I talked to a European 4 min. miler once. Nothing special obviously, and at the time I was not enough into running to care at the time, it was still my first year. But he told me that in Europe, they don't have people start training seriously until they are 20 and older, at least.
Grammatically terrible, partially irrelevant, go me!
the point could be wrote:
There's one theory that says, essentially, that we all have a certain number of running miles and when you reach the total that's it.
Haven't made up my mind on this. As it seems way oversimplified. Yet there could be some truth.
My own running was nipped in the bud at 19 as i contracted chondramalacia. And from then on decided i would just run for fun and to be healthy. And to learn how to go the distance. And it's never too late to learn a good thing.
My recent (5 years) barefoot running experiments have "evolved" my pleasure&health-driven approach to include amateur competition and conventional training methods. When you experiment with anything, it is a good idea to have some reference points and competition and racing defenitely offer some.
But the most interesting area of this experimentation has to do with re-generation: of tissue and will alike.
The soles of our feet regenerate with recovery. The souls of our minds need to do the same. Old shoes wear down and that's it. They are thrown away and you have to buy new ones. But we can recover.
My feeling is performance-driven obligation leads to injury. Pleasure&Health-driven competition leads to well-being and healing.
So far so good and improvement continues against the aging curve. But the Olympics and Masters championships podiums are still out of sight. The podiums, but not getting to the starting line...
sounds like the argument that we are born with a certain number of heart beats, and then we die.
Living in the Past wrote:
There was a thread awhile back about declining maximum heart rates as we age and how continuous training limits the decline, which is irreversible. That would argue in favor of guys who never quit running rather than guys who started late or who started up again.
But then jtupper weighed in on that thread, saying that max HRs were all over the map, that they didn't change much in his longitudinal test group, and that they weren't predictive of performance.
That's reassuring, because at 52 years of age I have a max HR of 170, which fits nicely with the 220 minus age formula. It seems natural to me that a lower HR max would mean less blood delivery and therefore inferior performance in an endurance sport. But Daniels's comments are encouraging. By the way, my morning pulse of 39-42 is the same as it was in my teens and 20s.
For the record, I cycle about 10 hours a week, going hard three days, easy three days, and resting one day to work on core strength. I haven't been able to run for 20 years due to a hip injury that flares up from the jarring of running.
Any thoughts about the role of declining maximun heart rates through aging and whether its better to continue training rather than laying off for years?
Interesting... In my late 20's I was able to get the HR up to 205. That was flying up a hill at sub 5 pace. I was surprised last month to still be able to push it to 200 at 41 years old. Sadly that was running all out on a track at about 7:00 pace!
I'm putting in slow base work and wondering if at my age I should do some sort of "speed" even during the base building?
I'm putting in slow base work and wondering if at my age I should do some sort of "speed" even during the base building?
It would probably help you enough to get better quality base workouts.
I noted that last winter when my stress fracture was starting to come back I dropped back to running only 2 days per week without any cross-training, so my heart got a little de-conditioned. I actually would even get a little short winded climbing a few flights of stairs, although I could jog for an hour the peak exertion rate was greater than the continuous rate.
So I mixed in a few treadmill intervals once a week -- at first it made me very out of breath, but after a couple weeks I got quite a bit faster on my "easy" runs and also after about a month my intervals got about 1:30 per mile faster.
So even if you don't do speed work as an all-out effort on a religious schedule, you can still easily benefit from a little speed work.
Sad? I don't think I said anything sad or anything but positive and supportive stuff. Hell, I have run hundreds of thousands of joyful miles and have performed pretty dang well up to my late fifties.
And I think you are also off on the "talent" idea. It IS true that well-planned, intelligent training and health practices combined with lots of hard work and miles (done with reasonable limits) can pay off with some pretty good results for the non-gifted runner. Undeniable--well, you can deny it, but you'd be wrong--or at least wrong-headed.
My times were not any better than second-rank in most distance races, and I have only one one open division race, out in Chicken Head Arizona in August.Talented persons who put in my hundred mile weeks and track workouts and regular racing and, well, yes, tough-mindedness, were running sub-2:30 marathons, 4:30 miles, and 1:50's 20-milers AT forty-five yrs. (Look up Jack Foster some time.) After months of training for a 10k in Chico, CA, with a bunch of Bay Area seniors, on the track, in the hills, and on the roads, on a good day and feeling great, I could only manage a 34:46. Several guys from our training group beat my butt by a minute or more, and they were several years older.
Oh, yeah, smart hard work and savvy make up for a good bit of talent.
Cheer up, man, you just have to put in the work and keep a positive attitude. Oh, and miles.:)
He wants to run!!!!