Nicholas Thompson, a marathoner, writes in Wired that running is the most “elemental sport” and that the activity itself is “natural.” For the most part, when running, you compete against yourself, and since it is so personal, the inevitable decline that comes with age can be incredibly difficult.
Aging reduces a person’s performance at everything athletic, though it may be hard to figure out what is happening at first. Thompson writes that with running, the evidence is clear: You start to move slower. Thompson ran well in high school but badly in college. He stopped running for about a decade starting when he was 18, but picked it up again and ran a 2:43 marathon at age 30. For the next nine years, he ran marathon after marathon in roughly the same time. But then age started to set in, and at 39 he started to slow.
So he called three experts and told them he wanted to go faster but didn’t want to spend more time on the sport. They said there are ways to beat getting old with science and a little math.
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