Start where you are

• More evidence that it’s almost never too late to start running. In this most recent study, individuals who began running in their fifties exhibited – within ten years – similar lean muscle mass, body fat, and running speed to same-aged runners who began running decades earlier. That’s encouraging!*

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  I’m having to contemplate either proceeding with knee replacement OR continuing to roll merrily along on cortisone shots for a while longer, while simultaneously cultivating a taste for swimming or cycling. Road cycling terrifies me (don’t judge; I see too much bad behavior on my hour-long, mixed-route commute to work and don’t trust anyone behind a steering wheel), and indoor cycling for more than 45 minutes or an hour is incredibly boring. So I’m exploring cheap indoor pools that will help me get in decent enough aerobic condition to try open-water swimming next spring/summer. With that aim, I found this article helpful: Outside magazine’s “Beginner’s Guide to Open-Water Swimming.” And am trying to remember to work these five exercises into my routine a few days/week: (1) high cadence drill with a resistance band; (2) crunches with weight; (3) stability ball push-ups; (4) tricep rotations; and (5) oblique rolls. Click through to the article and scroll down for a slide show depicting each exercise.

• 55-year old Roberto Romero was the overall winner of the Angeles Crest 100-mile race! (He’s the guy in the picture at the top of this post – an image I borrowed from the article.) Romero took up ultra-running in his forties. #rolemodels

*Update over a month later: somebody coulda told me I had a typo in the first paragraph! (A “to” where it should have been a “too”!)