And I’m cold gettin’ paid ’cause Rick said so…
LL Cool J, “I Can’t Live Without my Radio,” Radio, 1985, Def Jam Records
I would work out every day if I could. I love it. Physical exercise excites me, clears my head, and helps me maintain my energy levels. But there are just days when I can’t find the time to work out, and it gnaws at me if it continues more than a couple of days.
I wasn’t always this way. While I played a lot of sports growing up, I was never much of a runner. I ran when I had to, for practice or maybe a time or two before starting a sport season, but that was it. That changed once I got to college and played rugby. Our rugby coach at the time was a marathon runner and we ran all the time during practice. And suddenly, in my late teens, I found that I kind of liked running.
In my late 20s, when I noticed that I was starting to put on a few pounds, I began taking running more seriously. By my mid-30s, I was doing triathlons which led to my first Ironman in 2014, at age 42.
It was also around this time that I noticed that I didn’t seem to be aging at the same rate as many of my friends. I was still getting carded for alcohol past the age of 30, and I’ve always had a “baby” face, but by my mid-40s, old friends would routinely comment on how young I looked. I feel like a self-absorbed dick talking about myself this way, but I do have a point: strenuous exercise, for me anyway, has been the fountain of youth. And not just me. Endurance sport Coach Joe Friel, in his 2015 book Fast After 50, discusses what he calls the aging myth:
“In our society, even among athletes, there is a common belief that growing old is fraught with devastating and unavoidable changes that are out of our control. The best you can hope for is to keep them at bay as long as possible by taking a handful of pills every day. There is a parallel belief that you must not do anything vigorous. Protect your fragile bones. Stop strenuous exercising. Don’t get your heart rate too high. Slow down. Take up gardening or bird watching. Act your age.
I suspect you are not buying into all of this. You’ve undoubtedly learned that the best antidote for the ravages of age is exercise. If for no other reason, you can see this in the differences between you and your normal neighbors. While you may be about the same chronological age, you are physiologically much younger than they are. Exercise, especially vigorous exercise, is powerful medicine.”[i] (emphasis added).
I need to add a word of caution: I do not work out hard every time I do a workout, but I do try to workout at least five days a week. Coach Friel’s book also discusses the importance of what I call “recovery” workouts, where you do something easy, run, swim, whatever, at a relaxed pace. Friel acknowledges that we all get older, slower, and need more recovery time as we age. However, in order to keep fit late into life, Friel convincingly explains that we need to engage in some hard workouts, no matter how old we get. When I did my most recent Ironman, there was an 82-year-old woman who started the swim just as I did – the PA announcer called out her name and age.
Although I have never met Coach Friel, he actually coached a college buddy of mine, a former Olympian. I was interested in the sport of triathlon going back to the 1980s, and then I became friends with Ryan Bolton from Gillette, WY. Bolton and I met when we were in undergrad at UW in the early 1990s. Bolton was an All-American cross country runner at UW was a member of the 2000 Olympic Men’s Triathlon team.
I got to know Bolton on a few road trips across the southwest, including a 1993 Grateful Dead concert in Las Vegas that was sandwiched between camping out in Nevada and Utah. During those trips, Ryan would set off running in the mornings, about an hour before we’d fully break down camp and we’d pick him up miles down the road. I was always impressed by his dedication to training, no matter where we went. When I was in law school, I would see his name in triathlon magazines and when he made the 2000 Olympic Team, it was statewide news in Wyoming.
I hadn’t spoken to Bolton since college, so I reached out to him as part of writing this piece, to let him know he had inspired me to give the sport of triathlon a try nearly 20 years ago. That seed has led to a lifetime of fitness for me, and I’m grateful. Ryan was incredibly gracious and replied right away, excited to hear from me. What a guy. He is now a successful coach, founding Bolton Endurance Sports Training (BEST), The Harambee Project, and he is Director of High Performance for USA Triathlon. Ryan has coached a Boston Marathon winner, Olympians, in addition to athletes from all skill levels and backgrounds. Here’s Ryan’s website if you’d like to know more about his world class level of expertise and involvement in endurance sports:
https://boltonendurance.com/about-us/coaches/ryan-bolton/
Motivated by all of this, I also signed up for my first race of 2025, the Boulder Triathlon on June 7. I’m planning on doing the sprint distance race, and it will give me something to train for in the next few months. I’ll do a couple more races later in the summer but having that first one on the calendar will give me something to immediately target. And I spent the money to register, so in my mind, there’s no going back. I plan on doing another Ironman when I turn 60, 8 years from now. I did my first in 2014, finishing in 11 hours flat. Then at age 50, I clocked an 11:45 at the Arizona Ironman in 2022. My goal for my next Ironman is to break 11 hours. At age 60. 8 years from now. So I got time to train and grow old, if the universe is willing.
Working out also helps my creativity. The quote I opened with from LL Cool J is about Rick Rubin, legendary producer and author. Another good friend of mine, Jonathan Howdeshell, turned me on to Rubin’s 2023 book The Creative Act: A Way of Being. In the book, Rubin shares his philosophy on staying creative in both life and art, and he mentions high intensity exercise as a way to keep a fresh perspective on artistic projects:
“Meditation is a valuable tool for hitting the reset button. You may also try vigorous exercise, a scenic adventure or immersing yourself in an unrelated creative endeavor.”[ii] (emphasis added).
At the moment, I’m trying to finish off my first book, revise a law review article, write a blog post, and keep up with my teaching and advising duties. I also have a couple other projects that I want to start. I’ve been working on my book for a few years, and the law review article for about a year. There are times when I need a break from those projects, a “reset” as Rubin says. Working out, writing about working out – those activities all give me a reset on my criminal justice projects, which can be vastly different and sometimes depressing.
I’ll close with a few more thoughts on aging: I don’t want to give you the impression that I’ve somehow really found the key to living forever. “No one here gets out alive,” as The Doors would say. As much as I’d like to be Connor MacLeod from Highlander, I’m not. My hair is starting to get a little gray, there are wrinkles coming in all over the place, and if I bend over too long to pick up something, like weeds, I get stiff. Almost locked into place. Other days I feel like I’m still 18, bullet proof, and can run all day long.
But I know one thing: I’m not stopping my lifestyle. I’ll keep working out, five days a week at least, and some days, I’m going hard. I’m going to push it. I might get hit by a truck while biking or struck by lightning. Maybe a shark will eat me while swimming in the ocean, or I’ll be attacked by a mountain lion while trail running. Or I could die while sitting on my ass on a couch. Personally, I’d rather take on the mountain lion but that’s just me.
Anyone can do this. It’s one day at a time, and some days, you may not find the time to work out. But on the average, I’ll keep exercising every day until I die, whenever that is, today or 50 years from now. Like the Grateful Dead sang: “Just Keep Truckin’ On.” Rinse and repeat.
A final big shout out to Ryan Bolton for all that he’s doing to represent UW, Wyoming, and Gillette as an internationally recognized coach. He will forever be an all-time great Cowboy and Olympian.
So until my next post, Power River and Peace.
[i] Joe Friel, “Fast After 50: How to Race Strong For the Rest of Your Life,” pp. 38-39, Velo Press, Boulder, CO (2015)
[ii] Rick Rubin, with Neil Strauss, “The Creative Act: A Way of Being,” p. 337, Penguin Press, New York, NY (2023)
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