I was faster at 64 than I was at 62 also.

But I'm certainly not an athlete, never have been.

It's not running either since those particular shoes of mine have wheels.

So I'm very dependent on pavement for this activity.

>Concrete is terrible on the joints, and asphalt only a little better.

>He had worn out an average of two and a half pairs of running shoes each year ever since 1978

I don't have that kind of longevity. I did get new wheels a few years ago but I only had the old ones since 1983, so that's nothing like 1978. I don't lubricate them every year since I'm trying to get more exercise in a shorter period of time once I really thought about it. Didn't always have that good an attitude and it really helps now, same with skating into the wind which I used to dislike for obvious reasons. Last night storms were coming after work but I thought it was my last chance this week for dry pavement so I went anyway. For a while there it was 20 MPH wind with gusts to 30 before it finally did rain me out so I didn't get in the whole 10 miles. It was only really rough for the 25% of the time I was heading eastbound, where I only went about 2 MPH but with that kind of wind it takes as much energy as going 22 to 32.

>“Here’s something you’re probably too old to do.”

In regular shoes I usually go about 3 MPH for about 3 hours in my employer's chem lab, sometimes two or three times that. Not exactly toxin-free but it is what it is. I've got instruments in opposite ends of the lab and if I want to experiment as much as 3 people would do that's just what it takes. There's somebody there 24 hrs, once-in-a-while me. Up until less than a year ago I was getting the $10 running shoes from Walmart and wearing them out in 3 months. People in the lab give me a hard time because I keep wearing them an additional 3 months after that. They don't realize I'm also dancing to the oldies a few hours a week, often with much younger women who seem to like the oldies just fine. I'm no Mr Bojangles but for this I like it when there is no tread any more and the shoes have softened up quite a bit. With inflation I think those cheap ones will never be available again so I've downgraded to the $24 kind now. It's the only thing close.

Talk about asphalt, might as well throw this in here for a little relief, disregard if you hate petroleum chemistry. Now with heavy fuel oil we sometimes determine a component known as asphaltenes. This consists of some heavy solid hydrocarbon molecules of somewhat nebulous structure, dissolved in the oil, but not actually paraffins or tar. None of which I would ever want to get onto any expensive shoes. Anyway I'm a senior operator and advanced chemists still seem to expect me to know more than people actually can about this flaky stuff, even after they are fairly skilled at performing the difficult test. So occasionally I have to explain it in detail, and with my lengthy background I relate it to skateboarders of all things. It helps them to remember the fine points of unknowability easier. I tell them exactly what asphaltenes really are. First there are skateboarders who prefer solid concrete most of all, other times there are some that only want to skate on asphalt. Those are the asphalt-teens. Whose-ass fault was that anyway. Nobody's fault but mine.

Right above my brass plaque from ASTM I still display (what I thought was) a unique sticker from a short promotional run by a local printer, which I never have actually stuck to anything since the guy gave it to me with my letterheads when I had started my own lab back in the 1990's:

"The difficult we will do immediately, the impossible will take a little longer."

Since that's what I mainly do day-to-day scientifically for decades now.

TIL this saying was actually coined by:
>Fridtjof Nansen, the Norwegian explorer who led the first crossing of Greenland on skis

And this is what I just happened to "run" across earlier today:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/wellness/a-96-year-old-form...

Plus this about another marathoner mentioned in the Dag story:

>Singh, who attributed his physical longevity to abstaining from smoking and alcohol and to a vegetarian diet

Seems to work for me so far.