At 82 years of age, many people are generally slowing down, but not so for Victorian man John Timms, who is aiming to run 100 kilometres a day in Adelaide this week to beat a world record.
The Australian Six-Day Ultra Marathon Festival is underway at Thornton Park in the city's north-east this week and, by Tuesday, Timms had already run 132 kilometres.
"I was hoping to run a world record, which is 536 kilometres for someone over 80 and it's held by an American," he told ABC Radio Adelaide.
"Over six days, that was my plan, to run 100km a day.
"I did it the first day [but] because I'm a cancer patient, the nerves in the leg where I had the radiation was affecting it a bit and it took a while to straighten it out, so today I've had to climb out of the background a bit."
'Run, eat, sleep' repeat
Timms, who is sleeping in his car at the six-day event, said he was about "50-odd" kilometres behind and was planning to catch up on the shortfall "each day a little bit".
"It's run, eat, sleep; run, eat, sleep. I've done it for 40 years and thoroughly enjoy it," he said.
Timms already holds the Australian record for ultra runners over 80, having run 440.485km at the six-day event in 2023.
He also holds the Australian 48-hour record for ultra runners over 80, having run 177.84km at Thornton Park in 2022.
"I'm pretty proud of that one," Timms said.
The annual festival, which started on Sunday and has a public reservoir at its centre, includes a growing number of international runners.
"We've got runners from all over the world here, Japan, America, Korea. They're characters, all national heroes in their own right going for records," Timms said.
"This is the toughest six-day race in the world."
Living 'life to the full'
Despite his goal for a world record, Timms said he ran for "enjoyment, simple as that".
"A lot of people live life and they try something and [say] 'Nah, couldn't do it', but if you challenge yourself, you're capable of doing a lot more than you think," he said.
"Whether it's playing a piano or music or whatever, it gives you [an] incentive to live life to the full.
"Health-wise, in my position, I should be dead."
Timms said the medical professionals assisting him as a cancer patient said his actions were helping him "immensely".
Social contact is key to a longer life
Today is International Day of Older Persons, with a Council of the Aging forum taking place in Adelaide.
Loading...Veteran ABC presenter Geraldine Doogue is lead speaker at the event and said research showed it was "regular social contact, often of a very ordinary nature" that kept people living longer "and flourishing".
But this did not mean that people had to "plunge into full-on engagement".
Doogue said the contact could be simple.
"Often it's regularly going back to your centres and saying 'Hello' to people, knowing they're going to be there, or the likelihood is they're going to be there, that's actually more durable," she said.
"That's the message I'm going to send today, because that is the message coming regularly through, from all the longitudinal research."