LONGMONT — What does it mean to be fit?
Maybe you’re defining it by how many push-ups or pull-ups you can do. Perhaps “being fit” means you can fit, quite literally, into your skinny jeans. Or you’re in good enough shape to lift a large mug of coffee as you read this from your couch.
Lockett Wood, a triathlete who hails from Lyons, has his own qualifier.
“It’s kind of nice to know that any time I want to, I can go out and run 10 miles,” Wood says.
“That’s kind of my definition of being in shape — if any day, you can go run 10 miles.”
Ten miles is a lot. But then again, Wood did win a race and take second in another at the , Alberta, at the end of the summer. It doesn’t seem like a stretch that as the new world champion in the Olympic distance — that’s a 1.5-kilometer swim, 40K bike and 10K run — for his age group, Wood would set a higher bar for his definition of being in shape.
About that age group: Wood is 75 years old. He competes in the category for men age 75-79.
Athletes who represent Team USA at the world championships must first qualify at the age-group national championships, said spokeswoman Lindsay Wyskowski. Wood wasn’t the oldest one there — not even close. “This year we had more than 5,000 athletes who raced that event, from all 50 states, from ages 18 to 85,” Wyskowski says.
About 100 of the 600 or so athletes on Team USA competed in two different races at the worlds, as Wood did. “It’s still impressive that at 75 he’s made that commitment to do more than one of the races,” Wyskowski says.
Wood is hale and trim, and on a chilly fall day he buzzed around the spare Longmont office of his relatively new water-purification company — he tried to retire once; it didn’t take — wearing a flannel shirt tucked into a pair of Levi’s. Wood trains five or six days a week, but never more than a few hours every day. “You shouldn’t really do terribly intense workouts more than once a week anyway, I don’t care what you’re doing,” he says.
As a physicist and electrical engineer, Wood has had a busy career in Boulder County, from his years as a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology to his time as Covidien’s chief scientist. One wonders how he has found time to train to become part of Team USA. He tackles his workouts whenever he can by keeping a pair of running shoes nearby for impromptu jogs, or hopping on a bike indoors after dark if it’s the only time he can find for a ride.
The way he squeezes things in, well, he doesn’t just do that with his training, says his daughter Celeste Jackson. It’s also how he races.
“When he travels, he takes his bike, because you just never know when there might be a race,” Jackson says. “He’s, like, constantly moving,” she added.
But it hasn’t always been this way. Wood is not a life-long athlete.
“When I was 37, I weighed about 205 pounds — I was fat,” Wood says.
“I had all kinds of things that didn’t feel right,” he says. He went to a company health check-up and learned his blood pressure was 180 over 120. That’s high; the those with blood pressure above 180 over 110 as being in “hypertensive crisis.”
Alarmed, Wood turned his scientific mind toward the problem. “I went out and researched what to do, and it turned out, everyone knew what to do: You lose weight and you exercise.” He bought a bike. He was out riding it when he bumped into an acquaintance who was meeting a group from the Boulder Road Runners. “They were going to run 10 miles, and I said, ‘You mean people run 10 miles?’ ”
Pretty soon, he was running 10 miles, too, and dropping weight. “In six months, I’d lost 65 pounds. and I ran my first marathon 14 months after I started running.”
“I’m a little bit compulsive about stuff when I get started,” he says with a sly grin. “Part of it was, every day, I was making progress. I was losing weight, and I was getting faster. And that kind of reward encourages you to keep going. And what I discovered was, as I was getting into shape, I was modestly competitive.”
Wood has run all but two of the Bolder Boulders. During one of those, he married his wife, Tisha. Bolder Boulder spokeswoman Stephanie Winslow said it was the only mid-race wedding ceremony that organizers were aware of over the run’s history.
Though he eventually started competing in duathlons — run-plus-bike events — he only started competing in triathlons five years ago, when he turned 70. His brother-in-law prodded him into coming out for a visit to Washington, D.C., for the Nations Triathlon.
Like many triathletes, Wood has his strengths and weaknesses. “For swimming, I’m always trying to improve my technique because I’m a crummy swimmer. If I ever win a race, it’s because of the running, and with the bike, I’m just trying to hold on with the bike.”
For next year, Wood is eyeing the world championships again. But he knows some of the guys aging into his category are strong triathletes. If he doesn’t train well and bring his A-game, he says, “I’ll get my butt kicked.”
But quitting?
“There’s some 80-year-old guys, middle-80-year-old guys, still doing world triathlon. Unless you get ill or die, there’s no reason to quit. At this age, every day above the grass is a good day.”
Plus, he just feels good from exercising.
“I’d love to keep encouraging older people to stay active. The people who stay active, they stay healthy and happy all their life. And I’ve seen people who sit on the couch, and pretty soon they’re miserable. It doesn’t necessarily matter if you live any longer, but it matters a lot whether while you’re living, the quality of your life is good.”
We all know that exercise prevents disease, he says. So why not?
“You feel great. So why not stay active?”
Jenn Fields: 303-954-1599, jfields@denverpost.com or twitter.com/jennfields
Keeping up with Lockett Wood
Wood’s times, by race and event:
2014 ITU World Triathlon Grand Final — Olympic distance
Overall time: 3:08:37 (first place)
1,500M swim: 36:11
38.8K bike: 1:24:17
10K run: 58:04
2014 ITU World Triathlon Grand Final — sprint distance
Overall time: 1:40:39 (second place)
750M swim: 18:01
19.74K bike: 46:43
5K run: 26:56
Bolder Boulder 10K run
1992, the year he paused on course to get married: 1:36:03
2014, no known matrimony-related pauses on course: 55:31
