Prepare Well Ahead To Stay Active Into Old Age, Your Happiness Will Depend Upon It

Just look and learn. See how fragile the bone is in the unexercised legs; it’s not just the muscles that decay away. Image from Bicycle Lab.

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As the years go by, the more difficult it becomes to stay active into old age, but try you must. I think the reason I have done so well with my abdominal aortic aneurysm stent graft is, at least in part, due to my general level of fitness at the time the stent was installed, in 2010, and throughout the intervening years.

Your body will deteriorate without exercise, and this affects every system, including your aorta. My stent is held in place by vicious hooks, at the top (anterior) end, embedded in the aortic wall near my kidneys. The stability of these hooks is surely a function of the strength of my aorta in that region. Furthermore, continued exercise will keep my aorta in pretty good shape, to hold those hooks in place, as long as it is safe exercise, for which I recommend more endurance and less intensity as you age.

I’m entering my fifth year of living with Rupert (my aortic stent) and the second year with his extension (Aussie One – needed due to a bike wreck, at the World Half Ironman Championships, in Las Vegas, Nevada, in 2013). I’m still in Ironman training, with continued hopes of reaching Kona one day. But that isn’t really the underlying reason I do this. I do it because if feels good, and I have fun training.

I thought it was time I wrote a short book about my Ironman experiences, as I work my way into my 70s, in the hopes of inspiring others to do the same.

Don’t let your world shrink before it’s time.

Happy Trails.

FitOldDog