I run most mornings, and have since my 20s. I ran when few did, remembering being stopped in Italy by the police to find out what exactly I was running from.
“Signorina, who is’a chaz’ing yooo’?”
I’m convinced it’s one of the reasons my body has held up, since it does best in what I call, fitness flight. And one’s immune system toughens when you brave the elements, sparring with Mother Nature despite her many mood swings.
Farmers are rarely sick since they’re outdoors all the time, hardy and healthy, like our second president, John Adams, who came from a farming family. His son, our 6th, John Quincy, swam in the Chesapeake every day while in office, didn’t matter what the temperature was.
He lived to be 81, and his dad, 91, during a time 60 was considered old age.
Harry Truman fast walked daily before it was fashionable, in loafers no less, while the Secret Service tried keeping up. Imagine how fast, Give ’em hell Harry, would have been in a pair of Nikes.
Lincoln, all 6’3 and then some, loved a good stroll, to stretch those lanky legs no doubt.
U.S. Grant also, when he was president, preferred getting around by foot after his 4 years in the Civil War, marching, when he wasn’t perched on his horse, Cincinnati, that is.
JFK, as we know, enjoyed a good swim, usually in the company of naked, nubile women, providing Jackie wasn’t around of course. It was the same pool FDR enjoyed, a gift in 1933 courtesy of a fund raiser by the New York Daily News knowing swimming was good for his struggle with Polio. It was why when Nixon had it drained with a floor built over it for a bowling alley, the country moaned. It’s still there though, peeking beneath the years of its many incarnations.
Teddy boxed.
Ike played golf.
How did we go from me running, to leaders of the free world sparring and putting?
Hell if I know, but it’s interesting, now isn’t it?
SB