When running failed, he switched to walking — and still finished

The year he turned sixty, Old He signed up for the first half marathon of his life.

He trained for eight months. He started unable to walk two kilometres without gasping, moved up to a slow jog of five, and eventually ran twelve kilometres without stopping. Then, a month before the race, his knee went. The old meniscus injury flared, and the doctor was blunt: "Running? No."

Quit, or run anyway? He agonised for a week, then went to the organisers and asked whether there was another way. A staff member told him the course closed at three hours. "The rules set a closing time. They don't say you have to run."

He understood. He rewrote the plan: run where he could run, walk where he couldn't, shuffle when walking failed, and be at the finish inside three hours. He went back to the doctor with this and got a grudging yes, plus one condition. Wear the brace, wear the supports, and the moment the knee complained, switch to walking.

On race day the gun went and the crowd poured past him. He held his own pace. The first five kilometres were a slow jog. After five, the knee began to protest, and he switched to a brisk walk. People overtook him all morning. The volunteers at the aid stations came to know him — he was always the last to arrive, and he always waved and said, "Don't worry about me, I'll make the cutoff."

Past thirty kilometres, there were very few people left on the course. A staff car pulled alongside and asked if he wanted to get in the sweep vehicle. He pointed at his leg. "It says it can still walk."

The last five kilometres, it began to rain. His pace dropped to twelve minutes a kilometre. A sweep volunteer cycled beside him and asked what he was doing it for. He answered between breaths. "For the word 'finished.' I've made a lot of promises to myself in my life. Not one of them has come up empty. Today's won't either."

He crossed the line just inside the cutoff. When they hung the medal around his neck, the volunteers who had been sweeping the course behind him applauded. He lifted the medal and the first thing he said was, "I ran for two hours. I walked for nine minutes. The rest of it I walked on not giving up."

There is more than one way to finish a thing. Running finishes it, walking finishes it, shuffling finishes it. Completion doesn't ask about posture.

Afterwards he wrote the whole thing into a speech for his class at the seniors' college. He said most people his age find their bodies starting to set limits — knees, backs, hearts, all saying you're done. His advice was to negotiate. "It says it can't run, so walk. It says it can't walk, so walk slowly. Shuffling is still forward. As long as the direction hasn't changed, the posture doesn't matter."

He still enters races now. Walking races, mini runs, fun runs. His finisher medals hang along one wall, and under each one he has stuck a small label: ran or walked. The last medal is the half marathon, and its label reads, ran and walked — finished.

His grandson asked him, "Grandpa, does a race you walked still count as winning?" Old He took the medal off and hung it around the boy's neck. "Kid, a race doesn't eliminate the people who are slow. It only eliminates the people who don't get to the end."

He has since upgraded the philosophy. "When I was young I thought winning meant beating other people. Then I worked out that if you spend your life comparing, you lose the whole way — there's always somebody faster. Compare yourself to your own quitting and every race is a win." In his race log, every entry carries a note at the end: ran, walked, ran and walked. Three words, he says, will see him through the second half of his life.