🏃♂️ Mike Rilstone: Hey Fellow Seniors: What’s More Important, Your Knees or Running?
In 2020, as I turned 70, I was still jogging many kilometres per week; as in 100 plus.
On an annual check-up with our family doctor, he noted my low heart rate and physical condition. He inquired how I maintained myself in that shape.
Explaining how far I jogged weekly, he suggested I stop, noting the continual impact from running could soon result in knee and hip replacements.
He detailed how, as we hit our Senior years, those joints are aging too and cannot handle the steady shock of hitting the pavement thousands of times per week.
I did not have to be told twice.
Many of my friends had gone through the debilitating knee and hip operations; taking months to recover, along with all the related therapy.
In retrospect, I think I was lucky that my knees and hips had not already broken down!
Serendipity arrived on my doorstep that year like it was heaven-sent.
Right after my doctor’s sagely advice, I saw an ad for the SickKids Foundation’s Great Cycle Challenge and I gave up the pavement for an exercise bike.
What a win/win! By helping children with cancer I could maintain my physical conditioning.
It became the influence and momentum to replace my running with cycling.
Soon, I graduated to a recumbent bike, allowing me to easily use my laptop or watch television.
Now in this 2026 year, over half a decade since my doctor “wised me up”, I have almost completed my personal challenge of pedalling virtually around our planet at the equator in under 10 months; a distance of 40,075 kilometres.
To protect my joints, I keep my bike set to minimum tension.
In other words, it’s a cardio-calorie machine emulating my childhood years when I was told to, “Come home when the lights go on.”
If I’m on my laptop, (one of my Senior years’ addictions), or watching TV, (usually hours daily: GO Jays, Raptors & Habs!), I’m pedalling.
Yes, I cycle on the spot many hours per day.
My daughter Ali summed up the result this way, “Dad, you have reversed the aging process.”
That’s my back story for something I read on my laptop yesterday, a story I remember so well.
That story, in turn, led me to an intriguing account of someone who probably destroyed his knees from running.
(Maybe he should have been going to my family doctor!)
The story was about Katherine Switzer, a name I had not seen in years.
In 1967, Canada’s Confederation year, I was in high school track & field and that year she was arguably the most famous runner on our planet.
Women were NOT allowed to run in the Boston Marathon! (I’m getting to the knees’ part.)
She registered using her initials, “K. V. Switzer” and presuming she was a man, the Boston Marathon assigned her with their bib #261.
While participating, race co-director Jock Semple jumped off a following press truck and charged after Switzer. He tried to rip her bib off and toss her from the race. Friends surrounded and protected her.
Semple failed to eject her and she finished.
I remember that intriguing moment as a major one in the acceptance of women in the Boston Marathon, just like it was yesterday.
Yes, in my lifetime men didn’t think women had the endurance to run 26 miles.
Indeed, Switzer’s finish was a breakthrough for women in sports. In 1967, she was a hero.
Okay, now I’ll explain the knees part.
Wondering what Switzer had done all through the intervening years, I saw she had married another famous runner, New Zealand’s Roger Robinson.
Wondering where he had also been through these intervening decades, I was surprised to see he has kept running into his 80’s.
Yup, he destroyed his knees.
Robinson nicknamed his new knees Russell and Mark respectively, after the surgeons who carried out the operations.
My family doctor retired in July, 2021. If I ever run into him, I’ll let him know that both my knees’ names are now Glen.
Thanks to him, they are the originals!
