Combined, they may have celebrated an impressive 409 birthdays and logged virtually countless kilometres of running, walking skiing and biking.
But a group of senior aged athletes is proving numbers really don’t matter when it comes to keeping active. The five athletes — Gwen McFarlan, 81, Diane Clement, 79 and husband Doug, 82, Kay Pavelich, 83, and Hans Klein, 84 — believe exercise is important to improving your health, no matter what your age.
The key is to just keep moving.
“I’ve always been restless,” quipped Klein, who stays active riding his bike or walking to a local golf course to play a round or two a week, participating in Tai Chi classes at the Gilmore Gardens seniors residence where he lives, and swimming regularly, depending on the time of the year. “I like to move.”
Soccer, gymnastics and skiing were just some of the activities he enjoyed in his youth.
“I have a knee implant, so downhill skiing is not for me anymore,” Klein said, adding he doesn’t consider himself to be an athlete. “I just like to keep moving.”
And he, along with McFarlan, the Clements and Pavelich, did just that in the Forever Young 8k event at Garry Point Park in mid-September for those 55 and older.
“I got second prize in my age group, only because there were two of us,” Klein said with a smile.
Pavelich, another Forever Young competitor, said she comes from a physically active family.
“That keeps me going because I have to keep up with them,” she said. “They are all runners. And my grandchildren are into all kinds of sports. My grandson plays professional lacrosse.”
In addition to running, Pavelich also plays a lot of golf — at least three to four times a week.
“Other than that, I walk everywhere. I hardly ever use my car for anything,” she said. “I just enjoy being active.”
For her, an important component of exercise is the socialization that comes along with taking part in activities.
“That part is absolutely great,” she said. “I would never give it (being active) up. It’s part of life for me.”
Growing up on the prairies where she felt there was little in the way of sports activities for young girls, McFarlan seems to be making up for lost time.
McFarlan took up running when she turned 60, and in 2014 she clocked a marathon time in the 80 to 84 age group that smashed a world record. Her time of four hours, 12 minutes and 32 seconds was 24 minutes faster than the previous mark.
“Growing up, I was the only girl in my neighbourhood, so I played what the boys played — baseball and cricket,” she said. “We’d also swim in the creek. And the boys would swim over to the back of a market garden, pick up some carrots and swim back with them clenched in their teeth. And they said to me, ‘If you want some carrots you’re going to have to learn to swim over there and get them yourself.’”
McFarlan said she has met a lot of people through her activities and believes her circle of friends likely wouldn’t be as large if she led a sedentary life.
Plus, her active lifestyle rubbed off on her children, both of whom were nationally ranked swimmers and are now runners.
“But, they are not as fast as mom,” she joked.
For Diane Clement, running started with her father’s love for athletics.
“He started a track club back in Moncton, New Brunswick,” she said. “It was on a cinder track down by the marshlands. And I think I became so mast because the place was full of mosquitoes.”
Another major influence for the Canadian Olympian (1956 in Melbourne, Australia), was being invited with husband Doug, another Canadian Olympian (1952 in Helsinki, Finland and 1956) by the City of Richmond to start a track and field club locally in the early 1960s.
“The municipality came to us and said, ‘There are plans at Minoru Park for a track and field facility. If you two, as Olympians, would start a track club, we will build you a track,” Diane said. “And as Olympic athletes, we wanted to give back. Richmond at the time was just 25,000 people, with no shopping centre or hospital. But the municipality started to build a track.”
Eight years ago, the Richmond Kajaks club held a reunion and celebrated the fact it had, in that time, cultivated 55 Olympians.
In 1983 the couple started the Harry Jerome Classic track meet to provide local athletes with an international platform to compete on. Plus, they kicked off the Vancouver Sun Run which started with roughly 3,500 competitors and has grown to become one of North America’s largest fun runs.
“We now average 40,000 to 45,000 runners and 10,000 walkers,” Diane said, adding she feels regular physical activity is good for both body and mind.
“Mentally, it keeps our minds sharp,” she said.
As a medical doctor who specialized in sports medicine, Doug said there is scientific proof today that shows the brain benefits from exercise.
“We accept the fact that if we stop using a muscle that you can generally retrain it back to it’s former size. The brain is similar,” said Doug, who had a stroke in 1998 and made a full recovery, learning how to walk again. “That component of use or lose it is a truism. There’s no way out of it.”
He also believes physical exercise can be addictive for some.
“I think it’s for selfish reasons that we are doing it,” Doug said. “We’re exercising because we like it. There’s quite a bit of evidence now that the psycho-active hormones in your brain are activated by physical activity. And that sort of thing is addictive.
“You don’t have to be told to go out and be active. You want to because you feel better at the end of it.”
“I have two doctors — my left and my right leg,” Diane said. “If you don’t use it, you lose it.”
“It doesn’t matter what the day is, I never tell myself I can’t go out,” McFarlan added. “It’s just in me.”
“Physical activity, I think, encourages a more positive attitude,” Klein said. “And when you see the benefits of exercise, that also offers encouragement.
“If I don’t go the the gym, I feel bad. There’s something missing.”
