A higher level of performance that is possible physically doesn’t seem possible to an athlete if nobody around them is actually performing at that level. The Bannister effectĪthletic performance is psychologically limited by current standards. Indeed, I believe that my longtime habit of mimicking elite methods of taking care of the body is the number-two reason I’m aging more successfully as an athlete than I expected to. The good news for recreational athletes is that they can reap the same rewards by prioritizing these same practices. Nowadays, the typical pro place as high a priority on this stuff as they do on workouts, and the rewards are plain to see. In past generations, a lot of elite athletes ate whatever, overtrained, and eschewed ancillary practices like mobility work. Professional endurance sports careers are getting longer, and they’re doing so largely because athletes are doing more to take care of their bodies. Olympic Trials Men’s Marathon (Abdi Abdirahman) was 43. Last year’s male winner of the Ironman World Championship (Jan Frodeno) was 38 years old. So are active professional athletes over 35. It’s not just over-40 endurance athletes who are performing at historically high levels. Fiz was the 1995 marathon world champion and set a PB of 2:08:05 in winning the 1997 Lake Biwa Marathon–a top professional run in his prime still at it well into middle age. That goal was made a mockery of Martin Fiz, 54, who clocked 2:28:09 to my 2:39:30. In the old days, most of the top endurance athletes in the older age groups were late starters-folks who in their 20s were working in offices rather than racing in the Olympics like Tommy Hughes.Ĭase in point: When I raced the 2017 Chicago Marathon at 46, one of my goals was to not get beaten by anyone older than me. Additionally, a greater number of the most talented young endurance athletes are choosing to continue competing past 40. First, surveys like this one are reporting that there are simply more men and women over 40 participating in running events and triathlons, in particular. When I say there is more talent in the older ranks of endurance sports, I mean this in two ways. Reasons why older endurance athletes perform at levels unseen in athletes their age 1. So, let’s ask now: Why are lots of older endurance athletes these days performing at levels heretofore unseen in athletes their age?ġ) more talent competing in the older ranks of endurance sports,ģ) the reinforcing psychosocial effect of raising the proverbial bar. The phrase makes no effort to explain the cause or causes of the phenomenon. It makes a cliché of the observation that older people-or subgroups of older people, anyway-are behaving or performing or presenting themselves in ways we are accustomed to seeing only younger people do. We’ve all heard the expression “Fifty is the new forty,” and variations thereof. The point is that, as seems to be the case with so many older endurance athletes these days, age is not slowing me down nearly as much as it is supposed to be doing based on historical standards. None of these performances is anywhere near as impressive as Tommy Hughes’s world record, but that’s not the point. This year alone I have finished second overall in the Orange County Half Marathon in 1:15:30, finished 14 th overall in the Los Angeles Marathon in 2:46:59 (on a course with more than 1,800 of elevation gain), run my fastest mile since high school (4:55), and run a 10K time trial in 33:25 (beating my official PR by nine seconds). At 49, I myself am doing things at a lower rung on the talent ladder that I wouldn’t have believed possible for me. And it’s not just athletes like Tommy Hughes, who competed in the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, who are getting in on the action. You’re seeing this type of thing more and more these days-men and women redefining what’s possible for older endurance athletes. But the race became even more exceptional when 60-year-old Irishman Tommy Hughes crossed the finish line in 1:11:09, smashing the age-group world record for the half-marathon distance. It was one of the first sizeable road running events to take place after the COVID-19 pandemic swept the planet. The 2020 Antrim Coast Half Marathon was exceptional simply by virtue of happening.
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