July 2026 Athlete of the Month
By Del Moon, NSGA Storyteller
This Athlete of the Month story is brought to you by Uber, a proud supporter of the Senior Games community. Click here for a special discount on your next Uber ride.
Reggie Howze, 81
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Power Walk
Reggie Howze competing in the 5K Power Walk at the 2025 National Senior Games presented by Humana.
If you don’t believe you are capable of change or taking on new challenges after 50, Reggie Howze wants to have a word with you. Since reaching that milestone, Reggie has transformed his health, earned two degrees, gotten married and found a new calling.
Now 81, Reggie had an epiphany at age 50 that changed his priorities and habits affecting his health.
It started when he noticed himself and others gaining weight. “The scale started heading upwards for everybody all around me,” he recalls. “It was very uncomfortable for me.” His next thought really rang the alarm bell. “I guesstimated that I had smoked over 500,000 cigarettes from the time I was 13 years old to the time I was 50,” he says, pausing. “A half a million cigarettes, wow. That was a real eye opener!”
Reggie stubbed out his last smoke, grateful to be alive. “It can’t be anything but the Lord that I’m here, because my sister probably smoked that many too,” he says. “She got emphysema, and she’s no longer here. Plus, my dad died at the age of 52, so I was kind of scared straight.”
With the motivation to live better, Reggie started walking. Before long, he was running and set a goal to finish a marathon. “I’ve done three of them, plus a ton of half marathons, 10Ks and 5Ks over the years,” he recounts.
Finding His Groove with Power Walking
By his 70s, Reggie was ready to take on Senior Games, but he wasn’t sure which sport to choose. He’d played basketball from high school until he was 35, when his commercial cleaning business took priority. Then there was running, but that didn’t feel right for this stage of his life. “I did long running for so long, I was concerned about my knees. At this juncture, running just didn’t seem to be the right thing for me to do,” he says.
Power Walk provided the track for Reggie to follow. He placed in both the 1500-meter and 5K Power Walk races at his first National Senior Games in Pittsburgh in 2023. Reggie bore down, trained hard for two years and came in second in the 5K event at the 2025 National Senior Games presented by Humana in Des Moines. A medal!
The remade man now has a clear goal and a purpose for 2027. “I hate to poke the bear, but in my heart of hearts I really want to win the 5000 meters in Tulsa, and to use it as a great motivational tool to help others,” he explains. “I live in a rather low-income neighborhood, and people are not normally inspired by things like running or walking. But for me to win would be a bragging point, and people take note of winning. So it would help to inspire others and myself for the 2029 Games in Birmingham.”
Reggie on the medal stand at the 2025 National Senior Games presented by Humana. Image courtesy Reggie Howze.
‘Whole Foods University’ Leads to Two Degrees
Reggie was happy to return to fitness after 50, but knew he was not done learning new things. While he was proud to be the first in his family to attend college in 1964, he did not complete his degree. “I went to Cheyney State College near Philadelphia for a short while, but then Dr. Martin Luther King got assassinated, and that turned my whole world around,” he recalls. “School was the last thing on my mind.”
One year later, Reggie landed a job teaching a psychology class at the University of Pittsburgh. The experience led him west to the University of Southern California where he ran an after-school program with local high schools to improve recruitment among diverse populations. “They didn’t have very many African American students at the time. O.J. Simpson and a few others were there, but not very many more.”
Years later, he was retiring his successful cleaning business, but retirement was not on his mind. Nagging thoughts of finishing college remained. But what would be best to study?
He found his answer in the grocery aisles.
“I started working for Whole Foods Market, and that’s where I got the nutritional bug,” he says. “I wanted to increase my knowledge, and I used to carry a notebook and pen to work. Whole Foods was like a grocery type of a university to me.”
Reggie returned to college at 65. “I enrolled at Life University in Atlanta and was going to become a chiropractic doctor, but I changed my mind and got a degree in nutrition. I knew that nutrition was the way for me to reach healthy longevity.” He then went even further – completing a master’s in exercise science at 71.
More Growth – A Marriage and Motivational Podcast
Reggie Howze and his wife, Shawna, training at their local YMCA. Image courtesy Reggie Howze.
Life brought more happiness and purpose to Reggie when he married in 2025, and his 71-year-old wife Shawna is all in for Senior Games. They are training together at their YMCA to compete in Tulsa next year. “Just recently she fell and fractured her hip and her elbow, but she’s coming back strong,” Reggie says, adding, “She’s going to be a force to be reckoned with.”
The couple has created a new business called Living Well with Reggie and Shawna Howze, offering motivational speaking to groups and a podcast by the same name. Reggie also plans to write a book, and he sees Senior Games as a resource to move people into action.
“National Senior Games is a wonderful motivational tool for anybody that will stand still long enough for me to try to teach and motivate them. That’s what I see as my purpose in life, to teach. I want people to be inspired by my lifestyle, and by my life.”
