“Our goal for the Ramblin’ Rose was to finish and not to leave a trail of mayhem behind us. We were successful on both accounts.”
My neighbor Trudie Carraway, 75, and I can’t recall which of us first floated this audacious idea. (On the other hand, at our age, we can’t recall why we left the kitchen and walked up to get something in the bedroom.) But somehow it stuck and we decided that we might stand a pretty good chance of finishing well in our age groups. “Wouldn’t it be fun,” we thought, “to check off a small triathlon on our life list. And to test our mettle as active seniors.”
When I was 55, I decided to become a runner (I had never been much of an athlete). I ran the neighborhood, one mailbox to the next, for two or three weeks. Then to the second mailbox for a week. Then the third. Then I set my first big goal: to run one mile in one year. I was successful. I decided to do two miles in two years. Success, again. Then three miles in three years. I could not do it. Three miles in four years. I still could not do it. In my fifth year of running, at age 60, I competed in my first 5k AND my first 10k. I met my goals to run the entire course, and to not finish last.
I enjoyed running for several years, but my old hips began to give out, and in 2007 and 2008 I had my hips replaced. The doc said no more running, so I switched to swimming. My first evening at the Y, I cobbled together 20 lengths of the pool using a variety of strokes and styles – some of them pretty hilarious. I worked up to a mile of freestyle and recently discovered a masters class that challenged me to pick up a little speed and style. At the same time I came across the Ramblin’ Rose triathlons. Could I? Should I? I couldn’t run, but perhaps I could work up to a frisky trot. My friend Trudie and I often took our fat-wheeled bikes out for a ride on Greenville’s Swamp Rabbit Trail. We could do a nine-mile ride easy if we stopped at Leopard Forest for a cold latte. We decided to sign up.
What were we thinking? Every time we got together to run, swim or bike we laughed at ourselves. Were we crazy? Perhaps, but we were having fun, a lot of laughs, and feeling good about our aging selves.
“What was the most satisfying part of Ramblin’ Rose? To reach for and complete a goal we never imagined ourselves chasing, and to finish on our feet and feeling like a million bucks – while taking honors for being the two oldest ‘athletes’ on the course.”
