I am in the 60-69 age category, when did that happen?
My mind rejected the numbers every time someone said it.
You are in the 60-69 age category?
Sixty was someone else. Men in magazines. Men sitting on benches talking about what they used to do. Not me…
Inside, I still have the enthusiasm of a runner. However, my knees, unfortunately, disagree.
Years of running have gradually been negotiated away. First the long races disappeared. Then the hard intervals. Then the weekly mileage declined. The extra kilograms arrived quietly, one at a time, not enough to alarm me, but enough to make every climb a little steeper.
Running has given way to mostly hiking. It wasn’t surrender. At least that’s what I told myself.
I am still out on the mountains, still moving through the forests and across the ridges. I am strong, bloody stubborn Abelone will say, and I can hike for hours. I can still suffer. Importantly, I can still stand on summits that many younger men never reached.
Did I believe there was a plateau ahead. A place where the decline would stop. A place where fitness would maybe even return?
The graph in my mind always flattened out eventually, even if it never quite returned to where it had once been.
Then came Hylja Vertical 600.
Five km’s with six hundred meters of climbing – on paper, a race perfectly suited for me! No downhill to trash the knees, just up and the possibility to get in the red zone, stay there and push all the way to the line.
Short enough to hurt. Long enough to expose the truth.
And the truth not only came but hurts…
As I climbed, younger runners drifted away from me immediately. Some sailed past. Others simply maintained a pace I could no longer reach or dream of. I wasn’t surprised, I would be a fool to have expected otherwise.
My heart worked harder than I remembered. My lungs were in my mouth. It hurt in a way that was no longer reassuring. My legs answered more slowly than they once had despite my poles facilitating forward momentum. What had once been my strength, now felt like stubborn determination.
There was no humiliation in my run externally. No catastrophe. I finished. But inside, there was a quiet revelation that no matter how much I fool myself with positive thoughts, my good times are gone.
Standing there, breathing heavily and staring back down the mountain, I realized that for years I have been misreading the story of aging.
I had thought of my decline as a temporary descent followed by a shelf of stability. Perhaps even a small rise if I worked hard enough.
But the trails behind me in Hylja told a different story.
There will be good days and bad days ahead. Strong adventures and weaker ones, and yes, a few surprises, perhaps.
But the overall direction will never reverse now. The line will continue downward until the end.
These are not new thoughts, my mind has struggled for the last two years with my decline after an injury while running in Spain. I was aware of the lack of running, the increased pain, the gain in weight, but, I could hide the truth somewhere with an illusion of positive outward display – the Hylja finish line changed that and cemented the decline as a fact on a result sheet.
There is no need to keep mourning the man I have been. The older I get, the better I was.
The runner in my thirties has gone.
The runner in my forties has gone.
Even the runner in my fifties is now slipping into memory.
But the hiker standing on the mountain is still here. Still moving. Still climbing. Still capable of wonder.
I looked out across the valley from Hylja, the mountains of Rondane in the distance. The same mountains I had fastpacked through with Abelone just a month ago – covering 208km’s in 5-days – the landscape unchanged and indifferent to my age.
For the first time, I understood that life had quietly shifted from becoming to appreciating. When I was young, every run was an investment in a stronger future, a better and faster me.
Now, is every hike an acknowledgement of a diminishing one?
Does that make each step more valuable?
Am I no longer running toward a better version of myself?
I guess, I am simply grateful to still be on the trail. Loving the landscape. Loving the isolation. Loving the adventure. Where time and distance actually means nothing.
I will never outrun aging, and neither will you! The goal is to keep moving long enough to learn how to live and accept it.
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IAN CORLESS 