Threshold mileage for running well ... and age is just a number

I had previously noted a 30-to-40-mile a week threshold during a post-injury recovery period. In the beginning of that period, as I was slowly increasing my weekly mileage, the body just felt rusty. However, once I got back above 30-40 miles a week, running felt familiar again, like seeing an old friend. But, that was just one data point.

Now I’ve a new data point for this threshold of familiarity, arising from the COVID-19 hiatus in racing. During this two-year period, I didn’t participate in any races (other than a few virtual ones, which were basically time trials), my average weekly mileage was in the 20s, and my Sunday long runs were capped at around 16 miles, with many far shorter. Overall, the body just felt sluggish and struggled over the back half of those long runs, and I’ve been thinking that perhaps the aging curve has finally caught up with the adaptation (to training) curve (!).

But, then, over the past couple months, as my 7-day moving average mileage increased to 35 and more, my long runs began to feel differently, with faster, negative-split paces. Getting to this threshold, which probably varies with the individual, is apparently what’s needed for all the loose rusty parts of my body to become lubricated and snap together to run well.

So, it is still mostly a matter of training, even at my age. 😊

And, on the subject of running and aging, an interesting story recently came from Adharanand Finn, an author, journalist, and podcaster from the U.K. (I’ve read the first two of Finn’s books: Running with the Kenyans and The Way of the Runner, both terrific reads! On my list is his third and latest book, The Rise of the Ultra Runners.) I’ve a Patreon subscription to Finn’s writings, which include a “Monday musings” article.

A “musings” article from a couple weeks ago is a story from a recent parkrun. (Here’s more information on parkruns in the U.S., still catching up in participation relative to other countries.) One of the runners who had finished ahead of Finn basically said to him afterward, wow, you’re fast … for your age. And that set Finn off on a brief thought experiment on whether thinking younger makes one feel and act younger and be perceived as such by others. So, for example, do Kenyan runners in general and Eliud Kipchoge in particular not “run their age,” because they think of themselves as younger and, thus, are not constrained by their actual chronological age?

Here's my comment on Finn’s article: ‘I’m glad that you ended not with “must accept that I’m [old]” but with “better to embrace it.” I’d say even “to celebrate it”! I don’t think the Kenyans think of themselves as younger; rather, they just don’t think much about age, as least the chronological kind, which is just a number, literally.’

And, thinking more about this, what does chronological age mean anyway, other than a counting convention for how long a mass of cells has existed relative to the number of its revolutions around the sun? Of course, there is a secular trend to aging; nothing can be done about that, though sometimes we benefit from it, e.g., aging into a BQ (😊). But, eventually, we all, well, “age out.” What’s important is how we age, and about that we can do quite a bit, to slow down aging and perhaps even reverse it to some extent (see, e.g., Arsenis et al. 2017). Biological age is far more meaningful than that chronological number. For a given chronological age, a plot of its corresponding population’s biological age would show some spread or skewness that varies with the chronological age. Most runners would probably fall on the tail somewhere of a negative skew.

Finn has also written a couple “musings” articles about Kipchoge’s chronological age, that it could very likely be well over 40 (though no one seems to know for sure)! Again, I don’t think Kipchoge simply thinks of himself as being younger, i.e., as a mental technique for training and racing; he just doesn’t think much about age. So, if Kipchoge is running as if he’s in his 30s, it’s probably because he actually is in his 30s, biologically. He’s an outlier, obviously, perhaps with good “staying young” genes. But, there is also a host of other contributing factors, as Finn has described in Running with the Kenyans and as others have as well (e.g., David Epstein’s The Sports Gene and Alex Hutchinson’s Endure).

Age really is just a number. And it is still mostly a matter of training!

Reference

Arsenis, N.C., T. You, E.F. Ogawa, G.M. Tinsley, and L. Zuo, 2017. Physical activity and telomere length: Impact of aging and potential mechanisms of action, Oncotarget, 8, 45008-45019, doi: 10.18632/oncotarget.16726.