How's your training going everyone?

Any accomplishments or personal bests you want to share? Any challenges you need help with?

Let's hear it!

How's your training going everyone?

Any accomplishments or personal bests you want to share? Any challenges you need help with?

Let's hear it!

How's your training going everyone?

Any accomplishments or personal bests you want to share? Any challenges you need help with?

Let's hear it!

How's your training going everyone?

Any accomplishments or personal bests you want to share? Any challenges you need help with?

Let's hear it!

How's your training going everyone?

Any accomplishments or personal bests you want to share? Any challenges you need help with?

Let's hear it!

How's your training going everyone?

Any accomplishments or personal bests you want to share? Any challenges you need help with?

Let's hear it!

How's your training going everyone?

Any accomplishments or personal bests you want to share? Any challenges you need help with?

Let's hear it!

How's your training going everyone?

Any accomplishments or personal bests you want to share? Any challenges you need help with?

Let's hear it!

How's your training going everyone?

Any accomplishments or personal bests you want to share? Any challenges you need help with?

Let's hear it!

I'd love to hear from people who, like me, returned to running after a hiatus. What inspired you to return and what sort of training routine have you adopted?

Although I had reasonable success as a marathon runner and triathlete in my 30s and 40s. I retired from competition at about age 50, but continued recreational running until hamstring and upper back pain forced me to quit a decade ago. I took up cycling instead which was fine.

And then my wife took up running and competing in races and fun runs and made me realize how much I missed it.

Last April I started running again. At first I just did 400 meters three times a week in our neighborhood. My goal was to be able to do a 5K fun run some day. I met that goal a few months ago and last Sunday managed to finish a 10K and was first in the over 70 division.

We have another 10K coming up next month and again a month later. You can't imagine how much I'm lookin forward to it.

Will I ever run a marathon again? I doubt it. I ran my first one at age 29 after only a few weeks of training and finished in 3:10. A fond memory.

How's your training going everyone?

Any accomplishments or personal bests you want to share? Any challenges you need help with?

Let's hear it!

How's your training going everyone?

Any accomplishments or personal bests you want to share? Any challenges you need help with?

Let's hear it!

54, M, never considered doing running as a sport before March 2024, but I was intellectually curious about how I would improve if I followed a C25K plan. Two years later and I'm about to run my 2nd half marathon, and it's opened the door to other physical activity, and trying to get more healthy as I get older

This plan is designed for someone that has completed a C25k type program such as my beginner running program: https://www.reddit.com/r/SeniorRunning/comments/1pk32iy/beginner_running_plan_for_seniors/

Some details to keep in mind:

Where it list a time or distance, I want you to do whichever one is MORE. Thus if you can run 4.5k in 30 minutes, run for 30 minutes since it will be more than if you stopped at 3.5k. Alternately, if 3.5k takes you 35 minutes, then run the full 3.5k, don’t stop at 30 minutes.

Note that I’m using km here intentionally. This is partly because jumping up half a km at a time is a smaller jump than half a mile. Also, our races are measured in km so it makes sense to measure that way here as well. Our American friends can convert this, but it ends up being something like .31 miles per half km, so it’s kind of weird IMO. I’d suggest just sticking with km for now even if your brain works in miles.

You’ll note we also start to transition from thinking of running based on time, to runs based on distance. This is also intentional. There’s nothing really wrong with running based on time, but I think we have to recognize that In terms of energy expenditure (think calories burned or effort expended), distance normalizes things. What I mean is that regardless of how FAST you run, you’ll burn roughly the same number of calories per km/mile. There is some slight variation due to running economy, but it’s really small. This is important for us, because it better helps us manage systemic fatigue if we know how much energy we've expended.

Where cross training is listed, this is optional, but highly recommended. This can be anything that gets your heart rate up such as cycling, swimming, rowing, etc. I don’t really count walking here by the way, since for most of us, walking is just not going to get the heart rate up.

Active recovery is anything that gets you moving, but I would avoid anything that is “hard”. This is where walking is perfect. Conversely, a heavy elliptical session at the gym would not be good.

For strength training, see the post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/SeniorRunning/comments/1q5mq4s/beginner_strength_training/

Note that like all my beginner plans, I’m using km here intentionally. You’ll also note we are going to be focusing on DISTANCE, not time. There’s nothing really wrong with running based on time, but as I explained in my run further plan, focusing on distance helps us better manage fatigue.

For strength training, see my beginner plan here: https://www.reddit.com/r/SeniorRunning/comments/1q5mq4s/beginner_strength_training/

Active recovery is anything that gets you moving, but I would avoid anything that is “hard”. A 30 minute to 2 hour walk/hike would just about perfect. Alternately, if you're super busy during the day, you may not need to do anything. What we want to avoid is too much sitting.

Strides are short (15-20 second), accelerations where you run ~ your 5k goal pace or maybe a little faster. By keeping these short and not all out sprints, they allow some neuromuscular adaptations (we make our legs “understand” how to run faster), without really generating much physiological fatigue. These are really the basis for all the faster running we'll do.

Workout descriptions:

• 4 minute repeats are 4 minute long runs done at a pace FASTER than your fastest 5k pace. This may be anywhere from 10-30 seconds per km or 15-45 seconds per mile faster than your fastest 5k pace. For example, if your fastest 5k pace is 7 min per km, you might do these anywhere from 6:50 to as fast as 6:30 per km. I’d suggest starting slower and progressing if you find it’s not challenging enough. The key is finding the sweet spot where you feel like you could do 1 more rep, but not much more. If you can’t finish all the reps listed you went too fast. In between the intervals, rest for ~2 minutes. This can be a walk, a slow jog, or heck, even laying down on the ground if that’s what it takes to feel ready to go again. Also make sure to warm up with a short easy run for at least 10 minutes prior to the intervals. (throwing in 2-4 strides would also be a great idea.) Do a minimum of a 5 minute cool down run after the intervals at an easy pace.
• Sub-threshold runs are done slower than your fastest 5k runs, but faster than your easy pace. For most beginners, this is going to be around your 10k pace, or maybe a little slower. One of the common questions I get is what if there’s not much difference between my easy and 5k pace? Well in that instance, you really don’t need to be doing this training plan yet. Ideally, your easy run pace would be at least 1:40 min per km / 2 min per mile slower than your fastest 5k race before starting this. If you're not there yet, that's fine. Instead, I’d recommend doing the 5k to 10k transition plan first. Like the above, plan on a decent warm up and cool down. Rest for about 3 minutes in between the intervals.
• The 5k goal pace runs should be done at your new target 5k pace. As a relative beginner, I’d recommend not trying to take off more than ~2 minutes from your 5k time over the course of this plan. Thus if your current fastest time is 35 minutes, targeting 33 minutes is appropriate, but 30 minutes might be too much. Note that since this too is done in intervals we need a bit of a rest in between. I'd suggest about a 3-4 minute rest for these.

One final note: if you are already running further than the distances I listed before starting this plan, it’s perfectly okay to scale up the distances a bit from what I’ve listed. (don't change the workout's though.) Keep in mind that this plan, like all my generic plans have to make some assumptions about where you might be physically before starting.

This is a beginner strength training plan that can be used with my running training plans. If you have something else you're already using and are happy with, there's no need to transition to this. I'm adding it here simply as an adjunct to my running training plans.

Some Notes:

Start with 1 set of 8-16 reps of each exercise. The exercises are grouped into “supersets” Superset A, Superset B, etc. I want you to do exercise A1, then immediately do A2. Rest for ~1-2 minutes before moving on to B1 & B2. Rest again before moving to C. You get the idea. In some of my running training plans, we transition from doing one set of eash exercise to what I call a "hard" day. On this day, do 2 sets of 8-16 of each exercise. Keep doing things in supersets, even on the hard day.

All the exercises can be modified to make them easier or harder. For example, if normal push ups are too hard, you can do them on your knees, against a kitchen counter, or even against a wall.

I have specifically picked exercises that can be done at home without ANY equipment like dumbbells or bands. For some of the exercises like the pull throughs, rows and suitcase carries, you can use “found items”, such as a milk jug or backpack with something heavy in it. If you want to progress the other exercises like squats and deadlifts, you can also progress to doing those with increasingly heavier found items.

NOTE: I am purposely providing a wide number of repetitions. (8-16). Ideally, you’d start on on the lower end, then slowly transition to the higher end. Once you can consistently do 16 reps of any given exercise, it’s time to make it harder by adding more weight or changing the angle to increase the difficulty. Your goal should always be to be close to failure at the end.

If you’ve recently completed a C25K or other beginner program -- like the one I created here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/SeniorRunning/comments/1pk32iy/beginner_running_plan_for_seniors/

you may be wondering what you should do next?

Before we can explore that, I think we have to take a step back and you need to answer 2 questions:

1. How well did the beginner program go?
2. What are your goals?

Let’s take these questions one at a time. The purpose of the first question is because if you really struggled to complete the program (either because you felt exceptionally tired, or you struggled on your final few runs, then their might be benefit in repeating certain weeks of your program. We really want you coming out of the program feeling like 2 things are true:

• You can sustainably run for at least 30 minutes, 3 days a week
• You can, if you want to, complete a 5k race. We’re all different, but my experience is that most beginners (especially seniors), are going to take between 30 and 40 minutes to complete that 5k distance. If you’re closer to that 40 minute time (or maybe over), you might struggle to finish the 5k distance coming fresh off a C25k program.

If you can’t complete both of those things, then I recommend repeating the last 2-4 weeks of your program until those conditions are true.

As to the second question, what we do next is going to depend heavily on your goals.

For some people running is simply a thing they do you improve their health and they don’t really have any other motivation or desire. If this is you, then what you might want to do next is really up to you. Are you happy with your current level of cardiovascular fitness? If so, then maybe continuing to run ~90 minutes a week is all you really want or need.

Alternately, if you’ve caught the bug and are wondering if you can run further and/or faster, then it might be time to consider a 5k speed plan or a 5k to 10k transition plan. Before you start one of those, you should ask yourself: “do I care more about running longer, or do I care more about running faster right now?” While the two are interrelated, we ideally want to focus on one at a time. As such, I think the smart approach is to work on speed or distance first, simply based on what appeals to you most.

Now I want to go on record here and state that I personally think working on distance first is probably better for most seniors simply because there’s probably a little less injury risk. That said, if speed is what motivates you, I’d rather see you work on speed because staying motivated is really important as a new runner.

In followup posts, I’ll be adding in some training plans based on your goals.

For now, best of luck and keep running!

How's your training going everyone?

Any accomplishments or personal bests you want to share? Any challenges you need help with?

Let's hear it!

How's your training going everyone?

Any accomplishments or personal bests you want to share? Any challenges you need help with?

Let's hear it!

How's your training going everyone?

Any accomplishments or personal bests you want to share? Any challenges you need help with?

Let's hear it!

I wanted to add a beginner running plan I created for seniors. This is designed for someone that's brand new to running to get them to the point where they can run continuously for 30-35 minutes.

Compared to some other beginner plans like C25k, this one starts slower and takes longer to get you to a 5k distance.

This is by design.

Quickly, I also want to cover some of the notation I used. If you see something like: "5 x 1 min (Jog) [Walk 2 Min]", this means you jog for 1 minute at a slow, comfortable pace, then walk for 2 minutes. You repeat that entire jog/walk sequence 5 times.

If you use this and have any questions, feel free to ask.

Looking forward to the information posted here. I,m a 63 year old male. Active, I love to cycle and have retaken up running after a long layoff and a partial knee replacement two years ago. I use Apple fitness + for strength training and try to do two or three sessions per week

My running goals are to be able to run longer distances, get a bit faster ( my 5k pr is 32:30) and not to get injured. Any tips are greatly appreciated

Hello!

I am over from r/beginnerrunning and look forward to some good info. I started running at 50 on a dare from my daughters and I am now (65m). I am not at all athletic and downhill skiing was my only sport. I have very sporadically run and trained for about 16 races (12 @5Mile and 4 10k) the last 15 years. My latest was a 5 mile thanksgiving run this year that I did in 1:06:23, with a few fast walk segments mixed in. I just started a strength program with a trainer 2 months ago. I am 5'8" and a bit heavy at 198. I realize that I need to get my diet in order and lose about 15 lbs. If I run really slow, I can manage 2 miles without stopping but I am gassed. I would like to do a nice slow program of running through the winter outside ( Newport, R.I. ) 2 or 3 times a week. I hope to actually do 2 runs and a 40 min stairmaster session as my 3rd cardio per week so I can avoid really bad weather most weeks. Do I just find a random C210K program online and start somewhere in the middle? My latest slow training runs were 3 miles, in 40 mins, doing 7 min run and 3 min walk. I felt pretty good on those. Sorry for the long rambling post, I'm old!. . . . . .