A few years ago on the advice of my doctor, I stopped running and started biking. As he pointed out, it’s easier on the body and better exercise than running. It is a tad more expensive though.

As to the pain, I found that taking Tylenol before I start riding, the pain is much less than waiting until after the ride.

And remember, Pain is weakness leaving your body.

Happy birthday, buy a bike, get fit.

Crusty6

i ran too much as a youngster (literally thousands of miles in high school and 4 marathons before i was 20) so my knees and feet are shot. but i work out when i can and always try to walk when playing golf if the course allows it (drives me nuts when they won’t)

oh, and i drink a lot of wine :)

I needed the laugh in my convalescence.

But Death does deserve a thumb in the eye. This summer, at age 62, with a dodgy ticker and an iffy endocrine system, I bought myself a kayak (a decades long dream), so I could paddle around on the flat water of our nearby lake. My doctor said no, and I said, why not. If you can’t live your life the way you want to, what’s the point? I paddle, I beach, I rest, drink water, eat a powerbar, and then I paddle some more, and when the event calls for it, I toss choice words at stupid jet skiers. I have my cell phone in a waterproof bag if there’s trouble, and if it overwhelms me before I can call for help, so be it. I’ll at least be where I want to be, doing what I loved when I was a kid.

The worst part, though, is getting the damn thing on and off the top of the car. It’s only 37 pounds, but it’s ten feet long and awkward. God may humiliate me yet, by having the lake rangers discover my dead body next to my car with the kayak on top of me — probably within a week or so, when they get around to patrolling the hand launch area. If there’s an afterlife, though, I’ll probably get a chuckle out of my kids’ embarrassment.

Happy birthday, Jules. Good to see you have your head on straight. Enjoy a long, and happy life.

Happy Birthday.

The exercise bit is a no-brainer.

Someday, someone will come up with a reliable way to maintain the motivation and discipline to do it – without a drill instructor or personal trainer hounding you out of bed at 6:30am, or kicking you in the ass a couple times a day. After that, there will be no real challenges left in the world.