OLD BONES
While senior running narrows the margin between health and health problems, there are a number of guidelines to manage running’s effects on the aging body. These include cutting back mileage but increasing the quality of runs, adding more rest days to your plan to avoid overtraining, increasing variety in cross training and increasing warm up and post workout stretch time. Dr. Kenneth Riess from the School of Health Sciences points to the importance of a high VO2max for endurance sports, and its inevitable decline by 10% per decade after the age of 30. “Exercising throughout life, especially while aging, reduces this decline in VO2max by slowing the negative effects on the muscles, heart and vasculature,” says Riess, “but it still happens.” Exercising early and throughout one’s life is invaluable to accumulate a “bank account” of fitness in anticipation of VO2max withdrawals. Taking up running later in life has innumerable benefits, including reduced risk of heart disease, diabetes, blood pressure and cancer. What’s especially important for masters’ runners is that the risk of developing these conditions grows as you get older. Running improves muscle strength, coordination and bone density, which reduces the likelihood of falling, fracturing bones and increases the prospects of living independently. Anyone, at any age, can be like Ed. However, there’s risks. “The older you are, there’s more pieces of the puzzle that need to be considered,” says Reid Ferber, director, Running Injury Clinic. Start with your doctor, then see a gate specialist, for issues such as sarcopenia (the degenerative loss of skeletal muscle associated with aging) and a sports physiotherapist. Ferber reminds us, “It takes a village to raise a runner.” — By Megan Black
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2015 ISSUE 04
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“I think I have a great deal of what you might call perseverance.”
iRun because it helps me be the very best version of myself! — Geneviève Nicole, Ontario
2015-05-29 2:21 PM