Age is Just a Number: Sarah Staying Fit

Shawn Kennedy
Jul 30
3 min read

A picture of Sarah Malone at Planet Fitness. Sarah is a caucasian women with silver hair. — Sarah Malone is a member of Walking Wednesday - Team Nittany

"Staying fit and healthy as I get older feels like a real balancing act! How do I push just enough to maintain a healthy heart and lungs, good strength, balance and coordination, while not overdoing the effort or injuring myself, perhaps severely?"

Sarah Malone is 71-years-old, a member of our Walking Wednesdays group with Team Nittany, and is now its team captain. She is the epitome of the phrase “age is just a number.” People are oftentimes accustomed to senior citizens just relaxing and taking it easy – living a sedimentary lifestyle with no or minimum physical activity. Sarah is not that individual. She prefers to stay active, like when she was a senior hike leader a few years ago. Sarah walks with our walking group each Wednesday morning for a couple of miles, but not before getting in her one mile run and one hour strength training first. During our recent fall/winter months, she actively participated in five of our six, month-long personal challenges, which were designed to give members options for physical activity indoors. Sarah stayed consistent with these personal challenges, and even surprised herself with what she was able to physically accomplish through sheer determination, commitment and self-discipline. This was most evident during our sit-up and push-up challenges, where she started with 110 sit-ups the first week and ended with 150 by the end of the month. It also happened with the start of 60 wall pushups and ended with 135 tabletop pushups. Sarah is a great example of staying fit as your age.

Sarah Malone: “Staying fit and healthy as I get older feels like a real balancing act! How do I push just enough to maintain a healthy heart and lungs, good strength, balance and coordination, while not overdoing the effort or injuring myself, perhaps severely?

For the last 30 years, I have done a combination of cardio and strength training three days a week for approximately one hour per session, at the local YMCA or another fitness center. I also try to walk two to three miles most other days of the week.

I must be realistic about the fact that simply maintaining the same types of exercises and pace that I used to do could make injuries more likely as I get older – particularly as I cope with slight permanent nerve and muscle deficits from a car accident when I was young.

Running either outside in good weather or indoors on a treadmill, or around a gym, has long been part of my weekly cardio routine. I run about one mile in 12 minutes. Some days I alternate with a ½ mile in 11 minutes on a stair-stepping machine. Using an elliptical machine for 1 ½ miles in 16 minutes is also an option I sometimes use during the winter.

Using both machines are intense and more demanding on my cardio workouts than running indoors and outdoors, but not as good for my balance and coordination – since my feet do not move from the foot pedals. On the other hand, running outdoors place more demands on my balance and coordination.

That may not seem daunting to most folks who learned to walk and run as children, but I had to relearn all of that in a few weeks at the age of 20. Such lessons at that age do not stick as well as the same lessons we learned as children. My feet and legs can sometimes feel confused, not to mention that in glancing in different directions, I oftentimes experience double vision. Keeping all of these exercise factors in balance, along with doing strength training that stresses and stretches my muscles but does not injure them, is a worthy challenge.

Combining my own exercise schedule along with walking among the amazing, wonderful, justice-oriented, and nationwide Walking Wednesdays group, has been a godsend to me. This is especially true since I usually walk by myself these days. (I did retire from 10 years of leading group hikes a few years ago.) Thank you, Walking Wednesdays, for helping me to stay fit and healthy, as well as feel the safety within a group, as I get older and strive for balance in both my life and exercises!”

#WalkingWednesdays #WalkingForAHealthyHeart #TeamNittany #AgeIsJustANumber #MovementIsMedicine #HealthIsWealth