Dr. Vonda Wright: You can be a track god until about 75
Dr. Vonda Wright
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Dr. Vonda Wright is a fellow blogger at Masters Athlete Daily. Unlike me, though, she knows what’s she’s talking about. She’s a medical doctor and director of PRIMA — Performance and Research Initiative for Masters Athletes. She also serves as an assistant professor at UPMC Center for Sports Medicine in Pittsburgh. A W40 distance runner, Vonda knows whereof she speaks from experience as well. Lately, I’ve been coming across a lot of her wisdom, including in this Gina Kolata article in The New York Times. But perhaps her most important contribution is a scholarly piece titled “Age-Related Rates of Decline in Performance Among Elite Senior Athletes.” You can read the whole thing here.
Here’s the essence of the study:
Performance times and percentage change in performance increased for both men and women over time. In track athletes, performance times are well maintained until age 50 years and then modestly decline until age 75 years, when performance plummets.
This finding is supported by several other studies of senior athletes 5,6,30,31 and suggests that if disuse and disease are eliminated as confounding variables, seniors should be able to remain functionally independent until that age.
The loss of independence before 70 to 75 years is most likely owing to the effects of disease, disuse, genetic predisposition, or destructive lifestyle habits. Knowledge of this tipping point, which may be earlier with less active individuals, has key implications for our aging population as the increased cost of care for seniors becoming sedentary is much greater than if these individuals remained active and independent.
Boiled down, this means: Until age 75, you can be a studmuffin with the proper training. After that, you’re not too speedy. But you’ll be almost alone in your age group anyway, so why not keep collecting hardware?
It’s all good.
2 Responses
This may be my last post for some months. I have just about 27 months until I hit the skids at age 75 so no time to waste folks – gotta hustle out to the gym to bulk up and then to the track to train.
Bye for now!!
Thank you Ken.
This is exactly the type of information I look for to help me achieve my potential on the track.
You continue to provide an invaluable service to the Masters Track & Field community.
Again, thank you.
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