Age is just a number “not a state of mind or a reason for any type of particular behaviour” is from Love, Rosie by Cecelia Ahern. I definitely take that to heart, literally, as I follow the African Proverb quoted by Christopher McDougall in Born To Run. “Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up, it knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn’t matter whether you’re the lion or a gazelle-when the sun comes up, you’d better be running.”
With the exception of Tuesday when I waited for my daughter to leave at 7:30, I’ve been awake before the light of day and running as the sun rises. I am not outrunning “the fastest lion” but rather the Grim Reaper of Father Time.
If I think about my age and could also come up with a lot of reasons not to run or work out or both.
On June 2nd, 2021, I was blessed to be given a full life back with the implant of a pacemaker to control a low heart rate which was causing me to black out unexpectedly.
Since then, I have run well over 1,200 miles and done over 700 workouts in total. When I leave to run each morning to stay ahead of Father Time, if I didn’t have a Polar on my wrist or a calendar in the kitchen or a mirro by the front door, I wouldn’t even think about my age because age is just a number and mine doesn’t matter to me!
