This post is about a 100-year-old woman named Ida Keeling who is a competitive runner.
Who do you know, or know about, who in old age inspires or inspired younger people?
In the Well blog post “At 100, Still Running for Her Life,” Noah Remnick writes:
When she runs, Ms. Keeling occupies a lane all her own. She has held several track-and-field records since she began racing in her late 60s, and she still has the fastest time for American women ages 95 to 99 in the 60-meter dash: 29.86 seconds. In the week to come, she plans to compete in a 100-meter event at the Penn Relays in Philadelphia, where she hopes to establish a new standard for women over 100 years old.
“You see so many older people just sitting around — well, that’s not me,” said Ms. Keeling, who is barely 4-foot-6 and weighs 83 pounds. “Time marches on, but I keep going.”
… “I learned to stand on my own two feet during the Depression,” she said. “It taught you to do what you had to do without anyone doing it for you.”
Students: Read the entire blog post, then tell us:
— Is there a pastime or hobby that you hope to have your entire life?
— Who, if anyone, in your life reminds you of Ms. Keeling? Explain.
— How do you think other runners at competitions respond to her?
— Ms. Keeling says of her first run in decades, a 5-kilometer race that she claimed felt like it would never end, “Afterwards I felt free. I just threw off all of the bad memories, the aggravation, the stress.” How do you think returning to running could have helped her stay as she calls herself “a forward type of person”?
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