Brendan Hoban: A healthy realism is a good friend in old age                   

Western People 28.1.2025

A few weeks ago, tickets for the Irish Life Dublin Half-Marathon were thrown open to the public, and less than two hours later their website announced that the thousands of available tickets had been allocated. It was yet another indication of the compelling interest there is in physical fitness in Ireland today.

Another example is the ambition of young budding athletes to set the bar higher in terms of an impressive level of fitness. This includes not just athletes in the sense of those striving to join the ranks of Ireland’s success stories like Rhasidat Adeleke, Sharlene Mawdsley and others but GAA county players who were recently reminded that the new rules governing Gaelic football will now demand an ever greater degree of physical fitness.

And a third straw in the wind was the decision of a group of young twentysomethings who upturned an infamously problematic compulsion of their peers by committing to a decision to abstain completely from alcohol consumption.

Physical fitness and a new sobriety is the order of the day. There is, it seems, no end to the burgeoning grip physical fitness is exerting on multiple generations in Ireland today.

And yet another group worshipping in various degrees at the shrine of the god Heracles, patron of the gym, are the joggers, who come in varied shapes, sizes and ambitions. With the days (hopefully) getting longer and the disciples of Heracles polishing up their new year’s intentions, the best laid plans of joggers, serious and unserious, get a second wind. Soon the voice of the cuckoo and the swish of the swallow will arrive to remind us that summer is near. And joggers will take to the roads and by-ways of Ireland, cutting a dash in their Nike and Adidas sportswear, and embracing what are regarded, in terms of age, fitness and physical condition, as appropriate challenges for the avid jogger.

There will be, as we know, those overweight joggers whose heavy breathing and physical attributes will indicate our studied reluctance to control our enthusiasms. It is a world where moderation is sometimes unknown and ambitions can become easily inappropriate. We imagine that it’s not enough to trot casually in small bursts, breathing the fresh air or viewing the ripening seasons but conclude with sparse evidence that the ambition of a full-scale marathon, is not yet beyond us.

Since Pheidippides in 490 B.C. ran a distance 26 miles to Athens to relay the news of a Greek victory over the Persians in the almost 25 centuries since then, the word ‘marathon’ has become a magical word of excellence, possibility and a peculiar inability to appropriately moderate our ambition once we get our jogging wardrobe  in order. What marathon enthusiasts conveniently forget is that the now famous Pheidippides dropped dead at the end of his first and only marathon.

It is, as we know (though we sometimes in our enthusiasm forget) that punishing the human body by subjecting it to all kinds of extremely demanding physical trials can produce distressing results. If, without putting a tooth in it, our practice to date is that anything more physically demanding than getting out of bed in the morning is a challenge, then no matter how we compute ambition, imagination and previous accomplishments, we need to keep far away from even thinking about running a marathon.

Yes, there are exceptions. Some of advanced age achieve a certain notoriety in achieving an ambition beyond what might be reasonably expected. But they are very much a dangerous exception. The other danger is that perfectly sensible people can, suddenly and with the benefit of very little evidence, imagine that they too can replicate the aged hero of the day, falling over the tape.

It is a perfectly understandable human reaction to a given set of circumstances. If anyone can provide any possible way of convincing us that we can retain our youth despite the obvious diminishments of old age they will always get our business. Youth, it seems clear, cannot be recaptured by taking exercise. What appropriate exercise does is give us the benefit of enjoying our lives (probably for no longer than the same duration) with the best of good health possible.

Growing old is not easy. And, in the difficult circumstances that a gradually more  complicated medical history unfolds for us, a healthy realism is a good friend. The ability to grow old with some degree of grace and dignity in a world where everything seems to contract is an ongoing challenge. Presenting ourselves with feats impossible for our prevailing condition, as the terrible nonsense of ‘bucket lists’ affirms, is a recipe for trouble.

But we are what we are. The world is full of people who have every right to run marathons at every age. Or to inflict a torture called ‘Squash’ on their ageing bodies. Or to pay fortunes to adjust various parts of their anatomies to the north-west. Or to contrive to dress as teenagers. Or adopt whatever strategy they imagine will benefit how they feel about themselves.

But it’s good to know too, particularly for those of my vintage, that following a fitness regime can turn us too much into ourselves. While it important to care for ourselves, we are in our later years prone to a kind of physical narcissism that makes it the object of an almost religious devotion.

Oscar Wilde might almost be right when he said that youth was wasted on the young. That may be true but, as the great advertising cliché puts it, when it’s gone it’s gone.