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Week 112
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Greetings 50+ers.
Well, I've no miles to report this week. May not even run today or the next day, either. Between this gut thing and finishing up a couple of summer courses (grading these finals is somewhat deflating), I've just not had the time, energy, or inclination to train (OK, not quite true, mentally I'm itching to get back out there.) Funny how knees can hurt, calves can hurt, quads can hurt, feet can hurt, even the back (to some degree) can hurt, and I'll run through it; but when the gut hurts, that stops me. And it isn't *that* bad, I could easily run with this, but reading the posts tells me that this will only get worse if I don't fix it. What caused it? Still not positive, but I think I've been straining something on those easy runs in the arboretum where I "focused on form" with higher knee lift and more fore-foot strike. Even though the runs were easy aerobically, I probably shouldn't have counted those as easy days, since I was outside my comfort zone (in retrospect, this started appearing about when I ran the first of these recent arboretum runs, Week 106.) In which case, I didn't give myself proper recovery after those runs; last Wednesday's track workout may have just tipped the balance. The pain is really only noticeable when I run and it has lessened over the course of the week with a couple of short test jogs. Bottom line is that I really need to get in and see a therapist; it's just not been a good week to do so, as there has just been too much going on. Hope to get in this coming week. At any rate, so long as this doesn't linger, a little time off is not a bad thing.
How about Deena Kastor? Pretty sure she can and will take down all the masters records 5K and up, if she chooses to do so. (Side note: I was surprised to see how soft the women's 40-44 AR 5,000m and 10,000m times are...Monica Joyce's times at age 49 are better!)
Ken, glad to read that your fitness is returning...nice trajectory. Thanks for linking those studies.
Mike, ain't that the truth! We sure don't process oxygen like we used to. I know I don't need to tell you guys, but I thought I'd just throw these studies out there for those that might be interested. We all know the formula, HRmax = 220-age, these guys say it should be more like HRmax = 206-0.7xage:
http://content.onlinejacc.org/article.aspx?articleid=1126908
I think that through training we can increase the stroke volume to slightly offset that trend...but not completely. It's discussed in this summary (any more recent review?):
http://bjsm.bmj.com/content/39/4/190.full
And I thought this was a pretty decent summary on aging and exercise (although the focus is on those much my senior):
http://www.unm.edu/~lkravitz/Article%20folder/age.html
Well, that's all I got. I look forward to running vicariously through your posts this week. Hopefully, next week will be better.
All the best!