Living the Multisport Lifestyle at 80
Octogenarian Demos How to Live Life to the Fullest
By Lynn DeBruin
page 1 | page 2 | page 3 | page 4
March 28, 2010 (Colorado Springs, CO) — The red sandstone monuments tower over Lyle Langlois as he glides through yet another training ride in Garden of the Gods national park. But nothing seems more impressive than the soon-to-be-octogenarian's list of accomplishments.

Lyle Langlois drafts off of Kay Martin
The former computer science professor has run a marathon in all 50 states, bicycled across the country four times, and on March 14 attained yet another goal—completing 100 races between ages 70 and 80, including more than a dozen triathlons.
If ever there was a man who makes 80 look like the new 50, it's Langlois.
He's run around the Sea of Galilee at 600 feet below sea level and ascended 14,110-foot Pikes Peak in Colorado—seven times.
Most recently, he and third wife Kay Martin backpacked together up Machu Pichu, hiked halfway up the Matterhorn and covered the last 300 miles of the Pacific Coast trail—completing what has been a 22-year, 3,000-mile quest for Langlois.
"It's like the chicken and the egg. Do we do it because we're healthy or are we healthy because we do it? I don't know which, but it works," said Langlois, who estimates he's run 38,000 miles in his lifetime and biked another 25,000.
There's no telling where the Kansas-born Langlois, who mostly rode the bench as a kid, gets his energy. Or what he'll do next with what he calls a "positive addiction."
"You never know what I might suggest, but so far Kay has accepted everything," he said.
That the two are together is just as remarkable.
Kay Martin is a former Catholic nun who burned out on teaching long ago, married, then as a widow found the courage to take up running and triathlons at age 58.
"It wasn't much fun the first couple of times," Martin, now a great-grandmother, said of running. "I'd run for a minute; then walk for a minute. And did that for a two-mile lap."
A couple of days later she ran for two minutes then walked for one, and continued this trend until she was running for 12 minutes at a time.
"I thought, 'Hey, this isn't bad. It was fun,'" she said.
After her first 5k, the passion was instilled.
Langlois wouldn't enter the picture until a few years later while she was cross training via what triathletes call "the brick"—biking then running in the same workout—at South Mountain Park in Phoenix.
"There's not too many gray-haired women doing brick workouts," he said.
But Martin, who had met her first husband at a singles club that featured backpacking and canoeing, enjoyed the combination.

