CAN RUNNING KEEP US YOUNG?

According to physical fitness researchers at Arizona State University, women runners between the ages of thirty-five and seventy years old are "the most fit middle-aged and older women they have studied to date."

Scientists arrived at this conclusion after studying forty-nine well-trained female endurance runners. The runners in the study had been training for an average of nine years, averaged twenty-six percent body fat, and had been running approximately twenty-five miles per week. Some of the findings were that masters women runners are better at utilizing oxygen than athletes in other sports, that menopause doesn't have a negative impact on aerobic capacity and that maximal heart rates in female runners don't decline dramatically as a result of aging.

The average age at menopause for these women was fifty-one, but the scientists found no evidence that running either hastened or retarded the onset of menopause. Although the scientists found that post-menopausal women tended to have lower aerobic capacities and higher heart rates during exercise than pre-menopausal women, they found that the differences resulted more from the normal aging process than from the experience of menopause.

The study showed that the amount of oxygen required to run a particular pace and the individual's maximum heart rate remained constant with age. The maximum heart rate of the fifty-five to seventy year old participants averaged 172 beats per minute, which is the expected maximum for a forty-eight year old person.

The researchers found that thirty-five year old women runners were thirty percent more effective at processing oxygen than female swimmers of the same age and that forty-five to fifty-five year old runners were ten percent better at processing oxygen than swimmers of a similar age. The runners in this study were thirty to fifty percent better at processing oxygen than active women who did not participate in regular endurance training and fifty-five to eighty percent more effective at processing oxygen than sedentary women. The oldest runners in this study were found to have maximum oxygen processing capabilities similar to moderately active women thirty years their junior.

Although the women were shown to have higher maximum oxygen utilization capabilities compared to other women of their age, these women did show a decline of about one percent per year in their ability to process oxygen as they aged. For comparison, other research done at Harvard University on younger, but sedentary, people has shown that oxygen processing capabilities decline by about forty-three percent from age twenty-three to age fifty.

This loss in oxygen utilization capacity in aging runners has been documented by other researchers, notably by Ball State University's, Dr. David Costill. Dr. Costill found that very fit masters runners, runners who trained consistently, and ran high mileage, at a high intensity, were able to reduce this loss in capacity to fractions of one percent per year. My own experience bares this out. I ran my best time for the 10K, 29:44, in 1970 at the age of twenty-six. Then in 1987, after having trained consistently over the intervening years and averaging seventy miles, and one to three speed workouts per week for the previous two years, I ran 31:40 for the 10K. Over the next three years I reduced my training to an average of fifty miles with one speed workout per week, and I was still able to run the 10K in less than thirty-three minutes. But in 1992, after two years of running thirty to fifty miles per week and rarely running speed workouts, I was only able to run 35:20 for the 10K. Therefore, I slowed only two minutes for the 10K over the seventeen years where I kept my mileage and intensity high. I slowed an additional minute during the three years when I reduced my mileage by thirty percent, but continued to run regular speed workouts. Finally, I slowed two minutes in two years after reducing my training by twenty percent and discontinuing regular speedwork. The Arizona State researchers pointed out that the loss of maximum oxygen capacity they found in women runners was partly due to the fact that the older runners tended to train less than the younger women, but explained that the normal aging process also played a part. Gains in body fat, losses of muscle mass, and decreased contractility of the heart muscle are changes associated with the normal aging process that are thought to have an adverse affect on our ability to utilize oxygen. Even though we can't avoid the aging process, the research demonstrates that even a modest amount of running can slow some of the effects of aging, and that running a combination of moderately high mileage and regular speedwork may be our best defense. It appears that running moderately high mileage keeps weight gains to a minimum, and that regular high intensity running retards the loss of muscle mass, and heart muscle contractility that normally occurs with aging. A ninety year old mountaineer, whom I met on the top of 9,400 foot, Mount Baden Powell, told me, "The secret to enjoying a long life is found in staying active; people who just sit are either dead or dying." Consider Mavis Lindgren, who completed the New York City Marathon this year at the age of 86. Mavis reported that she was always sickly as a child and that she was diagnosed with pneumonia five times in four years during her 50's. When she was 62 her doctor recommended that she take up walking to improve her failing health. The more Mavis walked the better she felt. Soon she started power walking and then she started mixing jogging with her walking. She entered her first race at the age of 70, a 20 mile race in Sacramento, and finished it in 4 hours and 12 minutes. A few months later she entered a marathon and finished it in 5 hours and 4 minutes in a steady downpour. Mavis was hooked on running; she increased her training to 50 to 60 miles per week and ran her fastest marathon time 4:34:08 at the age of 73. To date she has completed 65 marathons, all of them since she turned 70. Perhaps the poet Dylan Thomas was right when he advised, "Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light." To me the evidence is clear, running may not allow us to live forever, but regular running can retard the aging process and give us extra years of quality living.

Copyright © 2001 by John Loeschhorn - Mail to:mtnrnr@pacbell.net March 31, 2001