h2ofun wrote:
dirtymangos wrote:
My observation is that aging not only effects ones body but it also often effects ones motivation.
Both of my parents are in their seventies. They both seem to complain a lot about there deteriorating athletic performance.
But the volume, intensity, frequency and logical coherence of their efforts have also declined.
My father is the most ridiculous.
Father (72) says- "10 years ago I could easily hold sub-7 minute pace for half marathon. " (Almost true)
"Now I can barely run sub-9 for a 5k."
Response- "Well of course you are going to get slower. But 10 years ago you were running 45 miles/wk. Now you are doing 9. 10 years ago you did intervals, tempo runs. Now you just do whatever you feel like."
From older folks I talk to, plus folks around my age, for most, it is nothing about motivation. It is just the fact when one gets older, things do not work like they used to, or recover the same.
So you need more recover time between efforts which means you cannot do as much, which makes you slower, etc. My motivation has not changed, but what I can do now is not what I could do in my 40's.
And I expect what I can do now in my 50's will not be what I can do in my 60's, even though I sure will want to.
I think it has everything to do with motivation and life circumstances. Take a minute to think about your life path vs that of other 'folks'. You seem to have had kids early in life, raised a family and was laid off work in your early 50's. You now have ample free time and motivation to do something that you didn't do as a young person. You train as much as most pro athletes and have the flexibility to basically do what you want.
What about other folks? Many have different work arrangements and kids much later in life. My dad kept racing until his early 50's and then lost the spark to keep going. Life gets in the way and other priorities take over. Or people races when they were younger and don't feel the motivation to keep going past their 40's, 50's.
The latter is a much more common scenario. It takes a lot of time and effort to keep racing and training as you get older. Most folks aren't interested in keeping that going for 50years.
I know several people your age that still train seriously on the track and run some blistering times. They seem to manage just fine, but they are very motivated. Of course people get slower as they age, but the massive dropoff in race participation and results in the older categories is much more about life circumstances and motivation than it is about any physical reality of aging.
