The 100-year-old athlete who puts the rest of us to shame
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You probably don't need any more shame for your youthful sedentary lifestyle, but here's some anyway in the form of Don Pellman, a Wisconsin native, who tried to set a new record in the pole vault in San Diego yesterday.
After each missed attempt, he muttered to himself "I need more practice," the New York Times says this afternoon.
Don Pellman is 100 years old.
He failed on his three attempts to be the oldest man ever to record a height in the pole vault.
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He'll have to be satisfied with becoming the first centenarian to break 27 seconds in the 100-meter dash, the first to clear an official height in the high jump, and new records for men in the shot put, discus, and long jump.
"It’s a poor day because I should have got that pole vault, too,” he told the Times of San Diego.
"Why do you do this?" a reporter asked Pellman, whose athletic career at La Crosse State Teachers College -- now University of Wisconsin La Crosse -- was cut short by the Depression.
“Somebody has to do it,” he said.
