When did age start slowing you down?

Crazy Answer wrote:

When did I start slowing down? The very minute your mother told me to take it slow.

Don't why you would listen to his mother when you never listened to your own.

I've been running / racing since 1973. I started slowing significantly starting age 50. I still do decent as an age-grouper, but boy oh boy, am I getting slow.

Ashley Madison wrote:

I've been running / racing since 1973. I started slowing significantly starting age 50. I still do decent as an age-grouper, but boy oh boy, am I getting slow.

Listen - count yourself blessed. Seriously, be thankful for every slow mile. I had my running involuntarily ended by osteoarthritis. I would be thrilled to jog at 12 minute pace now. Thrilled.

Be thankful.

great thread guys, really interesting and insightful responses.

one one hand, as a late-20s guy trying to make a comeback after an injury-riddled college career + several years off, hearing posters say they peaked in their early to mid 30s gives me hope that I still have time to fulfill some of my (self-perceived) potential. i have set 7/3 sec mile/800 PRs already this spring and want so much more more.

on the other hand, posts like the previous ones make me count my blessings. 3 knee surgeries & a car accident nearly kept me from ever running again, so i'm not taking a single day for granted, nor am i ever complaining about the grind of 80+ miles weeks, workouts, 2 hour long runs, etc.

plus i will be more than happy to be rolling along at 12min pace when i'm fifty.

Definite difference at age 35. I no longer train at all due to injuries, but used to be able to run sustained 7 min pace or one sub 6 min mile off no training. Now, 8 min miles feel like 7 used to.

Late 30's early 40's. I'm 54 now and I'm much slower BUT I don't train nearly as much- mostly I just go out and run.

I wonder how fast I'd get if I actually did workouts and hills, etc.

i'm guessing bernard lagat would agree with your reasoning as well

ataglance wrote

I would recommend that every real runner run fast for as long as you can. yeah, maybe you want to stick your toe in the marathon water but dont stay there. If you can race well at 5k-1/2 do that.

Just doing more for the sake of more is wrong headed.

My boyfriend is 46 and PR'd in every distance from the mile to the half marathon last year, after taking up running in his teens. Interestingly, he only did his first marathon 2 months ago (probably won't do one again). Never gets injured though.

I'm a 38 year old female and have done 17 marathons in the last 10 years (trained for 19) and am injured roughly 50% of the time. It's hard to get faster when you're always sore and/or injured. I really really love the marathon distance but the consequences of the training are starting to outweigh the positives. Unfortunately as soon as I get over an injury I just end up registering for another marathon. Makes me think twice when I hear about the guy with osteoarthritis.

agip wrote:

I'm 45 and still waiting for a material slowdown - I ran around 10:15 regularly for two miles in HS and I can still do around 10:40. But if I raced as much as I did in HS I bet I could get back down near HS times.

But the question on body change - I've found that since I turned 40 I have changed almost every year. I was pretty much the same runner for 25 yrs, but the last 5 yrs...every year seems different. Different races go well, different workouts, different injuries, different motivations, etc..

harder to coach myself, but at least I am not in a rut.

.

For me around 35 yo. The lost of speed has been constant since then. To my horror I went over 2:30 for 800m at age 55 in a serious effort.

I suspect that anyone who is close to their pr at 45 was not running seriously in their low 30s?

I started running when I was 22 (1980). In hindsight, I made the mistake of gravitating to the marathon right away, without taking time to develop whatever leg speed I might have had. By 1982, I had run six marathons.

I then decided to focus on the shorter end of the distance races spectrum and set a goal for myself of breaking 16:00 for 5k. Year in and year out, I would bust my butt toward doing so.

In 1999, after 18 years of continuously putting in 50-60mpw (I was never a high mileage guy) on six days of running, I had a "breakthrough" year (for me, anyway) and ran PRs for 5k (16:04-track), half marathon (1:14) and ran a 2:43 marathon. I was 41 years old at the time.

I noticed a first significant decline at around age 45. Now, at age 54, I would be hard pressed to run a single mile in what I averaged for 13.1 at age 41. And I can't run ONE SINGLE 400m at what was my 5k PR pace.

I still enjoy the training process and do intervals, tempos, long runs, 50 mile weeks, etc. but rarely race anymore. And those races I do run, are just for laughs and a social outlet, since I'd be too bummed with the time result if I took it seriously.

I've always thought that I might have broken that 16:00 barrier if I hadn't done so many marathons right off the bat and instead, worked my way up through the distances and worked on leg speed early on. But in the early 80s, marathons were the thing to do. I never had a coach, so while I didn't meet my 5k goal, I did okay overall.

But hey, I'd guess I'm still better off than 95% of the other 50-59 year olds in this country!

The other thing I've discussed with my training partners is that rather than your chronological age, I wonder how much the number of miles in your legs affects things.

I figure that over my 33 years of running, I've probably put in ~68,000 miles (avg. 50mpw x 52 weeks x 33 years). If you took another 54 year old who was newer to running, without so many miles in his legs, would he be faster than I am, even though we're the same age?

Food for thought (and discussion).

here's a thought based on my running. feel free to trash these ideas, but i genuinely feel this way.3 yrs high school (49.8, 1:56, 4:30, 16:20), 2 years college (1:53 & 26:09 8k) then i burned out and didn't run for almost 7 years.when i was 27 i started running 35-40 miles a week and ran a 2:46 marathon. i got hurt training for Boston but ran a 34:12 10k and 1:15:30 1/2 marathon during training. I averaged about 55 miles a week for 3 months, 35 a week for 2 months building up to that. Now (age 30), I run 30 miles a week but it's almost all under 6:00 pace. i do 3-4 runs a week: a 4-mile tempo around 5:35 pace, 10 miler at 6:00 pace. 5k of intervals at about 5:00 pace, occasionally do a run longer than 10 miles at 7:00 pace.now i can run under 5:00 for the mile, 16:30 for 5k, 34:00 10k, 1:17 1/2 marathon on 30 miles a week. i know i can run faster than this with more training, so don't tell me i'm under-achievingunless I run under 2:35 for a marathon, it's just an average time. and not worth the miles and energy spent and body damaged. i think if most people had this attitude, they'd run faster and stronger in shorter races. Let's face it: everyone running marathons in the 2:40's, just isn't that impressive of an achievement, especially the guys running over 60 miles a week. I know guys who have only been running 4 years and never ran before age 30 who can run 2:40. it's a joke. they can't run a mile under 5:30lets stop the marathon obsession and run fast 5ks, 10k's, and half marathons and enjoy races that don't get hurricaned or heat-waved out

terroir wrote:

I suspect those who avoid marathons have a longer life at speed.

People consider marathons to be normal running behavior - they aren't - they are very damaging to runners - esp older runners.

For me, after 35 there was a gentle decline, but it went exponential once I hit 50.

PR'd at 800m and 1500m last year at 29. If I don't PR again, 30 will be the age when I started slowing down. Although my body already cannot tolerate the abuse it did 10 years ago - I train smarter now.

Right around age 30...injuries.

I always find these threads interesting. I have run almost continuously since high school. I always was a mid-distance guy who trained in the 30-60 mpw range. I really noticed that I started to slow down at age 47. However, I also started moving up the age-graded performance levels in my early 40s. From the time I was a college runner until my mid-40s my best performances would hit about 78% on age-graded tables. Since then I have been moving up about 2% every 5 years on age-graded performance and now hit 85% on my good races at age 63.

I don't think so. I'm 54, started running at 40, and have done a little over 30,000 miles. I'm not fat, about 5'9 150 lbs, maybe I'd be faster if I were smaller and around 135-140, not going to happen with my frame. Anyway, I've trained about as hard as I can and can't get past certain limits...lucky to get under 20 in a 5K now and only got under 19 twice...I too started running marathons right away and wish I'd focused on the 5K, but I know I could have trained a lot harder (more fast miles) when the body was younger. My best years came when I was 48 and 50...I was about as good in the 10K at 53 as at 48 and 45 but I'm beginning to think I can't handle marathon mileage anymore.

33 for me. I started racing at 13, peak training at 20-25 but kept a pretty constant high level of training volume/intensity after that. After so many years you notice minute changes in your performance. I stopped improving at 32 despite doing the same training for 3-4 years after. I plateau'd for a year or so then nature started working against me.

At age 44 I ran a 2:32 Marathon, only five minutes off my lifetime PR of 2:27. However, only four months later I ran a 2:39 and then a 2:40. From there it has been a geometric progression of decline to the point that my best marathon since turning 60 1.5 years ago is 3:17.