Head-to-Head - Looking for inspiration en route to a century
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Updated: July 29, 2009 10:19 AM
By PETER VINCENT
Head-to-Head Columnist
This started out as a nice Lance Armstrong story and the Tour de France and the joie de vivre of the French countryside and back-slapping bicyclists, but somewhere along the line, I took a turn to the dark side. Let me be blunt.
You never see old fat guys. By “fat,” I mean anyone 25 or so pounds above their “fighting weight.” By “old,” I mean anyone that’s 10 years older than me. At least 10.
Skeptical? Look around. Wiry old guys like George Burns (died at 103) and even Ronald Reagan (died at 93) soldiered on well past the U.S. statistical “best-before” date of 75. Compare that to oh, say opera tenor and pasta lover Luciano Pavarotti, who checked out at 72. Closer to home, Canadian heavyweight comedian John Candy only managed to make it to 43 years old.
Fat guys die young. Their hearts can give out, having to pump blood through masses of excess flesh. They are more prone to nasty little diseases like diabetes brought on by lousy food choices. Sedentary lifestyles dictated by having to lug around all that extra weight bring on joint problems.
I plan to live to be 100 years old. Although the prospect of being a great burden on friends, relatives and nursing staff holds a certain macabre appeal, I am hoping to die with my boots on, throwing sticks for a future canine on the little beach at the bottom of my hill. This will prove to be a bit of a challenge, as from an early age I have been a bit of a porker.
Inside every skinny guy is a fat guy trying to get out. My inner fat guy came into bloom at about nine or 10, after spending three years parked in front of a black and white TV equipped with rabbit ears, scarfing down everything within reach, from Coke to Cracker Jack.
Science has concluded that most human fat cells are produced during adolescence. Science has also concluded that the Three Amigos — fat, salt and sugar — are nearly as addictive as heroine, which explains why they are in nearly everything that tastes good. For an addictive personality, junk food is like throwing gasoline on a campfire.
The pounds pack on. The fat cells multiply and multiply. An average guy has about 25 billion fat cells. An obese male can have as many as 260 billion fat cells. Once your own personal number has been established, that’s pretty much the number you are stuck with your entire life. Through strict diet and exercise you can empty out these fat cells, but they are always there, always lurking, waiting for a quart of Haagen Dazs to slip through the defences.
And so my formative years sentenced me to a life of exercise and deprivation just to stay even, just to tread water, just to prevent myself from becoming size XXXL. Every year on my birthday I cut something out of my diet. Whole milk is now skim. Cheddar is now mozzarella. Coffee with cream and sugar is now café noir. I go through less than a pound of butter per year. Meat products have been winnowed down to bison and turkey.
Most years I attempt some death defying exercise, like scaling Mount Saint Helens or “biking a century” — one hundred miles on a bike (from Comox to Vesuvius, for all those tempted).
Even with all these milestone events and a labour camp diet, even being the owner of a fitness centre, I am just managing to break even — to squeeze into 34 waist jeans. A guy I met the other day asked me, “When you own a gym, shouldn’t you be, like, buffed?” You learn to live with the slings and arrows.
At some point you need inspiration — a mentor of sorts. There are plenty of grizzled old bikers wheezing their way up Lee’s Hill here on Salt Spring Island. But lately, I have been getting up early to witness Lance Armstrong going for the yellow jersey in the Tour de France. Lance Armstrong, who won this race seven years in a row after beating testicular cancer that had spread to his brain and lungs. Lance Armstrong, who after retiring three years ago from this young man’s sport came back at 37 years old compete on the ‘09 Tour. Lance Armstrong, who has a resting heart rate of 32 beats a minute (mine is 59) Now there is one inspirational guy. Lance came in third this year. When asked about his performance, he said, “See you next year.”
And then there is 90-year-old Noel Morrow from White Rock, British Columbia. She will be competing in the World Masters Games in Sydney this year in October. She was the Canadian champion from 1934 to 1940. She swam in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. At 90 years old, she will be competing in the 100m backstroke. Now that’s just impossible. And wouldn’t you know? A female.
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