11.19.25

Since nineteen hundred, we've managed to increase our life expectancy from forty seven to seventy eight, even though we're only just now beginning to understand the science of longevity and what exactly human beings are capable of as we live deeper and healthier into our seventies, eighties, nineties, even one hundreds.

To help you harness all that we're learning about how to age athletically, National geographicun a handful of people hitting their stride in the last leg of their lives, we all shall share some pointers about how to start extending your health span right now, no matter how old you are, and some wisdom pep talks really from four of the greatest athletic specimens of the twentieth century How to age

like an athlete. An increasing body of research is telling us that staying active as we age provides extraordinary health benefits. These over fifty champs offer proof of what we gain by being athletes later in our lives. For Nora Langdon, the moment of truth came on the stairs. She was sixty four years old. Up to that point, Langdon had lived a largely satisfying life. She's raised two kids, had good friends, and was in her third decade as a

real estate agent in the Detroit area. But as time went on, she'd gained weight, slowly at first, until suddenly she had two hundred twenty pounds. She had never been an athlete, never played sports, hit the gym, or exercised consistence. But she wasn't a couch potato either. Her dad had worked in a steel factory, waking the kids at five a m. For prayer and breakfast, and at night they

all helped with the family's sole food catering business. In her world, effort had always mattered, and yet here she was struggling to make it to the second floor while showing houses to potential buyers. She began to worry. She'd seen retirees fall prey to a sedentary lifestyle. Ten years later. They're gone because they don't do anything but go home and eat, eat, sit down and look at the TV. She says. I saw a lot of my friends pass away because they weren't strong enough. She wanted no part

of it. I said, no, I'm not going out like that. At her birthday party, she got to talking with a friend's husband by the name of Art Little wiree enthusiastic and no nonsense. He worked as a trainer at a gym for power lifters north of Detroit. He invited her to come in for a workout. Langdon wasn't sure. She'd never done any weight lifting and had always considered herself a weakling. When Langdon showed up, Little led her to a bench. Around them, thick necked men grunted, weights clattered.

Little instructed Langdon to lie down, then lowered a broomstick into her hands. It weighed less than three pounds. Up and down she went with it, fighting gravity the whole way. That night, she returned home, exhausted, her body ached everywhere. Years of disuse coming to bear. She was reluctant to return, but a little voice in her set in her head told her she couldn't quit, but not not after only one session. So she went back to Little's jim later

that week, and then the week after. Little pushed her to add weight from broomstick to empty barbell, then to the bar with plates. Each time she told him she couldn't do it, just try it, Little responded. She did, finding she'd loved the feeling of getting stronger. Soon enough, with Little's encouragement, she entered powerlifting competitions and began collecting gold metal in her age group, even some for bench press,

a long way from her first session. Now in her ninth decade, she is stronger than most women in their twenties and thirties. Langdon is not alone. More people are not only exercising longer and later in life, they are also competing and breaking records in a range of sports. In Pennsylvania, a computer programmer took up running again in his fifties and now holds the fastest marathon time for

a seventy plus runner. In Idaho, a mountain biker racked up world championships while discovering that prioritizing mental health rekindled her love for the sport and helped her stay sharp and in Ireland after a string of injuries, a former rugby player learned that finding the right sport for a changing body sometimes takes persistence. Today, he's the Guinness World Record holder for being the first man to swim a

mile in ice cold water on all seven continents. These athletes are remarkable exact samples of a broad but quiet revolution in how we understand human potential across a person's lifetime.

Hirofumi Tanaka, a leading researcher on exercise and longevity, views masters athletes, typically those hardy souls who keep competing beyond the age of thirty five, as a compelling model of what he calls exceptionally successful aging, thanks to their ability to preserve strength, endurance, and cardiovascular health well into later life. It's really staggering, says Tanaka, director of the cardio Vascular Aging Research Laboratory at the University of Texas at Austin.

If you look at the world record for any given sport that's basically stagnated, they haven't changed that much over the last ten to twenty years. But age group records, he says, are a different story. They are improving rapidly. These athletes aren't just aging well, they're redefining what aging can look like. Longevity is one thing, quality of life is another. In recent decades, scientists have turned their attention to lengthening the stretch of life spent, active, healthy, and engaged,

called health span. The goal is no longer just to extend life, but to expand the years you can truly live well. While diet matters, of course, in medicine and genetics play a role, exercise is the lynchpin when it comes to health span. It improves heart health, lowers the risk of cancer, increases bone density, aids in cognition, reduces the prevalence and impact of Alzheimer's, and decreases symptoms of depression.

A twenty twenty four longitudinal study in Circulation found that logging three hundred minutes of moderate weekly exercise or one hundred fifty minutes of intense activity can lower mortality risk by roughly thirty percent. By another measure, every minute you exercise adds five minutes to rars life. Across these pages, we highlight a handful of records setting athletes from their

fifties to their eighties. Each extraordinary competitor, provides insight into the lessons and emerging science of aging athletes, and gives us all something to strive for the powerful impact of weight training. Only a few months into her new life at the gym back in two thousand and six, Nora Langdon was already feeling the benefits. She was becoming steadier on her feet, stronger through the core, and more confident

under the bar. Like many older adults, Langdon likely experienced cyclopedia the age related loss of muscle mass that accumulates with inactivity. Cycopenia can lead to a host of negative outcomes reduced mobility, increased danger of falls, a lack of independence.

The good news lifting helps counteract those effects. A twenty twenty four study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology found women who do strength training are more likely to live longer and have a lower risk of death from heart disease compared with women who don't. Those who participate in strength based exercises had a nineteen percent reduction in mortality risk from any cause and a thirty percent reduction in mortality risk from heart related conditions.

And the benefits for women are even more pronounced than for men. In Langdon's case, she steadily lost body weight, dropping almost twenty pounds, but also gained muscle. Within months, she was pushing around enough weight that Little suggested she enter her first state power lifting tournament. When Langdon arrived, she was in awe of all the strong women, most of them much younger than she was. Then she got

under the bar. To her shock, she took home the women's sixty to sixty nine age group gold in all three events she entered, squatting a hundred ninety pounds, bench pressing ninety five, and dead lifting two hundred fifty. After another year of training, Langdon had advanced to the nationals and then to the two thousand and eight World Championships in Palm Springs, California, where she squatted three hundred thirty

pounds and won her age group's gold medal. Since then, she has set more than twenty national on world age group records, logging personal records prs of two hundred three pounds in the bench press, three hundred eighty one pounds in the dead lift, and four hundred thirteen pounds in the squad mark she set in her seventies. Her bench press and dead lift prs remained US records in the

seventies age group. Now eighty two, Langdon still trains religiously three days a week for three to four hours, usually wearing converse high tops and eschewing headphones to better focus on the task at hand. She drinks protein shakes on the days she trains, eats beef twice a week, and swears by an elixir of a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar in a half glass of water. All I want to do is inspire other people just to get up and do things, she says, But the challenge for most

is getting started. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found only seven percent of American adults due strength training three times a week. If they can make the leap to take up weight training, the effects begin to compound. A study in Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports found older people gain not only muscle mass, but

also confidence and motivation. Langdon said she feels as if she's getting stronger, even at her age, and she has no plans of stopping either, not until, as she puts it, the Lord tells me to go on my own. In the meantime, she'll be in the weight room three times a week without fail. Starting late can help you finish stronger. When Gene Ultra Geezer Dykes revived a long dormant athletic passion, he discovered his DeLay's delayed commitment to competitive runs might

be a secret weapon. Dikes grew up in Canton, Ohio, and ran in school, then drifted away from the sport. He became a father to two daughters, took up golf and bowling, focused on his job as a computer programmer. When Dikes was in his early fifties, a friend recommended that he join a running group in the Philly suburbs where he lives. Soon, the group persuaded Dikes to enter races, including a half marathon. He loved the competitiveness of road

racing and had a blast running trails. In November two thousand six, at age fifty eight, he lined up alongside more than thirty five thousand other qualifiers on a cool day in Staten Island at the start of the New York City Marathon. Not only did he finish, but he did so in under four hours. Immediately, Dikes wanted more. With his kids grown and retirement lined up, he put down the five iron and began running a lot. He

ran with friends, with his daughter, by himself. Over the ensuing two decades, Dikes, a slow, light man with an ever present smile, ran thousands upon thousands of miles, setting age group records in everything from eight k's to marathons to fifty k's. He won his age group nearly every time he competed in the Boston Marathon. At sixty nine, he survived the sun scorched two hundred forty mile Moab Endurance Run in Utah, a giant loop covering desert canyons,

rocky slopes, and two mountain ranges, defying reason. The ultra Geezer unnamed bestowed by his daughter, got faster as he aged. In twenty eighteen, at age seven, he ran a two hour, fifty four minute, twenty three second marathon, not only the fastest ever by a seventy plus runner, but also a full ten minutes faster than his pr of a year earlier. At seventy five, he broke seven masters records during a solo twelve hour race at Pennsylvania's Dawn to Dusk to

Dawn Track Ultras How did Dykes do it? His late life surge, which may be telling. We've long been told to use it or lose it, but Dike's case proves a counterpoint. We tend to think their lifelong athletes research Hirophemy Tanaka says of elite Master's performers, whether or not many of them actually started competing after they retired. How and why is the focus of one of Tanaka's current studies.

For the past five years, he and his team have set up a testing station at the World Master's Athletic Championships, most recently in Gainesville, Florida, to compile data from competitors. Each year, they release new data on associated medical trends, and Tanaka's next paper, for which the team is still analyzing data, specifically looks at the tread on our physiological tires.

Tanaka's hypothesis some younger athletes go so hard that they develop osteoarthritis and other conditions that keep them from competing later in life. But those people who remain sedentary when they're younger, they deserve their joints, they preserve their ligaments, and now they can blossom as an athlete. Dikes believes this to be the case. He recommends that you save your money and your legs for retirement. Looking back, he believes the whirl of professional life and fatherhood may have

been the best thing that ever happened to him. It made me delay my hard running until I was older, he says. I tell people, you young guys, you're competing against Olympic hopefuls. I'm competing against people six feet under. It's a lot easier. It was a blessing in disguise. While Sykes started later, he also operates at a different level than his age group. Peers not to mention plenty

of runners decades younger. After Dike's record setting twenty eighteen marathon performance, researchers at the University of Delaware tested his physical markers, including his body composition, the economy of his running pace, and the volume of oxygen he could process per minute based on his weight. Known as V two max. This is a key measure of aerobic fitness that reflects how efficiently the body uses oxygen during intense exercise. It was, Dikes says, the first time he'd run on a treadmill,

and he vows the last. They found that Dike's v O two max of forty six point nine millileaders was nearly double the average for a typical seventy one year old, and was far higher than that of most marathon runners regardless of age. According to the Delaware researchers, who published their findings in the New England Journal of Medicine, most marathoners maintain seventy five to eighty five percent of their

maximum oxygen uptake. Dikes performed at ninety three percent. As you might imagine, these markers are closely tied to health span. VO two max is not only one of the best indicators of overall fitness, but is also one of the strongest predictors of longevity. In fact, studies show running is associated with a host of life prolonging fact including improved cardiovascular health, enhanced immune system, better weight management, and reduced

risk of chronic diseases. Dikes followed a training plan that was as unconventional as he is. It's based around what he calls the foe afts faster, farther, frequently and fun. He took a period of time a month a year and tried to either put in more mileage increase surroundings instead, and of course he says, always have fun. Meanwhile, he

avoided stretching, strength training, and special diets lightweight. Like weightlifter Nora Langdon, Dikes never wore headphones, preferring to enjoy things around him, but in twenty twenty two, something changed in Dike's body. While running, he began to feel weirdly fatigued. He thought, oh boy, is this what it's like to get old? During a five k, he found that he could barely run. He decided to see a doctor, and good thing he did. The doctor took tests and diagnosed,

Oh it's Dikes with blood cancer. Treatment began immediately, and fortunately he went into remission. Dikes being Dikes, he was back racing two weeks after the good news. Now he takes daily medication and is hopeful he can manage the incurable but treatable cancer the rest of his life. He credits racing. I would never have found out about it if I weren't a runner, he says, maybe eventually, maybe when I dropped over dead. The diagnosis hasn't stopped him

from running, but it has changed his approach. After years of logging high mileage, believing that, as he says, you've got to have your mind overrull your body sometimes, he is now listening to his body and trying a reset. The seventy seven year old ran the Boston Marathon in April and then began an extended break in which he plans to rest, try new recovery techniques, and he hopes prepare for the next potential goal. All those eighty plus

age group records can wait. Calm your mind, push your limits. For most of her athletic life, Rebecca Rousch felt invincible, the rare athlete, able to switchboards effortlessly and seemingly pushed past most natural limits. Then, in midlife, a freak accident coupled with the stressors of menopause forced her to make hard choices and led to a new appreciation for her

mental health. Born in Puerto Rico, Rush lost her father, a U. S Air Force F four pilot, at age three when he was shot down during the Vietnam War, a loss that would come to shape much of her life.

After running competitively in high school, she discovered climbing, notching the first female ascent of El Capitan's Bermuda Dune's Trail in nineteen ninety six, and went on to become an early champion in the emergence sport of adventure racing, a grueling blend of trekking, mountain biking, paddling, and navigation that demands both endurance and resilience over days long wilderness challenges. At thirty eight, she pivoted to solo mountain biking and

came to dominate the sport. She won the Leadville Trail one hundred MTB, a high altitude course in the Rocky Mountains, then won it three more times twice. She finished first among women in a three hundred fifty mile bike race on the Iditarod Trail over ice and snow in the Alaska Wilderness, and she became the only person to bike the length of the ho Chi Min Trail through Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, a feat spurred by her quest, ultimately successful,

to find her father's crash site. She's now won seven world championships and is enshrined in the mountain Biking Hall of Fame. Even so, as rouche A approached and then surpassed forty, her body, the one that never failed her, began to change in real time. She needed sleep more than ever, but had a harder time getting it. Our sleep quality and duration decline the older we get recovery took longer. On top of all that, she began navigating

men pause, hot flashes, joint pain, staccato sleep patterns. Then, in twenty twenty one, she crashed and hid her head on a rock during a trail ride, suffering a traumatic brain injury that left her with a host of symptoms depression, anxiety, headaches. For Rush, her crucial change came in the period after the accident, when she began concentrating on the mental aspect

of training and recovery as well. She entered therapy, and after years as a self proclaimed naysayer of meditation, she began regularly practicing suade after she looked into the research. Functional MRI studies have found meditation leads to changes in brain structure and function, including increased gray matter density, which is associated with improved memory and emotional regulation, and altered brain activity patterns, which can enhance focus and resilience under stress.

Meditating can be particularly helpful for athletic performance. A twenty twenty four men A study in Frontiers and Psychology found mindfulness training reducing athletes anxiety, improves performance and boosts what's known as fluency, the optimal competitive psychological state. Where the athlete's attention is entirely centered on the task. It doesn't really cost anything to meditate, Rush says, and especially for a hard changing athlete, it's really interesting. It's cool to

practice sitting still for ten minutes. Rush began to realize the value of that processing time. Long training rides, which she embarks on without headphones, became moving meditation. Along the way, she shifted her mindset, focusing on finding the joy in sport instead of trying her identity and self worth, tying her identity and self worth to her performance. She reminded herself that she does this because it is fun, and it feels good and I feel better when I am

doing it. She also looked to reframe the pain, darkness, and trauma of her concussion recovery, which stretched on for years as an emotional growth opportunity. Mindfulness helped, so did self reflection. Rush became a frequent journaler, logging her workouts,

reactions and thoughts in a small note book. It's a practice now embraced by many top athletes, including Katie Ledecky, Michael Phelps, and Simone Biles, and studies show it helps with problem solving, emotional regulation and competitive stress and enhances athletic performance. In Rush's case, she says, the key step is going back and re reading her entries. She compares it to being your own coach or therapist. Is actually a pretty interesting way to see what's surfacing up for you.

Rush says, that's what a good coach would do, That's what a good therapist would do. Is just to ask the right questions. She continues, As I get older, I'm starting to learn that I can ask myself the right questions and be like, what was great about that experience and just kind of reflect on it a little bit? Or why was I in such a bad mood after my run to day? Oh? Well, I wasn't really focused.

I was distracted by work to day. At fifty seven, Rush, who lives near the Sawtooth Mountains in Idaho, values quality over quantity. Chaffin takes off two days a week and when she works out, she does interval training, but it's the internal habits, the moments of pause, the willingness to reflect that now guide her performance. Who cares how fast

you run a ten k? She says, the most important part of being an athlete is to feel good and to be able to get up and off the floor to hang out with your friends and pick up your grandkids. These days, mindfulness isn't something she squeezes in between training sessions. It is the training Why it's never too late for a new favorite sport. What do you do when your body no longer allows you to participate in the sports you love. Growing up on the North side of Dublin,

Dear Kennedy played Gaelic football in rugby. In his thirties, he had a family and a full time job as a plumber. Honest work, but not easy on the body. As sports injuries mounted, he traded the crash and dash of rugby for running and cycling, entering his first Iron Man at the age of thirty nine. Still all that pounding on his joints built up. He began experiencing swelling in his knees and hips. I wasn't able to run any more because the consequences would be two or three

days in bed. He says. Cycling was good, but the hills were killing me. When Kennedy was forty, his doctor diagnosed arthritis in his right hip and knee. Surgeries followed, but Kennedy couldn't avoid the inevitable. A hip replacement awaited, scheduled a year and a half out in twenty twelve. During this time, his mental health took a hit. He turned to antidepressants alongside anti inflammatories. I had no way of exercising correctly, he says, I'd lost my outlet. For

any one, this can be a dark time. Not only do you lose the myriad physical benefits of e XA exercise, from the orphan rush to improved sleep, but the psychological hit is profound. A twenty twenty three analysis in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health found a direct link between injuries and depression in athletes. Kennedy needed to do something with his lower body out of commission until surgery, until only one sport remained for Kennedy, swimming.

Thanks to the buoyancy of water, the stress on joints is significantly reduced. Even though we do tell people that walking and running can actually help with arthritis, says researcher Hirofumi Tanaka, referencing studies that show weight bearing exercises in moderation can strengthen bones, the pain is often too much.

Water allows you to exercise fairly strenuously without that discomfort. Indeed, decades of research have shown that swimming is one of the most effective and sustainable forms of exercise for older adults, offering cardiovascular, muscular, and joint health benefits with many injury risk. A friend recommended to Kennedy that he go to the forty Foot, a historic swimming spot south of Dublin from which people have launched into the frigid sea since the

days of author James Joyce. Kennedy's first reaction, as he recalls, you're off your rocker, no way still one gray morning, he tried it in a wet suit. He eased into the waves and boomed. The cold walloped him my hands, my face, he says. I was like, oh my god, this is crazy. Then he got out and he felt better. I got a lot of relief out of it, mentally and physically. He says. Part of that was the exercise, but Kennedy's choice of where and how to do it

also mattered. Immersion in cold water produces a host of physical reactions, including a huge spike in dopamine. Rigorous studies are lacking, but a number of preliminary and anecdotal studies show that it might also help with mental health and depression. A twenty twenty three study in Biology found that after cold water water exposure, participants felt more active, alert, attentive,

proud and inspired, and less distressed and nervous. In Kennedy's case, he kept coming back swimming out to a set of boys at seven a m. Soon enough he shed the wetsuit. Onlookers told him he must be mad, but he upped his mileage. Adding in pool swimming, he joined an informal group of like minded cold water acolytes. The sports gave him an outlet, a community, and a purpose. Again, the blast of feel good chemicals and other potential benefits like

immune system strengthening was a bonus. Around twenty twelve, Kennedy heard about a new extreme sport, ice swimming. It's just what it sounds like, swimming in waters at forty one degrees fahrenheit or lower in just a latex cap, a regular swimsuit and goggles. This concludes readings from National Geographic Magazine for to day. Your reader has been Mercia. Thank you for listening, Keep on listening and have a great day.