Discussion: For the M/F50+ competitor

Of interest I think:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/magazine/28athle...

Including quotes from orienteer Mark Tarnopolsky on page 3 and again in the conclusion.

That is a very interesting article. It brings some science to the adage 'you don't slow down because you get old; you get old because you slow down.'
Yesterday I met again one of Ottawa's former orienteers who at 87 years of age still XC skis, walks regularly and otherwise keeps active. Years ago he could have been one of the models for the Canadian fitness campaign saying "the average 60 year old Swede is fitter than the average 35 year old Canadian".
He still looks incredibly fit and what amazes me is how his fitness regime seems to be keeping his posture perfectly upright.
As a result of the article I am definitely going to get back to stretching and resistance training as part of my workouts.

Thanks for the very interesting article....which I almost didn't see due to the odd title of this post! Why single out M50+ when it applies to all older athletes, and the "star" of the article is a 91-year-old female!?!

Yeah, I almost didn't read it because I thought it would be about some arcane M50+ issue at some recent meet. ;-)

>Including quotes from orienteer Mark Tarnopolsky

and bonus points for my buddy Mark for using a Neil Young song analogy to get his point across. Classic.

Uh, sorry ladies. It was a mind slip, I originally was writing Masters, but then changed my mind and just wrote 50+, not realizing I had inadvertently made it a Male only title.

The very old are disproportionately female. This suggests we have a very long way to go yet in developing senior female athletes.