(Photo: Ernestine Shepherd)
80!
She looks like this and is 80 years old!
How is that even possible?!
Ernestine Shepherd will tell you. She gets up at 3 AM every morning to pray and meditate. Then she runs 10 miles--except during marathon-training season, when she runs further.
After that warmup, she heads to the gym to begin her workout. When she's not exercising, she's training other people to get into shape. She's worked as a professional nutritionist, so she knows how to keep her body in perfect running order.
Shepherd began bodybuilding at the youthful age of 71. In 2010, Guinness World Records named her the world's oldest female bodybuilder. She says that "age is nothing but a number"--and clearly demonstrates the truth of that adage.
But please don't emulate the endurance running regimen in the hopes that it is the magic elixir. It's actually not that great for you. The evidence highly favors High Intensity Interval Training, which is healthier and much more efficient for cardiovascular exercise. (I hate it when Good Examples act like the secret to exemplar health is waking up in the middle of the night and exercising all day: it's false and rudely discouraging to normal people. She's got good genes, but regular people can age near optimally with a relatively modest amount of self-disciple.)
And weightlifting is a must for older people.