Prologue

It was 1971. I was thirty years old and full of vim and vigor. Or maybe just vigor. I've never been quite sure about vim.

At any rate, it was 1971, and I had decided to take up running for exercise.

One of the first things I noticed about running was that it was a sport for people of any age. Occasionally I'd even see some gray-haired old guy in his 60s plodding along, and I'd think, "It's great that he can still keep going without a walker."

Thirty-six years have passed since then, in what seems like hardly more than a few weeks.

When I go out for a "run" in the morning, teenagers flicker past me like humming birds.

People in their twenties and thirties move by like the Keystone Kops in a speeded-up silent movie.

Folks in their forties and fifties go around me as if I were a statue planted in their paths.

And that's when I realize I have become that old gray-haired guy that I used to see.

This is the story of how it happened.