I do most of my running in Forest Park, which is great since it
happens also to be one of my favorite places in St. Louis. It is a
wonderful place to run: beautiful, well-maintained, and over 50%
larger than Central Park in NYC.

Another nice thing about it is that there's a locker room in the
basement of the Forest Park Visitor's Center, where I rent a locker
and change. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I always see the same group of
retired guys who run together. I say "hello" and "have a good one" to
them, and vice versa, but we never talked more than that, until today,
when two of them asked me my name and introduced themselves as Wylie
and Frank.

In the course of chatting about the weather--cold and windy--and where
they ran and where I ran, Frank told me that he and his friends had
been out running for about an hour and 20 minutes and that they'd
covered about 7 miles. That's pretty remarkable since Frank looks to
be in his late 60's or possibly early 70's.

I asked Frank how often they run, and he said four times a week, on
Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday.

I asked him how long they'd be running in Forest Park, and he told me
that some of them had been running together for *thirty* years.

Thirty years! I find that amazing.

Also, Frank was wearing a shirt from the 2009 St. Louis Half-Marathon
(the first race I ever ran, as it happens) as he told me this.

I sincerely hope that, 30 years from now, I will be running 7 miles, 4
times a week, and racing half-marathons.

So the next time someone tells me that all that running is going to
ruin my knees and give me arthritis, I may admit that it's a
possibility but I will also think of Frank and Wylie and say, "I'll
take my chances."