Today is my Marathons of Life Day 27,666. I am toward the end of Marathons of Life #3 and will do whatever it takes to finish strong. I ended my first MoL on February 12th, 1977, and it was easy. I finished my second MoL on April 20, 2003, and it had its rough patches, but I got it done and finished strong.
The third MoL has definitely been challenging, but I have gotten a boost just recently from finding out about Bryan Johnson and Blueprint. I don’t take any of his supplements yet, but I did watch “Don’t Die” on Netflix and a number of his YouTube videos.
To date, I’ve adopted his (and numerous others’) idea of taking a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil every day. I am trying to stretch more (I don’t do any, and I am very, very inflexible). I am trying not to eat for four hours before bedtime and trying to get more sleep. I know that these are very minimal efforts, but as they increase, I will share more of them.
Today’s accountability is: an Okay night’s sleep according to the Polar Flow app, a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil, and a walk in the Rio Grande Bosque with my daughter’s dog Maggie. Almond milk yogurt with banana, and wild blueberries when we got back, and then oatmeal with chia seeds, a tablespoon of peanut butter, and almond milk for breakfast. Lunch was peanut butter and jelly on 22-grain bread, and dinner will be a pesto and penne salad from the Sprout’s Grab & Go bar.
What I did not do is any strength training, and that is my weakness, so to speak. I want to get a farm that would provide all of the strength workouts that I could need, but that seems like a far-off dream so far. What I am aiming for in this MoL:
Marathon 3: 52.4–78.6 — Preserve the Engine
- Resistance training becomes non-negotiable — sarcopenia (muscle loss) accelerates without it; 2-3x/week strength work is the single highest-leverage habit
- Protein intake needs to go up (aim ~0.7-1g per lb bodyweight) to counter anabolic resistance
- Keep VO2 max training in the mix — zone 2 base plus some genuine hard efforts; VO2 max is one of the strongest predictors of longevity in the research
- Power and reaction speed work matters as much as strength — fast-twitch fiber loss outpaces slow-twitch
Rich Dafter is the founder of HowToBeFit.com, a lifelong runner, former ACE Certified Personal Trainer, BODi Coach since 2007, and Polar athlete and brand ambassador for 40 years. At 75, he continues to run, hike, strength train, and share practical strategies for fitness, strength, nutrition, longevity, and more. Learn more about Rich Dafter on the About page.
