Auntie Em Goes Running

Interesting question? I'm in the same boat as you. I never trained to get faster until now (45 yrs. old). It's a fact that we slow down as we age, but I've been told it's maybe 1% per year or something...it's not much. I think if I had been a fast runner in my twenties, and trained for it, set a bunch of fast PR's, I could come close to, but not quite get those PR's today with hard training. I believe that running in general will slow some of the effects of aging. The nice thing for folks like us is we get to set PR's now in middle age.

Hmm intersting, I don't know what the answer maybe. Like you and JD I have never trained to run fast when I was young, but now am trying to get a bit faster. For my I don't think I'm very sucessful at it.

Since I've just started to train this way, I believe I'll get faster before I start slowing down...

I think I'll get faster yet for awhile anyway. I'm pretty determined.

Wow you worked out a lot today!

I can't really answer your question. But I do know that I have gotten faster as I have aged. It could have been b/c in my early 20's and in highschool I hated running, sweating, anyting that seemed competitive. I would walk and lift weights but that is about it.

I better get faster with age otherwise what in the heck am I doing all this for? LOL

This question is one I think about all the time, and I make a point of reading everything I can about "old" runners. I just know that I am way faster now, nearly 51 y.o., than I was 5 years ago. That tells me that it is not such a simple equation.

Hi Aunti, Nice run today.

As we age we lose muscle mass. No matter what we won't be as fast as if we could have been if we were younger. But, since we did not start running until later it is possible to still get "better" for a while - depending on the person into the mid-50's when the decline is more pronounced. The longer the distance the more we can improve as we age since speed is what takes strength (which no matter what you will lose slowly over time as you lose muscle mass). Take Joan Benoit, she is still running great for her age (17:xx 5K recently) - but that is nearly 3 mins off of what she could do in her 30's; I am sure she still trains as hard as ever (or at least as hard as she can without injury). Also, us older folks (over 40 since muscle mass declines linearly with time after 40) are limited a little in how much we can do because it takes us longer to recover from hard workouts too. There was a 40 year old guy who was taking PEDs a few years ago who was a good national class runner (Eddy Helynbeck (sp?) probably not able to compete internationally) - the main reason was that the drugs enabled him to run really hard all the time because they help you recover.

Do you have Noake's book, The Lore of Running? He has a pretty nice chapter that describes the biology of this.

Bonnie's explanation is right on regarding the comparison to younger age potential. There is also the phenomenon of improvement at any age. I read at least once that we can improve our running for at least 10 years, no matter what age we begin. (Note the word "can" rather than "do." It is potential.) Examples of this are Helen Klein (in her 80s) and Fauja Singh (in his 90s)- who both experienced marathon PRs in their current decade after having run for at least 2 decades each.

When I first read about Helen Klein it was like the rainbow appearing a la choir music -- "that's what I want to be like in my 80s!!" That was the first "elderly" fit person I had ever heard of. My grandmothers were invalids in their 80s and my parents died young. It was truly mind boggling. But I digress...

No, Bonnie, I don't have that book. I'll look for it. I am familiar with the theory that we inevitably lose muscle mass, but it sort of doesn't make sense as to why. When I was younger and body building, I felt that estrogen was perhaps getting in the way of muscle growth - surely it was! Now, with less estrogen floating around in me interfering, shouldn't I have an advantage in building muscle?

I too am inspired by Klein and Singh, and often by myself! Maybe only time will tell.

My understanding is that the loss of estrogen actually hurts recovery from muscle mass loss actually. It is not truly "muscle mass" but "skeletal muscle mass" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarcopenia. My guess, though I haven't actually looked up an articles on it - is that it is correlated with bone loss.

Since we are physically active we can prolong this decline somewhat, but muscle mass loss is a very well-demonstrated physiologic occurrence and really there is no way around it. This is why there are "age-graded" performance tables in track-and-field (WAVA tables).

I think that for 1/2 marathon and marathon distances are the last to be affected (e.g., can improve into an older age), as they rely more on stamina.

This type of diminishing strength is going to be much more apparent to people who have been running all of their lives (like my Dean - who no matter how hard he trains is running 5K - 10K's 3-5 mins slower than he did in his peak years, and he says that it is a faster decline now at 50 than it was in his 40s) and less so to people like us who started running later in life.

Yes, that makes sense. Also makes sense that older athletes can still excel at distances.