Senior Athetic Events: Octogenarian Triathlons
Contributed by Doug Ferguson
Our nation is experiencing an increase in people living longer. Alaska is no exception with seniors being the fastest growing demographic. This being true, it’s time for more creative thinking about how to enhance the “quality of life” for this segment of our population!
Recently in several weekly grocery shopping trips, as I have transitioned into my 80’s myself, and now that I have become dependent on the use of canes to get around, I have noticed a new category of potential athletes. I call them “Octogenarian Triathletes”!
These are people who are in their 80’s, have mobility problems of some type who use their shopping cart to augment their cane or walking limitations, and who manage to shop at our three Mat-Su Valley general purpose grocery stores (Fred Meyer, Carrs and Three Bears) all in one day!
Doing some research on this whole topic after experiencing some “three store” days myself trying to get everything on my shopping list and ending up feeling like I did back when I was a teenager after running the mile in a track meet, I’ve also noticed others in my age group having the same experience!
Using Google Earth views of these stores and the distance scale provided for each view, you can estimate the length and depth of the shopping area of each store, in this case in Palmer. If your shopping list contained the items listed below, then for each store you would have to go from the senior parking lot into the store back to the one end and then go to the other end and back out to the parking lot, assuming you didn’t have to go up and down any more isles for other things on the list!
Fred Meyers: Computer Ink and fresh fish
Carrs: Bread and lettuce
Three Bears: Bird Food and Shampoo
For those that shop in Palmer and are familiar with each store, these items are currently at opposite ends of the buildings!
Not counting extra trips up and down the isles to find other items, I estimated a total of traveling a minimum of at least 3/5 of a mile pushing the cart as a walker to do these three stores in one day! This is even more of a workout if you get a cart with bad wheels! Of course, spreading merchandise out over the whole store is a marketing technique used by all stores these days, thus encouraging us to buy items not on our list.
Thus, I make this modest proposal: Maybe once a year we could organize this concept into a real Octogenarian Triathlete Event! Of course, someone would have to test the carts to eliminate those with stuck wheels to make the event fair!
If this ever happens, I, for one, would recommend having a rest area with free snacks and drinks for all to enjoy afterwards! Oh! And I almost forgot! Free “T” shirts for all who participated saying, “I Shopped the Octogenarian Triathlon”!!