Hi, welcome to The Running Channel. I'm Kate, and today, along with Anna,
we're going to be looking at how age affects your running performance,
including looking at what age grading is and giving you some serious running
inspiration from older runners who are smashing it.
That's right. Getting older is a fact of life,
but it doesn't mean that you have to stop running. In fact, in this video,
we are going to be going through the kinds of things that you can be doing in
your thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, seventies,
and beyond to help with your running.
Now we know that a lot of you watching may have come to running later on in life
So we'd love to hear your experiences with some of the things that we're going
to be talking about today. So make sure you drop them in the comments below.
And while you're there hit subscribe and tap the bell icon.
So you get notified when we upload new videos, all about running,
which we do every week.
If a fit and healthy 20 year old went head to head with a fit and healthy 65
year old, running any distance,
then it's pretty certain that the 20 year old will
outperform the 65 year old. It's just the way that our bodies are.
Our peak fitness is in our twenties,
and that is the same for both men and women.
Our aerobic capacity begins to fall as we start to age and we'll be looking at
how much by, in a little bit.
and that's why you'll find within running something called age grading.
Now that provides a way of measuring the quality of runs without just having two
performances, head to head that don't take into account the age of the athletes.
Now the age grading is worked out by taking the best time run at that distance
by someone of your age and dividing it by your time.
So that's a really simplified way of working it out.
And every event will have different methods,
but the theory is the same.
It puts you on a level playing field with other people who are the same age or
gender as you.
And it just gives you a different way to be able to compare your performance.
Now you may have noticed that parkrun includes an age grading score as well. In fact,
the current parkrun age grading world record is held by Fauja Singh,
who set it in March, 2012, the day before his a hundred and first birthday.
He ran a 38 minutes and 34 seconds,
which equals two at age grading score of a whopping 179%.
So to give you an idea of how age grading works.
If you're a 52 year old woman,
who's run 5k in 27 minutes and the all time,
best time over that distance is 20 minutes.
Then you would work out your age grading by doing 20 divided by 27,
which makes 74%.
Now what age grading isn't is a number that puts you in a certain percentile of
the population. So for example, if you achieve a 74% score,
that doesn't mean that you're better than 74% of the population.
But what it does mean is that you can compare previous times, PBs from when you
were younger, to what you've achieved now.
Another thing to note when it to age and running performance is looking at the
qualifying times for some of the big world marathons. So the older,
the age brackets are, the slower the qualifying times become. For example,
Boston marathon qualifying times.
So a 19 year old man has to run under three hours in another marathon in order to qualify.
Whereas a 70 year old man has to run under four hours and 20 minutes.
So that's a time difference between the two of an hour and 20 minutes,
which is a lot. However,
it does not mean that the 70 year old has an easier job.
Those times are set to recognize the difference and the realistic abilities of
people at those ages.
So what's happening to our bodies as we get older,
that slows our running down? Well, as we get older, we lose muscle mass.
As soon as you hit your thirties,
most adults will lose between three and 8% of their muscle mass, every decade.
And a study in the Journal for Strength and Conditioning, found that people in
their late fifties whose main form of exercise was distance running,
tended to lose leg strength every year,
even if they weren't losing muscle mass.
Separately in a study of nearly 200,000 runners,
researchers looked at a road race of 15 kilometres over a period of 12 years.
And they found out that over the age of 40, runners slowed by about 0.2% a year.
That roughly works out as one second per mile per year.
They also discovered that as runners age,
the gap between men and women comes down. In fact,
they're more evenly matched.
So, they found that by the age of 60, women had made up
five of the roughly 15% difference that there is between men
and women in their forties.
Both genders slowed at roughly linear rates between 40 and 60,
but after 60, men's performance has dropped off more steeply,
whereas women's continue to decline, but along that roughly linear track.
It's not just a loss of muscle mass that slows us down
ss we get older either.
We also lose a lot of our fast twitch muscles.
And so that's why most sprinters will peak in their twenties,
whereas endurance runners, well,
they can continue to perform incredibly well right up into their forties.
And, sadly your aerobic capacity decreases over time.
If you take a look at what's considered excellent in a VO2 Max score for
women and men between the ages of 20 and 24,
that would be 50 for women or 60 for men.
But then look at the older age category of say ages 60 to 65.
And then you're looking at a score of 30 for women and 40 for men.
Finally, there's the whole running is bad for your knees debate,
which clearly has to be considered when you're looking at running into older age.
To be clear, running doesn't cause osteoarthritis.
And we do have a whole video on The Running Channel that goes into way more depth.
So check that one out if you're interested to find out more.
So having lookes at the physiological changes that happen that can slow us down as we age,
how do we counteract them? Well,
a lot of the decrease in race performance can be explained due to decreases in
oxygen uptake, upper and lower body strength, flexibility,
and explosive power.
To try to overcome these,
or at least give yourself the best chance of counteracting them.
Try focusing your running training on stuff.
That's going to help with your oxygen uptakes.
This doesn't have to be flat-out sprints on the track.
You can try and do some fartlek intervals or some Kenyan Hills.
Just bear in mind that as you get older,
you might need to give yourself a little bit more time, extra to warm up.
Now we know that muscular strength and power can be improved with weight and
strength exercises. So build some strength and conditioning into your routine.
Now that doesn't have to mean lifting crazy heavy weights at the gym,
simple exercises like lunges and squats or polymetric versions like jumping
lunges and squats. These can make a big difference. Running wise,
short hill reps between say 30 to 90 seconds, also helps and
develops your power, strength, and your speed.
Plus it doesn't hurt to focus on your flexibility with some stretching.
So check out our videos on what to do before and after every run,
and make sure you do them and don't skimp on recovery either.
We already mentioned the parkrun age grade record holder Fauja Singh,
but how about some other older runners to give you some serious inspo?
Well in October, 2016, at the age of 85,
Ed Whitlock completed the Toronto waterfront marathon in a time of three hours,
56 minutes and 34 seconds.
And that wasn't even the fastest he's ever run that marathon.
When he was 73,
he became the oldest person to run a marathon in sub
four hours. So to give you some perspective on that time,
if it was age graded, it's the equivalent of a runner in his prime,
completing the marathon in just over two hours and four minutes.
So not far off world record pace, amazing.
In October, 2020 Ian Barnes,
85 years old from Darlington set the UK record for his age group by running
a mile in eight minutes, 10.4 seconds.
And then there's Julia ‘Hurricane’ Hawkins, who took up running at the age
of 100. At the age of 103 in 2019,
Julia became the oldest person to compete on an American track,
running the 100 meter dash in an incredibly impressive time of
46.07 seconds. Julia, you are incredible!
So there you go, proof, as if
you needed it, that you can continue your hobby right into old age.
When did you start running?
Have you found that you've started to slow as you get older or perhaps you're
getting faster?
Let us know in the comments below and we'll see you next time on The Running Channel.