What do 50+ plus sprinters do for training?

A summary of my last week's training:

(each day had AM 30 min. bike spin @ easy to moderate effort, so 3.5 hours for the week)

Mon. rest (climbing session with new PR for six-finger dead hang 2:03)

Tues. Breakthrough PR hill session mentioned upthread. The interesting thing about these harder hill sessions is that in the moment they don't feel super-strenuous, but there is residual fatigue for days afterwards.

Wed. Six miles with four buildup from 10:00 pace to 8:00 (tempo) pace. Legs felt wrecked on uphills, but overall a solid aerobic effort.

Thurs. off (climbed, some lifting)

Friday. climbed outside for an hour (cold fingers) then stopped at soccer field and set up a couple of 32" traffic cones for repeats of hurdle run-throughs. Ended up going about an hour with maybe 25 reps, leading both right and left leg. Feeling pretty "autopilot" on these, even on still tired legs. 300H or steeple this summer?

Sat. a mile jogging plus drills on a nasty cold windy wet day

Sun. Three miles to/from the track for 10x 50m w/5 min recovery. Pretty cold and a bit slick running in trainers 9.xx consistent effort and times. Happy to have no niggles all week. Finished with a 400 at mile pace. Overall 18 miles running for the week. A solid effort for mid-winter cold and damp.

I also recommend watching camydunks's videos

he posts a lot of his 30m block and 10-20-30m fly times to compare to his competition times, I find these to be very useful

yep, i am sticking to just start and one cone finish for freelap. A 60m distance will tell me enough about start and top speed. Thanks for that clip.

my best 60m comp this season 2022 was 9.11 into a slight headwind.

Face it, inquiring—in athletic terms, 61 is ancient.

I have 5 years on you, so my condition is not necessarily relevant to your situation. I still put on muscle—in fact, I have tried to cut my calories so that I stay lighter, both for better sprints on land, and less resistance/more flexibility in the water. But I’m more or less the same as I ever was, I just don’t want to bulk up.

I understand what you mean when you say you did bodybuilding etc., for sure you had some crazy days in the gym, max pump, huge strength density, rushes of testosterone. I still get that, but not every single time, because some days I dial it back to preserve myself. Also I do only 3 days/week of weights—so while the intensity, strength, and power are still there, the total amount of power and strength work that I do is less than it used to be. I just get the feeling that if I went hard as often as I used to, I would for sure get injured.

To make up for it, I do lower-intensity, longer stuff: swim for an hour 2500m, bike for an afternoon with my wife, bike in the gym for an hour at 170W indicated, etc.. Would ks for me, like an active, medium-hard recovery.

Diet? Everything good, you name it. I have no idea what encourages T production, but if it’s natural, I eat it: fruits, veggies, pasta, buckwheat, muesli, shredded wheat, mushrooms, milk, cheese, eggs, yogurt, beef, chicken, fish both sashimi and cooked, rice, juice, chocolate, nuts, etc. I will say that I am literally the only person I know of my age who still drinks milk—and I drink a lot of it, maybe a gallon every 2-3 days. In europe I drink a bit less, but there I drink whole, unpasteurized, which is a lot thicker.

My only issue is that I feel that I can sometimes eat too much, and I don’t want to stress my pancreas so much. lol nobody understands how I can eat so much and mot get fat, but sometimes after an heroic meal, I am literally incapacitated. Once the roast was so good that I ate it all, and a bunch of carrots, onions, potatoes, milk, etc, and afterwards I thought that I had maybe ruptured my stomach. Contemplated for a few hours going to emerg, but it settled down, and I had an amazing night’s sleep, was boiling hot all night😁.

I also like small glasses of good port, and 2-3 beers on Friday, always a local microbrew. My beer tolerance has gone way down over the years, and I now only very rarely drink wine or alcohol.

Supps and meds: absolutely nothing, ever. I sense no need at all. I only once tried anything, as I have detailed on here before: a bit of creatine, now maybe 28 years ago. The results were insane to the point where I discontinued it very early, fearing that it had roids in it. Have never touched anything since, it freaked me out. My weightroom bests were set long after that experiment, 10 years later. Long, slow, natural progression worked.

re: “disease”. “Low T plus symptoms”. Maybe. How low a “T” and what symptoms are key to determining “disease” vs “normal age-appropriate condition”. Am I diseased because I now might run 12 instead of 11 or 10?

Think of it this way: don’t compare yourself to some 30-yo you used to be, compare yourself to the 60-yo or 58-yo you used to be. Keep the window small, and things will never get away from you. Also compare yourself to other 61-yo’s you know are natural.

Lol I forgot to mention that I also eat the cookies and cakes that the neighbor kids make for me. When they were really young I would ham it up as cookie monster, ever since then they have been baking me goodies😮😁. And I still have warm milk and honey before bed, like when I was 6.

I guess the upshot is that “training” is now all about managing decline—which is why I have re-engaged swimming and biking in a big way…because I started off low, I have real absolute gains, unlike sprinting (which I still love).

So, it FEELS to me like I’m not just managing decline, but actually getting better at something.

So maybe switch gears. Who knows, you might find out that you’re good at something you never knew. I found out that I’m an heroic masters rower on the erg! Almost the best, actually—but I have no love for it, so I don’t do it. I have picked distance swimming as my secondary focus, because I started off totally sucking. Although I have gotten much better, there’s still a LOOOOONG way to go😂.

But boy is it gratifying to really get better at something that you find hard to do—plus, it’s a great muscular active recovery thing for me.

Looking at some posts, i also cross train a fair bit.

With constant niggles (calf, achilles), i now avoid running two days in a row preferring to ride a bike although I would like to follow a sprint track session the next day with an easy run.

Now two days since my sprint session and still pretty sore.

Morning spin and very high animal protein+fat diet seems to keep me virtually impervious to soreness (though I get stiff and have to do a lot of mobility just to run properly). Also, I have a ton of "area under the curve" over the years.

Pot, meet kettle.

In strength & vitality terms 61 can be considered "ancient." Lol. Testosterone levels decline, on average, about 1 percent per year after age 30. So, at the ripe old age of 61 - soon to be 62 in a couple of months - I've experienced a ~30% drop in test from my peak youthful years. It's no wonder that I can't build lean muscle mass anymore & that I feel so crappy with poor recovery from harder workouts, an increase in musculoskeletal injuries, lack of motivation, moodiness, poor sleep, low libido, depression, etc. They even have a medical diagnosis for this: "late-onset hypogonadism."

It would really be interesting to see what your test levels are. Though you're about 5 yrs younger than me, you seem to show really good strength & vitality with your workouts. You indicated that you still get a good pump - with strength, intensity & power still there - though less than would it used to be. And your sprinting capability at your age is uncanny - if I tried any of your sprint training, Lord knows how many muscle, tendon & ligament sprains or tears I would sustain. Lol. My understanding of the excercise physiology is that sprinting involves the fast-twitch muscle fibers which are the ones that deteriorate the fastest through age-related degeneration. However, Chris Lewis' T levels are slightly lower than mine, and though we're basically the same age, he outperforms me by a lot shot showing also good strength & vitality in his workouts.

Your diet is impressive & you show a lot of discipline in eating healthy. But I also eat very healthy (all organic) with a lot of supposedly testosterone-increasing foods (e.g. whole eggs, grass-fed red meat, grass-fed dairy, almonds, etc). Can't say this does much for increasing my T levels but all lipids, A1c, PSA, etc are all good & I'm on no meds other than an albuterol inhaler for EIA & seasonal allergies problems.

Thanks for info - very informative. And how guys can sprint so well at that age is incredible. Btw, what is your height, racing weight & BF percentage?

wow, did 3x30m and 2x60m near top speed on Monday morning, and this morning (Thursday) could still barely move beyond a jog due to soreness.

Looks like a maximum two track sessions per week at best, even when I get used to fast training again.

Hopefully saturday evening i will be able to sprint again.

Yep, 2 hard sprint sessions, 1 easy/drills, per week.

btw it’s Wednesday, not Thursday. But that shows you’re hitting it right, if it’s good soreness.👍. As you know, recovery is just as important.

You got me jacked for drills later today, but I have to be careful, going skiing for Feb and don’t want to kill myself now.

I am finding that developing speed, after years of being sedentary with the odd attempt at endurance running, is taking longer than I had hoped. There is notable progress, after struggling with various issues / injuries for the first six months, and I appear to be getting quicker despite the move to winter training.

Weight training is intentionally limited (med reasons) but I have introduced a set of circuits and simple plyos once or twice a week, as time allows. I am looking to improve overall body strength (particularly core), having lost much of what I had in my youth. To my surprise, age 50, I appear to be developing some muscle mass, certainly more than I had hoped, and my general strength is improving.

I have absolutely no idea what my T-level is and I’m not particularly bothered – I know there’s a drop off occurring. Asking my local GP for a test, given the current state of the NHS locally, would be a waste of their time.

I try to eat healthily and have removed most fast sugars and booze from my diet. I do consume dairy and eggs, with a reasonable amount of meat and fish. Grain intake is much reduced.

sprintgeezer, it is thursday morning here in Australia.

will try and do some 150m reps saturday at around 90% effort. I think i will leave flat out efforts for competitions and time trials because my system always seems to get fried from such efforts.

I have always been like that since i was 20 years old. I quickly learned it took me about 10 days to recover from 100% intensity.

I am a firm believer that what works for one person, may not work for another.

I have recognized the "Ten Day Rule" (I know...sounds like a Runner's World meme, but it actually works) for over thirty years. Basically a targeted hard session requires ten days for the full "supercompensation" effect to peak (even for younger athletes). This is one reason I don't adhere to strict 7-day training weeks; ten day microcycles or even two weeks is better. Of course you can do other hard sessions, but in another physiological system. So if you are doing max speed 30m flys, you could place a 6x 300 tempo at a decently hard effort roughly halfway between the two consecutive max speed sessions.

And of course, distance/middle distance guys do a longer continuous run somewhere in there at least every two weeks. Field tested for all my champion athletes, 200m-marathon.

Yes, when I ran my best 200m and 400m at 32 (22.5 and 50.4), I never went over 80 per cent for my running sessions, either 5x200m or 5x300m with three minutes rest. This was for nine months. My power work came from hopping every second step up the stadium stairs after each session.

Thanks for that XY. I am glad I am not the only one.

fred kerley article. Some points are relevant to us oldies.

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I have seen the ten-day phenomenon at least supported in textbooks and/or research (I think the Daniels book has a graph of the timecourse anyway) , but in my view it is grossly overlooked, it should be one of the FIRST precepts for coaches and athletes seeking the best ROI and avoiding injury.

Of course, races are very much a part of this consideration, but in context of the overall workload, number of races/meet, etc.. A fit sprinter doing heats, prelims and finals over the course of two days would usually count as a single "hard" session in overall terms. And of course, a marathon will generally take at least a month for recovery, depending on the effort and recovery (interestingly, hot weather marathons are usually quicker recovery as the impact stress is reduced. The most intensely sore I have ever been in my life was racing my PR for 1500m age 44 on a day when it was 32 degrees on a rock hard track. We flew, but I walked funny for days.

XY, Iam not superfit, but i can tell you that my 6m39 1500m running solo also took it out of me. that was 8 days ago, and now i know why my 60m times were down last Monday.

No wonder i could barely run at 60% effort this morning.