Things that suck about being an aging runner

I plan on GAINING 100 LBS and becoming a weight thrower in Masters track

sUnDaY satch- wrote:

I plan on GAINING 100 LBS and becoming a weight thrower in Masters track

I was thinking about gaining another 10-12 pounds and becoming a clydesdale.

I also get delusional on those good days that I can still hit the times of my youth. That lasts about a day or two before reality hits back.

There's nothing like getting up in the morning and finding that the PF flared up overnight. Walking to the bathroom takes forever. It's amazing that 10-minutes later, I'm cruising down the road.

I'm thinking about doing some spin classes for my crosstraining instead of just slogging easy miles on the days between the hard stuff. However, I like running too much to only do it 3-4 days per week.

I really think my slowdown is the result of not doing the work that I did back in the day. I used to do speed sessions a couple of times per week. When the kids started doing their bit on Saturday mornings, I stopped racing as much. When I stopped racing, I stopped doing the speed sessions because it didn't seem worthwhile. Now, I run slow all the time. I would be better off running hard 3 days per week and crosstraining on the other days.

I do think the weight training is important because it provides you with overall toning and strength. My mother is 76 years old and can barely get around due to the lack of muscle strength. I don't want to end up like that.

I run with some younger people who are faster than me. One day we were talking about injuries and I mentioned that I haven't run without some kind of pain in several years. They were shocked. If I had to take time off every time something hurt I'd never run. I've just learned to deal with it, just like the loss of hair and the graying of the pubes.

running not good enough wrote:

Have you guys tried lifting weights?

No, but I guess I should!

oh no wrote:

Always hurting. I miss the days of being able to bang out a morning 10 miler, increasing the pace as I went, feeling incredible. Today, that same 10 miler is a painful crawl in which the only part I look forward to is finishing so the torchure can end. I would trade every PR I ever achieved "back in the day" just to be able to feel like a runner again. Instead, I feel like an old broken down piece of garbage.

This is the one that gets me (although, despite my advanced age, I am still able to correctly spell "torture").

I knew I'd get slower as I aged, and I'm okay with that. I simply adjust my goals and expectations accordingly, knowing I'll never again approach the times of my youth. I can chase "age group PRs", and I'm perfectly fine with that.

I just miss feeling good while running. I miss effortlessly cruising along on a crisp fall morning, enjoying the cool air and my limitless energy. There is no longer any such thing as an "easy run". Now, every single step of every single run is a struggle, start to finish. It is much harder to drag myself out of bed every day knowing that every step of my run is going to be miserably painful.

So I guess I have something else to be thankful for. I have many days when I'm just cruising along, feeling great. Of course, my watch is inexplicably running a lot faster than it used to. Must be something to do with relativity.

So what age did you guys hit your best times? I am wondering how much longer I have until I can expect these problems.

I am still dillusional to think that I can run 5:20 mile splits for 8 miles, but I can barely run a 7:10 for one mile.

Pey wrote:

I'll be 50 in Dec and still hit pr's since I first started running at age 33. I've just taken my first day off this last Monday since Memorial Day 06. I was never injured during that time, just wanted to take a few well deserved days off before training hard again to compete in the 50-59 age group. I'm hoping to set new all time pr's in the mile, 5k and marathon in my 50's. Yes it's still fun. The pr's are harder to come by but I'm healthy and still motivated. Life is good!

that's ok. i did my serious, competitive running from age 15 to age 30, including many 100 mile weeks, before retiring and turning into a regular guy who jogs some. been there, done that.

I found that I could run very nearly as fast as my younger times until my late 40s, although in my early 40s I noticed that I clearly needed more build up and more recovery time between quality efforts to do it. Now as I am about to turn 60, I find that I have been slowing down by about 1/2% per year for the last 10 years. For me now, on almost all runs I feel old and creaky for about the first 20 minutes, but then the joints warm up, the aerobic system opens up, and the running feels like it did in my younger days, but at about :30/mile slower.

I find that I too need agood mile or so to feel warmed up, whereas when I was younger I could shoot out the door at full speed . . .Yeah, those days are gone. But I also feel like I training a lot smarter now. Bottom line, as decrepit and slow as we feel we are, we doing better than 95% of the AMerican population. And I do like the age graded tables. I have run some races in Cnetral Park, put on by the NYRRC, and they always have age-graded results, and I find that I actually do pretty well overall, on an age-graded basis, even though I will never hit my PRs for the 5k again.