Do Older Runners Need More Rest

Audio Transcript

Michael: Hey Runners Connect fans. Today, I’ll be answering a question from Jen about older runners, and whether or not they need more rest.

Jen: As someone over 65 who used to be a decent runner, I feel a difference in my level of soreness at the end of the day. Should older runners take more rest? I am fine with the pace of my workouts, but feel they are not enough rest days to recover.

Michael: That’s a great question Jen and it’s something that we absolutely consider at Runners Connect.

To answer it basically, do older runners need more rest? Of course they do. You cannot recover at the same rate at your age, as you could when you were younger; that’s just the simple reality.

Your metabolism is a bit slower and your muscle mass is typically a little bit lower.

As we well know, a lot of things happen as we age.

If you think about it logically, you certainly cannot recover at the same rate; there’s no way.

That’s not to say that there’s no way you can run or there’s no way you can reach your goals. However, it is worth considering, and you don’t necessarily want to compare yourself to when you were younger.

It is going to take longer to recover and you might need to build in more rest.

This is something we know at Runners Connect and with anyone over 60 or so, we’re going to tend towards some slightly lower mileage, maybe fewer running days overall, perhaps build in some extra cross training instead of running, just to lower the impact on your muscles.

We can also include less intense speed work overall, because a lot of those intense speed sessions require possibly more than an older runner can handle, and that’s fine.

Those aren’t necessarily a 100% required thing that you have to do when you’re training, so we can ease up those a little bit and still get 90, 95% of the work done, without digging into the well that lasts little bit.

If only one of those things will solve it, we’re talking about mileage, the amount of running days, speed work, if only one thing will solve it, it’s usually more built in rest.

That’s the biggest thing that we do. This is for anybody but especially with older runners, we like to build in something what we call “down weeks.”

A down week is a week where you have lower overall mileage, lower intensity, maybe even take an extra day off.

And we don’t do this by need. What do I mean?

Let’s say you’re feeling a little tired and you say, “Hey, I’m exhausted. I’m not handling my training very well; I’m not recovering,” obviously at that point you’d have to say, “Okay, we’ll take a few days off. Maybe we’ll take this next week really light.”

Instead of that, we like to get it beforehand.

We like to get it before that even comes, so we build in down weeks. That’s important in your training. Build in down weeks, and not just by need; not just when you need them.

For any runner, it can be every third or fourth week; something along those lines.

For an older runner, it might be different. It might even get to the point where you have to totally alternate weeks.

Have one week where it’s more of a normal training week, it’s pretty kind of higher mileage for you, higher intensity, and then the very next week, you take it very low key; low mileage, low intensity.

You can take an extra day off, get in the pool a little bit, whatever you need to do cross training wise, and that might even be necessary.

That’s almost an extreme example as it’s usually not necessary if we’re training smart enough throughout the other weeks.

It’s usually not necessary to do it like on every other week but it might be.

The important thing to get across here is that a lot of people don’t understand down weeks. They’ll look at that and say, “Wait, how am I going to get better that week?”

Yet again it’s important to always go back to the fact that you don’t improve when you do a workout.

When you do a hard workout, you actually get worse; you become a worse runner, where as soon as you finish that hard session or a long run, you’re a worse runner than you were before, technically speaking.

You improve when you recover. Other things that aid in your recovery are when you rest, when you take some easy days, when you get some sleep, you eat well, and all that

That’s when you improve. That’s when your muscles adapt and regenerate and even get stronger than they were before.

Your cardiovascular system adapts and becomes stronger, so you only improve while you recover.

You should look at a down week as, “Oh wow, look at all the training that I’m going to absorb that week. I’m going to get better.

I’m going to become a better runner that week.” Instead of saying, “Oh man, I’m not going to be able to get in my training that week. That’s horrible. I’m going to get worse.” That’s absolutely not the case. You shouldn’t look at it that way.

The other way to look at it is, we would rather build those in ahead of time, than let you get to the point where you’re exhausted and over trained or perhaps even injured.

We would much rather just get that beforehand and hopefully prevent that stuff.

Let’s consider your normal training weeks to be 10 out 10. Those are the 10 out 10 weeks. These down weeks are more like a six and a five, something like that.

That’s definitely not ideal, but in the end, if you’re training in and out every single week consistently, even though you’re throwing in down weeks, every third week or whatever, that your average is still going to be pretty high, it’s still going to be above eight each week.

That’s pretty good. That’s better than most people can ask for.

Whereas if you were to hit tens every single week, you might get hurt, or over train and you have to take a month completely down, or even three or four weeks completely off for an injury.

That means you’ll have zero weeks and those are going to bring that average way, way down to six, five, et cetera.

We’re talking about consistency over time, and the number one thing is to keep you healthy. That’s why we like to build in those down weeks.

If I had one recommendation for older runners, it wouldn’t necessarily be just to look at your running days. I would say down weeks could be a huge thing to build in.

Another thing to mention is strength work. Strength work is important for any runner.

Any runner should be doing some sort of strength training regularly, even if it’s just less than an hour a week, 30 minutes a week, whatever you’re doing is going to help.

For older runners it’s not optional; it’s absolutely essential.

You must keep your muscles and tendons healthy and strong. Plain running is not going to do it. You’ve got to keep that stuff strong and keep yourself injury resistant.

In some cases, that’s more important than your running.

Let’s say it’s the last day of the week, and you have an option. You can either get a five mile easy run or you can get in your strength work.

Your strength work is absolutely more important, and I would say that to almost anyone, but especially someone who’s older.

It’s very important you get in your strength work, as that’s going to keep you training healthy consistently.

Another time, a member of Runners Connect brought something interesting to my attention.

I had never really thought about it, but it makes perfect sense.

He mentioned something called age PRs or I think he called them decade PRs. I think he was in his 50s. He said ,”I set a decade PR.”

I said, “What’s that?”

I think I knew what it was, but I wanted to enquire further, and he said, “Well, it’s a PR from my 50s,” and I thought that was so cool, because it makes perfect sense.

Let’s say you’ve been running since you were 18 years old or whatever age.

If you’re talking about someone in their 60s, you can’t compare yourself to back then. It’s not even fair; it’s not fair to yourself and it’s not fair to all the hard work that you’re doing to compare yourself to when you were in your 20s or your 30s.

You have to look at it in perspective, and so I like that idea of having those decade PRs.

As soon as you turn 50s or 60 or even 70, it’s like you have a blank slate; you have a whole new set of PRs to run.

Every race you run is a PR, and if you look at it that way, I think that’s a good way to look at it, because then you’re not saying, “Oh, I have to take more rest than I did when I was in my 20s.”

You’re saying, “Hey, this is just how I have to train to hit my decade PRs.”

It’s a good way to look at it and to change your mind-set about aging, and about running at an older age.

It can still be a lot of fun. You can still set a lot of great times even if you can’t beat your PRs from your 20s. You can set those decade PRs.

To recap, yes, older runners, 100% need more rest.

If it’s a difference between the amount of running days, that could make a huge difference. We have a lot of older runners who are running as few as four, sometimes even three days a week.

I usually wouldn’t recommend that for marathon training just because you need four, but if we’re talking about four days a week of running, and maybe even one or two days of cross training added, that’s a pretty good week.

If you do that week in week out, you’re going to be successful, even though you might think that you need to run like five or six days a week.

That’s something to consider as you get older.

Another big thing is down weeks. I would highly recommend building those in, especially if you’re still feeling really good, and you’re still feeling the energy and the drive to hit CPRs.

Apart from just enjoying it, try to also run fast and try to run some of those decade PRs, then make sure you build in some down weeks, even if it’s just every fourth even every fifth week, it doesn’t really matter.

The fact that you have a week in there that is purely for rest, recovery and absorption of the overall training, is important and it’ll make a huge difference.

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That’s all for today, Runners Connect fans. Have a great run today.