Irene Dale<$>

Mrs. Dale is a retired nurse who says she can walk as much as 15 kilometres a day. Living on Smith island, she said, naturally sees her do a quite a bit of walking. It also provides her a great opportunity to swim, of which she takes full advantage. She has a stationary bike that she uses regularly at home but she longs to do more.

“In Canada I exercised a lot more,” she said. “I played tennis four times a week and used to do aerobics twice a week. But it’s too expensive here.”

Mrs. Dale said in Canada she got senior rates where she spent $18 for six to eight weeks of classes.

“I’ve checked here and there’s nothing like that,” she said. “ It’s $200 just to join and then you only have use of the facility. You have to pay extra for classes and extra again for a coach. This doesn’t entice seniors.”

There was always a coach available at the facilities where she took classes in Canada.

“It’s really too bad,’ she said,’ we had very large classes in Canada and I really miss it. I loved doing aqua aerobics and miss the muscle toning.”

At 76 Mrs. Dale is so enthusiastic about exercise that she does enrol in classes she can afford. She lamented the closure of Total Fitness health club where she was in a seniors spinning class.

“Now I mostly do a lot of walking. I swim and I ride the bike,” she said. “But it’s important to do the muscle toning so that you don’t get cramps. I do on my own what I can remember. I exercise faithfully.”

Flora Trott

Seventy-year-old Flora Trott said she’s forcing herself to exercise but feels weak. “But I attribute that weakness to not getting enough exercise,” she said. The catch 22 situation is one that many seniors find themselves in.

Ms Trott fell while on holiday two years ago. “I really haven’t been active since then,” she said. Over the past twelve months she’s had two major operations, one on her spinal column and the other on her neck.

“I need to walk every day,’ she said. “It is the safest activity I can do until I get the all clear from the doctor.”

As a retired geriatric nurse Ms Trott knows the importance of exercise. “ I am really looking forward to working out,” she said. “ It’s been over two years that I haven’t been active.”

Her church, The Seventh Day Adventist, hold a weekly walk on Sundays at 8 a.m. “We all set out together and walk for half an hour out and half an hour back,” she said. “ Doing it this way enables everyone to keep their own pace. Some will go farther in the half hour than others but we all come back together,” she said.

The church also has a member that serves as a professional trainer to the group.

Natalie DeMoura

At 65 Natalie DeMoura walked her first Bermuda End-to-End. ‘ I did it to prove that as seniors we are still able,” she said. Since then she’s added another End-to End and a Middle-to-End to her achievements.

Walking is her main exercise and at 75 she’s still at it. She does anywhere from half an hour to an hour of walking as her daily exercise. And apart from that, as a waitress at Willowbank she packs in a lot more stepping.

Recently she chipped a bone in her foot while walking on an uneven surface in New York. So she’s in a cast but she’s still at work. “Oh, it hasn’t slowed me down too much,” she said. “For two weeks it was broken and I didn’t know. I walked on it then.”

While she remains active on the job, she has scaled back her daily exercise routine “easing into’ those walks until her foot is fully healed.