photo Matt Stetson 20sĪs an athlete in your 20s, life is great. The secret is to figure out what your body is capable of and what you can still do. And you can always run longer, set new age-group goals or look for running partners who run for the same reasons you do. That’s not a bad thing – running should always be about the enjoyment of movement and exercise. The day will come when you realize that your fastest days are behind you. The reality is that, for all but the outliers like Whitlock and Kotelko, our bodies will go through a normal aging process, and it will impact our running and training as we get older. RELATED: Marathon training may reverse heart aging, study showsĪlas, this isn’t an inspirational story about how you can overcome the greatest of challenges with genetics, a little gumption and willpower. When she was examined by McGill University researchers at age 91, Kotelko’s muscle fibres showed less decay than you’d find in most 65-year-olds.
If Whitlock’s not your taste, how about West Vancouver’s Olga Kotelko? Kotelko didn’t take up track and field until she was 77 – and in the next 18 years she set 34 world records, including 15 after turning 95 (not long before she died, in 2014). There’s no shortage of inspiration to be found. Let’s call it the Ed Whitlock effect: today’s runners, some inspired by the ageless Canadian wonder who continued to set records well into his 80s, are striving to get faster at older ages.
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