50+ Masters Training and Racing Open Forum

Wow, a 10-year thread! Hoping to read through it all, but in the meantime, hoping to hear from others who have had success treating persistent hamstring issues (2+ years). I am trying to strengthen glutes/hamstrings by lying on my back with my feet up on an exercise ball and doing "bridges". It's hard to tell if it is muscle or tendon, but I feel it on uphills and during speedwork typically.

I was a 2:45 marathoner in my early 40s, now in my late 50s I no longer run long and just want to break 20 again in the 5K. It's surreal that I used to do that 8 times in a row without stopping. The slowdown was imperceptible, but real.

I think you will see from reading this thread that your experience is common. I believe likewise, how you deal with that reality becomes increasingly individualized. By reviewing this thread you will see a variety of approaches that should be helpful.

condolences on the injury. Hamstrings are bane of my existence since a little uphill just before end of 2010 cherry blossom 10-mile, when i apparently sold my soul to the devil -- PR at age 49 in exchange for eternal hamstring issues. I'm not good on physiology specs and don't know if we have same thing, but fwiw I'm doing ok with it these days (knock wood) and do the exercise ball thing you mention plus:

1. on weightlifting days, reverse hamstring curls, one leg at a time, 3 X 10 reps at 50 pounds

2. roughly 2-minute segments of backward jogging a few times in most of my easy runs

3. inchworm planks (at least i think that's the label - walk your hands out to the point that you're basically doing a plank, then catch up with feet)

4. stretching (standing up, straight leg placed on chair, bend over toward it)

5. yoga -- have gone more to short classes [lots of good 10-min videos on internet] daily rather than getting to an hour-long class weekly

6. eccentric part of nordic curl -- using pullup bar placed in doorway just a few inches off the ground to hold my feet

7. conservative about injecting speed work. i do a decent amount of volume (training by time, not miles) but much of it very slow, some being on treadmill while i'm reading the paper in a.m. When hamstring is acting up i can often keep jogging quite a bit without aggravating, but speedwork or racing not so much.

got most of above from people on this thread or on masters weekend runs and races thread before i was on this one, also some from physical therapist.

good luck!

--Dave

One other consideration, if you end up running less, remember the correlation coinefficient of belly drag. You’ll never be able to outrun a fork.😹

Just added running on motorized treadmill with the motor off feels like pushing a car

Stuff that has helped me

KneesOverToes guys amazing stuff

https://youtu.be/aWtO8yGvu8U

Keith Barr rehabbing tendons

https://youtu.be/CgcR5J1dwcY

I had my online neurology consultation today. The neurologist listened to my story, asked questions, watched me walk “normally”, on tiptoes, and on heels, and did some simple functional and cognitive tests. She wants to refer me to a movement disorder specialist, but her take is that my self-diagnosis of a focal dystonia (“runner’s dystonia”) is correct. The good news is that I probably don’t have any progressive neurological disease that will result in death or complete disability. Focal dystonias are usually self-limiting, and while a few people end up having to use leg braces or crutches to walk, for most it just causes stiff, awkward movement. The bad news is that focal dystonias aren’t very treatable. The most useful treatment appears to be botox injections, but those are usually only partially helpful and tend to stop working after a while. Drugs such as anti-seizure medications also sometimes help but have serious side effects.

Basically, the situation is that I have “forgotten” how to walk properly after doing so for 62 years. It seems to me that this is the sort of thing that should be addressed through physical therapy, but very few PTs know anything about focal dystonias or have any idea of how to treat them and the MDs don’t think PT is useful. But I’m going to keep plugging away while waiting to see the more specialized specialist MD.

I set out to jog five miles today, my longest “run” since this dystonia thing started. It was successful but very hard; it feels like that's pretty much the limit of my leg strength with my current messed-up stride. I don’t plan to try extending the distances any further unless/until I can get to the point where 4 miles or so doesn’t seem so hard.

That sort of seems to be good news AMK.

@Zillionaire

My approach was or is very simple.

1.Make your hammies strong by regular fast running. Build up to e.g. 10x100m with walking back. Quick strides whenever possible etc. Redeveloping the ability to run fast can take unexpected long. For my it is a never ending journey @ 50 years old.

2. Stretch each hammy 2x5 times after every run (bend over elevated knee with foot on chair, stairs, rock, car bumper or whatever.

Kind regards

I haven't run a strict schedule for a while. I have a lot of projects going on.

I enjoyed several very successful cross country results and having tough fun.

Sunday (7th) 3 miles.

Monday (8th) 3 miles.

Tuesday (9th) Fast 16 miles.

All these have small hills.

I'll come back on Thursday with 2s with 2s repeats.

You’re a tough lady amkelley. Best wishes on a solution and recovery.

Igy

Dito

Geez. Sorry to hear about your condition amKelley. And thank you for enlightening me on this medical term, I will certainly do some research about it. It makes all our injuries and age graded times trivial compared to what you are going through.

But back to you, good luck with a speedy recovery. You are certainly doing everything you can to get through this, and I believe that you will succeed. Please do let us know how your progress goes and you certainly have our maximum. respect and best wishes

Keep fighting the good fight!

Thanks for the helpful replies!

@Ghost of Igloi - yes, working from home means I have easy access to the pantry...I think I am 10 pounds from my true "race weight". I'm sure that isn't helping. Planning to add another mile to my daily 3-miler.

@dhaaga - those are some great suggestions. I am always a little nervous about stretching (tip#4), though - is that something you do before or after a run? And do you stretch until it hurts? And for how long?

@Charlie - what is your takeaway from the Keith Barr video? I did watch it, but did you incorporate some techniques based on it? It didn't have any specific regimens.

@Newbi - Your approach for speed is almost the opposite of @dhaaga tip #7! I can appreciate different approaches. When I was running marathons for time, what worked better for me was a lot of intense speedwork (mostly Yasso 800s) with really slow long runs. Prior to that, I had been mostly long runs with increasing tempo. But my legs would always end up feeling like lead on race day.

So I'm inclined to try injecting 100s into my track day...after I'm fully warmed up, of course.

Thanks all!

Just want to share my training since performance is increasing and I feel I have settled in a sustainable regime that seems to work.

I have no problems training hard, probably daily, above threshold, and I have finally come to the conclusion I am a victim of too much intensity and too little recovery.

I have just turned 50 and have trained a lot for running probably 37 out of the last 40 years. Longest was a year off, 2-3 times. The last was 2018 and I got inspired back again spring 2019 and have been consistent from then.

I have tried much but have now ended up with a 14 day schedule with 1 block of threshold reps, 1 block of easier threshold reps, then 3 days easy to kindof short-peak into a test/race workout the 13th day. I do mostly double workout days and that works fine in regards to recovery both during that day and to the next workout day. I use cycling to accelerate recovery and partly to extend a single workout day as bike first and run immediately after.

Week 1 (Block 1 + start of Block 2):

Mo: AM: 30min bike - PM: 20min bike + 20min Easy w/strides

Tue: AM&PM: 10min WU+ 30min Thr + 5min Mod + 10min CD

Wed: As Monday

Thu: As Tuesday

Fri: As Monday + weights for legs

Sat: PM: 60min Easy on trails/terrain w/4x hill strides/sprints

Su: (Block 2->) PM: Bike: WU+15min Easy Thr+CD + Run: 5min WU + 40min Easy Thr + 5min Mod + 10min CD

Week 2 (Cont Block 2 + recovery& test):

Mo: AM: 30min bike - PM: 20min bike + 20min Easy w/strides

Tue:

AM: 10min WU+ 30min Thr + 5min Mod + 10min CD

PM: 10min WU+ 20min Thr + 10min faster/harder + 5min Mod + 10min CD

Wed: As Monday + weights for legs

Thu: AM&PM: 30min Easy (AM w/5xstrides)

Fri: AM: 25min easy - PM 35min easy w/4x30s sprints (start ev 5 min)

Sat: PM: 10 WU + 5min Thr + 15min test/hard + 5min Thr + 5min Mod + 10 CD

Su: PM: Bike: WU+18min Easy Thr+CD + Run: 25min easy + 10min Thr + 15min easy

I feel good on the testing day (Sat of week 2). Not the recent Saturday because I forgot strength on Wednesday and did it on Thursday and had heavy legs due to short recovery. Will not happen again...

I made this program in early august but with block 1 harder than Thr, and I improved a lot on the testing, probably due to enough recovery. I also now have eased down block 1 to Threshold effort and it will be interesting to see the improvement. I feel stronger and my interval splits show that I more easily run at a good pace, so it might be more sustainable and I reacted negatively to too much harder intensity.

Zillonaire,

The excess blubber is my biggest issue. Without it, I would be reasonably competitive for my vintage. Working on it daily, hopefully I will turn the corner.

Igy

@Charlie - what is your takeaway from the Keith Barr video? I did watch it, but did you incorporate some techniques based on it? It didn't have any specific regimens.

Barr ,my take away you need to do small consistent eccentric stimulation to the weakened damaged parts of a tendon not just when injured but as maintenance .

Eccentric part of Nordic Curl to stimulate the damaged / protected areas in the glutes and hamstrings. Especially at the hs muscle/ tendon interface.

2009 cross bike wreck flipped backwards doing a wheelie up leaf erickson dumb bike went over backwards I tried to push off caught my arse on the seat and played crack the whip with my left leg. Really ef'd up my fast running . Then I found Barr's stuff which explains how our tendons create islands of weakness and how to restore them. Then I found the KneesOverToes guy whose stuff I use to implement Barr's ideas.

IMO tending the tendons is a good way to slow down the brittleness of aging.

Peter Attia MD youtube podcasts lots of stuff on rapamycin, he takes it. Not sure if rapa is on the wada no no list a whole nother an of worms. IMO only thing wrong with drugs is they are banned so it becomes cheating and cheating is the problem not the drugs. Lets go WADA.

I do time restricted eating 6/18 low carb but not keto more protien , less fat a bit more carbs than keto. I take NAD supplements(NR,NMN and niacinamide) and hydrolyzed collagen. I am thinking about getting my t levels checked as well as using fisetin for the elimination of senescent cells using senolytics . The rapa is pretty interesting but dangerous instead just TRE followed by protein rich first meal to break fast is a conservative strategy. Measurement is one of the keys the horvath meth clocks are not so good but Lustgarten uses an aging clock based on blood tests that is probably worth doing like increasing your albumin levels via diet I went from 4.4 to over 5 and stuff like a1c 5.7 down to 5.0 then you have kidney and liver function measures and last but not least how your age graded times stack up to the younger you. I am a rambling.

Tendon aging is dependent at least in part on the actions of mechanistic target of rapamycin (mTOR). Long-term dietary administration of rapamycin, an inhibitor of mTOR, was reported to attenuate aged-associated increase in stiffness; decrease in elastiscity, cellularity, and progression of spontaneous tendon calcification; as well as enhance collagen turnover in aged mouse tendons (Wilkinson et al., 2012; Zaseck et al., 2016). Autophagy plays an important role in regulating the self-renewal capacity and stemness of human TDSCs through suppressing reactive oxygen species (ROS) production. Treatment of human TDSCs isolated from supraspinatus tendon of adult donors (26–34 years old) with starvation or rapamycin prevented H2O2-induced loss of self-renewal capacity and stemness (Chen et al., 2016). The effects were mediated by increasing autophagy activity and suppressing ROS production in TDSCs (Chen et al., 2016). On the other hand, inhibition of autophagy reduced the protective effects of starvation and rapamycin on H2O2-treated cells

@Charlie

Why take drugs instead of cutting out pork, processed foods and alcohol? This and eating enough! makes the trick for me.

Kind regards

Newbi wrote:

@Charlie

Why take drugs instead of cutting out pork, processed foods and alcohol? This and eating enough! makes the trick for me.

Kind regards

Google Lustgarten youtube as I mentioned he only uses diet to optimize blood biomarkers of aging. He is 48 and his biomarkers using a well respected set of measurements is 35 or so. He has been doing this for years.

As for me , I eat whole foods raw veggies and berries no dairy except some cottage cheese no wheat no processed foods with unhealthy oils and hidden carbs .

As one of those smart guys said let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food and some other smart guy said the dose makes the poison. I say keep up or fall behind