The older I get the healthier and stronger I am.

Strength changes shape rather than declining in a straight line.

There are people at every municipal pool before dawn, well into their sixties, out-swimming everyone half their age — not on raw power, but because they know which shoulder needs warming up, how much sleep they actually require, which foods cost them the following day. Forty years of data on one body.

That knowledge is only available to somebody who has been here a while. Youth has the engine. Age has the manual. The manual wins more mornings than people expect.