At an age when most individuals would possibly depend on a cane or a crutch, 89-year-old Greek runner Ploutarchos Pourliakas has as soon as once more defied expectations.
On Sunday, Pourliakas accomplished his thirteenth consecutive Athens Marathon together with his son, Petros, crossing the end line with a time of slightly below seven hours and half-hour. He was the oldest finisher within the discipline for the fourth yr in a row, and his time was ok for 52nd within the loaded males’s 75+ age group, beating eight runners youthful than him.
Pourliakas reached the end inside Athens’s Panathenaic Stadium, the positioning of the primary fashionable Olympic Video games in 1896, the place he was greeted and cheered on by his household and grandchildren.
His philosophy for longevity in working is easy: moderation and consistency. “I’ve by no means smoked. I don’t drink, and I eat in a balanced method,” Pourliakas advised Reuters in an interview following final yr’s race. He revealed that he does take pleasure in a every day sip of tsipouro, a conventional Greek brandy, saying he considers it “extra a well being tonic than a drink.”
Pourliakas started working at age 73, impressed by his son, an ultramarathoner. Right this moment, he follows a devoted coaching routine in his hometown of Kastoria, working about 5 kilometres on weekdays and 10 to fifteen kilometres on weekends.
Pourliakas’s story echoes that of the late Canadian masters working legend Ed Whitlock, who additionally discovered working later in life. In 2000, Whitlock grew to become the oldest particular person to finish a sub-three-hour marathon at age 69 and later set the boys’s 85+ world document, with a time of three:56:38, on the 2016 Toronto Waterfront Marathon.
Like Whitlock, Pourliakas’s continued dedication to maintain coming again to the Athens Marathon exhibits older runners that, irrespective of your age, working marathons remains to be potential. “Why wouldn’t you consider it? All of us can do it. So long as we need to,” Pourliakas stated.
