It doesn’t take being lapped by too many octogenarians out on the road to begin harboring home-baked theories about the prolonging effects of running. The sheer number of active, fit and healthy older runners certainly eclipses what could be considered the confines of a “lucky few” gene-pool. However, much of the medical establishment has long adamantly championed that strenuous activity, and running in particular, has more profound negative effects on the aging than it does positive.

A study released two days ago by Stanford School of Medicine confirmed what many in the running community have long known - running slows the aging clock.

“When Fries and his team began this research in 1984, many scientists thought vigorous exercise would do older folks more harm than good. Some feared the long-term effect of the then-new jogging craze would be floods of orthopedic injuries, with older runners permanently hobbled by their exercise habit. Fries had a different hypothesis: he thought regular exercise would extend high-quality, disability-free life. Keeping the body moving, he speculated, wouldn’t necessarily extend longevity, but it would compress the period at the end of life when people couldn’t carry out daily tasks on their own. That idea came to be known as “the compression of morbidity theory.”

Fries’ team began tracking 538 runners over age 50, comparing them to a similar group of nonrunners. The subjects, now in their 70s and 80s, have answered yearly questionnaires about their ability to perform everyday activities such as walking, dressing and grooming, getting out of a chair and gripping objects. The researchers have used national death records to learn which participants died, and why. Nineteen years into the study, 34 percent of the nonrunners had died, compared to only 15 percent of the runners.”

Perhaps not the fountain of youth itself, but an elixer almost as good. Maybe ol Ponce de Leon shoulda pulled his conquistador head out of his armor ass and laced up a set of kicks.