Running is an excellent sport for people as they get older. It provides significant benefits that can offset the effects of ageing. More than half the runners in the New York City Marathon are over 40, and over 10% of all runners train on a proform treadmill either at home or in their local gym.
From your thirties onwards, a number of physical changes take place in the average person’s body. Your ability to consume oxygen decreases, muscle mass reduces, muscle elasticity reduces, lung elasticity declines, bone density reduces, the metabolism slows, body fat increases and the immune system becomes weaker. How many more reasons do you need to take up running – even using a home based horizon treadmill will make all the difference.
These changes will have an adverse impact on running performance. The fall in aerobic capacity, reduced stride length, reduced leg strength, and reduced ability to store energy all contribute to deterioration in performance. In general, it is thought that running speeds deteriorate by about 1 per cent a year from a peak at some point in the thirties; and we appear to lose aerobic capacity at about 9 – 10 per cent a decade.
However, older runners can continue to perform extraordinary athletic feats. Canadian athlete Ed Whitlock ran a marathon in 2:59:09 in September 2003, at the age of 72. Carlos Lopes set the world marathon record at the age of 38. At the age of 52, Hal Higdon, marathon runner and writer, ran a 10 km in 31:08 and a marathon in 2:29:27.