Running After Menopause

Audio Transcript

Claire: Hey everyone. Karen sent in a question by email and here is what she wrote.

“Do post-menopausal women have added challenges on building muscle and endurance? If so, what can we do to overcome these challenges?”

That’s a great question Karen and I’m sure a lot of our listeners have had similar questions about how getting older affects your running.

The shift in your hormones as you reach menopause will undoubtedly affect your running, so if you’re prepared, you will be well ahead of your peers. Let’s first talk about what exactly happens.

At around age 40 or so give or take, your ovaries start deciding that the baby making days are over and so they start to release less oestrogen and progesterone.

This will eventually lead to a loss of your menstrual cycle, which let’s face it many of us welcome, but there are a lot of other non-baby making changes happening as well when oestrogen drops.

What oestrogen does in the body is, it strengthens bones and helps with how well your blood vessels expand and contract.

As the hormone decreases, your blood pressure and your temperature perception changes. Not only that, but your temperature regulation function starts to work less efficiently.

Meaning you feel hot. Those are also called hot flashes that you might have during the day or at night.

As every runner knows, running in the heat is much harder, more difficult, lowers your times and if you can’t cool off, your performance is certainly going to be affected, but there is good news about this.

Research shows that if you are a regular exerciser, you may experience fewer hot flashes than your sedentary friends, so keep on running.

Not only that. Because you are a runner, you’re used to dealing with the discomfort all the time. You’re hot and sweaty every time you run, right? You probably are a lot less bothered with being hot and sweaty than somebody who never gets hot and sweaty, so keep up your running.

The other side effect of lower oestrogen levels is that, your body tends to want to store fat instead of building muscles, not what you want to hear.

Thankfully, there is strength training to the rescue. Two or three strength training sessions a week build muscle and help support and create stronger bones.

You can either lift a few reps with heavy weights or use lighter weights with more repetitions, but the key is to lift to failure.

You are not working on your aerobics system in the weight room, so aim to lift until you can’t do another rep with good form and then rest for a few minutes, breath and relax before moving on to the next muscle group.

This is not an endurance session, you are not mimicking running, you’re weight training, so you want to take good rests and keep it anaerobic not aerobic.

Adding in some plyometrics or jumping exercises as well as hill sprints, also builds power and keeps those connections between your brain and your muscles sharp.

I’m not suggesting you jump huge boxes or leap up a stadium full of stairs. A simple jump rope session of 10 to 20 minutes a week will do the trick.

As far as endurance goes, yes, you absolutely can increase endurance through the post-menopausal years. If you started running later in life, you likely still have years of improvement ahead of you.

If you ran competitively in college, you’re not going to see PRs in your 50s of course, but there are always improvements to be made somewhere if you look for them.

Another key is not to skip your speed sessions. Many masters’ times decline not simply because of age, but because they choose not to push themselves, this could be a lack of motivation or a fear of injury, but speed work can and should be done safely as you age.

You will need more recovery days and/or rests in between intervals but keeping one or two quick sessions on the menu per week, will help keep you fit throughout your years.

Another way to stay motivated, whether you are a master’s runner or any age, is to listen to a good book while you run.

You can try Audible for free, for 30 days and check it out at runnersconnect.net/audible.

That’s it for today. Thank you so much for listening and I’ll be back next time to answer another one of your running questions.

If you have not gone to runnersconnect.net/daily to ask a question of your own, what are you waiting for? We would love to hear from you.

Finally, I want to thank today’s sponsor.

It’s no secret that I run with headphones almost all the time. When I need to crank out some fast miles, nothing gets me more motivated than a great song with a dance beat.

As Runners Connect athletes all know, only 20% of our mileage is fast, so what do I listen to the other 80% of the time? That’s where Audible comes in.

With Audible, I can download a thriller, listen to a cool biography, catch up on my monthly book club selection or travel to exotic lands, all while getting in my long easy miles.

They have all the latest running books too. Right now I’m listening to Cure: A Journey into the Science of Mind over Body by Jo Marchant and it’s absolutely fascinating.

The only downside? I want to keep running after my runs over to hear the next chapter.

If you’d like to try it out, Audible has a free 30-day trial, so you can see if it’s right for you.

Check out Audible’s humongous library and start your free 30 day trial at runnersconnect.net/audible.

That’s it and have a great run today.