Why Do I Exercise?
Not An Athlete Why do I exercise? Should I not just take it easy at age 67 and kick back and smell the flowers and all those cliches? Let me reveal some profoundly personal stories from my life to explain why exercise has been a …
Training, strength, endurance, nutrition, and what breaks.
I’m sixty-nine. Two marathons in twelve months at sixty-eight, and now a barbell instead — 143kg off the floor by December, which is a serious number for a man my age, and one I might not get. The point isn’t the events. The point is arriving at eighty still able to pick heavy things up.
I’m not an athlete. I was distinctly average at sport as a boy and I’m a distinctly average athlete now, carrying twenty-seven fractures, two arthritic knees and a shoulder that won’t rotate. What I have is consistency: fifteen years of training, on average, every other day.
I spent nearly thirty years in sports nutrition, which means I read the research rather than the marketing, and I’ll tell you when the evidence is thin. Expect numbers, sources, and the sessions that go wrong as well as the ones that don’t.
Not An Athlete Why do I exercise? Should I not just take it easy at age 67 and kick back and smell the flowers and all those cliches? Let me reveal some profoundly personal stories from my life to explain why exercise has been a …
I’ve blogged about this subject before, but after some productive focus on this area, I wanted to remind readers that this is an easy and highly effective practice to introduce into your wellness regime. Double down on protein. From the age of around 40 muscle …
Nanakorobi Yaoki Seven times fall, eight times rise. I live by it, even now. If I had stayed down every time I had a setback, it would have been a bleak life. I’ve always found a way to rise again. Some would call it stubbornness, …
18 Weeks To Go It’s 18 weeks until the New York Marathon, and a chink in my armour has appeared. I’ve done very little training since the last update two weeks ago, with one primary and one smaller blocker to progress. Not so #runmoonyrun, I’m …
Self-Doubt Rules It’s twenty weeks before my Run Moony Run attempt on the New York Marathon. According to the official site, 140 days and a few hours to go. I’m half anxious and half depressed about the venture. It’s only eight weeks since I did …
That Didn’t Last Long It’s marathon training plan time. Unfortunately, my best-developed plan has been torched before I’ve even run a step. I went into my Girona cycling trip with my TrainingPeaks plan informing me that I am 30% fitter than last year. Then, the …
How Did I End Up Here? Run, Moony, Run. What gives? What’s with the Forrest Gump strapline? I will tell you an embarrassing tale. Blog readers, my loving family and my friends know that 11 months ago, I managed to have my first real cycling …
You Can’t Improve It If you don’t measure it, you can’t improve it. The diagram on the left illustrates my Training Peaks fitness trend over the last year. A year ago, I was ramping up my fitness for the annual Girona cycling pilgrimage, which was …
What Is Misogi? A traditional Japanese purification ritual centred on waterfall bathing. In the Shinto faith, ‘misogi’ means ‘water cleansing’. Standing under the icy waterfall purifies the soul and prepares one for the next 364 days of the year. In a contemporary context, misogi has …
No f@£$%^g way am I doing that. Well, guess what, I am. I got the news last Friday that an entry into the 2024 New York Marathon was mine. Thank you to Dan and Sam at Science in Sport. Logically, there is no way I …