Extreme Elders
By: Sarah Tuff Source: NRTA Live & Learn Date Posted: THURSDAY, August 21, 2008
LIKE MOST ATHLETES, Charlie Futrell considers the Ironman—a grueling 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike race, and 26.2-mile run—the "granddaddy" of all triathlons.
The only difference is that Futrell could be the granddaddy of nearly all his fellow competitors. At 85, he considers himself the most competitive person his age in the country. While others in his retirement community near Orlando might sun themselves by the pool midday, Futrell jumps in at 7 a.m. to swim at least 100 laps before cycling, lifting weights, and running around the recreation complex. He has only one complaint. “I don’t have enough hills for training!” says Futrell, who has completed 88 triathlons, a half-dozen marathons, and more than 400 road races. “About the only hill you run into around here is a drawbridge.”
Futrell is one of thousands who are defying what it means to grow old in America, taking the “tire” out of “retire” and recharging themselves in electrifying new ways. Instead of puttering around the house, they’re throwing the shotput in national competitions; on birthdays, they forgo snuffing out candle-covered cakes for huffing and puffing up mountains around the world. As many as 12,000 athletes are expected to compete in the 2007 Senior Olympics, while others are ski racing, skydiving, and whitewater rafting. They’re all breaking new ground for the fifth of the U. S. population that, according to the Census Bureau, will be aged 65-plus by 2030.
Watch Your Back. The rest of the athletic world might be wise to watch their backs. “When I see someone walking ahead of me on the street, I watch her out of the corner of my eye and say, ‘Oh, she’s only 30--and I can pass her!’” says Veretta Garrison-Moller, a 66-year-old race-walker and grandmother of two in Alexandria, LA, who suffered a massive stroke 10 years ago. “I got a second chance, so I want to make sure that I go on for a long time,” says Garrison-Moller, an entrepreneur. “So I started challenging myself to walk faster, to skip, to go up hills. I’d get to the top of a hill and say, ‘I didn’t die, so I think I’ll try it again tomorrow.’”
Don Kjelleren, a 73-year-old retired DuPont executive in Delaware, has also been challenged by hills, having climbed Japan’s Mount Fuji at night and scores of other summits. His passion took root as he approached his 60th birthday. Kjelleren had planned an unusual yearlong celebration: He would climb the highest peak in each state. But then he found out that the feat had already been accomplished. So for each state, Kjelleren added a 100-mile bike ride, 10-mile run, and 1-mile swim.
After 346 days, he had completed what he called the “Great American Adventure” in every state from Alaska to Maine, including a harrowing climb up California’s Mount Whitney in winter with an ice ax. “It was pretty exciting,” says Kjelleren of the climb; he later took on the Cascade volcano range in the Pacific Northwest for his 65th birthday. “And my 75th is coming, so watch out!”
Kjelleren, who was inspired to run a marathon at 50, a year after he weighed in at 209 pounds, scoffs at peers who might dismiss his pastime as too dangerous. “The older population is, physically, in real trouble,” says Kjelleren, a health and fitness activist who likes to spread the gospel of the thinking behind his Great American Adventure. “I didn’t care for water,” he says. “But I threw the swim in because I’ve always had a philosophy that all limitations are self-imposed.”
Like Kjelleren, triathlete Futrell took up sports because of some scary numbers on the scale. “I was such a heavyweight,” he says. “I wasn’t even sure I could jog around the block!” Today, Futrell’s fitness level astounds his cardiologists, who once told him he needed a pacemaker—shortly after he’d finished a 3 1/2–mile swim.
Just Go Outside and Play. Doctors in Honolulu are equally amazed by Jack Karbens, a track-and-field superstar with a resting heart rate of 56 beats per minute, a blood pressure of 110 over 70, and cholesterol of about 195. In a land of Spam-lovers and caloric cocktails, he lets others think he’s a bit lolo for jogging the beaches, tossing the javelin, and running wind-sprints on rubber tracks. “You gotta keep thinking like a kid, you know?” says Karbens, 64. “Just go outside and play every day.”
Karbens eschews fast-food joints, but he admits a soft spot for chocolate—and for grabbing a slice of pizza with his pals every once in a while. “We’ll get through running in the early evening and then go off to the pizza parlor,” he says. “There’s a lot of social time.” Many of those friends, Karbens says, are in their 80s, 90s, and even beyond. “Some may be down to the last few minutes of their life, but they’re still running in the hallway of their condominium,” he says. “The walls keep them going in a straight line! That’s such an inspiration.”
For these athletes, the social interaction and the inspiration are inextricably linked. “There tend to be some fairly good parties after our races,” says Pete Donaghy, a 62-year-old Masters ski racer from North Hero, VT, who spends his winters thrashing down icy slopes and his summers training for the rigors of 70-mph speeds, just like World Cup racers. “We have athletes through their 80s—former astronauts, telephone company workers—and they’re all friendly and helpful.”
Endurance, Not Speed. Race-walker Garrison-Moller is a newlywed and jokes that she trains to look good. “I have to keep my market value up!” she says. But really, it’s to feel good, and to help make others feel better. “I just like inspiring anybody,” she says. “My granddaughter is only a year old but I already see she has the spirit—I want to leave the legacy of, ‘Don’t quit’ and ‘You can always do something.’”
And that something, says Futrell, doesn’t necessarily come from the Olympic motto of faster, higher, stronger, but simply from the heart that keeps on ticking. “When you get to be in your 70s and 80s and beyond, it’s not speed that counts, it’s endurance,” says Futrell. “You want to hang on for as long as you can.”
Sarah Tuff has written for the New York Times, National Geographic Adventure, and Skiing. This article was published in NRTA Live & Learn, Spring 2006.
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