Inspiring People

Two people in the running world who (whom?) I find very inspiring are Ed Whitlock & Fauja Singh. They are both world class runners, though it's likely you've never heard of them, or if you have, that you don't remember their names.

Both have set world records for the marathon in their age groups. Whitlock is now (and I haven't fact-checked this) 73 years old and he broke the world record for 70+ year olds in the marathon with a time of 2:54:48 (Yes, two-hours and 54 minutes and change!). He broke the record he'd set a year earlier at the Toronto Waterfront Marathon, cutting nearly 5 minutes off his time.

I always get a kick out of Whitlock's training regime. Ten miles a day in a graveyard! It's a great set-up for a joke. I just hope I can be in the position of having people laugh at my training regime when I get to be his age. Of course, after we get over the jokes about visiting his non-running friends, etc., we tend to look at the real value of this. He's able to train with very little traffic and NO high-speed traffic, and in peaceful environment. As a result, the risk to him of getting hit by a car is virtually nil, and at his age, that would likely be a career ending injury.

Singh is a Londoner, but also raced the Toronto Waterfront Marathon a year ago. He's now 93, but set the 90+ record by going under 6 hours. He gave in a bit this fall, and ran the half-marathon at Toronto, finishing in 2:30:02.

These guys, along with some others are truly rewriting the book on aging.