A retirement community in South Carolina is forming a triathlon team. And by triathlon, they don’t mean some hokum bocce-croquet-cribbage contest (which could be fun, OK, but it’s not a triathlon). This event comprises a respectable 350-yard swim, 13-mile bike and 3.1-mile run/walk.

Retirement communities used to be synonymous with…well, nothing. There was nothing like a retirement community, and nothing went on there, so no synonyms.  People called them warehouses, but that was never quite right. Air lock would have been better: it would have conveyed the sense that they were a transitional place, after which you would be launched into the great void.

That has apparently changed and one can intuit why. As people leave retirement communities (“Open the pod bay doors, Hal”) the operators of those facilities need new people to come in. But those new people aren’t as old as their predecessors. They might be of a similar age, but they’re fitter and more active and don’t consider themselves to be old until they hit their early to mid-70s. So retirement communities are going to new lengths to reel in these super-active elders. They are offering new amenities and activities (sky-diving!) that would have seemed preposterous to earlier generations.

The triathlon sponsored by Columbia’s Still Hopes Episcopal Retirement Community is just one example, but it’s a good one. The training program set up by the race’s organizers seems moderate and wise—strenuous enough to improve endurance but not likely to cause injury to older joints. The $150 cost of the training program includes “advice from dieticians, nutritionists, and numerous experts in the health field” as well as people who can consult on shoes (or the lack thereof) and bikes.

Stefanie Glatz—a trainer who’s helping seniors get in shape for the event—says it’s been designed as “a doable event for just about anyone.” That seems optimistic, since the CDC says almost a third of all seniors are obese. Yes, obese. But still, she sets a nice tone: “That’s our objective. To make it an event that anyone who might want to participate and try to reach a higher goal for themselves can do it. If a person is eating an unhealthy diet and not getting exercise that would strengthen their bodies, this is their chance to make a change for the better.”

Photo of a runner n the 2007 Dublin City Marathon by William Murphy, via Wikimedia Commons.