Rosie Swale Pope pulls her trusty cart.

A triumphant grandmother has ran into the record books after completing 27 consecutive fund-raising marathons, reports Britain’s SkyNews.

Rosie Swale Pope MBE, 63, ran the final step in her gruelling 707 mile odyssey to rapturous cheering from a crowd of supporters.

Crossing the finish line in Tudor Square, in her home town of Tenby, in west Wales, she said she was “tired but very very happy”.

The fund-raising phenomenon had originally intended finishing in Llanelli, where she completed her 26th consecutive marathon.

But in an effort to thank a legion of supporters across the UK for their backing she ran an extra marathon by way of a traditional lap of honour.

Read more … click here.

Talia Carner

One thing about us boomers that no one in any generation can deny: we are not just inventive, not just energetic … but we are undefeated. This doesn’t always matter, but when storyteller Talia Carner hurt herself on a ski slope, it mattered big-time. We’re only as old as we feel.

Not a cloud in the sky. The air is crisp and cold, neutralized, devoid of any smell from a world that is not just pure white and powdery. I fill my lungs. In the silence, all I hear is the swoosh, swoosh, swoosh of the snow scrunching under my skis. Swoosh to the right, swoosh to the left, what freedom! My body leans forward over the tips of my skis, pumping up and down as I serpent the slope. The mountain is mine, the world is mine, the moment is mine.

Except that all is suddenly shattered in a violent flip that unleashes a cloud of white dust. At once, I am hurled forward, sideways and upward. In a stitch of time everything blurs. My head whacks the packed powder. The line bifurcating the blue sky and white earth is tilted sideways. The sharp twist is my knee. The popping sound is my ski that releases a split second too late and goes flying over my head. When it lands a moment later, I am no longer near it; the momentum of my fall propels me downhill. My body is tossed over moguls. My left leg, already twisted, locks under me. It digs into the snow.

In the flurry of my spill, I’ve lost my hat, goggles, mittens, poles. In the silence that ensues, I hear horrible groans, and I realize that they are heaved out of my own throat.

Downhill, my husband and two daughters, their backs to me, pause above a new set of moguls. They must be figuring out the lay of the hill. They’ll take off in a minute, and I’ll be lying here for hours, all alone with my pain. Not hours, merely minutes, as in my mind’s eye I can see the sharp tips of unaware skiers perforating my skull. I put more force into my groans than I believe myself capable of, hoping the wind will carry it. And it does. My family freezes in stunned poses, then hurriedly remove their skis and launch a penguin-style uphill dash.

Still lying on my side, I manage to release my locked leg and rest it on top of my well one. I hyperventilate. The adrenaline pumps through my veins. Now my head is in my daughter’s lap.

“Shhhhhh,” she says, her fingers stroking me the way I used to do to her when putting her to bed. From somewhere, the garbled sound of a walkie-talkie is getting near. My husband bangs on my other ski to remove it, sending a jolt through me. My other daughter takes a guard position several feet uphill to warn skiers from running into me.

“A lady had a yard sale and hurt her knee,” the ski patrol says. I begin to laugh. Suddenly I feel good, relieved that I won’t be forgotten on the mountain. The knife in my knee has subsided a couple of notches to a throbbing that threatens to lash out in fury should I attempt to test it.

A young man with blue orbs and chiseled cheeks bends over me. His lips are carved as by a sculptor. “I’m John,” he says. I give him the kind of smile I wouldn’t have dared at a bar. His expert fingers search my knee, tenderly, but manage to extract a couple of yelps from me. I clamp down on them. Hard. For the first time I understand women in the delivery room showing bravery; their OB/GYN must look like my John. “Pain is a good sign,” he says. “The ligament is not completely torn. May I check your back?”

I smile. Check anything you want. His fingers climb up my spine one vertebra at the time. “It feels good,” I mumble, “Don’t stop.”

Someone collects my “yard sale” items. John wants to know how old I am. Oh, no. Just half an hour earlier I had sworn I would never again reveal my age. I tighten my lips. “C’mon, Ma,” my daughters urge. “C’mon, Ma. Go for it!”

I sigh. “Okay,” I tell him, scrutinizing the blue of his eyes to detect dimming of its brightness. But John takes my information well. No disappointment, I notice. He asks me about my medications. Must I also tell him about my hormone replacement therapy?

A few moments later, he introduces me to Josh. Blue orbs over chiseled cheeks. Carved lips. How has God made two with the same perfection? I sit up with as much dignity as my condition allows. “How do I look?” I whisper to my daughter and fluff my hair. Earlier she had remarked that the spongy part of my goggles was disintegrating. She brushes what I know looks like charcoal powder from my cheeks. “You look beautiful,” she whispers. The men lift my leg and rest it between two wooden boards. I stifle a scream as the top of the splint carves into my hip flexor. My leg looks like a hero sandwich with wilted lettuce.

My husband’s cell phone rings. He answers it and walks away, but I can hear his business voice thundering along the open slope, riding the mountain, taking away from my moment as the center of his universe.

I smile at my angelic saviors. “You’re terrific, guys.” I read their name tags. One is from Milwaukee, the other from Oregon. Twins separated at their parents’ divorce, I figure, except that they don’t know it. “How do you feel?” they ask in unison. “Wonderful,” I reply.

The stretcher is padded with a comforter. Josh tucks its edges like I’m a papoose. I stare at a bright, delirious sun. I am happy to be snuggled like this, saved from the slope, spared of any worldly responsibilities. Josh suggests my daughter put my goggles on my face. Like a coolie, he takes his spot between the two handles, positioning my head downhill. As he begins to ski down with the stretcher behind him, I hear the familiar swoosh, swoosh, except that now it is right below my ears. The powdery spray of snow from Josh’s skis sprinkles my face. I had just colored the gray away, and now my hair is flecked with white snow. The bottom of the stretcher is flexible, absorbing every ridge and bump of the slope. My injured knee protests each assault with its new vocabulary, but I tell it to shut up.

We come to a stop. John and Josh hover over me, four eyes so blue that for a second it seems that the sky peeks at me through holes in their heads. Just as I am about to inquire about the selection process of emergency services personnel, a third identical head pops above me. “I’m Judd,” the young man says, “and I’ll take you to the hospital.”

He can take me anywhere he wants. My husband, who has followed Josh and John’s tracks, kisses me goodbye and promises to meet me at the hospital after he sees to my equipment. I dismiss my daughters. “Go enjoy yourselves while your Mom is in the hospital,” I say, and they grin at me.

My three J’s slide the stretcher into the back of a Suburban, reminding me of the hundreds of rides my dog took in this section of our truck. I sniff for her smell, but of course, this is not the same vehicle. And as if to confirm my brilliant observation, my glance lands on a series of cartoons taped to the ceiling. I am just one of many who have taken a ride here, lying on their backs.

The cartoons are all of injured skiers. I laugh softly, when my knee sends me a painful reminder that nothing is funny. You’d better face it, I tell myself. Time to hang up your skis the way you once hung your ballerina shoes. Finito.

But as the Suburban pulls away, I catch through the windows the sight of white peaks against the pulsating blue sky, and I want to run back. Tied up like a mummy, I miss the freedom of the outdoors. I imagine my daughters back on the slope and realize that in their certainty that I’d be fine, so I shall.

I close my eyes. “I will return,” I say to the white mountain that will forever remain a part of my internal landscape. “I promise.”

© Copyright 2009 Talia Carner. Used by permission of the author.

Visit Talia Carner’s Web site!

And, I’m 61, a baby boomer. Most people I see during these hikes are in their twenties and thirties. Between the long distances, the elevation gain, and the thin air, the climbs are a little harder for us than for younger generations, but it’s easier for us to figure out how to incorporate them into our personal lives and our working lives. Here are the lessons I’ve extracted from the mountains:

• Planning — I had to carefully plan what I would need to succeed, to minimize the chances of failure. As they say, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.
• Setting missions — Without a definite, clear mission, I would not have been able to hike to each summit. My mission was simple and concrete: to get to the summit. The timing was also critical. I had received good advice about the best time to start my journeys. There was nothing vague or unclear.
• Stay focused — I knew I had to stay focused on my mission. Any wavering or mental ambiguities would have derailed me.
• One step at a time — Every time my body gave me “I can’t do this” messages, I had to rely on my mind to remind my body, “One step at a time.”
• Self-Motivation — I had to believe in myself. I never asked myself whether I was going to make it; I asked myself, “What is it going to take to make it?” I recall actually telling my body, “I’m going to the summit, and I need you to get me there.”
• You can’t see your goals before you achieve them — Too often, if we can’t “see” our mission, we give up. I didn’t see the summits until I got to them!
• Allow parts of your body to question, weaken, or struggle, except your mind — If your mind succeeds, the rest will follow. I stopped several times on the way up to give my lungs a break, to allow them to get the air they needed. It was like talking to them: “It’s ok; I’ll give you a rest before we go on. I want to live to talk about this…”
• Accept pauses, detours, stops, and even doubts, but keep moving forward — We often get discouraged when, on our way to our goals, we have to pause, take detours, or stop. In life, those slowdowns, pauses, or stops can be days, weeks, or even months. However, the only way we are going to achieve our missions in life is to simply keep moving forward. I allowed myself to get disappointed, but not discouraged. In life, sometimes we have to pause, take some unplanned turns and detours, and even stop. That’s okay, as long as we are still moving, in the long term, toward our mission.
• You can’t achieve the goal right now, but — We often lose our motivation because we want to achieve our goals “right now.” They won’t always happen right away, right now. But, what we can do right now is take the next step, and every step is necessary for us to achieve our mission.
• Sometimes, we lose sight of the trail we’re on — I have to admit that sometimes I would get distracted from the trail, but then I realized I needed to focus on the only trail that was there to help me achieve my mission.
• Remember, the mission, or goal, is best achieved by not stepping on anyone — Some of my work experiences and observations came back to haunt me during my hikes. Getting to the top, both during my past career and during my hikes, can be best achieved by stepping on firm ground, not on people.
• While on your journey, help others — It was common on each of my three hikes to see people checking on each other, and motivating each other, whether on their way up or down. Some of the manifestations of that altruistic mindset were comments like, “Are you okay?” or “You can do it.” I did the same for others myself: “It’s worth every step—the views are awesome.”
• Look back occasionally to remind yourself of your achievement — As I headed back down the rocky and daring geologic backs of those monstrous peaks, I looked back several times to see where I had gotten myself. Several times I’d think to myself, “I can’t believe I did that.” It was a great feeling. I did it!

I will never forget my lessons from a mountain.

There I was in the ocean, treading water like a madwomen, embarrassed and humbled. What happened? Well, I aced the pre-ocean part of the lesson. In fact in the swimming pool I was amazing — a scuba diving machine if there ever was one. I was practically one of those Discovery Channel shark chasers. Then came the next part … and my mind frantically tried to grasp where things went terribly awry.

At first, on the boat, I was excited. I even had built-in inspiration. A couple in their freaking 70s going out on a hundred foot dive with three generations of their family. My new heroes — maybe I could be one of their kids for the day. I was in awe.

We dropped anchor and the septuagenarians headed down (with their REAL children … the heartless brats) leaving us newbies behind. The strapping on of the paraphernalia got underway. Before long, I stood there with an air tank on my back (air is WAY heavier than one would think), a weight belt around my waist, and an extremely binding vest with fifty bazillion tubes hanging off of it. Overwhelmed, the meaning of the tubes started to escape me. Led to the edge of the boat in flippers with little peripheral vision because of the mask I was wearing, I began to unravel. This was not cool.

I switched on my panic mantra (people do this every day and do not die, people do this every day and do not die…) and jumped in. Needless to say, after making it down a whopping, oh, maybe five feet, I gave the distress signal (the only thing I remembered from the swimming pool) and was hoisted back onto the boat like a defeated whale. Not my finest moment.

The kindly boat captain and I became fast friends as we sat alone for 45 minutes while everyone else was having the time of their lives. I was angry, jealous, and resolute. Luckily, this was a two-tank drive. I had another chance and I wasn’t going to blow it.

The elderly couple (who I now hated with every fiber of my being) climbed out of the sea like Jacques Cousteau and started talking (with my husband, no less) about all the fabulous creatures they saw down below. Now I was REALLY angry, jealous and resolute. As it turns out, this is the very mindset I needed to be in.

I jumped in again and down I went along the safety rope. My very patient instructor stayed right in my face. I was petrified, but I was determined (people do this every day and do not die…) terror would not win this time. Reaching the end, I clung to the bottom of the rope like it was my job. At this critical point I realized that my main fear was that I was sinking when I normally would be floating. Being a control freak, this wasn’t sitting well with me at all. My brain was telling me that if I let go of the rope I would continue to descend slowly until I was stuck forever on the ocean floor. What I overlooked was that I had fins, strong legs, and a capable instructor.

So I let go. The instructor took my hand and lead me to a sting ray hiding in the sand. Kneeling close by this strange and beautiful creature, my Darth Vader breathing noise transcended to a calming yoga-like hum. The ray, deciding it wanted nothing more to do with us, got up and “flew” away. I gave chase. I hadn’t even realized that my fear was gone. I was one with the ocean.

Next step — certification. And, just maybe, I’ll have my own Discovery Channel shark chasing show — all I have to do is punch the mean ones in their noses, right?

Visit Veronica and David’s Web site, GypsyNester.

There is a lot to consider when looking at a health club and the new year is typically when new members flock to clubs with the best of intentions.

Read the rest … please click here.

But the off season is a great time for Baby Boomers to concentrate on the physical mechanics of golf, especially when it comes to the flexibility that golf requires but that aging limits.

There is a lot of advice out there, particularly on the internet, suggesting everything from yoga to pilates to DVDs that you can buy.

But much of the exercises that are suggested fairly simple ones that can be done at your gym, health club or even in your own home because they involve very little in the way of equipment.

Read the rest of Paul’s story.

However, according to Dr. Nicholas A. DiNubile, we are now paying a high price for our hubris. An article published in the April 16th copy of the New York Times turned the word “Boomeritis” into a household term.

Click to read the whole story.

Mind, Body, Spirit

When it comes to a healthier lifestyle, mental and emotional attitudes can be just as important as diet and exercise. Activities that bring true satisfaction and help keep people energized and engaged are vital. Volunteering, continuing education and creative expression are some of the ways to stay active and improve quality of life.

In fact, a recent report found a significant correlation between volunteering and good health.

Click for the whole story.

Fortunately, “don’t do it if it hurts” is last on the list of advice sports-medicine physician John Kearney would give to the Phoenix woman. Nor would he give it to Mike Riggs, 49, of Phoenix, whose pain threatened to keep him off the golf course.

“A lot of patients think they have to rest if something hurts,” says Kearney, of the CORE Institute (Center for Orthopedic Research and Education) in Sun City. “But often it’s just the opposite, even with knee arthritis. The more you exercise – in the right way – the better your symptoms become. That’s very counterintuitive to most people.”

With new treatments and new attitudes about remaining active in the face of physical setbacks, staying fit in your 40s and beyond needn’t be a pain. Instead of throwing in the towel, you may be able to set things right by easing off a little, modifying routines and practicing preventive measures.

Click to read the whole story.

But curiosity got the best of me and I decided to hook the pedometer on the pocket of my jeans to see if maybe, just maybe, I was way more fit that I’d led myself to believe. After all, I thought hopefully, it’s possible that I jog two miles every night in my sleep. So for a whole day, I had a little digital reminder of the distance I traveled not only in miles, but also in kilometers. I felt downright bilingual one day when I’d gone about a mile but someone at work asked me how far I’d gone and I’d answer “1.17 kilometers!” Take it from me, always answer in the metric system because it will sound like you’ve gone so much further. Even if I’m not getting enough exercise, I thought, I am learning something new -– how to use the metric system to fool people into believing I’m more athletic than I really am. Anything that furthers your education can’t be all bad.

A weird thing happened the next day. I got up and saw the pedometer on my bureau and thought to myself, “I bet yesterday was an anomaly. I probably go a lot further on an average day.” Besides, I hadn’t really measured all the steps I’d taken. It’s fourteen steps from the bed to the shower and I often do a little jig when I’m conditioning my hair. All that hadn’t been counted! So I stuck the device on my robe and went to the kitchen to fix breakfast.

“You’re wearing that thing again?” my hubby asked suspiciously.

I thought I’d shake him up a bit. “Yeah, I’ve got a half marathon this afternoon and wanted to make sure the course was measured properly.”

We both laughed enough to snort Cheerios through our nose. Unfortunately the pedometer wasn’t able to measure that. Both hubby and I knew that even if I had accidentally lapsed back into running -– which I used to do a long, long time ago in a land far, far away -– I’d do it in the house where I could stay dry and my hair wouldn’t poof up like Helen Bonham Carter’s hair in, well, every movie she’s ever made.

I felt very healthy walking around the kitchen cleaning the counters, putting away the breakfast supplies, with the pedometer clicking away. By the time I got to the bathroom for my shower and make-up, I’d already walked 83 steps. And did you know that if you shift your weight from foot to foot while applying mascara, you can tally up extra distance? Of course, you may poke yourself in the eyeball like I did, but you have to expect a little pain with your exercise program.

By about four o’clock, I had already walked as far as the whole previous day. I was so excited I decided to set a goal. I wanted the thing to turn over 3.0001 kilometers. Don’t ask why the extra .0001. Chalk it up to the overachiever in me.

I didn’t really need anything from the grocery store on the way home that day, but I thought walking around from aisle to aisle would help me come closer to my goal, so off I went. While I stood in line waiting to check out, I kind of marched in place. Sure, the other patrons thought I was a little odd, but not as odd as that whole practicing to be a swimsuit model thing I’d tried out in line the previous week. And as I made dinner later that night, I intentionally “forgot” ingredients, so I’d have to keep going back to the pantry. I discovered that the distance from my pantry to my stove is two steps or .0003 kilometers.

After a week, the pedometer became permanently attached to me, like a new digital appendage. Lately I’ve been walking over five miles. That’s right, I’ve started counting in miles; telling people how far I’ve gone in kilometers just seems cruel, like I’m holding it over them. I wear my pedometer everywhere these days. Although a few nights ago, my husband asked me to take it off my nightgown when I got in bed. I did, but I snuck it back on after he started to snore. After all, I still need to see how far I jog in my sleep.

(C) 2008 Leigh Anne Jasheway-Bryant