Old(er) guys, when did your running fall off a cliff?

I am 51 and I've found I haven't fallen of a cliff yet. But there is a decline. it does feeling like you are treading water more than getting better. I did feel "old and broken" when I was 49 but this DID NOT LAST.

Build-ups seem to take longer. More easy running on the beginning. It now takes a month before I start feeling good instead of a few weeks.

I only do 2 two hard sessions a week vs 3. I do some tempo or intervals and a long run.

I also do more ancillary work. First I started with Jay Johnson's mobility and core. Now I go to a strength trainer once a week.

I'm 56 now, and it really fell of a cliff this year. A pinched nerve, lower back pain etc, and yes I lift weights too(since 20 years old). I had to go to every other day schedule.

It's worked out okay. 3 easy days + 1 HIIT session a week.

I felt old and broken down in my mid-40s, due to a chronic right ankle tendonitis. I stopped running and started doing power yoga, for the ankle. After two years of power yoga, ankle PT and a cortisone shot, I decided to go for a run. The ankle felt great. I went for another run. It still felt great.

3 years later, at 49 I'm running daily, 70 miles per week, have shed 30 pounds and qualified for and ran Boston Marathon for the first time in my life. My next goal is to run under 3 hours in the marathon.

God willing, you will bounce back and have your own resurgence, in some form.

plenty of 40-50 year olds here in my part of england running 15 or 16 minute 5Ks on less than 6 days a week, working full time and having a family. you are wearing yourself out on 6 days of running.

Almost exactly 40, but I've been running very sporadically since about 30. Up until 40 I maintained a baseline fitness where I could always click off a few quick miles when I wanted to do something a little faster. Now I feel like the general population.

Right around 50. Tweaks would hold on, hammies and calves became somewhat brittle and touchy, would lose a few days here, and then a week there, and I found myself looking at mixing in other exercise, including rowing, cycling, skiers. I kept toes in the water but put on some weight and did this cross training mix for almost five years.

This year (age 56) decided to train for a marathon. I dropped 8 or 10 pounds, added mileage again, have had a reasonable training cycle, BUT now train between 9:30-10:30 pace, where just a few years ago it was 7:00-8:30. If I push very hard for more than a day or two in a week of runs I start to feel markers of overtraining. Some days I cannot believe how slow I've gotten but then I decide I'm happy to be running and prepping for an event.

Before age 50 a four hour marathon would have been unthinkable and now I'll be happy to be between 4:00 and 4:10. H-ll, I'll be happy if the wheels don't come off. It's humbling for sure.

The moral for me has been to humble myself re pacing and don't push to the point of 'tweaking' things that might take a while to get better. All it takes is a little calf tweak and I might be off the plan for a week or so. Sucks.

Also, and this is big, weight doesn't just roll off with miles the way it did before 50. I have to be careful to not eat too much in the evenings or I add weight no matter how much I run.

Stop being rude. Answer the OP's question and don't assume that you know it all.

My personal cliff was after I reached 55.
My peak was between 28 and 40.
I was never a big mileage guy, just between 30-45.

I think all of this is highly depending on lifestyle, work load, family life and level of running. If you run much fast and harder your cliff might come a lot earlier and a lot steeper.
It also depends on your expectations while you are getting older.

Keep on running but be gentle to yourself!

Really with an injury to both calves in a race at age 42. It's been nearly 15 years and despite repeated attempts at building back, I've only gotten slower and fatter and older.

There would be times when mileage would go back up and a run to the barn would start to feel easy. Then doing some strides or god forbid any VO2 effort, the calf would get reinjured.

Weeks/months off and start over. and over. 15 years. Building up again from zero. But now just 3-4 days a week. Nothing too long. Nothing too fast. Maybe some EIM 800's at some point. Mostly just happy to be alive after some other health issues.

So I'm not a guy but I'll chime in anyway. My performance peaked at age 33 (I did not start running seriously until about 30), suffered a rapid decline due to injuries, and then declined gradually (plateaus interspersed with downward steps) from 40 to 61. At age 61 I was still running 70 mpw but had slowed down a lot. Then I developed rheumatoid arthritis and it went off a cliff. I was able to keep running to some extent for about another year until runner's dystonia finished me off. Now at age 64 I no longer run, but still do a fair amount of cycling, walking, and hiking/backpacking.

Getting old sucks but it beats the alternative.

Age 43. Easily handling 50 to 70 mile weeks. The biggest issue for me is time. Between marriage, kids, jobs, side hustles, volunteering, and kids activities, running gets the 4am to 6am time slot and maybe a quick 3 mile run on my lunch break. I always tell people I want 28 hour days.

I did notice top end speed dropping around age 38. It’s hard to rip a fast 200m now. I could easily hit 27’s and now 32-33 is real effort.

Seems like every 5 years I notice a recognizable decline. But at 68 due to a few consecutive surgeries my running went in the gutter and it's been hard rebuilding since. However from just sheer determination my mileage has climbed back to 25 mpw from 12-15 and I expect continued improvement. Plus winning the battle to keep my weight/height ratio down to 2.04 lbs/in is helping. And I treated myself to a new pair of Kinveras as an incentive.

I'm 52, and just in the last year or so. But I've also had some injury problems (maybe that's also a symptom of losing it). Need to get on better overall conditioning and injury resistance, but it's been frustrating to want to run well/more (especially since I have more time, not that kids are grown) and be unable.

I think it was at 49 years (I'm 57 now). Started getting injured around 50% of the time I tried to do "speedwork," which led to a quick decline in my 5 mile pace. I think I lost around 75 second per mile in about a year. I also notice my stride was shorter, I had no bounce to it, and I kind of started "trudging" rather than running. There have been further declines, but none as much as that year.

It's pretty disappointing. You seldom get that incredible feeling after a hard run anymore, either. Sometime you do, but it's pretty rare. Usually, you are just glad to stop.

Depends what you mean by falling off a cliff.

I'm 58 and now do tempos at what was my easy pace in high school. The slowing really started in my late 30s. It's usually been gradual, gradual, gradual, then every 3-5 years a more sudden decline, then that mostly holds until the next big fall off.

In terms of the feeling, however, not much has changed. This morning I did a 30-minute tempo, then 6 x 1 minute at 5K effort. It felt more or less like it would have 30 years ago. Just way slower. The main exception here, mentioned by someone else, is that there are a lot fewer impromptu fast finishes over the last few miles of a normal run.

One thing that isn't mentioned enough is time on your feet. A 70-mile week now takes as long as 90-100 used to.

The best thing that happened to me as an aging runner was having foot surgery in my late 40s. I thought I might not ever get back to running the amount I want to. I did, and now cherish every run so much more than I used to.

nearly 56 now. i was running really well 10 years ago, but running was new then and i was making rapid improvements. after a couple of years of success, i went through a long period of constant injury cycles. fortunately, i've been healthy the last three years, but i'm notably slower, which i guess shouldn't be a surprise. i've done 50 - 60 mpw on average with a couple of workouts, but it just keeps me tired. going to try backing down to 45 - 50 and see if that freshens me up a bit. it's strange to be adjusting in what used to seem the wrong direction, but recovery isn't what it's used to be. not fun to be slower, but i'm really happy to be running. almost all of my buddies from 10 years ago have quit.

The glide slope became a nosedive at age 55.

55 is a very frustrating number:

This comment has been downvoted but I can relate to what it says.

Last year, at 42 I ran 16:35 on about 10-15 miles a week. Mostly tempo paced stuff but low in quantity. I was running 6 days a week but 15-20 mins a day average.

As you get older with other life commitments I do believe less can be more.