Episode 5-499 – Anna – Exercise for the over 60
If you think it’s time to get serious about your health, and take action for yourself, reach out to Rachel at www.drshuck.com/rrl and have a conversation.
Hello my running friends. Welcome to episode 5-499 of the RunRunLive podcast.
This week we talk with Anna who has written a book about exercise routines for people over 60. I got her query email and thought, ‘yeah, that’s interesting’.
So here we are.
In section one I’ll talk about how we can adapt our training and racing goals to this inevitable onslaught of time.
In section two I’ll talk about being a creative and what I have gleaned from my recent survey of a bunch of ‘how to’ books about creativity.
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Here we are, thanksgiving week and I think, between you and I, as friends, I can confide that the RunRunLive podcast is officially on the revived list.
You can throw away the milk cartons.
We have been found.
And I’ll continue to practice my writing, talk about things that are rattling around in my head and chat with interesting people.
I heard something today on a writing podcast. The lady said that she came to the realization that creatives are unique, that her brain is different.
It struck her that not everyone walks around with all these ideas and thoughts and images constantly introducing themselves and crowding our brains and asking to be released.
That’s how it is.
I don’t get a vote in this process.
My daemons have a firm grip on the wheel.
Speaking of gripping the wheel I had a rental car last week that had the lane change feature enabled and it was terrifying.
The way this works is that when the car senses you changing lanes it yanks the wheel back to keep you in your current lane.
Clearly they did not test this feature in Massachusetts.
I imagine that one of their design assumptions is that people signal before they change lanes. Not in Massachusetts.
I don’t think cars even have signal indicators in Massachusetts. By the way we call them ‘Blinkahs’ – as in “Use yah Blinkah yah moron!”
So, yeah every time I tried to gracefully drift into a new lane the car would yank the wheel. Like some sort of angry back seat driver.
And this is where we are headed with all the smart vehicles and advanced AI. Pretty soon you’ll be reaching for a beer in the fridge and your hand will be forcibly redirected to a carrot.
That’s how it’s gonna be.
Free will is an illusion.
The revolution will be optimized.
On with the show.
Section One – Adaptation to exercise with aging
https://runrunlive.com/shifting-the-balance-as-you-age
Featured Interview:
Hi Chris.
Attached is a 3D image of my book cover. I hope this will do? Let me know if not.
Also my links are below:
www.facebook.com/anna.williams.3517563
www.instagram.com/annashealthandlife
I will get you my brief bio before Thursday, for sure.
Thank you, again, for your time.
Section Two – The artists’ way
https://runrunlive.com/common-threads-to-the-artists-journey
Outro
Well, with any luck you have gobbled your way to the end of episode 5-499 of the revivified RunRunLive podcast and now are listening to me on a punishing weekend long run with turkey and cranberry sauce roiling uncomfortably thorough your intestines like an angry waves of a storm.
Or maybe your personal AI stepped in and redirected you to a tofu burger.
‘Revivified’ is an interested amalgamation of a word. It’s way more complex than it needs to be. Just means to ‘bring back to life’, it’s one of those words academics use to sound smart instead of letting the prose do the work for them.
I was reading a short piece on how Hemmingway wrote standing up at the typewriter. The Blogger, or maybe the AI blog-writer, used the word ‘idiosyncratic’, which is almost a direct translation of a Greek word idiosynkrasía which has three parts, ‘idio’, meaning something like ‘our own’, ‘syn’, meaning with and ‘krasis’, meaning a blend of the four humors – so basically it’s a 4,000 year old word that means ‘that guy makes his own mix’.
But, as interesting as that etymology is, Hemmingway would have never used that word. Hemmingway made the sentence do the work and didn’t rely on 10-penny words to sound smart.
…
Updates from me! I’m going to race a Thanksgiving 5K this week. And as much as I hate racing short distances it will be a good test and give me some good feedback on my fitness. Much to my own surprise I’m feeling a little pop in the old legs these days.
So far in this training cycle I have stayed out of the ditch. The broken shoulder is manageable and nothing else really hurts.
I have been doing some work travel and I’ll tell you a couple stories.
First is from my trip to Dallas. I got up at 5:00 to run out from the hotel and I had a wildlife encounter. I ran into the same skunk twice in the same place on the out and the back. This little skunk was camped out in the middle of a cement sidewalk.
Of course, I’m kinda out of it, with my head down, listening to something, I mean it’s 5 AM in the suburbs of Dallas! Then all of a sudden this little guy is in the middle of the sidewalk in front of me with his tail up. Thou Shall Not Pass!
It was a bit surprising. My approach with wildlife is leave them alone and they leave you alone, but this little bugger wouldn’t give ground so I had to take a wide berth around. Then he does the same thing an hour later, in the same spot, when I’m on my way back!
Imagine trying to explain that to your colleagues. What’s that cologne you’re wearing Chris? It’s rather earthy… Yes, it’s French, called eau de Pepi le Peau…
…
Or last week when I woke up to a terrific storm in Wisconsin and decided to take my tempo run to the hotel treadmill. I haven’t run on a treadmill in two or three years.
It was awful. I got into the tempo interval and could not hold my form.
It just felt terrible.
So I pivoted.
Instead of slogging through the long tempo with shitty form, which would provide zero benefit, and probably broke something, I switched to doing 2 minute fast tempo intervals with a 1 minute rest.
This way I got some benefit from the workout without hurting myself and without totally walking away from it.
Lesson to you, understand the purpose of the workout, listen to your body and don’t be afraid to pivot.
I was soaked with sweat. It was warm in the gym.
I don’t know if you folks do this, but I strategically hang my stuff up to dry around the room like some sort of dust-bowl-Okie camp. I mean, you could be nice and hang your stuff in the bathroom, but it won’t dry in the confined space.
A lot of my old running stuff is overtly offensive. It could be declared a toxic waste. But, since Covid, no one cleans the hotel rooms anymore so I can turn it into a locker room without spoiling the support staff’s day.
Enough prattling…
Yes – It’s thanksgiving week in the old U S of A. That means we gather, typically several times, with different relative groupings, to gorge ourselves on roast turkey.
But, if you set all the gluttony and uncomfortable social situations aside the point is that we have a holiday to be thankful.
Whatever that means to you.
What I have discovered is that gratitude, like love, is a practice, not an attitude. The attitude and the emotion are the end product of practice. These are verbs, not nouns.
You practice love. You practice gratitude.
And sometimes, maybe especially surrounded by extended family, that practice takes patience nad effort.
So – my friends, You’re not just going to magically be thankful.
You need to practice being thankful.
And as taxing as existence may seem to you, there is always something to be thankful for.
Here’s your exercise; tell someone you are grateful for them.
I’m grateful for you.
And I’ll see you out there.