# blueollie

## Gompertz Law and my sports..

The average exhaustion of a man’s power to avoid death to be such that at the end of equal infinitely small intervals of time he lost equal portions of his remaining power to oppose destruction which he had at the time of commencement of these intervals.”

This was written by Benjamin Gompertz in 1825. What this means: the force of mortality increases exponentially, or put another way: the decline to due age is the exponential of an exponential.

One might write: $f(t) = Ae^{-Be^{Dt}}$ where $f(t)$ is your ability to carry out some physical task which stretches your limits.
I’ve noticed that I am at about 80 percent of what I could do as a young man, both in weightlifting (bench press at roughly this body weight) and in the 5K (3 mile) run. I base this on: when I wasn’t especially focused on weight lifting, I could bench press about 250 pounds at my current body weight. Now I can do 200.

When I wasn’t especially focused on running, I could run 3 miles in about 19:45..roughly a 20:30 5K. Now, on a good, cool day, I can do 25:30 (this spring). That is about 1.25 times longer, or an increase of $\frac{1}{.8}$.

I might be morbid enough to see if I can gather data from earlier to compute a fit to a Gompertz curve.

I have to admit that races sometimes trouble me. On one hand, I still enjoy them and I enjoy seeing people. On the other hand..well..let’s just say that when I saw the photo in the paper, I saw the size of the runners and knew that I wasn’t in the photo. If someone is younger and around me, they are probably reasonably heavy:

I’d say somewhere between these two runners:

The days of my finishing around younger people who look like runners are over and are not coming back. The days of my lifting with younger guys who look like lifters are gone as well.

Ok, something positive: I finished two boring administrative tasks (one more to go), and I have tickets to a baseball playoff game tonight! Weather should be great…

Workout notes

Weights (weight: 183.5 after the workout)

rotator cuff
pull ups: 4 sets of 10 then one more after presses
bench press: 10 x 135, 4 x 185 (strong), 8 x 170 (strong)
incline press: 10 x 140
military presses: 2 sets of 10 x 85 barbell, 10 x 40 dumbbell
rows: 2 sets of 10 x 60 dumbbell (each arm), 10 x 110 machine
pull downs: 3 sets of 10 x 160

running: treadmill; increased the speed from 5.2 every 2 minutes: 11:05, 21:20, 30:40, 31:40 for 3.11 miles (5K)
bicycle: 15:30 for 4 miles