I rarely post here, although I've been a LR forumite since 2005. 60 y.o.
Since most of the past five years has been what seems like a long, slow, painful march towards the grave, with three L5 disc bulges/herniations (leading to layoffs from running of 5 1/2, 7, and 4 1/2 weeks, respectively), and various other aches and pains, I wanted to share two bits of good news.
The first is that I finally got back into racing last weekend after an 18 month drought forced upon me by a lagging hamstring tweak. I ran a local 5K here in Oxford, MS. I've done virtually nothing faster than 8:00 pace in the past six months, and very little of that. My usual W and F runs are 7 or 8 miles, run as progressions, with the first mile or two at 10:00 or slower and, if I'm feeling good, the last mile or two at 8:30 to 8:45. (In my last 5K, 18 months ago, I ran 7:05s. The decline has been precipitous.) My goal last Saturday was 1) don't rip anything and 2) to, if possible, average 7:59s or better.
Much to my surprise, I averaged 7:34s. I was first over-60 and, startlingly, first grandmaster as well. My training has been somewhat less than I would have liked, probably 25-35 mpw with no long runs over 10 miles and not terribly many of those. But I'll take it! I ran at submax effort, and I have had no hills or speedwork in my training diet. So the road to racing has once again opened up, and I can dare to dream a little.
The other bit of good news is that my knees, which felt like s--t six months ago, are now fine. It's quite startling, really. Six months ago, I was having runs where every single step hurt; where I sometimes found myself grinding to a halt one minute into a run and saying "WTF is this?" It was bad. It felt like the jig was up, frankly.
[Joke: What do you call an aging runner with bad knees? A cyclist.]
About six months ago I began taking one 500 mg glucosamine caplet every morning with my usual array of vitamins. (The recommended dose was 1500 mg, three caplets, a day.) I noticed absolutely no difference for at least three months. Just nothing. Then, at a certain point, it suddenly occurred to me that I hadn't thought about my knees in a while. And now they're OK. 500 mg. a day, every day.
So it is indeed possible to reverse apparently reversible declines--or at least one of them. I used to ice my knees. Now that's not needed.
One final note, something I posted in a separate thread. I ran the race, and a workout the Wednesday before, in a pair of Asics Gel Banditos that I've raced in since 2010. I noticed how powerful my stride felt, and this made me dissatisfied with the Brooks Ghost 10s that I've been training in. I began to look into the question of offset--the relative height of heel vs. forefoot--and made the startling discovery of just how hungry my feet are (and 'scuse the mixed metaphor) for lower heels and lower offset, and just how different the Banditos are from the Ghosts. Yes of course, the racing shoes are lighter, but that can't begin to account for the difference in stride power.
Brooks Ghost 10: 10.4 oz. Heel 30 mm. Forefoot 18 mm. Offset 12 mm
Asics Gel Banditos: 7.9 oz. Heel 19 mm. Forefoot 10 mm. Offset 9 mm.
The offset difference seems relatively small, and the Banditos aren't even considered low-offset shoes. (It seems as though 4 mm offset qualifies you for that.) Still, my subjective impression is that by shifting my point of contact forward, more towards the midfoot/ball of my foot, the Asics are giving me a more powerful, more harmonious, more natural stride. It's quite possible that the huge difference in heel height (30 mm vs 19 mm) accounts for some of that.
But there's another key difference in my subjective experience of both shoes, and it's counterintuitive. When going downhill--and I experienced this in a powerful way this morning, when I took a very hilly 8 miler--it feels as though the lighter, lower, less padded shoe enables a stride that transfers significantly LESS shock to my knees and hips with every step. I was able to bomb down the hills, really hit them hard, on my aging legs and my newly OK knees, and I never felt I was doing damage. It's the first time I've ever worn my racing shoes on this particular run. (In fact, I haven't done this run for at least six months in any shoes.) I did so because I wanted to test my hypothesis--and the test was a resounding success. In the Ghosts, with that 30 mm lift, I found it almost impossible in past runs to lean forward enough on the downhills to achieve a midfoot stride. Instead, I'm always catching some heel, which causes me to slow, which causes me, without wanting to, to settle back on my heels a bit--and then it's all over. I'm shuffling down the hills, bang! bang! bang!, and my knees are taking a beating. Today I just kept cadence high, extended my stride, and blasted down. I felt like a runner again. We all know that feeling.
I don't want to make the Asics my daily trainers. (I actually ran this morning's run in a brand-new old-stock pair that I bought on eBay earlier this week: eight year old shoes, pristine new, in the box.) So I'm in the market for some lightweight trainers with moderate offset and heels roughly the same height at the Gel Banditos.
In any case, now that I'm actually paying attention to shoe dimensions, I feel as though I've begun to figure out something that has remained a mystery all these years. I'm trusting my subjective impressions, but I'm verifying them with data. I always knew that I was headed in a more minimalist direction. Running is fun again!