News Journal: Week Twelve, Profile Piece (30th April 2016)

The New York Times published an article on a very inspirational woman called Ida Keeling on the 25th of April. The article was written by Noah Remnick and is about a 100 year old woman who has held several track-and-field records since she began racing in her late 60’s, and still runs now.

The article opens like this: “ On a cloudless Sunday afternoon in April, a 100-year-old woman named Ida Keeling laced up her mustard yellow sneakers and took to the track at the Fieldston School in the Bronx.” I really enjoyed the description in this sentence. The description helps to build the picture of the scene for the reader.

Ida still has the fastest time for American women ages 95 to 99 in the 60-meter dash: 29.86 seconds. In the coming week, she plans to compete in a 100-meter event at the Penn Relays in Philadelphia, where she hopes to establish a new standard for women over 100 years old. To hear that a woman of her age is so fit and determined is very uplifting and almost creates a sense of ‘if she can do it, anyone can’, for the reader which makes the article more enjoyable. The majority of the news content nowadays is negative so it is nice to come across positive stories every now and then.

Ida’s life has been far from easy. Her husband died at 42 of a heart attack. Two of her sons battled with drug addictions and were both killed. A quote is included in the article by Ms Keeling where she says, “I’ve never felt a pain so deep”. It is heartbreaking to imagine how hard it must have been for her at that time.

The fact that Ida is mentally and physically fit and healthy now, at 100 years old, shows that there’s hope for anyone, even people with the toughest of lives.

Link: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/04/22/at-100-still-running-for-her-life/?ref=health