Still running after all these years

"Still crazy after all these years" was a song written and sang by multi-awarded singer-songwriter Paul Simon in 1975. It is described as a song which "captures a sense of introspection and self-awareness, portraying a man who revisits the past... and recognizes that despite the passage of time, he remains fundamentally the same in his habits, emotions and idiosyncrasies."   

I turned 70 last November, "older than I once was, younger than I'll be" (a line Paul added later to his classic "The Boxer" - yes, I am a fan -- and, perhaps, you now have an idea how I picked this blog entry's title). I have had some health issues that goes with age but thanks to my doctors, my wife, and God above all, I have overcome and continued with most of my "crazy" ways, foremost of which is my running.

I have most definitely slowed down, running 1k in a snail-paced 12 minutes and sometimes more. My runs have been mostly on the shorter side, 2k's to 5k's. Many runners pass me on the road, mostly younger than me, but not so many older than I am. I can be happy with that. Seeing so many individuals into running nowadays reminded me of this blog I started way back in 2006 where I recorded my running exploits and more. Among these was an entry entitled "Decades on the road" posted in 2021: 

Decades on the road

Last Monday, while on the finishing stretch of a morning 10k run, my second at 66 years old, a motorcycle rider slowly drove beside me, the driver asking me how old I was. He was somewhere between his mid-20's and early 30's by my estimate. Smiling, I told him I was 66 years old. He quipped back: "Bata pa ko gadagan ka na, sir, ba. Lig-on kaayo. (I've seen you running since I was young, sir. Such endurance)."

I was perhaps in my mid- to late-20's when I started running, and have gone on since that time in the mid-80's, except for a couple of years or so that I dabbled more in cycling and run much less. I have been running since my return sometime in 2005-2006.

Many times, commuting on a tricycle when I came home from the city where I worked for about 5 years or so, the driver would ask if I still ran, and tell me how I have been a common sight running along the highway most mornings. Not seeing me on my usual early morning jaunts at that time pethaps made them ask: "What the hell happned to that running guy?"

I can only smile thinking about it.

Other runners I have run with when I started, most of them younger than me, have stopped running. I have run with many others who have picked up the habit over the years. I don't see many of them on the road nowadays. The few that still do seem to be moving faster than me now, but many more have stopped.  My times have slowed down over the years. My 45-minute 10k runs when I was in my mid-50's are now done in over an hour, closer to 2 hours in fact. But I am thankful I can still do it. I can still run. Not many my age here do that.

Now that I have retired from work, and have more time to run and ride, I am doubly grateful. I am blessed, and I will continue to make my runs and my rides my songs of praise. 

I also took time to look again at some photos from my runs in the past.

 

This first one was among the first few taken of me while running. I was going into the finish of a 20k run from Makilala at the provincial capitol grounds in Amas, Kidapawan. This was sometime in 1987 or 1988. I was in my early 30's.

This next one was of me finishing the 42k Davao Finishers' Marathon in a sub-4hr 10th place among male runners in 2011. I was 56 years old.

That is a total of  23 years in between the two photos, less the 3 or so I years I rode bikes instead of ran, that is 2 decades of running. To be doing it still, running at 70, isn't that sort of crazy?