A tap on the shoulder from a 74-year-old

I went out for a normal easy 5km this afternoon. Chest and triceps in the morning, legs fresh, watch on my wrist, no phone — just the road.

About halfway through, someone taps me on the shoulder.

I turn, and it’s another runner. He tells me to keep going, keep it up — and then he just falls into step beside me. We run together for the next two kilometres or so, talking the whole way. Our lives, the running, this and that. The kind of easy conversation that makes the distance disappear. When it was time to part ways, he asked if we could stop for a proper chat, so we did, standing there on the side of the road for a few minutes.

At some point I ask him his age.

Seventy-four.

Whaaat.

Seventy-four years old, and he’d just run two kilometres chatting like it was nothing, flexible and easy in a way I’m not sure I am at forty-two. I stood there genuinely inspired.

I’ve been telling myself I’m a “returning” runner. Forty-two, starting again, a long way from where I want to be. And then a man more than thirty years older taps me on the shoulder to encourage me. It rearranges something. If he’s still out here, still moving like that at seventy-four, then forty-two isn’t late. It’s early. There’s so much road ahead.

The pace said 9:21 today, a little slower than usual — but that’s just the minutes we spent standing still, talking. Best two kilometres of the week.