Amaze Yourself!

The Joy of a Challenge

Courtesy: Oscar Aguilar Elias/Unsplash

In the year 2000, I discovered cycling. I had been trying to kick a nasty bout of bronchitis during the winter. Two rounds of antibiotics helped but didn’t get rid of it.

I decided my best bet was to take up running. But my first jog around the block in my ‘hood resulted in shin splints. I still coughed.

A woman I had started dating at the time suggested I buy a bike. She lived in Toronto and would cycle to work and home every day.

“We could go out on rides together,” she said. It sounded like a great idea so I bought a bike.

 I fell in love with cycling on my first ride. By the end of the first week of cycling, my lungs were fine; I had kicked the bronchitis once and for all. And gained a passion for riding.

Each ride became longer and longer until I was often riding 50 kilometres at a time (about 30 miles).

I rode steadily for the next 18 years. I was probably in the best condition of my life.

For various reasons, not the least of which was laziness, I rode less and less as I got older until I can say today that I have not ridden my Trek bike in four years.

So, it was with a mixture of guilt and elation that I read a story in the Wall Street Journal about a number of older people who embarked on lengthy rides across foreign lands, people like retired pediatric physician, Peter Cox of Toronto who rode the Tour d’Afrique at the age of 65 or Rita Tellerman, a nutritionist from New York City who, in 2019 at the age of 70, spent 31 days riding across Madagascar.

I felt guilt for obvious reasons: I used to love riding but let it slip away under the false notion that I was getting too old. I felt elation because I realized that my current age of 72 was no barrier to me getting back on my bike again since there was the proof right in front of me on my screen: a 65 year old and a 70 year old cycling hundreds of miles.

Too many of those over 60 suffer under the same delusion that I am guilty of at times – that age really isn’t just a number but a definite disadvantage.

And yet, that’s so false! Sure, sometimes our bodies are impaired in some way but that’s not usually because of age but decades of bad decisions around diet, alcohol, drugs, etc.

Left to its own devices, the human body will run like a Swiss watch for a hundred years and often longer.

Health and diet advocates, trainers, doctors of natural medicine, hell, even GPs, will all tell you the same thing: eat properly and exercise regularly. It’s a simple formula that so many of us find difficult to embrace.

Frankly, it’s not the formula but the lack of intention to make a sea change in how we live. And that’s where joining can really help.

Find Your Intention

What do I mean by “joining”? Quite simply, if you lack the initial willpower to take on a healthy lifestyle but know you should, then join a yoga class, a gym, a cycling club – whatever. Be around others who are doing what you want to emulate and pretty soon, you will be inspired by their in-person efforts and before you know it, you’ll be accomplishing what you thought was impossible.

I’m reminded of the book by Wayne Dyer, The Power of Intention, in which he explains how having a strong intention to create something, change something, or be someone better can be all you need to launch yourself down a different and vastly more fulfilling path.

In line with the idea of joining is the fact that there are more and more travel companies that specialize in folks who are over 60 and looking for an active experience. The WSJ article highlights a number of them.

15 years ago, it would have been difficult to find a travel company that paid any attention to “seniors”. If you recall listening to our interview with Dave McCaughan, an Aussie marketing guru who loves to bash ad agencies that don’t understand older customers, Dave said it was because of their lazy, go-to assumptions about “the elderly” being weak, feeble-minded, and shut-ins.

Those over 60, the “baby boomers”, he said, are actually  the ones with all the money.

Guess what? They’re spending it on active, physical, and experiential travel. And loving it.

So, when I see how at least two people who advertisers would label “seniors” are challenging themselves physically – and being victorious – I know I can get back to where I once was, as well. And age be damned. After all, it really is, in the end, just a number.