By Shari HeldFor Custom PublicationsToday's 50 and older crowd is more fit and fun-loving than ever. Contrary to taking it easy, active older adults are showing they're not afraid to take on a new challenge and give it their all.

Rick Parker and Margui Knorr are two participants in the Indiana Senior Games demonstrating that you can continue an active lifestyle beyond your 50s, and doing so can be a bit of fun and games.

As competition season approaches, he works on increasing his speed. Right before a competition, he adds skills to the speed drill. If it sounds like Parker, 59, is serious about his sport, he is.

“I'll work on starts and form, trying to polish off my training so that I get the fastest possible speed in the race,” said the attorney for Ice Miller LLP.

Parker will be one of nearly 1,000 athletes 50 years and older participating in the 2006 Indiana Senior Games in Hamilton County this week. The event is a qualifier for the 2007 National Senior Games in Louisville, Ky.

“I'm more serious about this than 90 percent of the people doing the Senior Games,” said Parker, who also competes in events sanctioned by the USA Track & Field Association, headquartered in Indianapolis.

An avid sprinter, Parker competed in the National Senior Games last year in Pittsburgh, placing in the top 12 in several different events, including the 100-meter dash, which he said is the most popular event there.

He joked that participants in the Senior Games are “the only people in the world who are glad to be getting older” — at least from the perspective that when they qualify for the next age bracket (typically age brackets are in five-year increments) they're competing against older participants.

Parker always has been a runner, but he began participating in track and field events in 2000. He also serves as a volunteer track coach for St. Richard's School. For the past five years he has been entering track meets all over the country and Canada.

An injury led Knorr, age 55, to take up swimming. This week, she's competing in her fourth Senior Games, participating in the 50-meter freestyle and 50-meter backstroke events.

“I hurt my back when I was 50, and this is the one exercise I can compete in, but I've been active in sports all my life,” said Knorr, who played basketball in college and tennis and Frisbee golf in her 30s and 40s.

Like Parker, Knorr is on a training program. Twice a week she takes to the water at Krannert Park to practice. It offers her some much-needed relief from her role as primary caregiver to her 86-year-old parents.

Knorr's husband, Jim, is supportive, helping with her practice routines when she's in training and attending events to cheer her on. Not that she needs much encouragement to keep her on track.

This is cache, read story here