Pat Taub
GUEST POST by JANET WEIL
I ran track and cross country in high school. With Nikes bought from the back of a salesman’s car laced onto my feet, I dashed and panted across the finish line. After a long run, group showers were a delight – the rush of warm water down my legs, the gossip and giggles of my teammates, the pleasant lethargy following exertion. Running hard to shave seconds off my time around the track in practice was a fierce discipline; runner’s high was my reward.
High School girl runners, reminiscent of the author’s high school years
Now I struggle with sciatica. Nearly every day I set my feet on a track, this time an indoor loop inside my suburban gym.
I can look out huge window walls at the gray clouds and green hills, but it’s hardly the same as racing with the breeze pulling on my ponytail. I’m not running. I’m walking, sucking my gut in to ease the pinched nerve in my back. Soon I will sit down to do my physical therapy stretches, counting through the tedium.
The author climbing the stairs at her health club
The CDC recommends 30 minutes of moderate exercise, such as brisk walking, at least 5 times a week. Am I walking briskly enough? I look at gray-haired gym members, alone or with a spouse, trudging along, and chide myself for my internalized ageism. They look slow and tired to me – do I appear that way to them? At least they have made the effort. They are doing their best, I tell myself. Now YOU do your best, or at least don’t quit after a measly 10 minutes. That’s a BTN in my private code: Better Than Nothing.
30 minutes of brisk exercise 5 times a week, is recommended for seniors
Physical exercise is crucial for health and safety in old age. Balance challenge exercises can help prevent falls. Movement is a known mood lifter. Lifting weights keeps bones strong(er) and makes daily tasks like hauling groceries easier. Swimming and water exercises offer workouts, plus comfort and relaxation, to even very elderly and/or disabled persons.
Swimming is a popular exercise among older women
Yoga, which I used to do enthusiastically, develops body awareness and increases flexibility. Unless, of course, you do certain poses TOO enthusiastically, as I did, and wind up with a nagging shoulder injury and a bad attitude.
“If Daddy can do it, you can do it!” I once heard a massively buffed, fiftyish yoga instructor tell his mostly young, gorgeous students, after demonstrating a difficult pose. “Yeah, but you are Super-Daddy!” I thought enviously. He came over to me as I struggled with crow’s pose, my face flushing a deep red. “Are you alright?” he chuckled appreciatively. He probably thought I was “spunky.” I was definitely not “spry.”
Running is notoriously not so good for older joints. I gave it up long ago, taking up swimming and water walking, hiking, personal training and weightlifting in my forties, ice skating in my fifties, and during the pandemic, pickleball. Pounding my feet on pavement, jolting my knees and hips… no thanks. Not even here in runner’s heaven, the western edge of Portland, not far from Nike headquarters.
A pickleball game among older women
But lately I have had the sense that I am running toward seventy. Or maybe seventy is running to overtake ME.
The months and years clip by at an accelerating rate. As I approach “real” old age, the threshold of entering my 8th decade, I lace my sports shoes on my feet once again.
And some day this irritating sciatica will go away, at least for a while. Egged on by my workout buddy-husband, I may even lift my feet and run a bit, looking not at the track, but at the sky.
