If you think Rening Ylaya is amazing in the running circle, these guys are incredible. Yes, folks, Rening is celebrating his 80th birthday today but he has to play second fiddle to the members of the Over the Hill Gang, an 8-man running club whos members are all over 80 with the oldest at 94. The Over the Hill Gang started in Honolulu Hawaii 12 years ago when Lyle Nelson 90, a newspaper reporter and champion jawboner and Bob Henninger 90, a Masters 8K champion started running together. Other “oldies” started joining the weekly runs. Enter Tom Knoll 82, a retired Marine, Chuck Strang 82, former Airborne ranger and business professor, Siegfried “Sig” Ramler, 90, the resident intellectual, Kim Jacobsen 82, the fastest, biochemist Al Winner 89 and 94-year old Jack Gubbins. The group that starts running at 6:30 am along Waikiki, Beach has become a fixture around Honolulu as surfers, tourists and sunbathers. Among the group, Knoll is the most impressive, having run the first Ironman Triathlon in 1978. He came in sixth among 15 finishers. He has run across the U.S, three times. Sig Ramler was born in Vienna but moved to London in the late 1930s and eventually joined the US Air Force. He was a translator during the Nuremberg Trials and interrogated Hermann Goering, formerly Hitler’s second in command. At age 69, Lyle spent time in Iraq and Afghanistan. On one occasion, a man from a poolside chair hollered at the group as they pass a hotel “ You’re too old for that, guys”. Tom yells back “You’re too young to run with us, eighty and over only.” By the way , Chuck Strang has finished 47 marathons and ultras. Bob Henninger , Lyle and Kim has run the Hilo to Volcano 50K ultra relay, setting an age group record. Back to Rening, he has slowed down a bit and even have hearing and eyesight problems but he continues to run. Sometimes he shames several runners young enough to be his grandchildren. A recent study found people over 70 who are more physically active, have healthier white matter-the brain tissue that contains the nerve fibers that transmit messages around the brain. Aerobic excercises among “gurangs” can increase the size of hippocampus, a critical part of the forebrain that helps form, store, and recall memories, which shrinks as we age.
DID YOU KNOW?
Bill Haley of “Rock Around The Clock” fame was a rower and trained with Steve Redgrave, the only athlete to have won gold at five Olympic Games in an endurance event. Haley trained with Redgrave and planned to compete in the 1979 World Championship in Moscow, but a rogue seat in their boat wrecked that dream. Unknown to Redgrave, Haley had a heart condition and collapsed and died at his house in one of their meetings.
Michael Jordan, even after he made it big in the NBA, used to wear his University of North Carolina shorts under his Chicago Bulls uniform for good luck. Jordan, who is majority owner of the Charlotte Hornets was, recently included in the Forbes list of billionaires with a $1 billion net worth.