Super impressive: 62-year old Tommy Hughes - 2:30:05 marathon today in Manchester

haha. you can believe it. i might believe it a little. but like i said, i think the weight of the scientific evidence isn't on your side right now. and you may well believe youve optimized training and recovery for you--but if youve experienced exponential decline, the evidence probably suggests you havent actually figured out what works for you. thats obviously a ridiculous claim for me to make, because i know nothing about you. but if i know nothing about you other than that youve experienced exponential decline and i know the evidence suggests decline is largely linear across populations, my slightly better than coin flip guess is that youre doing it wrong. of course you might be an outlier exponential decayer too. and of course the evidence might swing back the other way at some point. so who knows whats right. but if i were you i might be making some tweaks. call me an optimist

We should be seeing Bekele run sub 2:20 when he is 60

What's the non-super shoes conversion, contrasted with a few years ago top 60-64 Master's/WR?

It’s possible that age-related performance decline is quite heavily related to one’s hormonal state, effecting overall muscle/tissue regeneration. Did not the subject of this thread have some type of ‘surgery’(?) related to his thyroid, or other? Does he consequently take pharmaceutical(s) related to that issue, with or without a TUE?

So anyone know what happened to Martin Rees, the iron welshman who was throwing down similar times same age five years ago, but with pre-bouncy era shoes? From Power of 10 it looks like 2016 was his last year of competing. I seem to remember he was a blue-collar worker of some sort on his feet all day.

Do you believe in doping though? That's where you're not challenging your perceptions.

“Tommy had surgery to remove his parathyroid gland.”

^I’m somewhat surprised I don’t see this mentioned much (if ever) in the online discussions (not articles) regarding Tommy. Would this surgery imply consequently depending on endocrine drugs for elevated performance?

Ed Whitlock's PR was 2:31:09 when he was 48. He took a break from running and returned to it in his sixties, building up to 140 mpw on that cemetery path.

Astonishing performance by an amazing runner who is fortunate enough to be able to do this.

Cograts to him.

Let's not forget that every individual runner and running performance is unique and the outcome of an experiment of one. There will be outlier performance examples like this at every level of competition, but they are more noticeable among very young and older runners. Every running performance is attributable to unique and complex reactions to an infinite number of variables, including genetic and environmental.

Someone else could have lived the very same life as Mr. Hughes, attempting to maintain the same training, lifestyle, habits etc. and their marathon time could be 2:25 at 62 but more likely they would have stopped running long ago due to injury, the relative lack of success from running slow, or mental burnout from trying to be something they cannot be.

So we should celebrate this achievement as it expands the boundaries of human potential.

But the vast majority of 62 year olds should know that it is also a huge accomplishment to run one quarter mile in 2:30.

Parathyroid gland surgery and subsequent medications should not affect performance.

He worked in the steel industry and at some stage in the final years of his amazing veterans racing career he took redundancy/was made redundant and was living more like a full time athlete.

Are you sure about that - one lap of a track at a 10 minute mile pace? At 'just' 62 it doesn't sounds that huge.

I didn’t make the comment. But since 99.9% of 62 yr olds I know couldn’t make it around the track once at any pace without stopping, let alone 10 min/mile pace, I’d have to agree with him.

I guess that explains why he was so slow in his 60's compared with "Lightning" Tommy. Yet somehow Ed rewrote all the age-group wr's when he returned.

He is a total specimen.
You can’t run 2:30 because of shoes. 5:45 miles for 26.2 is ridiculously difficult for anyone over 40 years old.

A few centimeters of foam isn’t magic. I feel bad for anyone who thinks foam and a stiff shoe 👠 propels a 60 year old to 2:30. In 5-10 years you will not see 100s of guys running 2:30 at 60. The shoes have been around for 4-5 years and there is only 1 of him.

This age grades to 2:00:29.
Right.

Just look at his form. He just moves forward, forward, forward. It's simply amazing, no explanation, a total freak runner. I'm impressed with his hip extension at that age. Great height on his back kick, I would have thought he'd be more of a shuffler at this age. No major benefit from the shoes as he slides into his stride instead of popping up.