Articles > Running > How To Keep On Running As You Age
Ageing is a natural process which occurs throughout everybody's lifetime. With it comes several obstacles but you shouldn't allow these to prevent you from keeping active. Some of these include feeling tired after effortless activities, muscles tire much quicker whilst exercising and joint become stiffer in general.
Keeping active isn't too difficult if you can set your mind to it and the health benefits are huge. Hopefully this article will motivate you to keep running as you age.
Set yourself Goals
The days of running daily may be something of the past but that doesn't mean you shouldn't set yourself goals. They don't have to be challenging or complicated goals, just make them simple and achievable so that every time you complete one you will feel good about yourself. This will motivate you to keep on running for that sense of accomplishment.
Examples of goals you could set for yourself include choosing specific days to run per week and then increase this number over time. Attempting to beat your times over distances such as a mile. Finally, set yourself a minimum amount of runs per week target to ensure you stick at it.
Take advantage of your age
By now you should be well aware of what your body is capable of. If you believe that your older body couldn't possibly achieve what your younger self could, you would be surprised if I told you that you could achieve it and perhaps succeed it.
Use this for some inspiration, Fauja Singh finished his last London marathon in 2013 at an astounding age of 101. Now I'm sure he wasn't any different than anyone else except for his extremely tough mindset which allowed him to believe he could carry on running forever. I don't expect you to run like Fauja but I do want to convince you that it's never too late!
Get more flexible
You wouldn't believe the positive affects being flexible has on your running. It's vital for preventing injury, improving your posture and enhancing your sports performance. By investing a small amount of your time in the mornings and before workouts stretching you can prevent your muscles from getting tight whilst exercising.
A great way to become flexible and healthy is to practice yoga. Yoga stretches your muscles and increases your range of motion. There are also other health benefits such as relieving anxiety, lowering cortisol and by lowering blood sugar.
Find Time To Fit Running In
As you age you may find that day to day life is much busier. Don't let all of those responsibilities in your life stop you from keeping active. You may believe that you could do without the added stress of running on top of the other 99 tasks which need doing by the end of the day, but a good run is the perfect stress relieving break that's needed. Do you find yourself struggling to sleep? Maybe you can't remember the most peaceful sleep you had because adults don't need as much sleep as when they were younger. This is where running could help. Running is linked to improved sleeping and reduced anxiety so if day to day life is becoming too much, then running is one of the best things to do!
The best way to motivate yourself is to create a specific routine of when to run. If you plan it out before and set yourself goals as previously mentioned then you will find yourself much more time to fit running in. Finally, you will feel so good about yourself once you've completed a tiring long run.
Eat a healthier diet
It's very important to eat well as you age as older adults are usually much busier than their younger selfs and require much more energy. There are various ways you could obtain the energy required to make it through the day and still be able to still complete a long run but using the correct techniques you will find yourself much more energetic.
Make sure you eat a balanced diet. This is the most effective way to make sure you have long lasting energy from foods such as carbohydrates, proteins and vitamins.
You may find that you're already doing all you can to eat a healthier diet so if this is the case then your energy levels may depend on your genetics. Simply eat an energy bar half an hour before your workouts and try regularly taking multivitamins.
Don't let setbacks put you off
Don't let setbacks prevent you from keeping active. You may have had a fall or injured yourself which requires you to take a break for a couple of weeks or months. As long as your injury isn't too serious then you will be able to run again in no time. Be patient, slowly ease yourself into running once a week to begin with and rebuild your confidence over time because usually you will be able to fully recover.
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