'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

Athleticism and older women

I took a day off from bookwriting today to run in the Charlottesville Women's Four-miler. Nowadays, they have these snazzy little chips you tie into your shoelaces that record something near to your actual time-- I think they trigger as you cross the Start line and as you cross the Finish line. This annual race has grown so large I didn't even cross the Start line till the clock showed 0:55.

So here are the results. I came in #802 out of 2,240 women who finished the race. My chip-time was 41:24. In the 50-54 age group I came in 68th out of 217 women (i.e., just at the one-third point.)

Since I am 54 this year, that means I'm in the oldest age-cohort in the group. It also means next year I'll be in the 55-59's.

So here are two slightly depressing aspects of this:

(1) I am definitely slowing down. In 2005 I clocked 40:13-- and they didn't have the chip-timing system in place then! (So I still fondly hang onto the idea that "actually", I came in under 40 minutes??)

(2) My feet hurt horribly after today's race. They've been hurting quite a lot recently, especially at the start of my usual three-mile run. But today, for much of the day since the early morning race I've been hobbling around like an old lady.

Okay, no more whining. I am still incredibly lucky to have great health and mobility. I've sometimes thought how unprecedented it is to have such huge cohorts of older-- and generally wiser?-- women still surviving in the rich countries these days, as opposed to the proportion (or, of course, number) of women who would have survived in good health to these ages in earlier centuries.

I delivered and raised three incredible children. I didn't die in childbirth. And though raising them while working was extremely tiring and stressful at times, I survived that with health and sanity more or less intact. (A huge bouquet to fellow-parent Bill-the-spouse for that.)

... And then, going out this morning to the stunning beauty of sunrise over the Virginia Piedmont and seeing 2,200 other healthy women all out there too-- huge numbers of them my age or older, and many of them with supportive spouses and kids in tow-- that was a great experience.

I had my own little dream there. Wouldn't it have been great if we could have taken all that sheer womanpower running on up to DC to encircle the Pentagon and tell the Bush people to just bring the soldiers home?

Well, my experience in life has taught me that not all women are as antiwar as we might like. (Condi Rice!!! Maggie Thatcher!!! Jeane Kirkpatrick!!! etc.) But still, I really do think there is a gender tilt in bellophilia/bellophobia. I think that having large numbers of healthy, well-educated older women is going to be good for US democracy and for the restoration of US values of fairness and caring, over the years ahead.

Okay, back to the book. (And an Advil or two?)