Midlife crisis? Not so fast

Is marathon running a sign of midlife crisis?

I watch him grow bigger behind me, until he’s so close I could clearly see the salt-and-pepper beard — more salt than pepper — and the cool shades hiding his eyes. He lingers for a few moments, drafting on my tail in runners’ parlance, then he’s off, squeezing by and dashing away like a rookie at the start of a marathon race.

“Midlife crisis!” my wife grumbles after him. I just nod. Almost every morning during our commute he comes by, recklessly straddling the middle line, the souped-up engine of his Mustang revving impatiently, and muscles his way through traffic, an elbow resting on driver’s door, shoulder-length grey hair fluttering in the wind. He’s the epitome of a midlife crisis stereotype: a man in late-forties to early-fifties, sporting a rocker hairdo and muscle car. But, apparently, we got the stereotype all wrong. It seems that I, rather than Mustang dude, am the modern example of a midlife crisis with my endurance running, healthy diet, love for gadgets and an unwillingness to drive anywhere I can walk.

A study conducted this year on behalf of Jeep, a general sponsor for Tough Mudder races, shows that the midlife crisis is alive and striving, probably affecting more people than ever. The term ‘midlife crisis’ is somewhat dubious for sure; it refers to (mostly) mid-forties men who feel the need to overhaul their lives. In the past it had been stereotyped as leather jackets, fast cars and young women. Nowadays, however, as the study suggests, we are more likely to register for marathons, get inked or change our diets.

The researchers polled 2000 adults and compiled a list of 40 “modern signs of midlife crisis.” The Daily Mail published the entire list. The finding shows that half of men in their mid-forties and fifties start working on their fitness and enrolling in endurance sports. While this fact is undeniably positive, the part that hurts a runner’s heart is the connotation given with the results, which paints all of us in this age group in a negative, show-offish light. Somehow they make it sound as if, unable to produce a muscle-car and date our daughter’s classmate, we opted to put on spandex tights and prove our manliness by sweating through a 42K race. Really?

The change in perception has evidently moved from previously negative images into healthier sphere, and yet it keeps smearing us with a brush of vanity. I blame it on the term used so carelessly and widely. Should we be allowed to call it a “crisis” any longer? After all, considering how many people participate in endurance races today, there must be a global pandemic of midlife crises. Maybe the sociologists and psychologists ought to find a better term? How about “midlife improvement?”

Regardless of the phase in life that brought us there, when I stand in a starting corral of a race and look around, I see as many women as men; I see young and old; I see happy, smiling, eager faces. I see people who took charge of their health and their lives. If they’ve something to prove to themselves or to the others, they couldn’t have chosen a better way to do it. We should be proud of it!