While his peers are either gumming canned peaches at a nursing home or, uh, enjoying an eternal rest, 95-year-old retiree George Etzweiler is running a five-mile out-and-back runup a mountain three times a week.
Born in 1920 and married to the same woman for 68 years, the silver fox of State College P.A. is equal parts humble about his own athleticism— “I don’t consider myself a runner,” he says with a shrug, before tallying the 10,000-plus miles he’s logged over the years—and positively delighted about his longevity: “Most people my age are dead.”
He’s also the latest of late bloomers. A former Penn State electrical engineering professor, he took up running at age 49, and ran the New York City Marathon (his first and only) at 67. In his 60s, he climbed all 48 of the 4,000-foot peaks in New Hampshire. Most recently, he became a vegan at 91.
For the past eight years, he’s rallied a team of senior runners, who dub themselves The Old Men of the Mountain, to complete a 50-mile relay race in central Pennsylvania. (Etzweiler won’t let anyone younger than 65 on his team.) But his biggest event is the Mount Washington Road Race in New Hampshire in June; it’s a 7.6-mile run up the highest peak in the Northeast, with a murderous 4,500-foot elevation climb. Etzweiler’s the oldest runner to ever finish it, and he’s done it 10 times.“I’m not decaying as fast as the average 90-year-old, apparently,” he says.
The Navy veteran records every workout, including distance, time and running partners, and says those reams of running logs serve as motivators to get out there again, and again, and again.
Why do you like running up mountains?On a mountain, I can put forth an extreme effort with very little risk to the knees. That’s why I like to go up the mountains, not down. Around age 60 I had some cartilage damage to the left knee, and they did arthroscopic surgery. The surgeon said I could work my way up to a 10K but not to try any marathons. And doing Mount Washington is about a half marathon’s worth of work with essentially zero risk to the knees.
What do you think about while you’re out there?If I’m with my friends, we’re telling stories—at this point some of them are told two or three times. I don’t really think about the running unless I’m in a race; then I concentrate on the next curve. I run a tangent with every curve, to minimize the distance. If I’m not in a race, my mind wanders. I think about the same things I think about when I’m sitting in a chair.
What’s your daily diet like?For breakfast, typically Grape Nuts with flaxseed, raw oatmeal, blueberries, banana and soy milk. And I always have dessert after every meal – typically an orange or an apple or another banana.
At lunch I heat up raw onion, tomato and red pepper with frozen mixed vegetables, some rice and a bunch of canned kidney beans or great northern beans with some juice from the can, for salt. I have a pretty good-sized bowl of that, and then an apple or a peach or a bunch of plums, whatever’s in season.
And in the evenings, I’ve been getting into a piece of toast with raw avocado. And then some dessert, of course. More fruit.
How long will you keep at it?I won’t stop until I’m forced to. My plans are to run Mount Washington when I’m 100, and drop dead when I cross the finish line. I figured that’d be a nice age to die at, and a nice place to die.
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