One of the things that I have had to come to terms with as I have gotten older is that my body can’t recover at the same rate that it once did. This has necessitated adaptation to both how I approach my trail running and more importantly how I manage my recovery.
As we age we need to adapt our recovery so that we do not start our next trail run with unwanted fatigue from a previous workout. Make easy runs easier than they were before and use interval workouts to get more fitness benefits from less time on your feet.
Let’s take a closer look at how we can adapt our trail running as we get older so that we can enjoy decades more injury-free running.
How To Adjust Trail Running As You Get Older
Something that I’ve noticed since I’ve gotten older is that I don’t quite recover as quickly after a big run as I used to when I was younger. If I pick up any niggles or injuries I’m not able to recover from them as quickly as I once did. I also need to temper my expectations of what I think I can take on these days.
When I was young, if I picked up an injury I’d be able to bounce back within a week. These days, an injury could mean taking a month or even longer off. The other thing that I need to remind myself is to remember that I must ease back into my training volume after taking time off as my body can’t cope with the same volume of training that I did when I was younger.
Make Easy Runs Even Easier Than Before
The first way to be able to cope with trail running as I get older is that I need to make my easy runs even easier than I used to do them before. The reason for this is recovery is vital and my easy runs need to be part of my recovery process.
Therefore, these runs need to be run at a super easy pace, otherwise, they do not afford me the necessary recovery that I need to be able to cope with the more intense training sessions that I have on my program such as doing hill workouts in the mountains.
Make The Most Of Recovery To Keep Improving
The way to keep improving as an older runner is to make sure that your recovery is tailored to be able to absorb the training that you’ve done. This includes getting enough sleep as well as making sure that I have my nutrition dialed in to be able to replenish my body with what has been expended during the course of a training session.
At my age muscle mass has a tendency to deteriorate more quickly therefore I need to make sure that I have enough protein in my diet to be able to offset any potential muscle wastage as a result of the catabolic effects of running high mileage on the trails.
I’ve also learned an important lesson that has changed how I view a training day when it comes to nutrition. I do nearly all of my endurance training in the morning. In the past, for example, I would look at my nutrition for a Monday based on what my workout was for that Monday. Doing this meant that I’d keep my nutrition light on a rest day and feel completely depleted partway through my workout following a rest day.
What I have now learned is that from the moment I get home from my workout on Monday, all of my nutrition for the remainder of the day must be tailored to the demands of the workout that is planned for Tuesday. That way I can be starting a workout optimally fueled.
Reduce Total Monthly Mileage
The next thing that I needed to adapt as I got older was that I needed to come to terms with not running 80 or 90 miles per week like I did when I was younger.
These days I need to dial that weekly mileage back to around 50 miles per week, simply because my body cannot cope with as much impact on an ongoing weekly basis. But just because I’m doing less weekly mileage out on the trails does not mean that I’m necessarily losing fitness.
There are ways that I can compensate for the lower overall volume. What I do is make the time that I spend on the trail more focused. I do more of my quality running sessions on the trail while leaving the bulk of my volume work to my crosstraining.
Add Cross Training workouts
Speaking of crosstraining, this is what I do to keep my overall training volume high even though I’ve reduced the number of miles I run per week on the trail. My crosstraining is largely done on the bike. My normal daily bike ride during the week is about 2 hours before work. Then over the weekends, I’ll often do longer rides of between 4 and 5 hours.
This gives me the cardio base that I need to be able to support the running that I do out on the trail. On the rare days here in Spain when the weather is not conducive to riding a bike, I’ll pop into my local gym and do between 30 and 60 minutes on the elliptical machine. I choose the elliptical machine as it gives me an excellent cardio workout but without any of the impact on my body that happens if I run too many miles.
Older Runners Need Longer Warmups
Now that I’m older I’ve also realized that I need a longer warm-up before each of my runs. When I was younger I could often get away with not doing any warmup at all and just took the first mile easy before increasing my pace.
My former running coach taught me the benefits of doing a dynamic warmup of between 5 and 10 minutes before each run.
These days I need to make sure that my warmup is between 15 and 20 minutes and if my body feels a bit tight from the previous day’s training it might even be a 30-minute warmup to make sure that everything is working as it should be before I step out on the trail and begin my run.
Add Strength Training to Hold Back The Aging Process
Now that I’m older and my muscle mass no longer is what it once was, doing strength training in the gym has become absolutely vital. Once we get beyond the age of 40 as men we, tend to lose approximately 1% of muscle mass each year.
Doing strength training, and lifting weights in the gym, drastically reduces that muscle loss. This is something that my physio pointed out to me. He told me that running is a catabolic activity that tends to cause us to lose muscle mass more quickly than if we didn’t run. Strength training effectively prevents the loss of muscle mass.
Female runners, however, are prone to the loss of bone density after the age of 40. Here again, the rate of bone density loss is slowed by as much as 95% by doing strength training and lifting weights in the gym.
Be Realistic With Expectations
The biggest adaptation that I needed to make as I’ve gotten older is that I can no longer do the types of challenges that I used to do when I was younger. Getting up from 6 months on the couch and running a marathon never was a good idea, but it is an even worse idea now that I’m older.
I need to adjust the expectations of what I can do on any given day to what my body is physically capable of doing. Likewise, if I’m coming back from an injury or time off, I can’t bounce back as quickly as I used to.
As an older runner, I still tend to have my mind try to dictate what I’m able to do. Meanwhile, the truth is that it is my body that determines what I’m capable of doing on any given day. We will all do better and stay injury-free as we age by learning to listen to our bodies.