Frank Rothwell, 70, from Oldham, Scotland set off from Canary Island La Gomera on December 12 and crossed the finish line in Antigua in the Caribbean on Saturday – reuniting with Judith, his wife of 50 years, with time to spare until Valentine’s Day.
He said crossing the finish line was a “completely euphoric moment” as he fundraised more than £648,000 for Alzheimer’s Research UK in tribute to his brother-in-law Roger, who died with Alzheimer’s aged 62 during his row.
From an Outside Magazine online article:
In the spring and summer, he trained two to four hours a day, six days a week, running daily and carrying 60 pounds of water up a 4,000-foot peak near his home in Seattle twice a week. “All the research has shown that 80 percent of training for alpine ascents needs to be long duration and low intensity, to build a huge foundation of endurance,” Swenson says. “There are no shortcuts to this. There’s no thirty-minute-a-day gym workout. You have to have the discipline to put the time in.”
As an older climber, when I go out and train on any particular day, my big goal is to not get injured. In my twenties and thirties, I would push through a tight muscle or minor pain, but now I just stop. It’s not worth it. The most important thing is to be able to come back tomorrow.”
(Steve) Swenson laments the common scenario for many older people, who often work too much, exercise too little, and find themselves unhealthy during their golden years. “Imagine spending all your years looking forward to retirement and you can’t enjoy it,” Swenson says.
To read more: https://www.outsideonline.com/2405337/steve-swenson-mountaineer
From Phys.org online article:
“As a result, today’s epidemic of physical inactivity in conjunction with highly processed, high-sodium diets contributes to thicker, stiffer hearts that compromise the heart’s ability to cope with endurance physical activity, and importantly this may start to occur prior to increases in resting blood pressure,” explains Shave.
The landmark study analyzed 160 humans, 43 chimpanzees and five gorillas to gain an understanding of how the heart responds to different types of physical activity. In collaboration with Harvard University’s Daniel Lieberman and Aaron Baggish, UBC Professor Robert Shave and colleagues compared left ventricle structure and function in chimpanzees and a variety of people, including some who were sedentary but disease-free, highly active Native American subsistence farmers, resistance-trained football linemen and endurance-trained long-distance runners.
To read more: https://phys.org/news/2019-09-evolution-heart.html
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