The Optimal Aging Podcast
When Is It Too Late to Get Fit? Author Gwendolyn Bounds on Pushing Limits at Any Age
How old is too old?
How late in life is TOO late in life to get fit, change your life, and improve your health?
Or is the answer, it’s never too late?
Well, these are the questions we’ll be covering on this episode of Optimal Aging, where we discuss the business of exercise, healthy living and wellbeing for people 50 and over. Each week, we explore what healthy living means for millions of people in this lucrative, yet underserved market, with a focus on communications, content, and making powerful connections.
Gwendolyn Bounds tackles this question head-on in her inspiring new book titled “Not Too Late: The Power of Pushing Limits at Any Age.”
In it, she tells her own remarkable story of transitioning from deconditioned news executive in her 40s to competitive obstacle course racer in her 50s. A veteran Wall Street Journal reporter and editor, Wendy also interviewed experts in longevity, philosophy, athletic performance and more.
It’s a compelling true story of how Wendy changed her life, but it’s also much more than that, as I think you’ll see from this discussion. So many will relate to her story – even if they have no interest in running obstacle course races. Wendy is a terrific writer and storytelling, and I know you’ll enjoy our conversation as much as I did.
Online Resources
Gwendolyn Bounds
Spartan Race
Prime Fit Content – Engage the over-50 market
How old is too old?
How late in life is TOO late in life to get fit, change your life, and improve your health?
Or is the answer, it’s never too late?
Well, these are the questions we’ll be covering on this episode of Optimal Aging, where we discuss the business of exercise, healthy living and wellbeing for people 50 and over. Each week, we explore what healthy living means for millions of people in this lucrative, yet underserved market, with a focus on communications, content, and making powerful connections.
Gwendolyn Bounds tackles this question head-on in her inspiring new book titled “Not Too Late: The Power of Pushing Limits at Any Age.”
In it, she tells her own remarkable story of transitioning from deconditioned news executive in her 40s to competitive obstacle course racer in her 50s. A veteran Wall Street Journal reporter and editor, Wendy also interviewed experts in longevity, philosophy, athletic performance and more.
It’s a compelling true story of how Wendy changed her life, but it’s also much more than that, as I think you’ll see from this discussion. So many will relate to her story – even if they have no interest in running obstacle course races. Wendy is a terrific writer and storytelling, and I know you’ll enjoy our conversation as much as I did.
Online Resources
Gwendolyn Bounds
Spartan Race
Prime Fit Content – Engage the over-50 market
How old is too old? How late in life is too late in life to get fit, change your life and improve your health? Is it 40, 55, maybe 70? Or is the answer it's never too late?
Speaker 1:Well, these are the questions we'll be covering on this episode of Optimal Aging, where we discuss the business of exercise, healthy living and well-being for people 50 and over. Each week, we explore what healthy living means for millions of people in this lucrative yet underserved market, with a focus on communications, content and making powerful connections. Content and making powerful connections. And I'm really excited about my guest on this episode, because Gwendolyn Bounds tackles this question head-on in her inspiring new book titled Not Too Late the Power of Pushing Limits at Any Age. In it she tells her own remarkable story of transitioning from a deconditioned news executive in her 40s to a competitive obstacle course racer in her 50s.
Speaker 1:A veteran Wall Street Journal reporter and editor, wendy also interviewed experts in longevity, philosophy, athletic performance and more for the book philosophy, athletic performance and more for the book. And it's a compelling true story of how Wendy changed her life. But it's also much more than that, as I think you'll see from this discussion. So many of your prospects and clients will relate to this story, even if they have no interest in running obstacle course races. Wendy's a terrific writer and storyteller and I know you will enjoy our conversation as much as I did. Here we go, gwendolyn Bounds. Wendy, nice to see you. It's so good to be here with you, jay. Yeah, I am delighted by your story and your book and by all the great things that we're going to talk about today. We've enjoyed a sort of a pregame warm-up here and this is going to be a good conversation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm really looking forward to it. We have a lot in common.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, I want to dive right into a little bit about your background, somewhat similar to mine, coming from newspapers and getting into this fitness space a little later in life, but you have such a great story about what the spark was, so go ahead and tell us that.
Speaker 2:Sure, you say a little bit later in life, getting into the fitness space a lot later, right Age 45. I am a journalist by profession. As you noted, I spent the first chunk of my career at the Wall Street Journal as a reporter and editor, later moved to a brand called Consumer Reports product reviews and ratings Many people probably know it where I oversaw their content and then just recently, have pivoted and am working at an internet startup, a media startup called Smart News. It's a news aggregator app. All of which to say, jay, is that, as a lot of sitting and a lot of screens and a lot of hands uncalloused pecking on a keyboard, and not a lot of being out pursuing your fitness or not.
Speaker 2:A lot of focus for me on exercise. I did enough to justify my gym membership, but that was about it. And I was the skinny kid last picked for sports teams growing up, right. I never got that positive feedback that you know. Oh, I should be an athlete, I could be an athlete, right. I got positive feedback about how I put words together right. So that's the direction I went in.
Speaker 2:So for me, age 45, as you alluded to, I had a pretty big wake up call in all places. At a dinner party, I overheard a old, older man, well into his gin, ask a young girl you want to be? What do you want to be when you grow up? Normal question, you ask a kid. But she just was like Jay. She was so full of, like, all these incredible things, one after another, none of them, which none of them had anything to do with the next right A veterinarian or a computer programmer at Apple, or an artist.
Speaker 2:And that phrase just stuck with me the whole night and into the next morning when I woke up and I was a little bleary eyed and I was just churning in my head and it I realized.
Speaker 2:You know, in middle age and midlife, we people stop asking us what do you want to be when you grow up? But, more importantly, stop asking ourselves. And that is what sent me to Google sitting screens again, where I still, to this day, don't know why I typed it. But I typed in the phrase what are the hardest things you can do? And the algorithm popped up what are the hardest physical things you can do? And I saw something called obstacle course racing, spartan racing, and I was like what is that? And I clicked on it and I started reading about this and we can get into what it is, but this crazy sport, I thought at the time, and that is what set me off on this journey to that was five, six year journey to transform from being really this unathletic news executive into a competitive age group athlete who's been in two world championships in Spartan racing.
Speaker 1:So that's the, that is the catalyst, and that is just great story because we all relate to that. A lot of people have had that moment where they think, oh gosh, what do I want to do? Who am I anymore? Where am I going to be for the next 20 years, 15 years, whatever? And it's the how we answer that question, you know with enthusiasm and curiosity or with kind of dread and resignation. So I love generally your response. I love specifically your response because these obstacle course races are on my bucket list.
Speaker 2:Well they're not going to be long, because I'm coming to Atlanta and I'm going to take you on a Spartan race. We're going to do it together.
Speaker 1:I can't wait. I hope you're not just saying that, because I will take you up on that.
Speaker 2:That is going to happen, and if anybody any of your listeners who haven't done one have been thinking about it, we should all do it together. Right, let's get a bunch of your listeners First timers. We'll all do it together. We'll cross the finish line together. We'll make sure everybody gets through it. Let's do that, I would love that.
Speaker 1:I would love that Tell the folks a little bit. I'm sure most people listening to this have a fairly good idea but what it is and why you didn't just run screaming for the hills when someone suggested you do this or the Google suggested you do it. Because it's pretty extreme. It seems extreme.
Speaker 2:It can be, and I think. Well, my mother still thinks I should have run screaming from the hills, particularly when she sees me crawling in the mud under barbed wire. But that said, it is. In essence, it combines endurance running with hunter-gatherer, military style obstacles carrying heavy buckets of rocks, heavy sandbags, scaling walls, climbing a rope, crawling under barbed wire all of things that are very basic to the functional movements we need in life. To be honest, jay, these are things that you want to be able to bend down and get the dog's ball out from under the bed, right, and not put your back out. You need mobility to be able to get down on all fours, hence the barbed wire crawl. If you want to put your suitcase in the airplane's overhead bend and not have to ask the flight attendant for help, right, that's. Can you get a sandbag up on your back, right? These are all.
Speaker 2:I didn't know this at the time, but as I have come to love this sport and to think about it as part of my own longevity, I have come to realize just how critical these movement patterns are to us aging. Well, and I think for many of the people who are your listeners, these are probably many of the movements that they advocate or support in the work that they do. So what I would say is that you can start quite easy, easily easy being a relative terms but 5k, 3.1 miles, there are both sort of non competitive heats they call them open races where you can go out with your friends this is what we would do with a team of people. You can help each other over the obstacles. You can do the penalties if you want no one's there to enforce them. You're not racing for a podium.
Speaker 2:Then that's where I started, I mean, that's where I just sort of that's where I began, knowing nothing. And then you can scale into competitive racing either in your age group, which is what I do. I'm in the 50 to 54 category where you are competing for a podium slot and you are held to the same standards as the even the elite pro racers who are competing in many cases for prize money. But you again, like you, have to do your penalty loops or your burpees. If you are in, a burpee is a type of movement which many people may be familiar with, very punishing but had been a long time penalty part of obstacle course racing in Spartan. But you can start small and you can scale up and I think that training for something like this, however you are training for it is, as we were saying, really going to put you on a better path for aging and all, and to basically fight the decline that is inevitably coming for all of us. Jay.
Speaker 1:Yes, it is, unless we take action to prevent it. And there's so much we can do. One of the things that I have been so excited to learn in the last few years, since I've been focusing on this fitness over 50, is uh, it seems to me that anyone sort of like I'm 60, I remember when fitness became common, and that means I remember when it was not, you know, when there weren't Nautilus studios on every corner, and back when Jane Fonda was just a movie star. It was a different world. My parents never exercised, your parents didn't. You know that generation didn't go work out. That just wasn't a thing that people did, and people thought muscles meant Olympic bodybuilders every four years on TV. I don't think there's that real awareness that fitness, athletic performance, strength, agility, endurance, that these things are essential for healthy life and for autonomy as we age.
Speaker 2:And not just to be a competitive athlete right. Yes, that's know.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's right. No, no, no.
Speaker 2:Right, it's worth underscoring that to participate just in basic daily life tasks some of the things we were talking about picking up a bag of mulch at Home Depot and things like that but also cognitively. I know you know this, but the research out there now shows we can get these tremendous, tremendous cognitive benefits from exercise and movement, which protects our brains and therefore anything that we love to do, whether it's painting or fly fishing or singing right, this can help us stay engaged in that. So movement is certainly a necessary prescription if you want to be an athlete of any sort, but it is a necessary prescription if you just want to be an athlete of life, right? If you just want to stay engaged in those things you love.
Speaker 1:That's right. That's sort of the main theme of my stuff is staying engaged in the things you love. I don't care what you like to do, I just care that you're able to do it as long as you want to, rather than being limited in your mobility and feeling bad. Gardening is such a great thing for people to do. It's a good physical workout, it gets you outside, it's creative, it involves your brain and it's hard so you can actually go to the gym and get strong so that you can enjoy working in the garden for longer, and that's going to prolong your quality of life and your autonomy and everything.
Speaker 1:So we're talking about someone who is now a competitive athlete in this kind of crazy sounding sport of obstacle course racing, and the book opens in Abu Dhabi at one of the championships that you went to. You don't have to go to all those extremes to just have a better life. The title of your book kind of addresses that it's not too late the power of pushing limits at any age. How did you come upon this kind of drive to go into it? I understand the spark of the dinner party and the little girl, but you went way beyond that. What was that journey like for you?
Speaker 2:I do think there's a reckoning coming for all of us at some point in midlife. You know where we ask the question is this all there is? You know, is this all I am or can be? And this was my moment of reckoning. And had I not gone down this rabbit hole of obstacle course racing, not sure what the, what my quality of life would have been like?
Speaker 2:I was not deeply unhappy, but I was called up in a cycle of inertia, doing the same things, same work challenges, same chores, monday through Friday routines. It felt like something slipping from a major to a minor right. I just wasn't waking up with this drive and this profound will to live that I think you have more acutely when you're younger. And so for me, it was the day-to-day process of starting to become a student again, to learn and to unlearn things in order to engage in this sport. Because I had no idea what I was doing. I started off by waking up 45 minutes to an hour earlier for my job at Consumer Reports. I would go downstairs, it was still dark, I was bleary eyed, I'd go out in my yard and I would do the. I was getting these free Spartan workouts of the day and I didn't even know what half the stuff was, jay.
Speaker 1:I didn't know what a bear crawl was so I'd have to.
Speaker 2:Google it, watch it on YouTube and then try and do it in my frozen yard while my neighbors drove by and were like oh my God, is she okay Like?
Speaker 2:she looks like a wounded animal, like down there with her middle-aged limbs. As I did these things day after day, then I would go to work and I'd feel a little bit different. Right, I would need a second breakfast because I had worked out so hard in the morning and that felt kind of powerful in its own way. Right, I would be sitting in my first meeting and know I had done this thing. It was like a secret identity that was developing alongside being a media executive.
Speaker 2:Baby calluses soon started to emerge on my hand and I would touch them under the conference table while somebody was on slide 83 of some monotonous PowerPoint presentation about marketplace challenges and it just it gave me this. I would go home. It would be what I would think about when I was going to sleep. I would have, instead of I don't know, scrolling through social media, I would watch videos of people climbing ropes. It took me forever it took like six, eight months to begin to learn how to climb a rope, but I got excited.
Speaker 2:Right, I would go to bed thinking about something other than, oh, I got excited. Right, I would go to bed thinking about something other than, oh, that annoying thing my colleague said. Or my Amazon list. I have to order, and that was changing the chemistry of my brain. It was igniting this will to live, and it wasn't until I began reporting this book, Jay, that I really understood the data behind having something like this in your life and what it can do for our longevity. There's a woman named Becca Levy at Yale, and she did research showing that people who have positive perceptions of aging live 7.5 years longer on average than those without, and part of that is will to live and having these pastimes that excite us and a reason to get up in the morning. I don't know about you, but I'd take 7.5 years.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, it makes such a difference. And also a lot of older people. The spouses might have passed away, the children might be grown and living far away, and we learned this in COVID. A lot of older people are alone and isolated and the social interaction that fitness can provide having a sport, having a hobby, that social interaction is really key for older folks. So did you find community immediately, or did that take a while, or what was that?
Speaker 2:like I did and I love this question. I'm going to answer it in two parts. The first part is not going to be about me. The first part is my mother-in-law, who just what you were saying. My father-in-law passed away about a year ago. My mother-in-law had to have a heart surgery prior to that. When she was done, she was having trouble just walking to the mailbox, right. But she joined a gym for the first time. She's now 84 and got a personal trainer and she is to the point where we just got back with her on it from a trip to Greece where she was able to climb the stairs and walk and see.
Speaker 2:You know this was a. You know I don't love the term bucket list, but it was a bucket list trip, something she wanted to do, and and that was powerful, right? Not only did she have the community of being at this gym and having this trainer and having a reason to get up, but she saw how her body changed, even in her eighties. So when I say not too late, like, it's not just 40s, 50s, 60s, but I'm talking up into your 80s, and for me this opened up a whole community and world of people I would have never crossed paths with yourself included. Right, I had trainers who were younger than I am. People who could have been my daughters were training me.
Speaker 2:I learned so much from them. But, even more importantly, they never let me use age as an excuse and I tried sometimes right, to get my training done. They just wouldn't hear it and because of that I shifted my own perception. So, between my coaches, the people I met in the gym where I trained for a while I mean still some of my coach there, some of the closest people that I think about when I something I'm struggling with in a life, right, like these are people I'm very close to now. And then the tangential people I see at races and I hug, and they're the ones who you know if they're passing me, they're giving me. You know, let's go, let's go, let's go. That is. I wouldn't have had any of that and it's a whole separate life. That is not. It's adjacent to the life I have now, but it makes the life that I had and that I do have now far more rich.
Speaker 1:Yes, and I think so many people experience things like that. I know I have. I've been going to the same gym here in Atlanta for probably 20 years and there are people I say hello to and we chitty chat and haven't seen you in a while and how you've been, and vacation this, and I might not know their last names. I'm not saying that these are intimate friends, but they are part of the community and they do keep me going back. I look forward to seeing them. That kind of thing that's really important the older we get, I think. Tell me about your training regimen. What are you doing to reach this level of excellence?
Speaker 2:It's changed a lot. In the very beginning, and I think what I'm going to say is important for anybody who just wants to get started, you know, at first I was sort of paralyzed by what gym do I need, what coach do I need, what fancy watch do I need? And finally I just kind of gave up and started doing and trying things, as I mentioned to you, like in my yard, in my house, and the internet will provide a lot of information to get started. But ultimately I needed structure and I do think having teachers is important to some degree, particularly if you want to keep learning. Think having teachers is important to some degree, particularly if you want to keep learning.
Speaker 2:So I found a local fitness center that really specialized in the types of movement patterns and skills you need for obstacle race training. They had hanging rings and monkey bars in the gym, they had sandbags and we kind of worked and hit a high intensity interval training at that gym. We kind of worked and hit a high intensity interval training at that gym and that's where I really was pushed by a lot of younger people, as well as my coach, who was older than I am, but they called him we still call him podium Pete because of how many podiums he had and he was in his sixties and he really drove me and helped me understand that, even though it was one of the older people in the class, like there was more, he saw something and I think he helped me believe that I could evolve from, you know, kind of a middle of the pack, last of the pack, place finisher, into something more. So I was at that gym for a while until COVID hit and then we were all at home and, as you well know and experienced yourself and people listening to this, I had to figure out how I could train on my own in my house, you know, and so I got the requisite equipment I needed. I have a pull up my basically I've converted my garage into a gym and I have a pull up bar, I have kettlebells, I have sandbags, I have a rowing machine, I have a, you know. It essentially is what I need for working out. Now it's all the equipment, resistance bands, things like that I trained there.
Speaker 2:And then, after my first the term people use in the industry is DNF, when you did not finish. I did not finish a very cold race in New Jersey because I was getting close, I think, to hypothermia and it would really could have gone a couple of ways. I could have quit, I could have been really like, well, I'm not cut out for this. But I Googled again and I found two coaches that I work with now online, one of whom is a former Olympic runner in Canada and the other one is a elite obstacle course racer, and I signed up with them and I've been doing online training with them ever since.
Speaker 1:Tell me if you have any examples of maybe positive or negative interactions you had from people in the fitness industry saying you're too old, you're too deconditioned, just stick to your day job, honey, don't try something this crazy. What's wrong with you? I ask because I talk to gym owners all the time and gym goers all the time and there is this gap between how gym employees and gym management will interface sometimes with older people and you're invisible to a large portion of the population after a certain age and I've seen older people be ignored by front desk help and I've seen them treated like royalty and the difference is tremendous in getting their business and helping them achieve their goals.
Speaker 2:So tell me, if anything comes to mind, I think this is a fascinating question, particularly because I also used to be a Wall Street Journal reporter, so the industry side of this sparks my interest. So I know and believe what you are saying to be true. What you are saying to be true, I think there is a real gap in how people who are aging in fitness are treated in the industry and how younger people are being treated. But I'll say, Jay, I think that gap is closing and here's why Because the market for people 40s, 50s, 60s and up is such a rich market and potentially lucrative market that I think very savvy people in the fitness industry are dropping that sensibility and recognizing the power of what this market can do for them. And I think they're also seeing just how incredibly hardworking people in middle age and beyond are when it comes to fitness, how disciplined they are, they show up right, they're patient, they're persistent, they have perspective. So these are great people to train and to market to right. They have disposable income to spend on personal trainers and gear and the like right. So I actually think the industry is shifting in a very positive direction and I like seeing that.
Speaker 2:I got very lucky that the gym owner that I went to he was 60. And he again, he didn't remotely think that that was a limit, because it hadn't been a limit for him. You know, he had been quite overweight. He was an investment banker and he used to eat in New York City and watch people in a gym across the street doing all of these obstacle course race training movements until one day he finally just like stopped eating lunch and he went over and he tried a class and he said he almost like died during it but he thinks he would not be walking at this point, Like he would have been so unhealthy had he not done that.
Speaker 2:And yet he was consistently placing first, second, third place in the 60 plus age group when he was coaching me. So he did not treat me that way. I have gone into other gyms, right, when all there'll be a class going on and you know it'll be a lot of younger people and they're kind of sweating it out on bikes or whatever it is they're doing. And I was in a gym in Long Island, New York, recently.
Speaker 2:That was happening and I wasn't part of the class and you know, I was just kind of over on the side and suddenly I was doing my own training and I went and climbed a 17 foot rope up to the rafters and rang a bell. Everything stopped Right and like the guy stopped the class and said could you please join our? Like he wanted me in the class because of that and the younger people were sort of like, oh, okay, Right, it just proves not only can you at any age do things that you maybe even couldn't have done when you're younger. I don't even know if any of those other people could have climbed that rope, but it just shows you can close the gap, Perceptions can be changed and then you can be somebody that people want you to be with them. So I just think there's a lot of ground that has been covered and that we can still cover in this Jay.
Speaker 1:Oh, I agree. That's what two things excite me the most about this business that I'm doing with Prime Fit Content, where I provide material for gyms to reach more people in this market, where I provide material for gyms to reach more people in this market, and that is that, that the message is taking hold and it is changing, not as much as I might like it to, but it is evolving because it just makes good sense. You know, when I started this, people would say, oh, that's nice. And I'm like you know, screw nice. I'm not suggesting you be nice, I'm saying you're missing out on an economic opportunity here, because baby boomers want your help and they'll give you their money. It's not just baby boomers, but that's a good sort of core for it. But then the other thing is these stories are just so amazing.
Speaker 1:As a writer, I am moved and fascinated and compelled by all the different variations that people bring to the classic hero story. They're going along in the status quo of their life and then something happens. It doesn't have to be cataclysmic you overheard a conversation with a little girl and that got your mind thinking. Or maybe your doctor says you're pre-diabetic, or maybe your grandbaby won't play with you because you can't get down on the floor. Something gets you started and you find a way to improve your life through taking better care of yourself. And the name of the book is Not Too Late the Power of Pushing Limits at Any Age by Gwendolyn Bounds. I want to ask you to tell us about the book and how it came about. It's available June 18th, which is any minute now.
Speaker 2:Yep Available for pre-order up until then. I actually have there's a pre-order bonus for people. You can find it on my website, gwendolenboundscom for people who order the book before June 18th. So I would encourage people to check that out. But it will ship on June 18th. It's available at any major retailer, any major book retailer.
Speaker 1:Now Wonderful how did it come about? What made you think gee, this isn't just something I'm doing, this is a book.
Speaker 2:The people around me and even strangers who would meet me, and then the obstacle racing journey story would come up somehow. They all wanted to know how? How did you manage to fit something that you weren't good at into an already busy life? What were the tools and the tactics you used to do that? How did you break the inertia, this cycle of sameness that you were in and make this happen? Because you didn't just go, I didn't just go out and run one race. I have now run 50 races and I continue to have this open journey in front of me. And so enough people were asking me how, what were the time tactics you use? What were the motivational tools? How did you do it? And it often would end with oh, you should write a book about that.
Speaker 2:And enough people say that that it sticks in your head, and so I wanted to write a book that you know not only used my journey as a narrative arc and a peg to hopefully encourage people to know like, yeah, yes, you can do this if you're over 45, but also I wanted to help people have it. Do it better than I did. Right, I went and interviewed a lot of very smart people. I used my journalistic skills scientists, longevity doctors, a philosopher, performance experts, elite athletes and I used their wisdom to essentially help other people understand how they, too, could have the tools and the tactics they need for whatever pastime they might choose, to really engage and to begin to integrate it into their life. So that's how it came to BJ.
Speaker 1:Wonderful. Okay, I'm going to say it once again. The name of the book is not too late the Power of Pushing Limits at Any Age by Gwendolyn Bounds. You can pre-order it now at gwendolynboundscom and as of June 18th, you can get it everywhere. It's very exciting. I'm so glad that we connected and you've inspired me on a few levels today, so thank you.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm so glad to have been here and I would say for anybody thinking about how they're going to push themselves in whatever aspect of their life, I think we have to get comfortable looking foolish a little bit. Right, we get in midlife to a place where we think, oh, I need to be the master of my universe. Right, I have to do the things I'm good at. That's what people expect of me and I think if you let yourself be willing and open to kind of not knowing things and to not being the smartest person in the room, not being the one who has all the experience and the stories to tell, but somebody who's willing to be a student again, to make your brain young in that way, and to again to be okay failing in front of other people, that is how you're going to cross this Rubicon. That is how you're going to transition into building a new part of yourself into your life.
Speaker 2:If I hadn't been willing to do that, I wouldn't have gotten to where I am. I had to fall off of ropes, I had to be. People tell me you're just, you're not strong enough, Like over and over again. It's humbling, but it was through that humility that I now don't humility, that I now don't like that little girl, that I was right. I don't have regrets about that anymore. I have solved that piece of the puzzle and become something that I think I always wanted to be but didn't think I could. But I had to be willing to look a little dumb and to be into fail to do it. So I just want to leave people with that, because I think that's such a critical piece of this, Jay.
Speaker 1:Great lesson.
Speaker 2:Thanks for wrapping up with that 100% and let's get 10 to 20 people who are your listeners. Let's find a Spartan race. They have them in Atlanta. We'll come down. We'll get everybody through that race together, Jay.
Speaker 1:Well, I can't wait. I'm so excited. Okay, thanks, wendy. Thank you, jay.
Speaker 2:Great to be here.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to Optimal Aging. I hope you enjoyed it and I hope you'll subscribe, tell a friend and write a review. All of that helps me grow my audience. You can learn more about me and my content business at primefitcontentcom. You can send me an email at jay at primefitcontentcom. That's jay J-A-Y at primefitcontentcom. I'm also on Facebook, linkedin and Instagram so you can find me anywhere you like and be in touch. And again, thanks for listening. Join me next time.