The National Senior Games start today in Minnesota, with track on tap for more than a week beginning Tuesday. (Here’s the sked.) TV stations are spotlighting entrants including Iowa’s Kay Glynn, who is recovering well from shoulder, hip and knee issues. We’re also getting attention from The New York Times, where a blog post about “fitness age” vs. chronological age is the No. 5 most-emailed story on site now. (Senior Olympians were queried via an online form, and they rate 25 years younger.) Dash recordman Oscar Peyton, another 60-something star, got a spot as well. Looking great as always. (He’s my role model for skinny sprinters.)

Here’s the gist of the Times story:

Many of the [Senior Olympic] participants complied, producing more than 4,200 responses.

The results were impressive. While the athletes’ average chronological age was 68, their average fitness age was 43, a remarkable 25 years less.

“This is a massive difference,” Dr. Wisloff says. “I had expected a big difference,” he continued, “since these people have trained for years. However, I was surprised that it was this big.”

The effect was similar for both male and female athletes, he pointed out. Virtually every athlete, in fact, had a lower fitness age than his or her chronological age.

Dr. Peeke and Dr. Wisloff have not yet determined whether athletes in certain of the sports at the Senior Olympics, particularly endurance events such as distance running and swimming, have a younger fitness age, in general, than athletes participating in less-vigorous sports.

But they plan to parse the data extensively in the coming months to answer that question and to look for other patterns among the Senior Olympians. They expect to publish their findings soon.

Even in advance of that information, though, the takeaway message of the data should be inspiring, said Dr. Peeke, who will be competing in the triathlon event at the Senior Olympics.

“A majority of the athletes at the Senior Games didn’t begin serious training until quite late in life, including me,” she said. “We may have been athletes in high school or college. But then, for most of us, jobs and families and other commitments got in the way, at least for a while.”

Kay also is the subject of an Omaha World-Herald story:

Kay Glynn is the perfect antidote for “can’t.”

“I can’t; I’m too old.”

“I can’t; it’s too hard.”

“I can’t; it’ll take too much time.”

“Oh yeah? Kay Glynn.”

Sometimes “Inspiration” has a Hastings, Iowa, address and a homemade pole vault pit in her backyard. Kay Glynn is a bona fide track and field phenom, a hall of famer and record holder with a side passion for dancing and acrobatics. (Talents that earned her appearances on “David Letterman,” “Jimmy Kimmel,” “Oprah,” “The View” and “America’s Got Talent.”) Humble and hard-working, she’s spending this summer helping to run the family insurance business, training, competing – and keeping up with her eight grandchildren.

“Age is just a number,” says 62-year-old Kay.

Here are a few other “numbers”:

19 feet, 2¾ inches – The length of Glynn’s high school long jump state record that stood for more than 30 years. (She still holds the Iowa district and the western Iowa records.)

15 – The age at which she won a Ford Mustang for doing one of her acrobatic “chair routines,” versions of which she later showcased for those national TV audiences.

1979 – The year she was inducted into the Iowa Girls High School Track & Field Hall of Fame.

48 – The age at which she returned to the sport of track and field after a 30-year hiatus, a span that included the raising of three children with husband, Mike, and the founding of a dance studio she operated for 20 years.

Kay took up pole vaulting in 2003 at age 50 and won the national indoor heptathlon that same year. She has since competed in the Senior Olympics in Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, Kansas and Missouri, as well as a flurry of other coast-to-coast events – typically 10 meets a year.

Along the way, she has racked up an amazing number of medals, national titles and accolades, including USA Track and Field’s 2008 Co-Female Athlete of the Year. In addition to the vault, Kay competes in all of the jumps, throws, hurdles, short sprints and the occasional decathlon. She trains daily in her backyard, an hour minimum, usually two.

“I enjoy training. If I know I’m going to work out at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, all I can think about all day is, ‘I get to work out at 3,’ which probably isn’t normal,” she says with a laugh. “I’m not quite as obsessed as I used to be. I don’t go out in the dark anymore and try to get my workouts in.”

Her coach is “me, myself and I,” and her energetic training partners – her grandkids – are always good for a high five and a hug.

“They retrieve my shot put tosses and play on the rings and bars,” she says. (Kay’s youngest grandchild is named Miles, a nod to his active parents’ passion for running.)

As is often the case when dealing with a diehard athlete, some may question Kay’s sanity – but they cannot question her commitment. She says this is just who she is and what she does.

“It’s an unusual hobby maybe. Some people golf. Some people camp. I run track,” she says. “I love the people and the competition. The camaraderie draws us all together.”

Slowing down just isn’t in the plans – even though she has had perfectly acceptable excuses. She underwent rotator cuff surgery in 2008 (and set a world record in pole vaulting two years later). In August 2013, she had work done on her hip, an age-related ailment.

“They told me I had bone-on-bone arthritis. It took me seven doctors to find the one that did my resurfacing.”

Less than a year later, she tore her anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), which sidelined her until last December. Just last March, Kay gave her restored hip and repaired ACL a test run at the Iowa Associate Indoor Championships in Grinnell, Iowa.

“I vaulted 8 feet, pretty close to my normal for March, so I was happy. I high jumped about my usual, too. I ran the 60-yard dash with a careful start, just for practice.”

Kay’s diet includes lean protein, lots of vegetables and fruits (she grows a variety on her farm), flaxseed, chia seed and the occasional reward of dark chocolate M&Ms.

Greek yogurt and broccoli are on her daily menu while breads, pastas, potatoes and fried foods scarcely land on her plate.

Kay gives herself 10 hours of sleep a night. “The harder you work, the more sleep you need.” And never takes a nap. “There’s no way I can wind down in the middle of the day.”

Her spring-summer schedule included: the inaugural Western Iowa Senior Challenge in Council Bluffs in May; Iowa Senior Games in West Des Moines in June; National Senior Games in Minnesota in July; and the 2015 State Games of America in Lincoln set for July 28-Aug. 2. For the last event, she is entered in the pole vault, high jump, long jump and triple jump. And she makes it look easy.

“I am particularly looking forward to watching all ages of people participating in so many different sports,” she says of the State Games of America. “The kids remind me to ‘play like a kid,’ and I will, hopefully, teach the kids that you never have to give up your passion.”

Did we mention the pole vaulting, long jumping, acrobatic, Oprah-meeting grandmother also does motivational public speaking? Her advice to others is simple: “Keep on movin’.”

“People want to know how to get started. First, you have to get up off the couch and throw on a pair of shoes. That’s the hardest part of a workout sometimes. Find something you like to do that’s active so it doesn’t seem like it’s a workout, and make it a priority on your list of things to do each day.”

In addition to a strong attitude, the secret to Kay’s vitality is likely a strong bloodline. Her mom, who lives just down the road, is 91 – and still mows her own lawn.

“That,” Kay says, “is the way I want to be.”