Hello everyone,
I have been a runner for the past almost 30 years and a triathlete for most of that time. For some reason running is so much harder in my late 50’s (female) than ever before. I do strength training, balance, mobility and my weight has stayed nearly the same. What gives? Does anyone else struggle with running as an older athlete? What are your strategies?
Thanks!
KK
Oh boy did this just resonate with me right to the core. In the last year I’ve put in 5-6 runs a week, 7 runs a week through the winter. I took off nearly 2 weeks to heal a sore foot and I feel like I’m at absolute 0 fitness. Gasping, weird ungainly stride, and itching all over. Also late fifties woman lifetime runner. It’s disheartening to say the least.
Wish I had a solution, I just have commiseration.
Exactly why the Aquabike races have a majority of older people
.
I’m 53 years old, and have been running for 38 of those years.
nowadays, I feel like I’m just waiting for my next injury.
I’m literally thankful for every run.
This is definitely related to menopause. Men need not chime in unless you are an expert in hormones and female grand masters athletes. I have been racing on and off for 40 years (20 as a pro). For me everything was great until age 60. I entered menopause fairly late so my decline came a little later. Don’t get me wrong I was slowly declining mostly in the run through my mid to late fifties. Not sure why the run is the most affected by aging but for me it is. I know women in my age group that get TUE’s for hormone therapy but I won’t go the route of legalized cheating. If you see someone in their mid to late 50’s improving then you can logically suspect they are doing hormone therapy with the added testosterone which is a big no no. Testosterone is banned under all circumstances by WADA and there is no TUE available. So don’t be discouraged what you are going through is a natural aging process and the best way to combat it is to do lots of workouts to enhance your strength and efficiency. Lifting heavy weights might help for certain things but I have found a great coach that gives me very specific workouts to combat the effects of aging. Good luck and don’t give up. Your running may be slower but take comfort in the fact that all women our age that are doing things legally and not doping are feeling the same thing.
Holy carp, chick! You are singing my song! Interesting I started a very similar thread HERE> (https://forum.slowtwitch.com/.../?page=unread#unread) just about a week ago.
I used to be a really good runner back in my younger days. Not to say I was particularly fast, but I could pretty comfortably hold a 7:30-8:00 minute/mile pace for 15-20 miles “back in the day” (30 years ago). Today, I’m killing myself just to do a sub 10 minute mile even if it’s just a stand alone sprint. In my triathlons, I’m pretty solidly middle-of-the-pack in the swim and bike, but I lose a lot of ground in the run. On average, I’m just barely in the top half coming out of T2, but most of the time I’m in the bottom quarter by the time I cross the finish line.
I think for whatever reason the decline in performance accelerates somewhere between 50-60. I am male and 58. At 20 I could do a 36 min 10k 1:20 half marathon. I am not sure I could do a sub 2 hr half anymore and I train about 21 miles a week mainly at 1 min per mile slower than what would be race pace. I do 10-20 percent of volume slightly below what would be a 2 hr race pace. 8 years ago 47 min 10K now I think I could do 51 minutes with great distress.
I seem to take much more of a pounding than when I was younger. At 20 I weighed 160 pds now 172. On a 6 ft frame. But I have put on some muscle from years of swimming.
No longer cycling but my swimming is almost as fast as when I was in my 20s.
On thing is the first sigh you may be getting an overuse injury back off. You don’t lose much fitness in a few weeks of reduced volume but 2 months of no exercise takes a long time to get back fitness.
I have also notice young people (in this case swimmers that join our masters group) gain fitness at a rate much faster than I do. In fact with great effort I seem to hardly gain it at all!
Older people lose tendon stiffness. If you don’t train and load tendons properly with appropriate exercises and loads and ranges your tendon stiffness will diminish over time
Are you referring to plyometrics, weight training (specific to running)?
Could you please clarify?
Thank you.
KK
I am closing in on 60 and resemble this remark. I literally pass zero people after T2 and just continuously move backwards on the run. In an Olympic tri, on a good day I can hold 5 min per km, but it is 6ish at half IM. Most of my training runs are right at 6 min per km, but I warmup more like 7 min per km. Sometimes in a race I will see an athlete ahead and say to myself, “that guy’s form looks bad, maybe I have a hope of catching him…”, and then the bad form guy limps off into the distance dusting me". For context I ran my open marathon PB at exactly 4 min per km…I have not seen that number on my garmin in several years even on a downhill with a tailwind even for 100m !!!
Older people lose tendon stiffness. If you don’t train and load tendons properly with appropriate exercises and loads and ranges your tendon stiffness will diminish over timeI think this has a lot to do with it, especially in the feet. The sensation I’ve associated with it is I have no “spring in my step”. There really is something to that. I think when we’re younger, our feet are much more spring like. They can absorb energy with the foot strike and then release it with the push off. At least for me today, when my foot hits the ground, it just feels like my foot goes “splat” and all that energy just goes right into the road.
Yeah I’ve seen a lady doing things in her 60s the best girls can’t do in their 30s around my way. Mixed feelings about it but just my conjecture and observation. And many dedicated younger men cannot do.
Hello everyone,
I have been a runner for the past almost 30 years and a triathlete for most of that time. For some reason running is so much harder in my late 50’s (female) than ever before. I do strength training, balance, mobility and my weight has stayed nearly the same. What gives? Does anyone else struggle with running as an older athlete? What are your strategies?
Thanks!
KK
Lots of things contribute to this & I put some strategies in the bottom half of my post
For women peri menopause and menopause don’t help
For everyone:
leg spring stiffness declines - our tendons become less able to act like a spring when running
decline in vo2 max
decline in muscle mass
increase injuries as one ages and then they also take longer to heal from. Downtime is a HUGE enemy of staying fast as one gets older.
Less emphasis on things that can help us go fast.
When we’re younger we don’t give one thought to doing something like 10x200 full gas on the track when we’re out of shape/barely been training and ripping them off in 27-28. if a 50 year old tried that it’d be the snap of a tendon or muscle heard round the world. On the bike we’re more likely to do things like oh here’s this hill that takes :11 to get up and crush it. As we age we’re less and less likely to do that, same with running. older athletes tend to be less likely to go out and do a really, really hard session of short :20 hill sprints.
Recovery takes longer as well
Less Testosterone, both M and F
More life stress. never discount how much stress impacts ability to recover and train
Did i mention it takes longer to recover and it takes longer to shed fatigue
Sleep. Youngsters mostly sleep like a rock. I sold insomnia drugs for 6-7 years when I was a pharma rep. The average person using insomnia drugs was >50yo. Sleep is the fountain of youth. How are you sleeping?
If you’re like my wife who is going through menopause you have 1-5 hot flashes every night. Recipe for less recovery right there. You can take sleep drugs and that will help you sleep through some of them. Did I mention sleep is one of the most important tools a 50+ athlete has in their training?
If you look at charts showing S/B/R times over the decades of life, the S/B stay pretty constant, sure there is some degradation. When you hit your mid 40s to late 50s, somewhere in there everyone falls off the cliff. In the late 30s to mid even late 40s you may personally may or may not have some tiny step downs. If your rate of decline is slower than everyone around you congrats! On average though run times will drop faster than a 2 ton rock
Strategies?! I’ve got your/some strategies. There is some hope
Lift weights, get strong and take a deload week every 4th,5th,6th or 7th week and a deload month every 6mo or so. Why? because you’re not 25 anymore. You need some time to allow your muscles and joints to recover. Sure you may lose a touch of strength in that month. Who cares? You’ll gain it back in 3 weeks and you’ll probably see accelerated gains for the next two months than if you hadn’t deloaded
Go fast - you have to work on power development. Find those really short hills on the bike and crush them. Find some short hills on the run and slowly work into crushing those. Work into doing a few really fast 200s or 300s or 400s. You have to (re)develop the neural pathways to run fast and then you actually have to run fast. Start with strides if you’ve not been doing this.
Run less often. It might be good to run 5x/wk instead of 6x or run 5x in 4d instead of 5x in 7d. More rest for more recovery. I still think 4x week is the minimum. Do one or two runs shorter than normal and one or two runs longer than normal. if your bread n butter run is say 7 miles maybe do 4 miles two days and 9 miles two days.
Or add in more transition runs where you run 10min easy off the bike. That’s a low recovery cost activity there.
Change your training from more tempo/threshold to more vo2 max. You can stave off the decline of vo2 max. Of course the faster you go and the more often the greater the injury risk. be smart
Swim more. Great for cardiovascular loading and low recovery cost. It’s a lot easier to recover from adding in an extra 1k of swimming 3x week than 1k of running.
Walk your dog more. Adding in an extra 5 miles of dog walking per week isn’t going to lean you out, or make you super fast. What it will do is burn some extra calories and slow the addition of extra weight. Sure if you’ve not been training at all you’re going to get somewhat leaner. Think of it as extra insurance against the some of the joys/sins of vice(s). When I was training 20h/wk I had 1-2 beers/night and never thought about it. Now, walking the dogs 15 miles per week offers some protection against nights where I overindulge.
Hope that helps
Spot on! I was just told on Friday not to do marathons any more due to severe arthritis in one of my knees and now tears on both sides of the meniscus. I just turned 55 and running has been really hard for the past couple of years. I didn’t find out that I was a decent runner until I turned 40 and started doing triathlons and longer running stuff. I had just set my sights on one focused goal of qualifying for the Boston marathon again and leaving behind 70.3s (after having done ~25 over the last 15 years). Now, I’m supposed to kiss that goodbye?
I eat well, have a great coach for training, work with a strength coach, and generally do all the things. I’ve watched some of my competitors in the 55-59 this year race a 5:11 70.3 and wonder what they are doing that works for them.
Geez…not on HRT, but estrogen is a dominant missing factor here. Can’t put on muscle without it. Can’t keep my joints happy without it. Can’t really sleep well without it.
Bugger 
lol! I can totally relate to your comment on the bad form guy in your sights;) I still have a great swim/bike combo so when I get to the run I get to see a lot of bad form youngsters go flying by me. Sad but that is the reality at 64;)
Strategies?! I’ve got your/some strategies. There is some hope
Lift weights
Go fast
Run less often.
Swim more.
Walk your dog more.
+1 to all of that, particularly the dog walks 
since my old dog passed I haven’t been doing the regular daily walks and 2hr weekend walks, my run has slowed down even faster…
Author Jim Harrison (Legends of the Fall, etc):
“Every day of the year, the first thing I do after breakfast is take the dogs for a walk. They absolutely depend on it. But it’s also what’s best for me.”
all of those strategies kept me running reasonably well until late 50s, 60s has been horrid tho. No particular injuries, only getting slow as a slug…
plyometrics in particular seemed to be useful.
I am also wondering if our ability to store and use glycogen is compromised as we age. I definitely have had problems with severe bonking way earlier in my races now. Started around age 57. Of course studies on this are non existent.
I am also wondering if our ability to store and use glycogen is compromised as we age. I definitely have had problems with severe bonking way earlier in my races now. Started around age 57. Of course studies on this are non existent.
I would ask if you’re riding and/or running at higher outputs?
if you were riding say at 210w & now you’re riding at 225w then your kJ output is higher which can indicate you are probably burning a bit more glycogen.
Conversely if you’re less fit you may be overcooking things and leading to bonking.
You could also be under fueling.
You could also be having some sort of metabolic issues that impact storage or utilization. McArdle disease iirc
There are several possibilities. If you have detailed notes about when it’s happened you may be able to find a solution.
Definitely not a fitness problem. Still at the top of my age group. I have upped my watts on the bike the last year through great coaching and hard work but this was happening prior to that. I can tell you without fail that in 70.3’s I start to unravel at mile 6 of the run and IM races mile 13 of the run. I think low sodium is becoming a problem and I need to really focus on taking in more nutrition on the run. I race this weekend so we shall see if my shift in nutrition helps. Getting old stinks;)