At 105 years old, E. Gerald “Gerry” Meyer is not just still ticking, he’s still running races and bringing home gold medals.
The Laramie resident won two gold medals this year during the Wyoming Senior Olympics, one each for the 50- and the 100-meter dashes.
Granted, Meyer was the only competitor to show up in the 105 to 109 age group. But, sometimes, that’s the whole point of life. Showing up and then seizing the day.
Seizing the day is Meyer through and through, no matter how old he gets. He rode his motorcycle until he was 92, only giving it up when it became clear to him that he no longer had the requisite vision and balance to ride anymore.
Meyer doesn’t have a particular training regimen.
“I guess I’m sort of an oddball,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “What I do is run some every couple of days, and, once in a while, I’ll go down to the track to see if I can do the distance that’s required.”
How he performs during training tells him what distances he should run in the Senior Olympics — or if he should compete at all in any given year.
“I think I might have been able to do 200 meters this time, if I really put my mind to it,” he said. “But I didn’t try it.”
He stuck with the 100- and 50-meter dashes, and the two gold medals he took home now qualify him for next year’s National Senior Games in Des Moines.
“I’m looking forward to going to Des Moines a year from now,” Meyer told Cowboy State Daly. “I suspect there will not be a lot of people, so I could probably win a medal there somewhere.”
Road Trips
Meyer particularly enjoys the road trips getting to the national senior olympics, which are held in varying locations every other year.
He’s run races in a dozen or so different ones, and it’s always fun to see a new part of the country.
“I’ll tell you one year the National was in Baton Rouge, Louisiana,” Meyer said. “And I just about died. I mean it was August and it was so hot, so humid. At that time I was running the 5K and the 10K and man, that was really tough. I wasn’t used to the heat and the humidity.”
His favorite racing location was Stanford University.
“The weather was good, the surroundings were good,” Meyer said. “Stanford University has a tremendous athletic setup and all of the events, the swimming and the road races and the dashes and the bicycling and everything were close by.”
School wasn’t in session, so that meant Meyer and the other contestants could get rooms in the dormitories — just like being a kid again. Stanford referred to its running areas as “The Farm.”
“It was beautiful,” Meyer said. “And for all of those road races, we just ran around what’s called The Farm. It was great. I think (Stanford) was probably the finest one.”
Laramie resident E. Gerald "Gerry" Meyer loves competing in the Wyoming Senior Olympics. This year, he ran the 50 meters at age 105. (Courtesy Gerry Meyer) 
Laramie resident Gerry Meyer ran the 50-meter dash 3 seconds faster than he did in last year's Wyoming Senior Olympics. The 105-year-old is not just still kicking, he's winning gold medals. (Wyoming Senior Olympics via Facebook) 
Laramie resident E. Gerald "Gerry" Meyer loves competing in the Wyoming Senior Olympics. This year, he ran the 50 meters at age 105. (Courtesy Gerry Meyer) 
Laramie resident E. Gerald "Gerry" Meyer loves competing in the Wyoming Senior Olympics. This year, he ran the 50 meters at age 105. (Courtesy Gerry Meyer) 
Laramie resident E. Gerald "Gerry" Meyer loves competing in the Wyoming Senior Olympics. This year, he ran the 50 meters at age 105. (Wyoming Senior Olympics via Facebook)
Training Paw-tner
Just making it to 105 is a feat for most people, but to be as fit and as sharp as Meyer is, that’s something else again.
Meyer had a little help with it all. A big German Shepherd named Rom, who loved to go on early morning runs with Meyer.
“I adopted Rom from the dog pound here that takes care of stray dogs,” Meyer said. “And he became a member of the family.”
Rom is just a little bit of a rascal.
“We have antelope out on the golf course during the winter, and he would run around chasing them,” Meyer said.
The other rascally thing he’d do every morning, bright and early, was stick his cold wet nose right on top of Meyer’s, if Meyer was still asleep.
“He knew what time we were supposed to get up and go running,” Meyer said. “So if I was still in bed, that’s what he would do. He made sure that I would get up and run.”
Rom, of course, had his own ideas about how a run should really go.
“He didn’t exactly follow me,” Meyer said. “He’d do something, stop and look at something, and then he’d pick up and run awhile with me.”
Meyer would usually go about a mile, depending on how much time he had, before returning home with Rom.
“The older you get, the less ambitious you get,” Meyer said. “But in this case, in my case, I could not fail to do what I was supposed to. There were times I would have stayed in bed, but Rom wasn’t going to let me.”
Healthy Habits
Running was a habit, though, that Meyer started long before Rom, when he was Dean of Arts and Sciences at University of Wyoming.
“There were lots of major decisions to make, and so running was just sort of relaxation,” Meyer said. “I didn’t play golf and do those kinds of things. It was too time-consuming.”
But running could easily fit into his day before the workday started. And so it became a habit, and it’s one of the habits he credits with not just his longevity, but the quality of his life now at 105.
“I consider that there’s three parts to that,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “One part is your genes and your inheritance and so on. That’s one-third. The second third, though, is taking care of yourself. No smoking. Exercise. Get some sleep. Eat properly.”
And the third component?
“That’s luck,” Meyer said. “Luck to just not be in a place where you might have gotten run over or this and that.”
Some of that luck, though, comes down to understanding your own limitations as you age.
“I rode a motorcycle for a long time,” Meyer said. “And a lot of motorcycle accidents occur when somebody driving a car isn’t looking. Fortunately that didn’t happen to me.”
Meyer has ridden his motorcycle all over the country, even up to Alaska, where he decided the real state bird is actually the mosquito. But, eventually, at the age of 92, Meyer decided that he should quit riding his motorcycle.
“My vision was not like it was and so on and on,” he said. “So, I decided I’d better quit that.”
Contact Renee Jean at renee@cowboystatedaily.com
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
