AARP-eligible sea kayaker at midpoint on Scotland-Iceland row
Fifty-four-year-old sea kayaker Chris Duff has finished the first leg of a demanding, 450-mile voyage from Scotland to Iceland. He left the Scottish island of Lewis last Wednesday, rowed 40-50 miles a day and arrived Sunday in the Faroe Islands. This makes him one of the few travelers since St. Brendan to find the Faroe...
Saturday mash-up: May 26, 2012
Busted glasses, busted diets, lost manufacturing…no intention here to sound ominous. Sometimes the news just points you in a way and there’s no point in resisting it. But summer is here at last. Break out the white flannels. Soon. Just as soon as this small dark cloud passes over. They’re pretty light, those glasses, so...
Marco Olmo is to the Alps what Caballo Blanco was to the Copper Canyon
Writing about the real and perceived risks of long-distance running for old people, we were reminded of the triumphs of Marco Olmo, the 60-year-old Italian excavator operator who won the grueling, 166-km (with 9,400 meters of climbing) Ultra-Trail du Mont Blanc. Actually, he won it twice, in 2006 and 2007. He’s well known in Europe...
How dangerous is distance running for old folks?
Older runners who are in excellent shape, with years of marathons under their collective and not very long belts, can still be cut down in mid-stride by a cardiac arrest. That’s the lesson suggested by the autopsy of famed 58-year-old endurance runner Micah True (AKA Caballo Blanco), who reportedly died from an undiagnosed enlarged left...
Tamae Watanabe is sitting on top of the world. Again. And Everest claims four others.
UPDATED: On Saturday, May 18, Tamae Watanabe became—at age 73—the oldest woman to summit Everest. This is an amazing accomplishment because (1) it is Everest, (2) she attacked the mountain from the difficult north face and (3) she broke her own record, set in 2002, when she was a spry 63-year-old. So congratulations to her....
Saturday Mash-up: May 19, 2012
Like the other photos for Saturday mash-ups, this one is picked not for its relevance but just because we like it. It’s a photo of a “black ice growler from a recently calved iceberg closing in on the shore at the old heliport in Upernavik, Greenland. Such black ice growlers originate from a glacial crevasse,...
You’re over 50, you’re outdoors, and it’s Friday
Old people have occult skills for opening bottles of beer. Chalk it up to experience, cunning, and a stubborn insistence on opening that bottle of beer dammit even when there isn’t a reasonable tool at hand. But they are too worldly to use the tricks of younger folk. They don’t use their teeth; they know...
Dietary secrets of centenarian athletes
Recent posts mentioned paraglidingPeggy McAlpine (104) and marathoner Fauja Singh (101). Our centenarian coverage inadvertently omitted recognition of the 100th birthday of “Pocket Hercules” Manohar Aich, the 4’11” body builder who was India’s first Mr. Universe. Aich no longer lifts weights, since he had a minor stroke last year. (Which, yes, suggests he was lifting...
Obesity studies are the empty calories of public debate
There was yet another conference last week where experts confirmed what we all already know. The United States is fat and getting fatter. The conference issued a companion report. There was also a new study out last week. There’s a four-part HBO series, The Weight of the Nation, that premieres tonight. The HBO series has...
Saturday mash-up: May 12, 2012
By separating these odd lots into discrete posts spread over several days, we might appear more professional. But alas, we are what we seem to be: The National Park Service is reminding folks that 33 national parks will offer premier seating for the solar eclipse on May 20, and six parks “are at the center...
Art in passing
We are sad to mark the passing of B. Hive. We didn’t know he was even feeling bad…indeed we didn’t even know he was, at all. So imagine our surprise when his epitaph rolled by at 60 m.p.h. It was accompanied by a burst of color and images surpassing the mundane suburban gallery it rolled...
104-year-old sets paragliding record
It’s been a good few weeks for achievements by people who are so old that—typically—each new breath would be considered something of a triumph . Fauja Singh finished the London Marathon in late April; he is 101. A week or so earlier, Peggy McAlpine reclaimed the record for the oldest person to take part in a...
