age and exercise

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Even scientists can improve with age!
Like Ken Sparks, renowned exercise scientist Dave Costill, Ph.D., of the Human Performance Laboratory at Ball State University is another athlete who has actually performed better after he reached silver-haired status. As a college student, Costill's PB in the 1500-metre swim was 23:31, but at the age of 50 he covered the same distance in only 19:42, a close-to four-minute improvement!

Costill also managed to upgrade his running performances as he moved through his 40s. At the age of 32, the hard-working investigator's PB in the 10K was 43:16, but at age 46 Costill rocketed through the same distance in a brisk 40:18. How did Costill do it? Unlike most ageing athletes, who gradually cut back on their training as they get older, Costill actually increased his workout load. In college, for instance, he swam about 7.5 miles per week, far below the 15-mile per week level he reached as a 50-year-old. As a runner, Costill ambled 25-28 miles per week at the age of 32 but accelerated to 41 miles per week at age 46. Sometimes it's nice to be a bit lazy when you're younger. If at a later date you expand your training to match your burgeoning age, your performances and chronological age can increase simultaneously.


In the Lapp of the gods
The 'new' discoveries about perpetually young runners are lessons which the Lapps - an energetic people who roam the northern reaches of Scandinavia while tending herds of reindeer - could have taught us centuries ago. The Lapps have a rather unusual cultural tradition: upon reaching the age of 55, a Lapp father gives the family's herd of beasts to his eldest son and retires to a life of sedentary reflection and story-telling around the campfire, a transition which transforms even the most wiry, fatigue-proof Lapps into lethargic doughnuts.

When noted Swedish exercise physiologist Bengt Saltin transported treadmills to the tundra as part of a Lapp-testing project several years ago, he found that the herders' aerobic capacities remained at incredibly high levels up to the age of 55 but then plummeted as soon as permanent seats were taken at the fireside. As Saltin concluded, it's really a lack of exercise - not ageing - which makes fitness deteriorate appreciably as we get older.


Is the process the same for women?
Since the Ball State studies were carried out only with male athletes, they don't provide clues about possible age-related performance losses in females. At first glance, it might seem that declines in fitness would be independent of gender, but a key point to remember is that males produce their key sex hormone - testosterone - more or less continuously throughout life, while females' production of theirs, oestrogen, dips dramatically after menopause.

Oestrogen may have a number of positive effects on performance, including a boosting of cardiac output and a preservation of bone density. Therefore, female athletes who don't opt for postmenopausal oestrogen-replacement therapy might suffer from weaker cardiac action, appreciable declines in bone density, a higher incidence of stress fractures, and greater overall rates of injury, all of which could downgrade performance and aerobic capacity by making consistent training more difficult.

In a new study conducted at the University of Colorado, Dr. Edie Stevenson is collecting valuable information about what happens to masters female athletes. Stevenson's group of 14 runners (aged 4967) includes several national- or world-record holders, as well as women who win age-group competitions at major races such as the annual Bolder-Boulder competition in Boulder, Colorado. The study hasn't been going on long enough to chart individual changes over time, but a comparison of the sixty-year-old runners with the fifty-year-olds suggests that the loss in V02max is around 10 per cent per decade, higher than the downturn observed in intensely training males in the Daniels or Ball-State research. However, one of Stevenson's runners lost only 4 per cent of V02max between the ages of 43 and 53, a very low rate of aerobic-capacity impairment.

'We really don't know if the process is the same for females and males,' says Stevenson. 'For women, we do tend to see a big drop in performance and V02max in the late 50s and early 60s, but we don't really know why this is happening. To figure out oestrogen's possible role, it would be interesting to give post-menopausal female runners who aren't on oestrogen-replacement therapy some supplemental oestrogen and look at how that influences their performances over time.' Most of the women in Stevenson's study are currently not taking oestrogen.


How Higdon stays young
Although the story for female athletes is still cloudy, the trend in males is clear: if intensity of training is maintained, age-related losses in fitness are slight. The running career of the American author and runner Hal Higdon is a case in point; Higdon experienced almost no decline in his running ability between the ages of 24 and 52.

When he was 24, Higdon completed a 10K in 30:06 and a marathon in 2:21:55. At the age of 52, the Indiana runner breezed through a 10K in 31:08 and a marathon in 2:29:27. Those small downturns in performance represent a decline of only 2 per cent per decade, well below the 'normal' 10-15 per cent drop-off observed in many studies. In addition, Higdon's maximal heart rate diminished only slightly, his running economy (the amount of oxygen required to run at a given pace) did not worsen, and his V02max did not fall off at all between 1971 and 1981 as Higdon aged from 40 to 50!

Higdon's secret? Unlike most runners, he refused to let his training load decrease as he aged. In addition, Higdon coached a high school cross country team and carried out many of his team's intense workouts right along with the team. Like Ken Sparks, Higdon used high-intensity training to keep his legs young. Higdon's timeless running brings to mind the classic research carried out by University of Illinois scientist Dr. R. C. Hickson, who showed that aerobic capacity could be maintained for prolonged periods of time, as long as individuals continued to carry out a moderate amount of intense training. Yet speed training is often one of the first things that athletes give up as they get older.

The successes of Higdon and Sparks and the Ball-State research tell us that it shouldn't be a shock to remember that an 'over-the-hill' Carlos Lopes ran a 27:17 10K at the age of 37 and a 2:07:12 world record marathon at 38. Nor should it be a surprise to read about 43-year-old Larry Almberg running a 4:06 mile or 41-year-old John Campbell pushing through a 2:11 marathon. Since not much capacity is lost when serious exercisers reach their forties, the real surprise is that such performances weren't attained long ago! One of the main obstacles to superior senior performances has simply been that older athletes cut back on their training because they believed that they were too decrepit to achieve such 'miracles.'


Strategies to adopt
'If you stay highly motivated and injury-free and continue training at a decent intensity during your forties and fifties, you just don't lose very much,' says Ball-State researcher Vukovich. True, remaining injury-free isn't always an easy task, but new research indicates that more experienced athletes do have a lower risk of injury, compared to athletic newcomers. Current research also suggests that high mileage and lack of recovery days - but not high training intensity - are the paramount causes of injury.

Since intensity is a more powerful producer of fitness than mileage, that's good news for older athletes! Masters runners can satisfy their bodies' desires for injury prevention and augmented recovery by cutting back on miles while slightly hiking average training intensity. It's easy to do. For example, a senior runner currently running six days a week for a total of 30 miles, with three of those miles 'fast' (at about IO-K race pace or faster), can simultaneously reduce the risk of injury and raise fitness by cutting back to a five-day, 25-mile weekly schedule, with FOUR miles at I O-K tempo or faster. The extra recovery day and lower mileage decrease the risk of injury, while the additional upscale mile improves V02max, running economy, and competitive performances.

The idea of adding in more recovery seems to fit well with older athletes' training needs. Famed masters runner Priscilla Welch noted that as she grew older, her speed didn't decline but she did sometimes require an extra recovery day after tough work J outs. The American marathoner Bill Rodgers noticed the same thing. Adding an extra recovery day doesn't mean that one's total training load has declined, because the additional recovery can facilitate higher-quality training on other days.

The other answer for older athletes, of course, is to maintain or even advance training volume by engaging in cross training (aquarunning, cycling, ski machining, and weight training if you're a runner, for example). Such workouts seem to produce less muscle-tissue damage, compared to running, and recent research suggests that they represent an excellent way to preserve V02max. Strength training is particularly important for athletes over the age of 50 - when atrophy of muscle and skeletal tissue begins to become a problem.

Fortunately, the bottom line for all of us is that advancing age doesn't have to spell an end to high-quality performances. With some basic adjustments in our training schedules, we can thwart time's attempts to slow us down and continue to perform at a high level.

Final note: ALWAYS consult your doctor before embarking on a programme of strenuous exercise.

Owen Anderson

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