Health issues from long term high mileage/marathon

Your problem is that you ran only 60-80mpw. When you felt aches and pains, you should have gradually increased your mileage. Once you are over 100mpw, you should feel it easier to handle the volume.

The reverse happens when you cut back on mileage. You initially feels better. But once your body gets used to a lower mileage, you find it not as easy. And then you are tempted to cut back even more. It's a downward spiral.

Anyone without disability can handle at least 100mpw. You just need to ignore your aches and pains. Like most things i life, they will go away if you ignore them long enough. It's all about motivation and commitment.

The Way We Were wrote:

Your problem is that you ran only 60-80mpw. When you felt aches and pains, you should have gradually increased your mileage. Once you are over 100mpw, you should feel it easier to handle the volume.

The reverse happens when you cut back on mileage. You initially feels better. But once your body gets used to a lower mileage, you find it not as easy. And then you are tempted to cut back even more. It's a downward spiral.

Anyone without disability can handle at least 100mpw. You just need to ignore your aches and pains. Like most things i life, they will go away if you ignore them long enough. It's all about motivation and commitment.

There is a certain truth to this. Sometimes you have to just "get over the hump" and things feel better on the other side. When I've been in poor shape due to layoff that's when I experience the most aches and pains.

The Way We Were wrote:

Your problem is that you ran only 60-80mpw. When you felt aches and pains, you should have gradually increased your mileage. Once you are over 100mpw, you should feel it easier to handle the volume.

The reverse happens when you cut back on mileage. You initially feels better. But once your body gets used to a lower mileage, you find it not as easy. And then you are tempted to cut back even more. It's a downward spiral.

Anyone without disability can handle at least 100mpw. You just need to ignore your aches and pains. Like most things i life, they will go away if you ignore them long enough. It's all about motivation and commitment.

I agree with you in terms of getting used to the mileage and aches will eventually go away in a quest to go faster.

I’m wondering about how a lot of running can have negative consequence when you’re older. Is there a sweet spot amount of running where you get the benefits of running but not be detrimental to your health.

There is no single, correct answer. It depends. Genetics will play a huge factor.

High mileage training and racing marathons resulted in soreness and aches and pains? You don't say.

Short answer is, yes, there are possible consequences of long term endurance training.

too hot wrote:

There is no single, correct answer. It depends. Genetics will play a huge factor.

Good response. The thing is most people are not bio-mechannically sound enough to be able to run even 70 mpw. It is an individual thing and what works for one athlete may not work for another because of body limitations. You have to experiment and determine what you can handle consistency and still function the rest of the day in the real world (job and family). Elite athletes do not have a job their job is running-recovery-therapy-auxillary exercises-rest-eating-sleeping. They are not working 8-10 hours a day and commuting another 1-3 hours a day.

I know people who have gotten older and had aches/pains and they never ran a step in their life. I knew one guy in a mobility scooter (died last week RIP) who couldn't walk because his knees were screwed and he never ran. I even had this conversation with him and it made me realize running and being healthy are two different things I guess that's why they call it Health 'and' Fitness.

Soft tissue repairs itself well over time. i did about 15 years of 70-90 MPW and have now backed down to 20-30 mpw very easy. All the soft tissue aches and pains I would have with high mileage are pretty much gone. What stays with you is arthritic changes. I have bone spurs in my foot and some osteoarthritic changes in the first metatarsal joint. I can still feel those, but it is nothing that gets in the way of anything.

Precious Roy wrote:

Soft tissue repairs itself well over time. i did about 15 years of 70-90 MPW and have now backed down to 20-30 mpw very easy. All the soft tissue aches and pains I would have with high mileage are pretty much gone. What stays with you is arthritic changes. I have bone spurs in my foot and some osteoarthritic changes in the first metatarsal joint. I can still feel those, but it is nothing that gets in the way of anything.

Glad you mentioned arthritic changes. Yes lots of sedentary folks experience them too but I would bet the percentage is much greater among high mileage runners. Two of my friends and I were at the top of the pack in Miami for a good many years in the ‘70s and early ‘80s and all three of us have been “crippled” for years. I lasted the longest - to age 58. We all still do lots of exercise, particularly the other two guys who are pretty fanatic. We just can't run. Yes a small sample but representative, I think.

Relevant question: Would I do it again, if I knew this awaited me? Yes, probably. Especially since I would not have believed it would happen to me. I was rarely injured. I LOVED being really fit and feeling like my body could do almost anything. And I LOVED high mileage. That is to say I loved it when Miami weather cooled down. And when I got to Seattle and to the SF Bay Area in the summer for long stretches.

Background: I am 44, have run at least 40 miles a week for the last 30 years, at least 60 most weeks for the last 20, average over the last 20 years probably around 75-80 with sustained peak of about 100-120. Speed 2-3 days week. Still maintaining around 80. The most important thing that I learned about mileage is that there are other variables involved. If you get the other variables right, the mileage is beneficial for your health and fitness. If you get them wrong, you will be less fit and healthy. Fit and healthy go together - it is hard to make your body perform at top level if some parts of out are out of whack.

The specifics of the variables will vary from person to person as was already observed by several posters. For me the following was important:

- Adequate sleep

- Reduction of stress in life (managed to do this somehow while providing for a wife and starting with one and now up to ten children)

- Healthy diet - fruits, vegetables, grains, fish, light meat, no fast food or any food of poor nutritional reputation

- Avoiding harmful substances - in particular alcohol and caffeine - I realize that some people will debate whether those are harmful, but I consider those harmful for various reasons and stay away from them as a matter of principle.

- Split the runs into doubles, and even triples if the circumstances and creativity permit - which meant sometimes putting two babies in the stroller, and taking two running kids running to a grocery store.

- Understand what subsystem is the weakest link in the chain and be gentle to it. For me it is the adrenals. I noticed mine wear out at 6:40 pace or faster (for reference, my marathon PRs are 2:23:57a St. George, 2:27:46a Top of Utah, 2:30:32 St. Jude), and kept my easy runs slower than that. If I got bored, I would just run one quick mile to "get the devil out of my legs", and that was usually enough to keep me happy for the rest of the run at 7:10-7:20 or even slower.

- Stay out of trouble. I noticed that if I ran more than 5K on the track on a frequent basis or on trained on slanted surfaces, it would irritate my lower back, but I could run on asphalt without any problems, so I trained on asphalt using the track only for occasional fitness tests/sense of pace calibration.

Gainesville/Miami guy wrote:

Glad you mentioned arthritic changes. Yes lots of sedentary folks experience them too but I would bet the percentage is much greater among high mileage runners.

actually, it's not. in fact runners are supposed to have less arthritis than sedentary folks.

Mechanically: This has a lot to do with your biomechanics, acute injuries, and recovery. Runners with decent biomechanics who take time to heal after injury and ramp up their training again in responsible ways should do little longterm damage to themselves and mostly enjoy the benefits.

Cardiovascularly: Excessive training beyond what is aerobic or when dehydrated could cause your heart to grow, harden, or show damage in ways that could be permanent. Fortunately as a high mileage runner you're doing mostly aerobic running, so the stress on your heart shouldn't be too much as long as you are properly fueled and rested.

Chemically: High levels of training could lower testosterone, iron, or throw things like thyroid or endocrine systems out of balance. Most of this should be fixable with good nutrition and responsible training. Time off should help a lot of that come back quickly if you watch your nutrition.

Basically running is healthy if you do it right. If you overtrain or push anything beyond a boundary you run a risk of doing something that could take much longer to recover from. Then if you keep cumulatively compounding the stress on your body when already beyond what is healthy you enter the territory where a bone fracture could harden into a permanent limp or gait change, your strained heart makes a longterm adaptation, or you become dependent on a prescription for months to years because of some chemical shortage/excess.

I see a lot of older guys running with a sort of limp that has only gotten worse as they've aged. They just never found a way to change a biomechanic or couldn't bring themselves to take serious time off during a normal injury, so they never healed when the repetitive or acute stress happened and now they're defined by it. You don't have to become that guy if you take your health and recovery seriously. Soft tissue heals more quickly and so as we age it's easy to handle the aerobic aspect of training often to the detriment of bone or tendon. And then you have people who believe "no pain, no gain," and are basically setting themselves up for a health disaster when they're old. Just be smart about it and train within yourself.

you guys are obsessive, and a bit messed up mentally.

true distance runners

Shoebacca wrote:

I see a lot of older guys running with a sort of limp that has only gotten worse as they've aged. They just never found a way to change a biomechanic or couldn't bring themselves to take serious time off during a normal injury, so they never healed when the repetitive or acute stress happened and now they're defined by it. You don't have to become that guy if you take your health and recovery seriously. Soft tissue heals more quickly and so as we age it's easy to handle the aerobic aspect of training often to the detriment of bone or tendon. And then you have people who believe "no pain, no gain," and are basically setting themselves up for a health disaster when they're old. Just be smart about it and train within yourself.

True dat!

Being a quitter whimp has paid dividends.

But I do admire tough runners kinda like watching the guys in the flying suits and Red Bull Rampage admire yes but also think they are nutz maybe I am just a bit jealous.

Seriously or more seriously this last cycle of quitting for a few years and being able to return at 60 has been tough but after 18 months I feel like a runner again....light springy low resting HR all the good stuff.

This article scared me into NOT goofing off anymore. So dam the torpedos full speed ahead no more breaks cause once you fall off you are done!

The Way We Were wrote:

Your problem is that you ran only 60-80mpw. When you felt aches and pains, you should have gradually increased your mileage. Once you are over 100mpw, you should feel it easier to handle the volume.

The reverse happens when you cut back on mileage. You initially feels better. But once your body gets used to a lower mileage, you find it not as easy. And then you are tempted to cut back even more. It's a downward spiral.

Anyone without disability can handle at least 100mpw. You just need to ignore your aches and pains. Like most things i life, they will go away if you ignore them long enough. It's all about motivation and commitment.

Oh you will see if this cavalier approach will pay off for you when you are getting older... good luck

I did the whole grind of being a sub elite chasing an OT qualifier for a few years after college. Could sustain 110 mile weeks for 3-4 months at a time heading into a marathon but everything was always sore. Always felt like I was about to get sick. Couldn’t keep muscle on my upper body, etc.

The short term effects on your health of running that many miles weren’t great day to day, but didn’t matter after the race was over. I can’t imagine there are many negative long term effects of training that hard for a few years. We all get sore and creaky when we’re 60 regardless of how many miles we ran in our 20s. Sun exposure is a big one. But if you are able to get your body up to running 100 mpw, then it’s kind of a sign your body has what it takes to handle running that much. You can fake 50-60 mpw, but you just can’t fake 100s. You either have it or you don’t.

And Crocs, of course!

I'm glad someone brought this up. I'm concerned about one of my friends. He works 40+ hrs a week and is now doing 100+ MPW in SINGLES. Yes, in singles. I've tried suggesting doubles but his schedule doesn't allow (but somehow allows for a 20+ mile run at 3 AM?). I'm super worried and don't know if there's anything I can say or at least if there are warning signs he's gonna get seriously hurt. He refuses to take supplements like iron too, saying he can get it all from his diet. Does not go to doctor to get levels tested either. Is there anything I can do?