Welcome back Nick & thanks for the offer! I'm like Robin, one of my biggest questions/concerns is optimal training for older runners. I'm 61 years old and started running in October of '09. I've had my share of injuries: stress fracture to hip, retrocalcneal bursitis, plantar fasciitus. I've got high stiff arches and supinate. AND I LOVE to RUN!!!

My injuries tend to come after doing the old "too much, too soon, too fast".

I'm currently training  for my first marathon, actually planning to do the Goofy Challenge (half marathon on Saturday, and the full on Sunday) at Disney World in January. I'm using the Galloway plan for "experienced" runners to hopefully get me there and across both finish lines. I'd love to be like Robin and run 5 days a week but am afraid to do more than 3 or 4, at the risk of injury.

I'm not fast, but want to improve speed, but running long and running healthy are more important. Currently I do one run per week that total 4-5 miles with 4-6  hill repeats, one 4-5 miler that focuses on speed  with either cadence or what Galloway calls acceleration drills , the third run of the week is a long slow distance run. When I can, I like to do just an enjoyable easy run that is 3-5 miles for my 4th day.

I too would appreciate your thoughts, comments and suggestions.

Marie

Nick-good to actually be able to communicate with you.  I've been trying to read through the old Basebuilding, low heart rate training via Maffetone et al thread and have seen you on there many times.  I appreciate any wisdom and suggestions as I'm just getting started with the low heart rate training over the last 2-3 weeks or so, and heart rate monitor working only last 10 days or so.

Anyway, I'm 58 nearing 59, so I've used 122 as the top HR for my runs, trying to stay 112-122 >98% of the time.  I've been running for 18 months, so I did not add +5 to the equation as I felt it would be best to be on the low side. I had a mild case of Achilles tendonitis about 10 months or more ago and have been fortunate to be injury free since then.

Some of the races I've done appear below; I ran a similar # in 2011 and have made slow progress in improving my times.  (first 5K was about 36 min)  I want to run longer distances and had been doing my longer runs at a much slower pace than my other runs since early July, but did not have HR monitor and had not read the Maffetone thread or his web site at that time.  My longest run is 18 miles, run on 8/11, with average pace of about 14:09.  usually run 1 minute and walk 1 minute, but by the last 6 miles it was more like 30sec of each to keep HR down. 

I plan on using the low heart rate training exclusively for at least the next 6 months except for a few races planned for the fall.  And those are races in name only; I plan to use them as organized training runs to see where I'm at.  On 9/15 there is a local HM that I will run at or near my current training pace, perhaps picking it up a little on the heart rate the last 3 miles if I'm feeling OK.  My primary goal is to finish (nor race or run) a local FM on 10/21. (My wife and I have had a large number of losses in our family in the last year, and I want to do the marathon in honor of our loved ones).  So the goal is to finish, nothing more.

After that it will be back to just LHR training, tentatively planning only 4-6 races in 2013, from 5K to marathon.

Any thoughts, suggestions, critiques would be welcome.  Thanks for taking your time to share your wisdom.

I'm a 27 year old female. I weigh about 165 lbs (I'm 5'7" so I'm over weight). In my teens I played basketball and cheered. I was diagnosed with osgood schlatters disease and started to become less active. As an adult, I haven't been consistently active until recently.

I was worried that maybe my knee hurts because of the osgood schlatters, but that had to do with my bones growing...Once I stopped growing, the pain stopped to so I don't think that has anything to do with it