maybe this wasn't a very good idea at all.

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: 50s, Vintage Sportsman

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