and the lack thereof Fitness,

About a year ago, I began running again with my friend Dale after a long layoff. We managed to waddle around the local high school track a few days per week in the wee hours of the morning. This lasted for a few short weeks, whereupon we were both sidelined with injuries. It doesn’t take much for a 60-year-old body to succumb to the most minor of stresses, (though Dale has managed to intermittently keep with the program, multiple setbacks aside.) It really wasn’t so much the current workout regimen that caused the problems. It was the previous 45 years of martial arts, marathons, motorcycling (with occasional unplanned get-offs) police work (going to bar fights for fun and profit), backpacking, climbing and mountaineering, some less-than-ideal medical care, and a few factory defects that have left my old carcass with some preexisting conditions, or more bluntly, built-in failure points.

While never a great athlete, I’ve always been very active, and tried to train like one, all while being kept busy with one or more demanding jobs and careers. Delusions of athletic greatness kept my training intensity and volume higher than was ideal, thus contributing to the miscellaneous aches and pains today.

So now at age 60, what to do? Some focus is desperately needed. Contact sports and running are simply off the menu, as kinetic impacts, whether from punches and kicks or pounding the pavement on my own aren’t going to work anymore. Lifting weights is a great form of exercise, but I like to move, and use whatever strength gained from the barbells doing something. Never strong enough to excel as a strength athlete, and not quite fast enough to be a great runner, my strong point seems to lie in the middle of the spectrum; I can strap on a big backpack and march through and over mountains, and do so better than most. Best of all, the semi-worn-out knees still tolerate it, provided there is no running or jumping. OK then, how to go about it?

Fortunately, the folks at Uphill Athlete have some answers in the form of training programs for mountain athletes, even old creaky guys like myself. Now, their programs are written by – and for – world class mountaineers, alpinists, rock climbers, ski racers and runners, but the principles are general, scalable and apply to just about anyone, provided the trainee keeps realistic goals in mind. (Speed climbing Ever- est won’t be on my agenda.) Interestingly, the program goes completely against my life-long training principle that every workout should be done as hard as possible.

Such a hard-charging ethic is pretty common among athletes of all types, especially those with limited time. According to the UA folks, duration and consistency at a lower intensity will build a base for more intense training later in the program. A longer workout with a lower heart rate is also much easier to recover from, enabling another workout tomorrow. This is not some “couch-to-marathon” 12-week program, (all but guaranteed to cause burnout and injury) but rather a 20-to-30-(or-more)-week training cycle with lots of different activities. The overall strategy is lots of aerobic exercise, such as biking, rowing, running for those who can, or best yet, hiking with a light pack for long duration, intermixed with strength training and anaerobic intervals later in the program as one approaches their goal climbing event.

Given my residence in the middle of the Rockies, the training ground out my door is almost endless. A couple hours of hiking with a light pack at what I consider a low heart rate doesn’t feel like a “real” workout, but rather an enjoyable day in the mountains. I still get to enjoy some low-volume, but tough, training with weights, and a lot of unconventional bodyweight exercises to keep me challenged. Slow and steady progress is the goal, instead of short-term glory – along with overtraining and probable injury – for which so many other programs are known.

I’ve been at it for a few weeks and feel good, am not injured and am looking forward to enjoying my mountain environment more as my fitness improves. The photo at the top of this article is from a bunch of years (OK, decades) ago, taken about five rope-lengths up a technically moderate ice climb. It’s something a fit older athlete can do, with the right training and a good level of fitness. I’m looking forward to it.

At times, it’s a bit hard to conform to the never-ending changes with the global innovations arising from the auto industry.

This thought recently had me reflecting back to my high school days. You see, the majority of my buddies that drove, customarily had a hefty V-8 engine jammed under the hood of their cherished vehicles. It was infrequent to find a V-6 or even a four-cylinder engine powering our beloved cars.

To “fast forward” our thoughts, many