Posted on 05/20/2014 9:51:59 AM PDT by Phillyred
Doing HIIT does just as good, is quicker and much better on the knees.
Myslef and most of my friends are in our early 30’s and we all, independently of each other, took up different forms of exercise right after 30. Be it running, weight lifting, cross fit, or biking we are all doing something now we were not doing before turning 30. My dime store psychology says its to prove to ourselves we still can ;-)
I took up running last year after never having even run to the mailbox in all the prior years.
I went from no running ever to running for fun. I do the occasional 5k and 10k and plan on training for my first Half (13.1 miles) which takes place in October.
For me, it’s all about the camaraderie. I train with others that I met through the running programs, and we don’t try to break any records, we just have fun. No injuries so far, but like I said, we do it for fun so we aren’t going that fast lol.
I get that. And that’s great. I just don’t get the whole over-advertising about it all.
I'm not in a hurry. And I just like to run. It's great to be able to move so freely, take in the sights and sounds of wherever I happen to be...and then go out for ice cream.
“Friend of mine started biking (road) at 52 and went all in within three years. He’ll 100 miles each day on Sat. and Sun., and then 40ish miles each day during the week.
Joined a local bike club, got a new set of friends and is really in shape. Does not hang with any of his old friends.
Hey, it’s his life.”
Biking is totally different from running on pavement. Biking for most bike riders is a healthier addiction.
One of our younger relatives in his late 40’s rides his bikes over 10k a year. Most of the time, he rides his bike 10 miles to work, a lunch time sprint and about 20-30 miles home. The longer trip home relaxes him and gets rid of work related tension.
His knees, ankles and hips are in great shape. Only advice from his doctor is “don’t waste your/our time and your money on physicals and eat more. See me if you are sick or hurt yourself. Keep riding those bikes. Ride different bikes during each week.”
He rides with a similar group as you noted. Most of them bust the hump with 100 miles plus on Saturday. If they ride their bikes on Sunday, they use their simple bikes like we used to have as kids on simple rides with their kids/wives and around their home towns. Some of the younger and more addicted riders do hump busting rides on Sunday too. When they get to their mid 30’s, the Sunday rides become shorter fun rides.
A large % of his riding group is 50 to 70+ age wise. They look and act like they are 20-30 years younger.
“I’ll start running when I see a runner smiling.”
BOL! I adopted that reality about 4 decades ago.
did not work out so well for the very very very first marathon runner ...
Bingo!
I've been a walker for about two years now. My goal is to walk 7-9 miles, 4 days a week. I've got a super trail where I live, just be careful of the Lance Armstrong wanna-bes.
I celebrated my 60th birthday two weeks ago by making a complete round trip from my house to the end of the trail, a bit more than 15 miles. Slept like a baby, was not sore the next day.
A fat porker mentioned the same thing to me some years ago. I told him I didn't have to look in the mirror to find my d!ck.
[ According to evolutionary biologist Daniel Lieberman at Harvard University, our huge bumpers give us the balance that other bipedal animals get from tails, and they also aid in making us superior runners.
Our ability to run apparently helped in our evolution as well because while there is no way we could beat one of the other great apes in a fight we could definitely outrun them.
We also had to run to catch some of the animals we wanted to eat.
Even though many animals, like dogs and cats, run faster than us, as the distances get longer we’re actually able to catch up and beat some of the fastest creatures on the planet.
Add to this the configuration of our ear canals, which give us the incredible balance needed to run on two legs, and you see why we might make ideal marathoners.
Being relatively hairless also helps. It makes it easy to get rid of excess heat. ]
The whole “Out of trees and onto the savhanna” theory is daned brainless, if it were true why would we even lose our body hair, baboons LIVE in the savanna and they have fur, so why not humans....
Not to mention the shape of the nose, and the amount of body fat that would actually make it HARDER to shed excess heat.
If we came down from the trees and started walking upright in the savhanna we would look like bipedal baboons... Not like something entirely different...
“I’m a big fan of exercise, but running is hard on the body, especially the knees....and even more so for women.”
Add the hips into your equation. Women for many reasons seem to wear out their hips before we do. If they run, they often seem to need new knees and hips.
In our cul de sac as we all have aged in the last 35 years, the women our age, who ran, all have new hips and knees. My wife used to get kidded by female co workers, gals in her bridge group, church groups and on our block that she never ran. She is now in her early 70’s and still has her original knees and hips. We try to walk twice a day up and down our hills and on flat land about 1.5 miles each trip. She wears a couple of sizes smaller dress and slack wise than when we got married, and she is about the same weight before our kids came along. Her secret has been the walking and Italian eating habits.
Swimming is good too, less strain on joints as well.
Personal experience which led to running marathons: In the late winter of 1977 my father-in-law mentioned to me that Spring Lake (Mrs. JimRed’s hometown and our residence at that time) would be having a five mile race on the Monday of Memorial Day weekend. I had been running a little to stay fit for skiing and rec basketball, but hadn’t really trained since high school, so I decided to start a workout program to get ready to try it.
It hurt like heck (warm day, out too fast at the start, rookie mistakes) but I managed to finish 125th of about 500 in 33:15. I had nothing to compare it to, so I was surprised when some guys in my age group (30-35) who were regular racers told me I’d finished ahead of them. That was the incentive to train regularly, and to enter more races that summer.
Eventually I was breaking 30 minutes for five miles regularly, and over the next year and a half tried 5k and 10k races, an 8 mile up and down Garrett Mountain (Paterson, NJ) and a half marathon. 27 races all told, but entry fees were cheap then! I was HOOKED!
The marathon was the logical progression in the series of challenges. On 30-50 miles a week and a longest training run of 15 miles, I finished my first in 3:22:15 at Philadelphia. Hooked again! Now the goal was three hours, another challenge. Then the goal was Boston, needing a sub- 2:50:00 to qualify. Squeezed out a 2:48:45, then finished Boston the following spring in 2:56:57.
Bottom line: It’s all about the challenge and improving. And an occasional age group trophy or medal is nice, too!
Fat porkers are disgusting.
“Swimming is good too, less strain on joints as well.”
We lived in Sacramento for a few years. We had a nice pool, I would swim before work and in the evening. Often it was too hot to walk, and I just swam more.
As someone who has been jogging since 1971, I think running has gone way down in popularity.
I don’t know the statistics. But if I go shopping for real running shoes, they are a lot harder to find. Most athletic shorts are basketball style, where there used to be racks of shorts good for actually DOING something.
And when I was in college (think 1970s), lots of folks jogged. I finished a math class at the local community college this spring, and there were not many students who looked capable of jogging very far from their computer screen...or their donuts.
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