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WNPR News sports coverage brings you a mix of local and statewide news from our reporters as well as national and global news from around the world from NPR.

Athletes over Fifty

Providenz

http://cptv.vo.llnwd.net/o2/ypmwebcontent/Commodore%20Skahill/The%20Colin%20McEnroe%20Show%2004-03-2012.mp3

Today's show was the brainchild of producer Betsy Kaplan, but it seems like something I might have thought up, just to deal with some (de)pressing problems in my life. I'm 57. I have arthritis in both knees. One of the magazines I write for wants me to do, this fall, a Gran Fondo, a bike ride of more than 100 miles with a significant elevation change.

I'm literally not sure I can.

But all around me are examples of athletes over 50 doing remarkable things.

Also all around me are people my age fighting the realities of time and decline. My friend Martin Cooper, who is my age, recently damaged his knee but, like so many of us in our fifties, not from any activity he can really pinpoint. Dana Carvey says you can injure yourself in your fifties just by reaching to answer the phone. Why are some people exceptions to this rule?  Sometimes it's hard to tell who the exceptions really are.

Leave your comments below or email colin@wnpr.org or tweet us @colin.

We apologize to Charles "Brooklyn Beast" Olsen, who was unable to share his story as an ultra-athlete, due to lack of time.

Colin McEnroe is a radio host, newspaper columnist, magazine writer, author, playwright, lecturer, moderator, college instructor and occasional singer. Colin can be reached at colin@ctpublic.org.

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