Do runners past the age of fifty still run 100MPW?

I do 12.

I go over 100 once a year just for grins. Normally I'm 45-65mpw, but I'm a miler. The only regularly over-100mpw guy over 50 that I've heard of is Gary Romesser, who is pushing 60 now.

20 mpw works for me. Smart quality runs trump high mileage.

age 54

They do past the age of 70. Ed Whitlock runs 3 hrs a day and estimates it to be about 20 miles a day which would be 140 mpw. But he just plods along and his only quality is when he races. At least that is what I read somewhere. Maybe Ed could enlighten us since he posts here once in a while.

Interesting but there is no mistaking me for an Ed Witlock.

If thats true, its amazing.

Yes. I've done it many times, though it doesn't bring the results it once did. That makes it hard to get myself to do it for months on end like I once did.

What sort of results DOES it bring now?

It is true that Ed Whitlock runs big mileage but he does not plod campared to many of us oldtimers. He ran a marathon under 2:55 at age 73. Incidentally, I seldom ran above 70 miles a week when I was running 2:32 marathons in my 20s and 30s. I now train at 12 to 14 minutes a mile with the hope of running a 5K some day at 10 minutes a mile. If I ever do that I will aim to improve. I still enjoy what I am doing.

Note that what is plodding for some is way past all out for some of us.

A plodder at age 70

I ran over 100mpw for years into my 30s...at 52 now, no can do...knees too sore with arthritis and several knee surgeries later.

Orville: Yourself and Ed get special dispensation.

The hardest part at this age is the reality of family and job. No Time.

Was Kiwi jaw-dropper John Campbell a big mileage guy? He was muy rapido in his 50s.

Gary is 55 and seldom does 100 MPW anymore. He's like the rest of us, has to cut back just to make the next workout and work full time. Gary is a great guy and I can't think of another master runner who trains smarter than he does. He told me once all the speed work he needs each week is

1 x 400 1 x 300, don't need much when you're in shape all year round.

I, too, had to forage for food and build a career so I could enjoy retirement.

I began running in 1952, ran my first marathon in 1961 and my last one in 1987. I still hope that I will be able to jog/walk another marathon at some point.

I also wonder that if I had done more mileage when I was competative would I be even more beat up? Would I have run faster times back then if I had run fewer intervals and more long easier mileage?

When I started, the name of the game was to win. Now I just enjoy running/jogging or whatever one calls it. In both eras the times I ran was not that important. Doing ones best with the time and energy one has is.

Usually it leads me to be grateful I can do it if I want to. Otherwise I can't say because I really only do it for the sake of doing it. I might do it for a month and then do something else. If I race in that month with the 100s, I can't really say, "Well, it got me to that time" because what you do in a race isn't based on what you've done in the last three weeks and I just haven't done enough of it to be able to evaluate how it compares to doing, say 80.

It doesn't seem to drop any weight. It doesn't seem to induce any sorts of aches and pains that aren't induced at, say, 80. I actually think that I feel better when I run that much, but again, I don't have any long term samples for compparison.

If you're looking for times, let's say that if I get below 20:00 for 5km I'm happy. If I get around an hour and a half for a half marathon, I'm happy. But I don't race enough anymore to make myself happy in these ways very often, nor, as I sort of mentioned already, to be able to draw any conclusions about its effectiveness and I didn't respond here to advocate 100 mile weeks for guys over fifty. My reply was very limited and literal; yes, at least one runner past fifty does still run over 100 mpw occasionally.

I'm not sure that John Campbell even competed at age 50. otoh, my personal hero Jack Foster ran ~2:20 at 50, with low mileage and lots of bike riding. I don't think that Derek Turnbull trained particularly high mileage either. I've never heard about Ron Robertson's training. All those old Kiwis are seemingly given a constitutionsal toughness that obviates the need for tons of miles. Rodgers MIGHT have been around 100mpw at age 50. Maybe he will weigh in, as he does on occasion....

Lorenzo the Magnificent wrote:

Was Kiwi jaw-dropper John Campbell a big mileage guy? He was muy rapido in his 50s.

Gordon- How is Gary racing nowadays? Is he near 60 now?

We all have to make adjustments. I am currently nagged by an achilles that keeps me off the track, but allows me to put in the miles freely. I've had this before, and tend to think that I will get over it again, but one never knows for sure. I'm just glad as hell to be able to still "feel the wind in my face", as malmo puts it.

At 20 or at 50, I always seemd to do best off of moderate mileage, with hard/easy days.

Gary is 55 and runs mid 16's for a 5K and 33's for the 10K. The longer the race the better for him. I hope to be running that fast when I get 55, stuck in the mid 17's for now at age 53

Campbell had a brief comeback at 50. He came to Boston hoping to go under 2:20 but got a blister and dropped out. He seems to have vanished after that. There were some stories about him during that comeback and he said he was doing about 80-90 and hadn't done any runs longer than an hour except for a half marathon he'd run.

Neither Turnbull nor Robertson were big mileage guys. Derek just did what he liked. I think Robertson ran a bit more, but wasn't a big miles guy at all.

Campbell was definitely a big miles guy when he was 40 or so.