Wife Trish says there is some talk about 80km at 80 years – the good part being that he's got 10 years "to get fit".
The other good part is that it's become a family thing almost ever since the couple started taking what she calls their "first steps" in Napier in their mid-30s, spreading across the globe to a marathon in Amsterdam, and the New Forest runs back in Hampshire, from where Eric migrated to New Zealand in 1974.
He's spent all but 18 months of the last 46 years in Hawke's Bay – much of it running at what is a bit more than jogging pace.
His best time for the 26 miles and 385 yards (42.2km) historic distance of the marathon is about 3hrs 12min, and he's twice won the New Zealand 65-69yrs 10km road title, but decided against defending the crown last year because as his wife says: "It was in Auckland. He didn't want to go that far."
His big run was on August 16, three days before his birthday.
"I decided I would run it then, because if I did it on the 19th I wouldn't have had time for the chocolate cake," he said today, after his latest run with the family while in Paekakariki.
He'd made it interesting by running mainly a long lap of 2.1km, sometimes a shorter 800 metres, and sometimes anti-clockwise. Starting at 7am with running mates Giles Pearson and Rob Strong for company he was soon into stride, with a new runner joining him on each lap, and taking a short break every 11km, each lap marked-off on a white board to make sure no one lost count.
His wife says he tired towards the end, did a bit of walking and the walking poles came out over the last 2-3 laps, before they were discarded for the run to the finish.
With both being members of the Napier Harrier Club, his wife says running your age is becoming a "bit of a thing". For Phimister, it was like stepping up the distance each time, once joining two 30-year-olds, then a 65-year-old and then a 50-year-old for a run at night.
Last week's spin might have been one of the greatest days for Anderson Park, since it was used for horse racing – the home of the Napier Park Racing Club until 1961, and once also the home track of Moifaa, a Hawke's Bay horse that won great English equine endurance test, the Grand National, in 1904.
Phimister took a break from running the day after his 70km, but was back into it again on Tuesday, into the regimen of 60-70km a week.
He and his wife can at 8am on most Saturdays be seen stepping out around Anderson Park as part of "parkrun" a global phenomenon of a walk, run, pushchair, wheelchair outing for which there is, on average, about 100 starters in Napier, up to a record 157 one morning last February.
