In the health and wellness space, reversing aging has become trendy. There are all sorts of supplements you can take, protocols you can follow, and dubious tests you can take to help you on your journey to find the fountain of youth. Perhaps most famous of those on this journey is Brian Johnson, who runs around claiming he’s in the top 1% of 18 year olds on dozens of mostly arbitrary measures. I recently turned 40 and have been contemplating this both recent and eternal anti-aging quest. In some ways, it can be beneficial. Whatever gets you exercising and sleeping more, eating a bit less junk, spending more quality time with friends and family, and so forth is a good thing. Most of these big bucket items aren’t reversing aging though. They’re just helping us age gracefully. And I think that’s the point where we often get derailed. The goal isn’t to be king of mastering arbitrary biomarkers that may or may not extend our lifespan. It’s to live a good life. Whatever that means to you. It’s akin to the athlete who is convinced that the whole point of running is to run their mile repeat workout faster…Meanwhile they miss out on the joys of the experience, the exhilaration of competition, and the contentment of trying to master something that is hard. And…they miss that running those mile repeats faster doesn’t even promise that your actual performance will improve.
Instead of trying to resist aging, there’s power in accepting it. Just like when it comes to toughness, if we deny or try to resist the pain or fatigue, it generally backfires. If we accept that the race we’re running or task we’re doing will be difficult, that we might fail, and ultimately don’t have full control over the end result, we’re able to navigate it. The same goes for aging. Instead of resisting it, accept it.
In that acceptance comes wisdom. We get to learn and adjust as we go. Instead of trying to look to the past, we can use our experience to stay in the game longer— and enjoy doing so. I’ve recently had the longest injury free stretch of running in many years. And most of that is attributable to accepting my limits. Not trying to pretend I’m 18 again. It’s why I run 35 miles per week, instead of 100. And do small spices of workouts instead of trying to go see god. It’s in accepting reality that we are able to navigate it better. And yet, at 40, I just ran a 4:46 stroller mile for fun.
With that in mind, here are a few lessons I’ve learned as an aging athlete who can still run pretty fast, but is having a lot of doing it. These insights are heavily shaped by new book Win the Inside Game, which is part reflection on what it takes to strive and achieve in a healthy and sustainable way.
1. Stop short. Almost always.
There’s an old adage in running that you should have one more rep in the tank. It’s also called the no hands on your knees rule. Both get a simple point, the risk of pushing to get that final repeat is seldom worth it. The benefit is small, if it even exists.
This is even more true as you age. Instead of one rep short, it’s several. Instead of doing a 5 mile tempo, run 3. Instead of 20×200, do 14. It’s not wussing out. It’s trusting your body that if you need to go to the pain cave in a race, you’ve been there before. Practice is about balancing the risk and reward. And as you get older, that balance is shifted to minimizing risk. Because the name of the game is…consistency trumps everything else. Where that line is for each person will differ. But it’s often ego and insecurity that makes us push too far in practice. We ignore that slight twinge in our calf, until it strains. We overlook the feeling of fatigue, until it’s full blown burnout. It takes true confidence and self-awareness to stop short, so that you’ve got a better chance of coming back tomorrow, and the next day, and the next.
Don’t try to be an Instagram workout hero. No one is impressed. At least anyone who knows anything.
2. Use Your Wisdom to Your Advantage
Experience is your asset. When younger you would ignore your body, you know to listen to it. When a younger you might have gone out way too ambitiously, only to fade, you know how to thread the needle in pacing to perfection. Use your experience to your advantage. This mainly means don’t do stupid things that you sometimes could get away with when younger.
3. It’s easier to maintain than build.
Building up a quality or capacity is hard. You’ve got to convince your brain and body to change. That means a regular stimulus that just embarasses your body enough so it adapts in that direction. Maintaining what is already built up is a lot easier. There’s no convincing your body to change, it’s just about keeping what you have around. As I’ve aged, I’m trying to take advantage of the over two decades of training. The goal isn’t to go somewhere I haven’t gone, to push new bounds. It’s to simply maintain some of the capabilities I’ve built before. Instead of 60 miles per week, I can get pretty aerobically fit off 35-40. Instead of 10×400 at mile pace, I can do a handful of repeats and get most of the bang for my buck. Sure, there are some things I’ve neglected for a while that I’ll need to build back up. But that’s the point. Identify what it is you can maintain. It takes the load off, and you get most of the benefits for 30-40% less work.
4. Define Success in a complex instead of simple way.
When you’re young, success seems rather straightforward. You either won the race or didn’t. Ran a personal best or fell short. That narrow way of defining success may work when progress comes easy, and the relationship between working hard and improvement is highly correlated. But as we get older, that relationship breaks.
And it’s a good thing it does. It forces us to move from judging our success by the simple external, and instead based on a number of factors. It could be based on the feeling or experience; that challenge of navigating a tough patch, or the feeling of being alive as you’re overwhelmed by sensory feedback. Or you could zoom out and see exercise as a part of a broader journey. One that allows for a bit of mastery as you challenge yourself in something you can control. Or perhaps winning is about simply showing up. When your pursuit is about connecting with others, being there is a win, regardless of the outcome. Your pursuits can fulfill different needs or roles. And those may change and fluctuate with the different seasons of your life. This move away from the simplistic doesn’t make you less competitive. It allows you to explore the craft in the way that fits your life in it’s current iteration.
