Retirement – Enjoy it standing up

I am not retired, and I can assure you, it is nowhere near my radar.

That said, I keep seeing people who used to be in my year at school, whose Facebook profiles have their job title down as “Retired”.

It doesn’t seem the proverbial five minutes since I was playing football, basketball and cricket with some of them. I also fondly remember us all chasing round the local muddy fields in school cross country races. Those were the days.

School cross country came to my mind at the weekend because I ran in the Scottish Athletics Masters Cross Country Championships in Aberdeen. The Masters part of that line means runners over the age of 40. Wow, those runners aged 40 to 44 are quick. A few of them managed to lap me and they didn’t look a day over 30!

A great aspect of the Masters race is that you wear a number on the back of your vest to show runners behind you which age category you are in. That helps you spot runners that you are really competing with. A “40” sticker on the back means that runner is aged 40 to 44. The 60 on my vest shows that I’m in the 60 to 64 category.

The prize for oldest participant on Saturday went to the runner with an 85 on his back, who just happened to be celebrating his 86th birthday on the day of the race. I think there were many runners, even amongst those wearing a “40” who hoped they would still be competing when they reach 86.

Competitive cross-country racing wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea at school, and I’m pretty sure it isn’t everyone’s idea of taking a bit of healthy exercise in retirement, but seeing so many people of retirement age running round the course on Saturday did get me thinking about exercise for those who retire and need to find a new structure in their lives.

I think that word “structure” is the key to it. If you don’t think it through properly and make a plan for that transition from your working life to retirement, you could be in danger of adopting a traditional and stereotypical retirement pattern of wearing slippers all day and spending far too much time sitting down. Even if you keep yourself busy by joining a couple of committees and becoming chairperson or treasurer, there’s the danger that although you might be keeping your mind active and contributing to your community, you could be falling into the clutches of a sedentary lifestyle in front of a computer screen.

I’m not about to recommend cross-country running for every pensioner, but a lesson that anyone approaching retirement age could take from those older runners I was with at the weekend is that retirement should be about staying active and not buying into the outdated adage that “you’ve worked hard all your life, now it’s time to sit down and take it easy”.

Now, it’s one thing to say to yourself that you’re going to be more active once you retire, but a great way to increase your likelihood of actually doing that is to follow the suggestions I make in my book, Find Time for Exercise.

This goes back to that word “structure” again. If you set yourself a physical exercise challenge, that is appropriate to your own personal fitness level, and come up with a plan to succeed in that challenge, then you are likely to maintain your motivation, keep working towards your goal and, here’s the key point, enjoy improved health and well-being as a result of the exercise you are taking.

It is important to stress that an exercise challenge should be based on what will be challenging, but not out of reach, for you. The fastest male runner over 60 beat me by nearly 9 minutes on Saturday. Whatever he does for training is way beyond what I can do. I couldn’t keep up with him in the race and I’ve no doubt I couldn’t keep up with him on a Thursday evening training run, but I have my structure to what I do, and I’m happy to keep challenging myself at what I regard an appropriate level for me.

So, please take some time to think about what I’m saying and what is in my book, but don’t try to do what I do. If walking a mile a day is a challenge for you and will lead you to taking more exercise than you’ve done in the past, then consider adopting that as your challenge. After all, a challenge isn’t set in stone. If you walk a mile day and find it too easy, then challenge yourself to walk ten miles per week or two miles per day. Just use your imagination to set your own rules and come up with a challenge that will fire up that human instinct to rise to a challenge and make you want to succeed. We might all be at different levels, but that same instinct is in there, so whether we’re Mo Farah or the retired teacher that hasn’t exercised for thirty years, there’s always a determination to meet a challenge.

And finally, if you set yourself a challenge, make sure you learn to enjoy it. If you’re not enjoying it, tweak it or start again. If you set yourself a target to walk at least a mile every day, and you find you enjoy your walks and look forward to your walks, then you’re onto a winner. You’re going to succeed. Think of the three corners of a triangle as Challenge – Structure – Enjoyment. If you have all three, then you’re going to be taking a lot more exercise than the person who just says they’re going to take more exercise but doesn’t make a plan for how to do it.