Where and how do you start running training if you are over 40, and how will reaching this landmark age affect you if you are an experienced runner?
Well, firstly and probably most importantly, 40 is just a number, it’s just three straight lines and a round one; nothing should happen to us overnight just because we’ve reached the age of 40 years. But of course for many it does. Because 40 has also become a label, and people often behave according to their labels. To be labelled 40 has many meanings for runners, for men we become veterans and we all know how we feel about veteran cars. We almost expect to start running slower, to start getting more injured, to become less flexible, it’s as if someone has waved a magic wand over us when we were sleeping — running will never be the same! Perhaps instead we should think that we’ve just reached 14610 (that’s 40 years in days, give or take the odd leap year). Ok, perhaps not.
It’s a huge subject — most of the runners in our running club are over 40 years old, most of the runners we regularly compete against are over 40. Here’s an interesting statistic: in our county in the UK, Sussex, we have a running competition that takes place throughout the year and encompasses most of the road races in the county. Participants come from most of the running clubs across Sussex, over 3000 male and female runners. Of those, a staggering 62 percent are over 40. Most of those will have their own ideas about how age affects running, but I wonder how many actually consider the best way to adapt their training to their age? And not just their age, what about their expectations? Are there any special considerations for those of us who run over 40? Of course there are. Some of the biggest areas for concern for runners who reach 40 are:
- how will my age affect my speed?
- how will age affect my injury risk?
- what is the best way for me to train?
We’ll be looking at those questions, and plenty more too, but in the meantime a great source of info is the book ‘Running over Forty’ by Bruce and Sue Tulloh.
Do you run and train according to your label? Or do you ignore your chronological age and instead just listen to your body and train accordingly? I suspect that we should be somewhere in the middle. Yes, there are certain changes we should make to our training as we get older, but there are also many ideas we take on board that might need questioning.
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