| Sixteen years ago, at age 66, Juan López García first tried running a mile. He couldn’t finish that first mile. He could barely start it. Now, at age 82, López García is the world record holder in the 80-to-84 age group for the 50-kilometer (31-mile) ultramarathon. In 2024, he also won the world marathon championship for his age group, with a time of 3:39:10, setting a European record in the process. His outsize success caught the attention of a group of European scientists who study aging. The researchers found that López García has the highest aerobic fitness recorded in an octogenarian, matching that of healthy 20-to-30-year-old men. Taken as a whole, López García’s physiology and performance in his 80s may help upend some common assumptions about what’s possible and normal as we age, the researchers concluded, including whether it’s ever too late for the rest of us to tackle that first mile. | 
