Mastering Running as You Age

It's tempting to deny that age has any effect at the lower end of this range. After all, Meb Keflezighi's Kregals advice to 70-year-olds applies double to the age divisions above him Boston came only weeks before his 39th birthday, and many runners continue to improve during their late 30s. But the two oldest Olympic gold medalists were Carlos Lopes (marathon, 1984) and Constantina Dita (marathon, 2008), both 38 at the time of their wins. "The magic number is 39 to 40," says Mark Cleary, coach of the So Cal Track Club. "I know guys who run really fast at 38, then all of a sudden say, 'Now I know what you're talking about.' "

Some spend their early masters career bemoaning every race as a new PW—personal worst. Others embrace it, counting the days until their 40th birthday when they have a chance to set records in a new category.

Amy Begley, a 2008 Olympian and now head coach of the Atlanta Track Club, says every athlete has to deal with change. "There was a high point, and now they have to reset the goals," Begley says.

Her husband, Andrew, another coach with the club, faced similar issues earlier than most, when a knee injury in his 20s took him out of elite competition. "My advice is to learn to race against yourself," he says.

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One way to measure that personal competition is by using predictor workouts, then trying to beat the prediction. Andrew Begley used the Mile Down workout, starting with 1600m, then working down: 1200-800-600-400-300-200m. "When you add up all of the times for this workout, I could run within 20 to 30 seconds of that for a 5K race," he says. "So when I got into the race, I was trying to run a little faster than predicted. If I could look myself in the mirror after my race and tell myself that I worked hard and didn't quit, it was a victory."

In terms of training, the changes at this early stage in masters running are relatively minor. Realize that injuries can be more frequent and take longer to heal. "Extra recovery time needs to be built in," Amy Begley says. "You may wind up doing more cross-training." And women, in particular, need to be aware of the risk of declining bone mass. "I encourage lifting exercises to keep up density in the upper body and spine," she says.

Health - Injuries

• Accept that things have changed: Don't collect personal worsts.
• Use newly found extra time to train more.
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While the increase in recovery time and the decline in top performances are impossible to ignore, this age can be one of the most rewarding of a runner's life. Each age group represents a chance to be the young runner again, providing anticipation as the turn-year approaches and offering the thrill of setting new marks and competing for awards as you enter the new group.

Some people who had busy family lives when they were younger may suddenly find new time for training. Consider Colleen Rocereto of Tigard, Oregon. At 49, with the last of her three sons in college (and a 40:56 10K already in her arsenal), she has started joining groups—one on the track and another for weekend runs—in preparation for seeing what she can do in the 50–54 age group. The opportunity to do such workouts with partners, rather than just running out the door, has opened a new window on her training. "I feel like I can get faster and stronger," she says.

Another motivation is simply to beat the age-grading curve. In fact, you can easily channel the energy you once put into chasing PRs into chasing age-graded PRs, with similar, if not greater satisfaction as you defy the hands of time.

But this is also the age when masters reality truly sets in. Not only do you have to be exceptional to still be fighting for the type of position you might once have had among the open-class runners, but if you haven't already adjusted training to accommodate your changing body, you're in danger of spending this decade fighting off injuries. "Keep health before fitness," Cotner says. "If you're always having to compromise workouts by what hurts, you're not going to get very far."

Part of staying healthy is maintaining muscle strength and flexibility. "That's a real change from a number of years ago," says Bob Williams, a Portland, Oregon, coach. "People are now in the gym—they're really doing it."

Start to add extra recovery time and cross-training.

For the calves, the most common problems are inflexibility and muscle pulls. But aging calves can also lose power. To see if this applies to you, Cotner suggests finding a steep hill and running up it, counting strides. He uses a hill that's about 500 meters long, with a grade of 12 to 14 percent, but there's no magic to that formula, especially in places where long, steep hills are hard to find. What matters is that the fewer strides it takes to cover the course, the more power you have in your calves—and that you repeat this test on the same hill periodically to see whether you're improving, declining or maintaining.

As for hip flexors, they are the muscles that help lift your knees and swing them forward between strides—meaning that there is a strong correlation between hip flexor strength and running speed. But they can lose strength and flexibility, especially if your job entails increasing amounts of sitting as you get older.

Tight hip flexors can also lead to hamstring problems. That's because the hip flexors attach to the pelvis and to several vertebrae of the lower back. When they get tight, Cotner says, they change the tilt of the pelvis. The result is a reduced ability to activate the glute muscles, less hip extension (the upper leg going out behind) and hamstrings that are overstretched and weak—so much so that Cotner sees the combination of these problems as a common syndrome.

The solution to any of these problems, of course, is strength and flexibility training. You can no longer get away with perfunctory stretches and just running. All those articles about supplemental training that you ignored in your 20s now make the difference between continuing as a successful racer and dropping out with injury or dropping off with a compromised stride.

Other training tips for runners in this age group are simpler. Pretty much every coach, for example, recommends spending as much time as possible on soft surfaces. "Run too much pavement," Cleary says, "and your days are numbered." He feels that even tempo runs should be on a track, trail or other soft surface. "I'll do 24 laps around a sports park, on grass," he says. Cleary is 56; if you insist on spending all your time pounding the pavement, he says, "I'll be running 10 years from now when you're not."

Health & Injuries

• Find new motivation with each age group or in beating your PRs with age-grading.
• Use newly found extra time to train more.
• Work on strength and flexibility, particularly in the calves and hip flexors.
• Work on strength and flexibility, particularly in the calves and hip flexors.

To begin, the 55-59 age group is the first to show a truly marked drop-off in the number of competitors. For example, in 2014, the 9,000-runner California International Marathon saw only 397 combined male and female finishers at ages 55-59, compared to 702 in the 50-54 group and 915 in the 45-49 group. By 60-64, the number of finishers had plummeted to 189.

Other than praying you have good genes and doing your best to maintain a healthy lifestyle, there's not a lot you can do to keep yourself from joining the ranks of those sidelined by arthritis and other nonrunning ailments. But if you're one of those people who is never happy with your race results, this might be a good time to start acknowledging the successes you've already had, before the unpleasant time comes—however far in the future—when there are no more successes.

"I am appreciating my past times more than I did when I ran them," says Suzanne Ray, who lt age 62, set the course record for 60-plus at the California International Marathon with a 3:24:01. "The key to longevity in running is joy," she says.

But this doesn't mean you can't still strive for improvement. Running, Ray says, is as much about meeting your own goals as it is about beating your rivals, which means the drive to constantly seek more from yourself is "almost essential."

Also important to realize is that the 0.7 percent annual decrease in performance translates to 3.5 percent over the course of each five-year age group. The youngsters in your age group are now 20–30 seconds per mile ahead of you, and it's easy to get frustrated. "The last two years in the age group can be tough," says Mark Cleary, coach of the So Cal Track Club.

One way to deal with this is simply to wait it out until the next key birthday rolls around. Another is to use the upcoming age group as an incentive. That's useful, Williams says, because "you need to ramp up a year or so early to really be effective."

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Meanwhile, you do need to make some training changes. One is to recognize that just as masters runners don't recover as easily as open-class runners, older masters runners don't recover as quickly as younger ones. You have to become more adept at monitoring and judging your recovery, not relying on timing rules or other runners' experiences.

"The key is only to do the next workout when you're recovered," Cotner says. "In some cases it's only a day or two longer than in the 30s and 40s. Sometimes it can be a whole week."

Cleary adds that this is a good time to start taking extra rest days, even if that means taking two or three days off in a row if you feel a warning twinge. "I've learned that being in the game is more important than trying to push and not being able to compete," he says. In his coaching, he's adopted the same attitude. "I tell them, when in doubt, do a pool workout. That has saved more butts than I can tell you."

If the idea of backing off makes you feel lazy, Tom McGlynn, founder of the online training program called Runcoach, has a rule of thumb he calls 60/80. It applies to runners of all ages (McGlynn is in his early 40s) but is particularly important to older masters runners bemoaning their inability to put in the high volumes they once did. What the 60/80 rule means, McGlynn says, is that even massive cutbacks in training don't slow you down as much as you might fear. "I can do 60 percent in terms of volume and intensity and still be 80 percent as good," he says. Though to make this work, he says, you need to be careful not to jack up your speed work in an effort to compensate for reduced volume. "A lot of people do 60 percent of the volume, then train so hard they have Achilles tendinitis and everything else," he says.

Even if you've had a relatively smooth path through your masters career so far, this is another time when you may need to revise expectations for racing and training.

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Whatever evolutionary biologist Lieberman says about our distant ancestors, this is an age where simply lining up for the start of a race is something most peers would never attempt.

But if you're careful and dedicated, it's still possible to be good. One person who's discovered this is Mike Reif, coach of the Genesee Valley Harriers, an upstate New York club that has won dozens of masters championships.

"I've been running for over 55 years and [at age 65] got motivated because of the new age group," he says. He lost weight and began running with the athletes he coaches. He also remembered his youth, when he was on a national championship team. "My mindset went back to that," he says. "If you can make that transition, you can get motivated at any age."

Also useful is to find a club, even if many of the runners aren't your age. You can mentor some of the young ones. Others are inspirational, letting you point to a young speedster and say, "Hey, he's part of my team."

Reif's club competes in USA Track & Field meets, where masters events can have sizeable fields, even in the higher age groups. But in road races, Joe Kregal, a 70-year-old from Portland, Oregon, says he is far too often the only one in his age group. That, he says, makes the victory feel hollow, even though he can still run a highly respectable 22:48 5K. "So," he says, "I compete with whoever's moving. If there are 1,000 people in the race and I come in in the top 20 percent, that's my race."

From a training perspective, caution now rules. Kregal is a fan of monitoring his body's twinges and reacts accordingly. And he believes in active recovery, like swimming and biking.

It's also increasingly important to pay attention to strength training. The average person steadily loses muscle mass after age 30—this can represent a 30 to 40 percent decline by age 70. Just because you run, don't believe you're immune to this.

And whatever you do, don't listen to the naysayers. "Unless there's something anatomically wrong with you, you can get some pretty good speed going," Kregal says. "The problem is that society wants to close you down. Don't quit when people tell you to."

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• Find company: Join a club and look for races with strong masters fields.
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Kregal's advice to 70-year-olds applies double to the age divisions above him.

For about two decades, beginning in the late 1980s, John Keston (now 90) was the dominant runner among his peers, setting age-group records in a wide range of distances. In his 70s he trained fairly traditionally, but as he approached 80, he found that rest had become so important he shifted to a three-day workout rotation, running one day (up to 16 miles), then walking 6 miles on each of the next two days. "I also raced a lot, using the races as my speed work," he says.

Only running every third day was a radical change from his prior training formula. But, he notes, "It worked." It worked so well, in fact, that at 80 he set world's bests for at least three distances: the mile, the 3,000m and the half marathon.

Others find, though, that as the years mount, the onetime nuances of form, pacing, race strategy and training take a backseat to simply lining up for the next race start.

Marv Metzer, an 87-year-old from McCook, Nebraska, still manages a 3:26 half marathon. Not fast, but it's the equivalent of a 30-year-old's 1:43. At his age, he says, training becomes more and more like work, and it's increasingly difficult to stay in shape. You also have to get used to the fact that you're slower than you'd like to be. On a recent training run, he says, he noticed his shadow and "it looked like I was walking."

He's also had to reduce his racing (because otherwise he'd spend all of his time recovering) and cut his training drastically. "I'm only doing about 15 miles a week," he says. "A few years ago, I did 60."

But he plans to keep going, even if eventually he winds up walking. "Unless something happens," he says, "I'm still going to be out there moving."

Reif echoes the same sentiment. "Use it or lose it," he says. "Its very important to stay active and healthy. I am very motivated to live a healthy lifestyle for the rest of my life."

And from a much younger masters perspective, Cotner notes that with each new age group, everything readjusts. "But that's what masters running is," he says. "You're reinventing yourself every season. We wipe the slate and start over."

Priorities for the Super-Master Runner

• Ignore the voices that say you're too old.
• Reduce racing and training volume.
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• Keep running.

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