Our Fitness Is Our Best Medicine

Phil Shipp

This story originally appeared in Geezer Jock in 2021.

By Ray Glier

When a rare pestilence came for Phil Shipp his high-level of physical fitness punished the thing called Polyarteritis Nodosa (PAN). It attacked his intestinal tract and didn’t find a frail guy. It found a venerable 81-year old who has been a stalwart steward of the only body he has.

Instead of desiccating an older man, PAN gave up and went into remission. That was five years ago, when Shipp was 81 years old. 

This is a good time to tell you that Shipp, who lives in Sedona, Arizona, does the Decathlon. He is 86 years old and still trains to do all 10 events in the two days required. Phil brought all that history of training to bear on the disease: 

The training included sustained endurance for the 1,500, the nerve, core strength, and agility for the pole vault, the velocity and bounce of the high jump and long jump, the drive phase and body posture for the 100, the physicality for the shot put and discus, the arm strength for the javelin, the relaxed running style for the 400, and the flexibility and speed for the 80-meter hurdles.

“The doctors told me if I had not been in top physical shape,” Phil said, “I probably wouldn’t have made it.”

It is fitting that Phil’s treatment included the decathlon of steroids, prednisone. He went to the Cleveland Clinic and was put on a regimen of the multi-use prednisone, which can deal with inflammation from sore throats to poison ivy.

Shipp was sidelined from competition for five months, mostly because surgeons had to make a 6-inch incision in his abdomen to search for the source of the pain when he was first admitted to the hospital. The pain, by the way, was an 11 on a scale of 1 to 10, Phil said.

Marianne Shipp, his wife, “is a very smart person”, Phil said, and she researched how to best recover from the trauma. Marianne found an expert of PAN at Cleveland Clinic and that’s when he was put on the regimen of prednisone to calm the inflammation of the arteries around the intestine.

Once the recovery from PAN was completed, he competed. 

His latest competition was the 2021 USA Masters Combined Events Championships in Ft. Collins, Col., August 11-12. 

He had one other competitor in the 85-89 age cohort, which was Bill Jankovich of Racine, Wisconsin, but that is beside the point. Phil was out there. On the track. When you are 86 years old, after all, you are competing against yourself. He earned 10 All-America badges, which are awarded with going a particular distance, or height, in your age group. 

In three national championships meets in 2021, Shipp earned 10 gold medals and one silver in the individual events. He set five American records in Ft. Collins at the USATF Combined Championships.

Shipp exercises six days a week, weight training and running, and that explains the defense mechanism against PAN. Some days, I imagine, Phil reflexively exercises. It’s what he’s done all these years, so I’m sure he has been labeled eccentric, but a good kind of eccentric. 

Other days, metaphorically, he has to find a paper clip, hold it tight, and stick it in a wall outlet. He has to juice himself.

It can be a grind, he said.

“It's not as easy as it used to be when I did the decathlon in my 60s, I was in such good shape,” Shipp said. “At 80 it took an effort and at 85 it took a heck of an effort.

“The fatigue factor, you know, catches up to you.”

Shipp’s best year in the decathlon was at age 70 where he established a new American record, which stills stands.

After taking a tour of Italy the next year, Phil and Marianne decided to build a 5,300 square foot Tuscan-style home. Shipp took off from Masters track most of his 70s to build the home. 

Phil was the general contractor and he also wired the place and did the plumbing. He and Marianne also put in an 8-foot by 4-foot concrete counter top in the kitchen island, long before concrete countertops were the rage. The thing weighed 900 pounds had to be installed in two parts.

This is where Geezer Jock gets preachy.

You’ve heard it a thousand times, so let’s make it 1,001, “We are in a lot better position to survive an infection, like Covid-19,” Shipp said of older people who exercise.

Too many peopletalk about what they didn’t do.

Phil Shipp, among many others, can talk about what they did. Phil saved his life at 81. He built his dream house. He married a smart partner. He competed, in the Decathlon, no less. I didn’t ask him if he has regret. If he does, it’s small.

Go out and save your life and don’t have regret that you should have exercised more. Find a way to motivate yourself for that walk, or run, or weight lifting regimen. Just do it. Your life depends on it.