If you watched the 1988 Summer Olympics on TV, you'll remember the heroics of a 17-year-old distance swimmer named Janet Evans, whose lack of stature -- five feet four inches and 99 pounds -- and unorthodox (though surprisingly efficient) windmill stroke made her look like an unlikely champion.

But those seeming flaws were outweighed by seemingly inexhaustible endurance and an intense will to win, and the diminutive Southern Californian with the gigantic smile came home from Seoul with three gold medals. Evans went back to the Olympics in 1992 and won another gold, and then competed again in 1996, when she was honored by being chosen to hand the Olympic torch to Muhammad Ali. It was the pinnacle of an athletic career in which she set three world and six American records and earned a spot in the International Swimming Hall of Fame. After swimming, she went on to success as an author, corporate motivational speaker and reality TV show participant.

Kirstie Alley, the 60-year-old former Cheers star who has famously struggled with her weight for years, has shed 100 pounds since March. Now she's encouraging others to join her in getting fit by dancing for 100 days beginning January 1.

Alley started a strict diet and exercise routine early this year in an effort to prepare for her stint as a contestant on Dancing With the Stars. Now, dancing has become central to her fitness plan. "I'm trying to start a grassroots movement and I hope you all join in," Alley tells the San Francisco Chronicle. "I'm doing a hundred days of dance, starting January 1. What you do is you join in, and whether you dance for 30 minutes or an hour, you dance for 100 consecutive days. I want everybody in the world to join in on this; it's a fun way to stay fit."

This summer, 55-year-old Craig Szachta joined more than 10,000 runners to compete in the Warrior Dash in Mt. Morris, Mich. The 5K race included some unusual obstacles: a line of old cars, a pond filled with logs, a cargo net, a rock wall, a tunnel of flames and a sinking mud pit.

"It wasn't like running the Boston Marathon," says Szachta, a plant manager at a pipe fabrication company in Clinton Township, Mich. "But it was very challenging.

Hard times are stopping many people from moving for retirement or work, according to Census Bureau data and a new Associated Press/LifeGoesStrong.com poll. The current mobility level, or how many Americans move each year, is the lowest since 1948, when the Census Bureau started tracking the data.

The unsteady economy exacerbated a trend toward fewer moves that had been gaining ground for several decades due to more two-income families that find it harder to relocate for work and an aging population that's less mobile, according to the Associated Press.

The willingness to climb into a boxing ring -- and brave being punched in the face, or even knocked unconscious -- is something that we tend to associate with youthful bravado or foolhardiness. That's why it was so startling last Friday to see a fight card at Staples Center in Los Angeles that featured not one but two middle-aged pugilists.

The main event featured 46-year-old Bernard Hopkins, who in May became the oldest boxer ever to claim a major title by winning a unified light-heavyweight championship fight against 28-year-old Jean Pascal. Hopkins, who's boasted that he will keep boxing until the age of 50 and who's been known to do pushups between rounds to show off his vigor, once again faced a younger opponent, 29-year-old challenger Chad Dawson. Alas, Hopkins injured his shoulder early and had to concede.

In 1968, Alan Moore played in the National Junior College Football Championship as a freshman kicker for Jones County Junior College in Ellisville, Miss. The next year, he shipped out to Vietnam, ending his athletic and educational career. After completing his tour of duty, Moore became a construction worker and spent 37 years as a building superintendent in Mississippi, Florida, North Carolina and overseas.

Now 61, Moore has finally returned to college and the game of his youth. This season, he is the placekicker at Faulkner University in Montgomery, Ala. He's also the oldest college football player on record, according to the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA).

Like many of you, I was rooting for 62-year-old Diana Nyad to succeed this weekend on her second attempt this year to swim 103 miles from Havana to Key West and finally conquer a challenge that she first tried several decades ago at age 28.

Diana Nyad startled the world by announcing that she's making a second attempt at swimming 103 miles from Havana to Key West, a feat that she tried and failed to accomplish earlier this summer.

Aside from the Libyan revolution, the big transition news of the week came from Apple founder Steve Jobs, 56, who announced that he is stepping down as chief executive for health reasons.

Jobs is the boomer visionary behind much of the innovative gadgetry that's transformed our lives. In the 1980s, he and then-partner Steve Wozniak helped make point-and-click graphical computing ubiquitous. More recently, he's churned up equally towering waves of technological and social change by introducing the iPhone, which put the internet in everyone's pocket, and the iPad, which presages a future in which desktop computers and laptops are museum antiques.

Kathy Allin didn't take up golf until she was in her 40s. Now she's found her third career as a golf instructor and likes to help other boomers get into the game.

Allin says she wasn't physically active at all while working in the health insurance industry in Ohio. Then she and her golfer husband, Harry, moved to California for his job, and he bought her a set of clubs and a pink golf bag she hadn't asked for.