Older and fitter

I couldn't agree more fred246. It's just too easy to jump into the car. We live close to the town centre, and so I can walk to pretty much everything that I need to get to. The only time I would use the car is to do the big weekly shopping, but I've even got into the habit of walking to the supermarket nearly every day and buying what I can carry, so even those trips aren't as frequent as they used to be.



We have a big issue around our local secondary school, as there's nowhere for parents to park when they pick up the kids, so they end up on the pavement and on double yellow lines etc. I'm pretty sure a lot of those kids could walk home, but they don't.


And equally my SIL (aged 65) thinks I'm amazing because I walk into town (5 minutes walk up a slight incline) - so the issue isn't just with the young. We sometimes go for dinner to our local restaurant, which is really not far from home (300 yds max) - she will drive.

That's absolutely fabulous Nebulous2. Very interesting that the cycling started as a means to an end but then became a 'thing' in itself. When's the next big race?

That's a lot of kilometres!! I own a bike - and in fact OH and I have had some very pleasant cycle rides (there's a canal path not far from the house). I could cycle to work, it's only 4 miles away, along the canal - but I always seem to have something to carry, or the weather looks a bit doubtful, or it's actually raining, or I'm running late, or I need to go on somewhere afterwards...


Which I guess just goes to prove that the most important thing is finding the thing that works for you, and then actually doing it!! I was chatting to a gym buddy the other day, about how often we go. I go three days a week, she goes 4. In my ideal world I think I would go every other day, but at the moment OH is working away so I don't feel I want to head off to the gym over the weekend when he's at home. Once he's back home all the time it's something I might consider.

We're all different (thank goodness!!).


But there is some sort of fitness-producing activity for everyone, and I firmly believe that doing something is better than doing nothing.

I have a friend who goes to dance classes - signed up for ballroom but discovered a love of swing and rock and roll as well.

My parents used to walk (regular 12 mile hikes in all weathers), and still do, although now it's more like 3 miles via a tearoom... But my mother does housework like it's an Olympic sport, and still climbs steps to clean her windows and the tops of her wardrobes (she's 88, but don't tell her I told you, it's a very well kept secret!). My father still does exercises every morning, and only recently stopped doing push-ups (and only because he had a problem with his hand, not because he couldn't do them!). And he gardens. A lot.

You see so many people who are relatively young (I'm thinking 40-somthings) who struggle to walk any sort of distance and couldn't run if their life depended on it. They aren't going to suddenly get fit - and their mobility will only get worse as they get older - unless they start actually doing something. In my own case, my hip pain was really bad, kept me awake at night and reduced my mobility so that I struggled to get socks on. It eased up during the day, but I was never really pain free. I was pretty sure that, given 10 years or so, I would be on the list for a hip replacement. Now - it doesn't hurt. It's as simple as that. It just doesn't hurt. And I put that down purely to exercising - not just my legs, but my whole body. It has to be the whole body (in my opinion) to allow everything to be in balance and working efficiently.



And I'm a bit evangelical about it, I admit!!

I've never come across the term 'compression of morbidity' before - but I couldn't agree more!!



Any of us can have health problems at any time - the trick is to make it less likely to happen to you!! And you can do that by eating a healthy diet, and exercising frequently. Is that me making a complex subject too simplistic? Or do people add unnecessary complication to an otherwise simple concept as a way of avoiding having to just do it?
Medical progress has meant that many of the things that killed us off at a younger age are no longer going to do that - so, having won the war (against disease etc), we now need to win the peace (by living our longer lives to the full).