033 ☼ I don't want to become a grumpy old runner

Not that I'm on the way to this condition - if you're wondering

Welcome to my email newsletter 'Never not [thinking about] running' - a weekly newsletter about running and mental health. If you haven't subscribed yet and you're not sure whether you really want to receive an e-mail from me on every Tuesday, have a look at the archive. Todays newsletter is about getting older and how I imagine myself as an well-aged runner.

Only ‘old’ runners here?

I see relatively few young people writing about running here on Substack. That's a shame, because a change of perspective is always good. But maybe that's a fallacy and I've overlooked a few people in their mid-twenties? The point is that I keep stumbling across texts here that focus on the little nasties of ageing. From stiff hips in the morning, to greater susceptibility to injury, longer recovery times and the loss of general fitness. Exceptions prove the rule.

Of course, I always imagine how I'll be walking around in ten or twenty years' time. Or maybe not anymore. I think it's a situation that every runner always imagines. What if I get osteoarthritis, break a foot or whatever and running is no longer an option? A horror scenario for some, but a real scenario if you ask around in your running environment.

The options

I suspect that if it comes to that, I can start the next therapy straight away. Maybe cycling is an option, or swimming, or maybe there is no option at all. Anyone who has read a few texts here knows that running is very important for me and probably couldn't be replaced by sport X or hobby Y. I secretly hope that it never comes to that.

The ideal scenario would be that I can continue to run as I have done so far, perhaps satisfy my running ambition for a few more years with a personal best here and there, then keep up the level for as long as I can and then run for the rest of my life - of course slower. I think it would be cool to still be reasonably mobile in my mid-80s. When I look at my father, I'm quite positive.

The grumpy old guy

But maybe it will be a kind of middle way. Or I'll end up like a guy here in the neighborhood. I noticed him for the first time during Covid-times. The neighborhood consists of many immigrants from Eastern Europe, I would count him among them, in his mid-70s, always walking with sticks and then in powerwalk mode. Usually a kilometer and a half in one direction and then the same distance back. And not once, but dozens of times a day.

No matter what the weather. Rain, storm, snow, blazing sun. Nothing knocks him down. Wrapped up properly in winter, in jeans and thick hiking boots in summer at 30 degrees. Sweat beads up under his leather cap. This guy is a phenomenon for me because I meet him every time I go running myself. And when I'm not running, he's out and about too.

In the beginning, I used to say hello to him, looking a bit impressed, but he was always in the mode, never taking his eyes off the road, always staring ahead. Nobody is greeted by him. I thought maybe it was because of me, but of course other runners in the area know him as well and have experienced the same thing. Maybe he secretly thinks we are all unworthy or there is a language barrier or in his culture people don't greet each other when doing sport. I don't know. In any case, I've given up saying hello to him.

But he did come out of his tunnel once. Our whole family on the road. Mother, father, three children, a horse, a dog, the youngest in front - he had to laugh and waved to our little girl. After all. I wonder. Sometimes it only takes a small child to lure someone out of the reserve.

Well, in any case, maybe I don't want to be quite like this guy. Without knowing him, of course (I don't know what's behind it) - just looking at him. We’ll see.

How do you imagine yourself as an older runner?

Running update

Last week was great. I did three runs in a row from Monday to Wednesday. Two easy ones and a quality session. Thursday I rested well and on Friday I wasn’t sure what to do, but I had some spare time so I decided to run 25k. I started very easy and then I forgot, that I wanted to do the rest also easy. I ended up with a halfmarathon-time better then in March in a competition and it felt for a long time easy. You can have a look at the Strava-result here.

I don’t know what happened, but the usual summer heart-rate set in. In late May or early June the avarage heart-rate on runs always drops and the speed-heart-rate-ratio increases. In this case it is out of nowhere, where in most cases I would say it’s because of the training, but you read about my training the last months. Yeah, but I don’t care. I’ll take it as it is.

Mental health update

Another children’s disease in the house. Scarlet fever. At times I also had the feeling that at least my body was fighting a little battle with it. It's annoying and also affects my mood, especially when you ask yourself how it can be that for six months there was more or less no phase where all three children were healthy.

Saturday I was really tired because of the situation, which I try to hide, because my wife celebrated her birthday and we had lots of people in the house. On Sunday I had to help at the euro-elections at the local polling-station, which was very demanding and the outcome was also not what I wanted to read.

The town I live in, the right-winged AfD has nearly no chance of winning something. They always get here the lowest ratings in the whole of Germany, but when you read the results here in the quarter, there are streets where they were elected by 20-25 percent of the eligible voters. That’s not cool and the overall shift to the right in Germany makes me feel very worried. At least it wasn’t as projected half a year ago, but that is only a small consolation

The video department

Is sadly closed today. Too much appointments. Hopefully next week again.

The end

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