Ageless Athlete — Healthy Aging for a Strong, Capable Life

Dean Potter once called Timmy O’Neill his “secret weapon.”
With Dean back in the spotlight through Dark Wizard, I went back to this conversation with Timmy — and realized how much of it deserves to be heard again.
Timmy shares stories from their extraordinary years climbing together in Yosemite, but this conversation goes somewhere deeper: how our relationship with risk changes as we age, why Timmy fears not living more than dying, and his idea of cultivating a “life wish” — even if you’re not a climber or adventure athlete.
We also talk about aging, play, family, loss, adaptive climbing, and finding the things that make you feel truly alive. One of my favorites. Enjoy! 
Marek Health: Get a deeper look at your health with comprehensive bloodwork and personalized guidance. Ageless Athlete listeners get 10% off with code AGELESS at https://agelessathlete.short.gy/marek
Timeline: Support cellular renewal and mitochondrial function with Mitopure, featuring Urolithin A. Get up to 20% off at timeline.com/AGELESSATHLETE
🚀 Love the show? Here’s how to support it 
If something you’ve heard here has stayed with you, made you smile, please consider supporting the show. 👉 https://buymeacoffee.com/agelessathlete
Ageless Athlete is a podcast about healthy aging for people who want to stay strong, active and capable for life. Conversations explore strength, endurance, mobility, recovery, VO2 max, muscle and bone health, and what it takes to keep doing the things you love as you get older.
Follow Ageless Athlete — How to Stay Strong, Curious & Capable for Life for new episodes each week.

At 82, Cherie Gruenfeld is still racing IRONMAN. She’s a 14-time world champion and is considered a GOAT of the sport. Wildly, she didn’t even start running until 42 or triathlon until 48. 
Her lesson after four decades of training: if you want to preserve strength, power, and muscle as you age, you can’t keep training the way you did when you were younger. We talk about what Cherie does differently now and, the mindset behind performing into your 80s 
More about Cherie: https://cheriegruenfeld.com/. She also founded Exceeding Expectations, which uses triathlon, mentoring, and education to help at-risk kids build a different future. You can support their excellent work and donate here: Exceeding Expectations
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Train Smarter, Age Stronger with Matt Fitzgerald. Live Sep 23, 5 pm PST. FREE. 
Signup: https://open.substack.com/live-stream/347022
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Marek Health: Get a deeper look at your health with comprehensive bloodwork and personalized guidance. Ageless Athlete listeners get 10% off with code AGELESS at https://agelessathlete.short.gy/marek
Timeline: Support cellular renewal and mitochondrial function with Mitopure, featuring Urolithin A. Get up to 20% off at timeline.com/AGELESSATHLETE
🚀 Love the show? Here’s how to support it 
If something you’ve heard here has stayed with you, made you smile, please consider supporting the show. 👉 https://buymeacoffee.com/agelessathlete
Ageless Athlete is a podcast about healthy aging for people who want to stay strong, active and capable for life. Conversations explore strength, endurance, mobility, recovery, VO2 max, muscle and bone health, and what it takes to keep doing the things you love as you get older.
Follow Ageless Athlete — How to Stay Strong, Curious & Capable for Life for new episodes each week.

Allison Aubrey has spent more than two decades reporting on health and science for NPR. But when she put herself through a longevity assessment, some of the results caught even her off guard. 
In this episode, we talk about what she learned from that experience, why being active and lean doesn’t necessarily mean you’re as prepared for aging as you think, and the health markers that may actually be worth paying attention to.
Then we get into the bigger stuff: strength, purpose, connection, reinvention, and the gap between knowing what to do and actually doing it.
And later, Allison shares what she learned from spending time with 32 centenarians — including one pattern that kept showing up in people who had made it past 100. 
About Allison: Allison Aubrey is an NPR health and science correspondent and the author of the Book:Your Turn: How to Create a Midlife You Love. She also writes on Substack. 
Brain Care Score — Mass General
Marek Health: Get a deeper look at your health with comprehensive bloodwork and personalized guidance. Ageless Athlete listeners get 10% off with code AGELESS at https://agelessathlete.short.gy/marek
Timeline: Support cellular renewal and mitochondrial function with Mitopure, featuring Urolithin A. Get up to 20% off at timeline.com/AGELESSATHLETE
🚀 Love the show? Here’s how to support it 
If something you’ve heard here has stayed with you, made you smile, please consider supporting the show. 👉 https://buymeacoffee.com/agelessathlete
Ageless Athlete is a podcast about healthy aging for people who want to stay strong, active and capable for life. Conversations explore strength, endurance, mobility, recovery, VO2 max, muscle and bone health, and what it takes to keep doing the things you love as you get older.
Follow Ageless Athlete — How to Stay Strong, Curious & Capable for Life for new episodes each week.

Paul Pritchard is one of the most significant figures in British climbing. He became one of Britain’s leading rock climbers and mountaineers, with major first ascents across the UK, Patagonia, Baffin Island, Yosemite, Kyrgyzstan and the Karakoram. His first ascent of the West Face of Mount Asgard in 1994 remains one of his defining achievements.
He was also the first author to have won the Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature twice — for Deep Play, and later, The Totem Pole.
In 1998, everything changed.
While climbing Tasmania’s Totem Pole, Paul was struck in the head by a falling rock, sustaining a near-fatal brain injury that left him with hemiplegia. He spent the next year in hospital and has described the decades since as his longest project: healing, adapting, and learning to live one moment at a time.
And yet today, Paul says he gives thanks to the Totem Pole every morning.
This is not simply a comeback story. It’s a conversation about mortality, fear, acceptance, freedom, identity, and what happens when the life you expected disappears.
We talk about why losing choices can sometimes make us freer, why fear doesn’t need to disappear before we act, how aging changes the need to prove ourselves, and Paul’s idea of the “dignity of risk.”
If none of us knows how much time we have, what are we still postponing?
REFERENCES
Paul's excellent books:: Deep Play | The Totem Pole | The Longest Climb | The Mountain Path on his website at https://www.paulpritchard.com.au/books
Paul's Instagram: @paulpritchard
Marek Health: Get a deeper look at your health with comprehensive bloodwork and personalized guidance. Ageless Athlete listeners get 10% off with code AGELESS at https://agelessathlete.short.gy/marek
Timeline: Support cellular renewal and mitochondrial function with Mitopure, featuring Urolithin A. Get up to 20% off at timeline.com/AGELESSATHLETE
🚀 Love the show? Here’s how to support it 
If something you’ve heard here has stayed with you, made you smile, please consider supporting the show. 👉 https://buymeacoffee.com/agelessathlete
Ageless Athlete is a podcast about healthy aging for people who want to stay strong, active and capable for life. Conversations explore strength, endurance, mobility, recovery, VO2 max, muscle and bone health, and what it takes to keep doing the things you love as you get older.
Follow Ageless Athlete — How to Stay Strong, Curious & Capable for Life for new episodes each week.

We spend a lot of time preparing our bodies for the next 30 or 40 years.
Strength. Mobility. Sleep. Recovery. Longevity.
But almost nobody prepares for how sex, desire, intimacy, and pleasure may change over that same stretch of time.
In this conversation, I speak with Joan Price, one of the best-known voices on sex and aging, about what changes, what can actually get better, and what we should understand long before we think we need to.
Joan is 82, but much of what she shares may be most useful in your thirties, forties, and fifties.
We talk about physical changes, why exercise matters, how desire evolves, why communication becomes more important, and how intimacy can adapt as we age.
This is a conversation about the next 40 years of your body — and a part of longevity we rarely prepare for.
Note: This episode includes frank discussion of sex, sexual function, grief, and intimacy.
Joan’s Books & Resources
Joan’s books include Naked at Our Age, Sex After Grief, The Ultimate Guide to Sex After 50, Better Than I Ever Expected, and Ageless Erotica.
Learn more about Joan’s books, webinars, newsletter, and other resources at JoanPrice.com. If you’d like to buy one of her books, consider purchasing through her website: joanprice.com/books 
Marek Health: Get a deeper look at your health with comprehensive bloodwork and personalized guidance. Ageless Athlete listeners get 10% off with code AGELESS at https://agelessathlete.short.gy/marek
Timeline: Support cellular renewal and mitochondrial function with Mitopure, featuring Urolithin A. Get up to 20% off at timeline.com/AGELESSATHLETE
🚀 Love the show? Here’s how to support it 
If something you’ve heard here has stayed with you, made you smile, please consider supporting the show. 👉 https://buymeacoffee.com/agelessathlete
Ageless Athlete is a podcast about healthy aging for people who want to stay strong, active and capable for life. Conversations explore strength, endurance, mobility, recovery, VO2 max, muscle and bone health, and what it takes to keep doing the things you love as you get older.
Follow Ageless Athlete — How to Stay Strong, Curious & Capable for Life for new episodes each week.