Learning to Run Fast (er) Again at 60

Ok, the first disclaimer is I know I am not 60 yet, but really close!  Like three months close.  Believe it or not I was once a fast runner.  Second disclaimer, in comparison to many others I was slow, but relatively for me, I was once way faster.  I went 25 plus years “maxing out” the USMC three mile run requirement, which for me was under 18:00.  Again, I realize that it is slow to the speedsters of the world as my son crushed my fastest times by over a minute when he was a young teenager.  This “faster me” translated into some relatively decent marathons as well, that is until I discovered the joy of going slow.  Upon retirement, I decided to focus on the much longer ultra distances over highly challenging terrain.  Walking?  No problem.  Sitting and resting for a minute?  Go for it.  I simply got used to it and enjoyed not having to run fast.  After jumping feet first into the ultra-world, running faster than nine minutes per mile seemed challenging, and just why try when I would never run that fast during a race?  There is a lot wrong with this last question, something I was reminded of after spending a significant amount of time studying ultra training and coaching.  I realized I was not training optimally for even the 100+ distance ultras.  I don’t want to go down the training plan road here as that is not my intent.  However, you do have to do some fast running to maximize your potential at any distance.  I spent years training to just finish races, happy in the experience of completing some of the toughest races out there.  In retrospect, I wish I had put more thought into training then and excelling instead of just finishing. Water under the bridge.

Fast forward to today.  What do you do when you turn 60?  I suppose I could do what I have done the last several years and just keep picking super hard races, finish, and claim victory.  Take satisfaction from being one of the older folks crazy enough to give it a try.  I have tired of that though. I am at the point in life where just finishing is not going to be satisfying enough. Recently I remembered that yes, I can go faster than I have been recently. Someone - thanks Heather - said that if I were to try to qualify with Boston with her that she would commit to doing a 200 miler for my 60th. We will also do something fun that year and travel somewhere cool, but we still need some challenges. I must admit that I have seen no proof of her signing up for any 200-mile races yet, but time will tell.  My bargain?  I am participating in a training plan to achieve around a 3:42 marathon, a time we think we need to make it to Boston.  While this was once easy for me, it has been a long time since I went remotely that fast.

What am I taking away from this experience. Well for starters I will be posting on my site some periodic observations. Nine weeks into a twenty-week plan, I can honestly say I have gotten stronger and faster. A year ago, running a 7-minute anything would have been foreign to me at this age. Now we are doing that weekly. Ten minutes used to be the norm and now I look at that as a recovery day. What I take away from this is that the tempo and speed work are important no matter what distance you run. The number one determinant of how well runners do on ultra distance races is not “the long run” in training, but their overall conditioning, and things like faster runs contribute to this. Again, not a coaching effort here or training plan builder, just an observation that is likely obvious to most runners, but I somehow missed it for years.

The challenges with age are that we break down faster and recover slower. For the past five years I have integrated a ton of cross training and that has made me much stronger and more durable. Doing this cross training literally stopped me from quitting the ultra-scene. Focusing on mobility also helps significantly – I am trying to do more of this. Lastly, I have learned I need the recovery and when it says recovery run, I run slowly. The takeaway is making the fast runs fast, and slow runs slow. Most of us know that but pay it lip service at best. Do it. Especially if you are getting older like me. Time will tell how this goes, but I have to admit I am enjoying memories of the days when we would go out on a group run that was supposed to be easy but ending up with an all-out race for survival. I also want to see how this translates to success on some harder trail races such as the Looking Glass 100K in November. How I transition from running flat stuff to this big elevation race should be interesting and will be working on that plan shortly. From there we will see how it supports getting ready for a 200-mile race, who knows! More on that later. For now, stay tuned on how the “running fast at 60” is going.