How to Keep Running Strong at 70 and Beyond

How to Keep Running Strong at 70 and Beyond

As New York Marathon Nears, a Septuagenarian Isn’t Looking to Just Finish

By Matthew Futterman in the Wall Street Journal

The running world has a habit of turning older marathoners into mascots. Who doesn’t love the story of the great-grandfather who gets across the finish line in seven hours?

But with all due respect to that sort of wrinkled runner, 75-year-old Hernán Barreneche Rios isn’t traveling to Sunday’s New York City Marathon from his home in Colombia to simply get a medal for participation. The retired professor of mechanical engineering is looking to break 3 hours, 30 minutes and win his division—just like he did last year when he ran 3:24:03 to win the 70-to-74-year-old age group by nearly 14 minutes.

“…if God allows me to continue running marathons, my goal is to run 3h 30min at 80 years old,” Barreneche wrote last week in an email from Pereira, Colombia.

Countless seniors have proven they can healthily complete 26.2 miles. But within this demographic is a small subset of extreme competitors, who even into their seventh, eighth and ninth decades can maintain remarkable speed.

And their ranks are growing. Last year, 27 men ages 65 to 69 broke 4 hours in New York. A decade ago, only 10 did. Likewise, nine women in the 60-to-64 category broke 4 hours, compared with four in 2004.

Barreneche was one of 10 men ages 70 to 74 to break 4 hours. In 2004, just three men in that age group ran that pace, and the fastest finished more than 16 minutes behind Barreneche’s age-group-winning time in 2013.

“Some people are built to be baseball players, some are built to be swimmers and some are built to be long-distance runners,” said Jordan Metzl, a sports-medicine physician at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York. “If you have the right body type and right physiological capacity, you can keep your shape for a long time.”

To be sure, being fast as a senior runner doesn’t come easily.

Studies show peak heart rates begin to diminish after ages 25 to 30, limiting how much blood and oxygen the body pumps through the system. Also, muscle mass deteriorates as a person grows older.

With age comes wisdom, though, and an improved ability to pace, said Luke Bongiorno, director of physical therapy at NYSportsMed, a Manhattan treatment center. But even elite runners in their late 30s and early 40s realize that they are going to lose speed and that they must try to minimize the loss.

Deena Kastor, a 2004 Olympic marathon bronze medalist who at 41 is shooting for 2:25 in New York, has cut her weekly mileage to 100 from 140. Instead, she focuses more heavily on her Tuesday speed session, her Saturday mid-distance run at near race pace and her weekly long run. Staying fast also has been about “eating better or sleeping better or getting a nap in or getting to bed a half-hour early,” she said.

Joan Benoit Samuelson, the 1984 Olympic gold medalist, won the 55-to-59 category in New York last year in 2:57:13. That is a 6:46 mile pace, 41st among all women.

Ms. Samuelson said the speed comes with plenty of cross-training that includes both Nordic skiing and gardening “to strengthen my upper body so that my arms and legs are more in balance when it comes to strength.” Also, she often has to squeeze miles into a small period of time because of her busy schedule, which organically turns those runs into speed workouts.

It is a safe bet that no 75-year-old competitor is working as hard to maintain his speed as Mr. Barreneche, who was on the Colombian Olympic team in 1968 and 1972. He ran a 3:01 marathon when he was 70 and a 3:19 in Boston last year at 73.

Mr. Barreneche spent four decades as an engineering professor, had three children and has been married for 44 years. He supports his racing with his savings and the occasional assistance of Colombia’s national sports federation or a local sponsor near where he is competing.

He is still fast because he practices running fast. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, he does speed repetitions—10 sets of 800 or 1,000 meters at near-maximum speed, or three 3,000-meter runs.

Other speed workouts might include an increasing series of distances between 400 and 3,000 meters. He rests 3 to 5 minutes between each interval. Or, he might mix fast intervals with distance. A 10-mile run might alternate between a mile at 50% effort and 400 meters at 80%.

Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays are for long distance on running trails through Pereira’s mountainous countryside, which is about 5,000 feet above sea level and rises to more than 7,500 feet.

On Sundays, Mr. Barreneche runs about 20 miles. For the week, he averages about 75 to 80 miles. He rests on Saturdays and dials back the workouts in December. When the new year arrives, he maps out his racing calendar, sets his goals and plans his training accordingly.

“The degree of vital satisfaction that fills you is proportional to what you practice/do,” he wrote. “Every time we compete we can either win or lose, but there are aspects of our being that can never be put into question, like the strength of our spirit, our will or our sensitivity to beauty and the satisfaction of doing what we like.”