Slowing Down

A year ago I organized a panel discussion on exercise and motivation. We had three local people with varied expertise and experience in exercise and psychology. It was a fascinating discussion, very informative and interesting: but one question made me think.

One of our good friends is a real runner - fast, looks the part, always out running. He has been running almost every day since he was 12: he is now in his 50s, and still runs almost every day: rain or shine. Not like me - I am a fun runner, I do it for enjoyment but I don't much push myself, and although I did learn to lead other runners and know a lot of background and techniques I am not myself a very good runner - apart from the fact that I do it and enjoy it still.

His question was unusual: "How do you stop?"

His explanation was that as a habitual runner - and a good one - he found running an essential part of every day: it didn't feel right without it. But also, as he aged, he was coming to realise that no matter how hard he tried, no matter how well he trained, speed was slipping away: and even though he knew very well that was inevitable eventually, it was upsetting. He wanted to stop needing to run fast.

Well there are many articles and some good books on 'the aging runner', and they each hold valuable advice. But the question started me to thinking, not what happens when a good runner ages, but when a bad one does? OK, I don't really mean 'bad' - I mean a recreational runner, a Slow Runner, like me?

Running used to be a highly competitive (and male..) sport: but it has increasingly turned to a recreation and a health exercise, so statistics on the aging - and often non male - runner are sort of having to run after the aging age profile, if you see what I mean.

Actually, aging doesn't affect running times all that much. Studies seem to show that for every year beyond 40 you lose a second or two off your time for each mile: but that figure deserves some questioning. The most controlled study is of runners aging from 40, running the same 15 km run each year for 12 years: that study quotes a decline in pace of 1 second per mile per year,. That 1 second is said to be 0.2% annual decline in pace, so we can estimate the original average pace at 40 to be about 500 seconds, or just over 8 minutes per mile: since the race was in km we might as well convert the pace to just over 5 minutes per km - quite a decent pace for a 15 km run. So these were fit runners, and dedicated because they did run that race every year.

For comparison, when I wrote Slow Running I was 56. Funnily enough that was the time I was running at my fastest, because I was taking Run Leader courses and following the excellent running training offered by The Running School: but my fastest pace ever was only 5 minutes per km - and that was not sustained over anything like 15 km. My usual average at that time was a very consistent 6 minutes per km, and that for a typical 5 km not 15. I am now 62 - 6 years older - so the study suggests I should have slowed by a bit more than 1%, losing three or four seconds per km: the reality is that I have declined from 6 minutes per km to 7 at best, so a full minute.

I freely admit that I don't run as much as I used to: my regular weekly base of about 25 km is now more like 5 with an occasional 10 - and those are slow km, with my run group, chatting and enjoying the scenery. So my slowing down is probably due more to life style than age: which brings me back to the point, that we are not all committed elite runners. The profile of runners has changed dramatically. In the 1980s runners were overwhelmingly young, and fit: now runners are very often older, and unfit. For example, one would expect average marathon times to have decreased because the trend is for runners to be faster: but if anything the opposite is true - allegedly, because so many more of us Slow Runners run marathons that we drag down the average.

One of the criticisms of Slow Running is that if you don't push yourself you don't benefit from increasing fitness: the Jane Fonda Workout "No Pain, No Gain" idea. The evidence supports that idea: if you want to run faster or longer then yes, you do need to challenge yourself in your running. I wrote Slow Running, though, as a reaction - and a caution - against the prevalence of challenge in running. Run England, through whom I did my Run Leader training, were concerned at the time about the high injury rate amongst leisure runners: at that time half of all fun runners were injuring themselves at least once each year to the extent that they had to stop running for a while, which in any other sport would be regarded as a slaughter. Most of those injuries were from running too far, too fast, too soon: hence the idea of running slower, pacing yourself, building stamina and endurance without injury - because most runners will challenge themselves anyway, probably too much, so the need was (and still is..) to restrain that impulse and return running to a fun and safe activity: we can 'train' if and when we want to, but not every run is a training run. But if we have a lot of leisure runners, and we're not training, then perhaps - and as far as I can see there is a lack of studies to test this - we are all slowing down, faster than elite athletes would. Does it matter? I don't know: I enjoy running, and I only know I'm slower if I check my time - which I generally don't bother to do, because I'm running for the fun of it not to achieve a pace. But for my friend, speed obviously is important - a measure of the quality of his run - and in his case, as an elite amateur runner, training regularly, no amount of training can hold back the inevitable slow decline in speed.

The only advice one can give, I suppose, is that faced with the inevitable one should accept it - don't stop running, but try to stop needing to run fast. Run for fun - but easier said than done.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Early Years

Timing error in sampling, and balanced ADC/clock choice

How to confuse people