Your muscles lose about 8% of their energy-making capacity every decade. Unless you give them a reason to keep it.

If you’re reading this, I’m guessing you are an older runner who wants to keep running as you age, with plenty of energy and vitality to lace up and hit those streets.

Sounds doable, but it’s going to take some planning.

Most of my friends in…

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Forever Runner Newsletter

Helping runners over 50 effortlessly run faster without pain or fear of injury so they continue to enjoy their running lifestyle as they age!

By Herb Reeves

Forever Runner is your resource for leveraging your running to increase your freedom, independence and vitality as you age.

I publish articles on everything related to your running and health that will keep your running effortless, enjoyable, and injury free.

A bit about me…

I’m a life long runner who suffered a heart attack at the age of 50, resulting in triple bypass surgery. I went on to enjoy a successful ultra running career, winning age group awards and sponsorship from Hammer Nutrition. But at age 62, I had another heart attack. Something needed to change.

That’s when I discovered Maffetone method training and all the benefits for us older runners. But it was hard to implement and it took many trials and tribulations to finally reach success. I was running faster with less effort, and I finally lost that last 10 pounds!

So I packaged my lessons learned into what I call the “Forever Runner Method” and began coaching older runners on my method. I’m now 73 years old and still enjoying effortless, injury free running and I’m planning on running till I am 100 years old!

Why I started Forever Runner on Substack…

I have a passion for sharing my take on running in your 50’s, 60’s & 70’s, and providing some coaching.

So Substack seemed to be the best platform to not only share my articles and videos, but also foster a community where you have direct access to an experienced running coach to help you on your journey.

The internet is full of advice for runners, most of it not applicable to us older runners or just flashy headlines to draw in our attention. I want you to have access to proven methods that actually work for us delivered by email and available on a phone app.

What is the “Forever Runner Method”?

The Forever Runner Method is the 9-step system I use to help runners over 50 run injury free into their 90s.

It’s based on Dr. Phil Maffetone’s low heart rate training, adjusted for older runners. His 180-minus-age formula gets shaky after 60. At 62, it gave me a training heart rate I couldn’t even run at. I walked more than I ran, and walkers passed me on our popular lake trail.(embarassing!)

That’s why the method starts with your MVP, or minimum viable pace. This is the slowest pace you can comfortably run on flat ground without stopping. You hold that pace for a few weeks and let your heart rate come down.

When I tried it, my heart rate at a 10:30 mile dropped from 132 to 126 in about a month. Within another 60 days I was running 9:30 miles at that same 126. No walk breaks.

From there, the 9 steps fall under 3 pillars:

1. Build. Low heart rate aerobic running at a pace your body can hold, plus a short sprint session every 10 to 14 days.

2. Burn. Nutrition that teaches your body to burn fat for fuel (fat adaptation) and cuts the inflammation that makes your joints ache.

3. Move. Strength and mobility work, so your body holds up to the miles.

The method is for runners in their 50s, 60s and 70s. Most are mid-packers like me who’ve run for decades and want to keep going. If you keep getting hurt, or Zone 2 has you walking half your run, I built this for you.

The goal is the next 20 years of running.

How To Get Started With The Forever Runner Method

There are 3 ways you can get started with the Forever Runner Method…

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Get Run Coaching as a Paid Subscriber

As a paid subscriber, you not only get my Sunday posts, but also a Free copy of my “Forever Runner Method” book & Action Guide. Plus, weekly articles on how to implement the various parts of the Forever Runner Method. You also get access to my live chat, where you can get your running questions answered directly from me.

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Thanks so much for checking out my Substack. I’m really looking forward to chatting with you.

-Herb

“Not Done Yet”

Falling back is a reset, when everything you do changes. You get to sleep in, but it’s darker sooner.

This is a great time to try something different. A new morning routine, a healthier diet, maybe finally starting that strength routine.

You have a choice. Complain about the time change, or use this as a trigger to reset part of your life.

Could be simple as picking up a new headlamp, helping you out the door in the dark.

How are you going to “Fall Back”?

-Herb

“Not Done Yet”

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P.S. If you are passionate about running, and you don't want to lose that passion, then getting your copy of my new Forever Runner Method book is the right move. Click this link to get yours: https://foreverrunner.com/

Runners over 50: Pain free running without injury with slow running!

P.S. If you are passionate about running, and you don't want to lose that passion, then getting your copy of my new Forever Runner Method book is the right move. Click this link to get yours: https://foreverrunner.com/

Runners over 50: Pain free running without injury with slow running!

P.S. If you are passionate about running, and you don't want to lose that passion, then getting your copy of my new Forever Runner Method book is the right move. Click this link to get yours: https://foreverrunner.com/

Runners over 50: Pain free running without injury with slow running!

P.S. If you are passionate about running, and you don't want to lose that passion, then getting your copy of my new Forever Runner Method book is the right move. Click this link to get yours: https://foreverrunner.com/

Runners over 50: Pain free running without injury with slow running!

P.S. If you are passionate about running, and you don't want to lose that passion, then getting your copy of my new Forever Runner Method book is the right move. Click this link to get yours: https://foreverrunner.com/

Runners over 50: Pain free running without injury with slow running!

But it’s rare at the elite level for a 50 year old to have a dominate performance.

Frenchman Ludovic Pommeret not only won one of the hardest 100 milers in North America, he destroyed the course record in the proces…

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Hey runners, how’s it going?

There’s a drawer in my house full of old race bibs and a couple of belt buckles from 100-mile races. A few weeks ago I opened it looking for something else, and I ended up just standing there, holding a buckle from a race I know now I’m never going to run again.

Not because I quit. Because my body and I have had a few conversations lately, and we’ve come to an understanding. I’ll keep running. I won’t be running those.

I felt something go a little hollow when I put that buckle back. If you’ve run long enough, you might know the feeling.

A few days later I read a piece in the New York Times called “When Lifelong Runners Are Forced to Quit.”¹ It told the stories of people who ran for decades until a knee, a hip, or an illness finally shut the door for good. One woman said running had felt like being a horse, free and wild. When she had to stop, she compared it to watching an ex move on with someone new. “I know you’re out there,” she said. “I know you’ve moved on. But I don’t want to have to watch.”

I read that and thought, that’s it. That’s the thing nobody warns you about.

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The Loss Under the Loss

Here’s what the article got right, and what most training advice never touches. When an older runner is forced to stop, the hardest part usually isn’t the fitness. It’s the identity.

One psychologist in the piece put it plainly. Running, he said, is one of the most reliable forms of mood regulation we have, and when you take it away some people get irritable, stressed, low, even mildly depressed. It doesn’t matter how far or how fast you ran. It becomes part of how you understand yourself.

I’ve watched this happen to runners I know. A stress fracture or a bad hip sidelines them for a few months, and they don’t just lose their weekly mileage. They lose the plot. They go quiet. Some of them slide into a real depression, and it isn’t the injury doing it. It’s the empty space where “I’m a runner” used to sit.

That empty space is the whole problem. And I think it’s one we build for ourselves, one race at a time.

My Ladder of Labels

Look at how I introduced myself to you over the years.

In my forties, I was a marathoner. That was the badge. Boston times, splits, the whole business.

In my fifties, I became a trail runner. Roads got boring, the mountains didn’t, and I traded one label for another.

Then I went further and became an ultrarunner. 100-mile races. The oldest guy in the van. For a good stretch, that word was practically my last name.

Every one of those labels felt permanent while I wore it. And every one of them eventually had an expiration date I didn’t see coming.

At 72, with a couple of heart attacks and some newer medical surprises on my record, I’m not an ultrarunner anymore. I still feel like one on the inside. That never fully leaves. But I’m not going to run another hundred, and pretending otherwise would just set me up for the exact grief that Times article is full of.

So what am I now?

Maybe I’m Not “Just” a Runner

This is the shift that saved me, and I want you to steal it.

The sports psychologists in that article said something I’ve come to believe all the way down. The runners who make this transition well are the ones who separate their deeper values from the specific activity. You think you love running. But dig a little and you usually find you love something underneath it: the challenge, the mastery, the being outside, the adventure, the sense of belonging to a bunch of people chasing hard things.

Running was one way I expressed all of that. It was never the only way.

When I stopped seeing myself as only a runner, I started seeing myself as an adventurer who has, for a few decades, mostly adventured on foot. That’s a bigger container. Running fits inside it. So does hiking the kind of country I used to race through. So does whatever comes next, on the days my heart and my balance decide the terms.

One of the psychologists described it as a seesaw. As the runner identity fades, something else has to rise on the other side. If nothing rises, you just sit there in the dip, watching other people run past your window.

I refuse to sit in the dip.

What the Second Heart Attack Taught Me

I want to be honest about how hard this is, because it has flattened me too.

When I had my second heart attack, my first clear thought, before the fear even, was: well, that’s the running done. I was sure of it. I grieved it in the hospital bed. For a little while I let myself become a heart patient and nothing else, and that was a darker place than any injury ever put me.

I was wrong about the running. I recovered, and I’m still out there. But I’ve never forgotten how fast I collapsed my whole self down into one broken thing. That’s the trap. It isn’t the illness or the injury. It’s how eagerly we hand over our entire identity the moment the body wobbles.

The runners who suffer for months when they get sidelined aren’t weak. They just never built the bigger container. They put every egg in the “runner” basket, and when the basket tipped, they had nothing to catch the eggs.

What I’d Tell You to Do About It

You don’t have to wait for a diagnosis to start on this. Please don’t.

Hold the label loosely. Be a runner, love being a runner, and also know that “runner” is one room in a much bigger house. Name the values living underneath it: adventure, challenge, being outdoors, community. Those don’t expire when your knees do.

Keep a second thing warm. Long before you’re forced to, have something else you’re a little bit proud of. It doesn’t have to replace running. It just has to be ready to rise on the seesaw when the day comes.

And when your body does hand you a hard conversation, listen to it without signing your whole self over. You’re allowed to change what kind of athlete you are without deciding you’re no longer an athlete at all.

One of the runners in that Times piece, a man of 79 who can’t run anymore after a knee replacement, said something I keep coming back to. “We get a gift,” he said, “and it’s a gift of uncertain duration. You make of it what you can.”

That’s it exactly. The running was always a gift of uncertain duration. So is all of it. The point was never to be a runner forever. The point was to keep making something of the gift, in whatever form my body will still allow.

I was a marathoner, then a trail runner, then an ultrarunner. Now I’m just an old adventurer who still gets to lace up most mornings, and who is nowhere close to done.

Not done yet.

-Herb

Run Smarter, Live Longer

P.S. IF you’d like help with extending your running career, join our Forever Running club and go through the foundations program. You’ll be running better in just 30 days! Click Here for your 7 day Free Trial

¹ “When Lifelong Runners Are Forced to Quit,” The New York Times, July 2026. Quotes from runners and from sports psychologists Justin Ross and Jack Lesyk are drawn from that article.

P.S. If you are passionate about running, and you don't want to lose that passion, then getting your copy of my new Forever Runner Method book is the right move. Click this link to get yours: https://foreverrunner.com/

Runners over 50: Pain free running without injury with slow running!

So as we celebrate our nation’s 250 years of independence, think about how your running supports your health and longevity, allowing you to contin…

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I was sixty-two, a few months clear of my second heart attack, standing at my front door with a heart rate strap on like it was scuba gear. My cardiologist had cleared me to run again, and I’d just finished Dr. Phil Maffetone’s Big Book of Endurance Training and Racing. I was ready to become a low heart rate convert.

Ninety seconds in, my number blew straight past my calculated ceiling. I walked. It dropped. I ran again, and a minute later I was walking again. My easy morning shuffle turned into a stop-and-go routine, and I remember thinking this can’t possibly be right.

I almost quit right there. Quitting would have been the biggest mistake of my second running life, because that method is a big reason I’ve logged more than 80 ultramarathons since then, still running strong in my seventies instead of managing a slow decline.

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✱✱✱ Click here to watch on YouTube. ✱✱✱

I’ve coached runners over 50 for the last decade, and I see the same story play out constantly. Someone reads Dr. Phil’s book, straps on a Garmin, and heads out ready to run easy and patient. The number blows past the ceiling in under two minutes. So they walk, run, walk, run — and by the end of the week, they’ve either quit before they started or they’re one bad run away from giving up entirely. That frustration is exactly what I want to save you from.

Here are the four real reasons strict Maffetone training breaks down for runners over 50 — and the fix I now use with every client who hits the same wall.

1 - You Don’t Actually Know How to Run Slow

Running slow well is harder than it sounds. Your form holds up fine at a normal pace, then falls apart the moment you try to go easy. You get bouncy, you overstride, and your heart rate climbs from pure inefficiency rather than effort.

There’s a name for this: aerobic deficiency syndrome, or ADS — a heart rate that redlines at an effort that should feel like a jog.¹ It’s common in runners who came up through harder training and never built the aerobic engine to match. It isn’t a fitness problem you can outrun. It’s a base you haven’t built yet.

Pull up your Garmin data after a run like this and you’ll usually see the same pattern: heart rate climbing steadily even though your pace never changed. That drift is your form working against you, not your fitness failing you.

2 - You’re Still Carb Dependent

If your body runs on sugar, it hasn’t learned to tap fat yet, and that’s exactly the system you’re asking it to use the moment you slow down. My mentor, Mark Sisson, has spent decades showing that a body trained to burn glycogen first will stay tethered to it, spiking heart rate and cravings alike, until you retrain the switch.

The switch is real and measurable. Elite ultra-endurance athletes who are fully fat-adapted can oxidize fat at more than twice the rate of typical endurance athletes, even at moderate intensity.² That adaptation takes weeks of consistent low heart rate work, not one good breakfast.

3 - You’re Not Consistent Enough to Build a Base

Maffetone works on accumulated easy miles over time. A couple of runs one week and none the next won’t get you there, because the aerobic system adapts through repetition, not intensity.

Classic exercise physiology backs this up. Just six weeks of consistent aerobic training can roughly double the mitochondrial enzyme activity in trained muscle — the cellular machinery that actually burns fat for fuel.³ Skip weeks, and you’re asking your body to rebuild that machinery from scratch every time.

I see this most clearly with runners who train hard for two weeks, miss a week to travel or a sore knee, then start over from zero enthusiasm. The aerobic system doesn’t punish you for missing a run. It punishes you for never stringing enough of them together to adapt.

4 - You Expect Results on Your Timeline, Not Your Body’s

You want a faster pace in two weeks, and when the watch doesn’t cooperate, you bail. That’s not a character flaw. Research on habit formation shows it takes an average of two months of repetition before a new behavior starts to feel automatic, sometimes longer.⁴ Maffetone asks for patience right when your motivation is thinnest.

The Fix: Reverse Maffetone

Stop treating this like a ten-week training plan. As a longevity coach, I see it as a lifelong way to train — think three years, not ten weeks. That shift alone changes how you approach the watch.

Here’s the difference. In strict Maffetone training, you hold your heart rate steady at your ceiling and work on getting faster. In Reverse Maffetone, you flip the order: hold your pace steady and work on bringing your heart rate down at that pace. Same destination, far less frustration getting there.

Here’s how to do it:

Step 1: Find Your Minimum Viable Pace

The slowest steady pace you can run without stopping — not a shuffle that turns into a walk. Let your heart rate be whatever it is for now. You’re not chasing the number yet. Do all your runs at that same comfortable pace.

Step 2: Clean Up Your Form

Often times, a higher heart rate while running is because you are not an efficient runner. A video gait check usually finds a few small fixes — cadence too slow, overstriding, leaning back — that lower your heart rate at the same pace without you working any harder.

Step 3: Build a Schedule You’ll Actually Keep

Not the schedule you wish you could do. A schedule you can commit to. For most of my runners, that’s four easy runs a week, short enough that they never dread lacing up. Consistency is what builds the base.

Step 4: Confirm It With a Drift Test

Once you can hold an easy pace for forty-five minutes, a heart rate drift test sets your personal top of Zone 2 — your real Maffetone ceiling, not a generic formula.

Same pace, lower heart rate, week after week. For most of my runners in their 50s and 60s, that ceiling settles in somewhere around 130 bpm once the prep work is done — not the number the formula spit out on day one, but the number their actual body earned. Once that settles down, you’re ready for the strict formula, and it finally clicks instead of grinding you down.

This is exactly what I walk runners through in the Forever Running Club’s Foundations program, along with support from our community of older runners just like you. If you want the full four-step breakdown, Click Here to check out the Free Trial.

The Bottom Line

This isn’t a quick fix. It asks you to slow down and trust the process for a few weeks before the watch rewards you. If you need results by Friday, this won’t feel good. If you’re playing the long game, it’s one of the best trades you’ll make.

The Maffetone purists will probably scoff, because it doesn’t follow the formula to the letter. Here’s how I look at it: you’ve managed to run okay for years without strict Maffetone training, so a few weeks of prep costs you almost nothing. Skip it, and you’ll do what almost every older runner does — struggle, get frustrated, and quit before the benefits ever show up.

I’ve had two heart attacks and I’m still out there. I’m Not Done Yet!, and neither are you.

What’s stopping you from finishing the prep work before you chase the formula?

Which of the four reasons hit closest to home for you? Hit reply and tell me — I read every one.

Have a great week!

-Herb

Run Smarter, Live Longer

P.S. IF you’d like help with this, join our Forever Running club and go through the foundations program. You’ll be running better in just 30 days! Click Here for your 7 day Free Trial

1. David Roche, “How to Spot—and Correct—Aerobic Deficiency Syndrome,” Outside Online, accessed July 2026, https://run.outsideonline.com/training/aerobic-deficiency-syndrome/.

2. Jeff S. Volek et al., “Metabolic Characteristics of Keto-Adapted Ultra-Endurance Runners,” Metabolism 65, no. 3 (2016): 100–110.

3. John O. Holloszy, “Biochemical Adaptations in Muscle: Effects of Exercise on Mitochondrial Oxygen Uptake and Respiratory Enzyme Activity in Skeletal Muscle,” Journal of Biological Chemistry 242, no. 9 (1967): 2278–2282.

4. Phillippa Lally et al., “How Are Habits Formed: Modelling Habit Formation in the Real World,” European Journal of Social Psychology 40, no. 6 (2010): 998–1009.

P.S. If you are passionate about running, and you don't want to lose that passion, then getting your copy of my new Forever Runner Method book is the right move. Click this link to get yours: https://foreverrunner.com/

Runners over 50: Pain free running without injury with slow running!

I’ve been an ultra runner for over 20 years, doing 50K’s, 50 milers, 100K’s and even a few 100’s. You would think, that over time, I would want to run the Western States 100, much like a longtime marathoner would want to run Boston. After all, WSR is the oldest 100 miler in the US a…

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You added miles. You added a hard day. For a few weeks it worked. Then your body started going backward — and your age isn’t the reason why.

I’m 73 years old. I’ve run more than 50 ultramarathons, I’ve won age-group awards into my late 60s and 70s, and I’m a two-time heart attack survivor. I want to be clear about something: I’m a mid-packer, not an elite. I’ve never had elite genes or elite talent.

After my second heart attack at 62, I tore my whole approach to training down to the studs and rebuilt it. Everyone expected me to slow down and fade out. Instead my running got better. I got faster at an age when the charts say you’re supposed to be finished.

I’ve spent the last eight years coaching runners in their 50s, 60s, and 70s through the exact problem I’m about to describe. I’ve watched it play out hundreds of times, and it almost always starts the same way.

Here’s the pattern. Around 50, you slow down a little. The pace that used to feel easy starts to feel like work, so you do the thing that worked your whole life — you push harder. You add miles. You add a hard day. Your easy runs creep up into medium-hard runs, because backing off feels like quitting. For a few weeks it works. Then it stops. You plateau, you start going backward, you’re tired all the time, and your knee or your calf starts to ache.

Pushing harder didn’t fail you because you’re old. It failed you because after 50 it’s the wrong tool. Here are three reasons running harder makes an older runner slower, heavier, and more injured — and what to do instead.

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✱✱✱. Click Here To Watch On YouTube. ✱✱✱

Harder running starves the engine that’s supposed to carry you

Your body makes energy two ways. Your aerobic system runs on oxygen and burns mostly fat. It’s slow, steady, and you can run on it all day. Your anaerobic system burns sugar fast and dumps a lot of fatigue and stress into your body in the process.

At 30, you could lean on that sugar-burning system every day and bounce back by morning. After 50, two things change. You recover from hard efforts more slowly. And your aerobic system — the fat-burning one — is the system that keeps getting stronger for decades when you actually train it.¹

When you answer your slowdown by pushing harder, you feed the sugar-burning side and you train the fat-burning side less. You end up with more fatigue and less of the staying power that keeps you running for life. It feels productive. Your body is quietly going the wrong direction.

The main culprit has a name: junk miles. Junk miles are runs that are too hard to recover from and too easy to build real fitness. Coaches call it the gray zone — that medium-hard effort where you’re breathing harder than a conversation but nowhere near a true hard workout. My mentor on low heart rate training, Dr. Phil Maffetone, puts it plainly: most athletes “run often in that gray zone, not slow enough on the slow days and sometimes not hard enough or too hard even on the hard days.” His warning is blunt — “when we don’t train the aerobic system, we lose aerobic function. That aerobic system becomes literally deficient.”²

Run that way for years and you build what I call aerobic deficiency syndrome (ADS). Your aerobic system ends up underbuilt, so you burn through sugar and run out of gas early. Most runners our age live in the gray zone. Nothing is truly easy, nothing is truly hard, and everything sits in the soggy middle.

If this is landing for you, hit reply and tell me the age when running first started to feel harder. I read every one, and I’m curious how many of you say it happened right around 50.

Harder running teaches your body to store fat, not burn it

This one doesn’t just show up on the clock. It shows up around your middle.

Your aerobic system is your fat-burning system. Spend all your training in the gray zone and your body gets worse at burning fat and better at relying on sugar. Researchers measuring fat and carbohydrate burning in endurance athletes found that the best-trained aerobic engines burn dramatically more fat at the same effort — that’s a trainable skill, not a fixed trait.³

There’s a hormonal cost too. Constant training stress keeps your stress hormones high, and over months elevated cortisol pushes your body to hold onto fat, especially around the belly. In one study, lean women who secreted more cortisol under repeated stress carried more abdominal fat than women who didn’t.⁴ You run more, you feel more tired, and the scale climbs anyway.

My mentor Mark Sisson of Primal Health has been saying it for years: you can’t outrun a body that’s been trained to depend on sugar. This is a fuel problem, and a fuel problem is fixable. Build the aerobic engine and you turn back into a fat-burner — on the run and at rest.

Harder running breaks tissue down faster than you can rebuild it

This is where training like you’re 35 hurts the most. After 50, your tendons get less forgiving, you lose muscle, and your tissues repair more slowly than they used to. Stack hard runs back to back with no easy aerobic running in between, and the damage piles up faster than your body can rebuild. One day the soreness becomes a real injury that costs you weeks.

Then the spiral starts. You get hurt, you rest, you come back feeling behind, so you push to catch up — and that hands you the next injury. Round and round it goes. After 50, the fastest way to lose your fitness is to get hurt. Almost every injured runner I coach was running too hard on their easy days and too easy on the one day they should have pushed.

The decline researchers measure in older athletes isn’t mostly about aging muscle — it’s driven in large part by the drop in training quality that happens when fatigue and injury chip away at what you can actually do week to week.⁵ Protect your easy days and you protect your training. Protect your training and you protect everything.

What training with your age looks like

Here’s the whole fix, and it’s simpler than the gray-zone grind you’re doing now.

Most of your running should be genuinely easy. Slow, conversational, at a heart rate low enough to build your aerobic system without beating up your recovery. For a lot of older runners that lands right around 130 beats per minute — slow enough that walkers might pass you, and that’s fine. Use your Garmin to hold that ceiling honestly, because your legs will lie to you and the watch won’t.

Then one small slice of your week is truly hard, with a clear purpose. Your easy days stay easy so your hard days can actually be hard. That mix — mostly easy, a little truly hard — is what makes an older runner faster and more durable.⁵

Two quick tests to see if the gray zone has caught up with you:

1. The 130 check. On your next easy run, watch your Garmin. If you can’t hold a conversation at 130 bpm, your aerobic base needs work.

2. The waist check. Measure your waist. A waistline creeping up while your mileage holds steady is your body telling you it’s burning the wrong fuel.

The payoff that makes the slow weeks worth it

When you build your aerobic system instead of grinding the gray zone, your slowdown starts to reverse on its own. You get better at burning fat, so your endurance climbs and your waistline comes back down. You step off the injury treadmill, because your body finally gets the recovery it’s been begging for. And your easy pace gets faster while your effort stays exactly the same.

I’ve watched runners in their 60s shave minutes per mile doing less hard running, not more. That’s not a trick. That’s what an aerobic engine does when you finally feed it.

Picture next spring. Same easy effort, but the pace on your watch is faster. Your waistband has loosened a notch. Your knee stopped barking weeks ago, and you’re not counting down to your next forced rest. That runner isn’t a younger version of you. That’s you, training with your age instead of against it.

I’m 73 and I’m getting faster. You’re not done slowing down because you’re old — you’re slowing down because you’re grinding. Fix the grind, and you’re not done yet.

Are you training too hard on the days you’re supposed to go easy — and too easy on the one day you should push?

What age were you when running first started to feel harder? Hit reply and tell me. I read every one.

Have a great week!
-Herb
”Run Smarter, Live Longer”

P.S. Ready to go deeper?
The Forever Runner Method is a proven, step-by-step framework built specifically for runners over 50 who are tired of getting hurt and are ready to run smarter. If you want to discover how, Grab a copy of my book at Foreverrunner.com.

Notes

1. Hirofumi Tanaka and Douglas R. Seals, “Endurance Exercise Performance in Masters Athletes: Age-Associated Changes and Underlying Physiological Mechanisms,” The Journal of Physiology 586, no. 1 (2008): 55–63.

2. Phil Maffetone, “Your Performance Is Dropping? Here’s Why,” interview, accessed via the Forever Runner research library, 2025.

3. Iñigo San Millán and George A. Brooks, “Assessment of Metabolic Flexibility by Means of Measuring Blood Lactate, Fat, and Carbohydrate Oxidation Responses to Exercise in Professional Endurance Athletes and Less-Fit Individuals,” Sports Medicine 48, no. 2 (2018): 467–479.

4. Elissa S. Epel et al., “Stress and Body Shape: Stress-Induced Cortisol Secretion Is Consistently Greater Among Women with Central Fat,” Psychosomatic Medicine 62, no. 5 (2000): 623–632.

5. Stephen Seiler, “What Is Best Practice for Training Intensity and Duration Distribution in Endurance Athletes?,” International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance 5, no. 3 (2010): 276–291.

P.S. If you are passionate about running, and you don't want to lose that passion, then getting your copy of my new Forever Runner Method book is the right move. Click this link to get yours: https://foreverrunner.com/

Runners over 50: Pain free running without injury with slow running!

I started running after college — not for fitness, not to look good, but as an excuse to drink more beer. After all, isn’t a long run just carb loading in reverse? Club runs ended with pints at the local pub. The finish line meant one thing: a cold beer. Race directors handed them out like medals, and I earned mine. That post-race beer was never a guilty pleasure — it was the ritual, the reward for the suffering. Nothing about it ever felt like a problem. (Heart attacks aside!)

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But now, as an endurance athlete in my 70s, I need every advantage I can get to keep going. And alcohol isn’t one of them.

For decades I treated that finish-line beer as free. A reward with no receipt. Then I started actually measuring my training with my Garmin — resting heart rate, sleep, recovery — and the numbers told a story my taste buds didn’t want to hear. That beer isn’t your reward. It’s a tax on the very engine you just spent two hours building.

Here are three reasons alcohol quietly sabotages your endurance after 50 — and why cutting back might be the easiest performance gain you’ll ever make.

#1 - Alcohol Robs the Repair Window

You don’t get faster during your run. You get faster in the hours after it, while your body repairs the muscle you just broke down. Coaches call it the recovery window, and for the first 60 to 90 minutes after a hard effort, your muscles are primed to soak up protein and rebuild stronger than before.

Alcohol slams that window shut.

Researchers in Australia put this to the test. They had trained athletes finish a hard workout, then gave them either protein, protein plus alcohol, or carbs plus alcohol. The protein-only group recovered as expected. But add alcohol to the mix and muscle protein synthesis — the actual rebuilding process — dropped by up to 37 percent.¹ Thirty-seven percent. You did the work. You earned the adaptation. Then you poured a third of it down the drain.

Here’s the part that should get every one of us over 50 to sit up. As we age, our muscles already become less responsive to the rebuild signal. We need more protein, not less, to trigger the same repair a 30-year-old gets easily. We’re already starting from behind. Drinking after a run digs the hole deeper at the exact moment we can least afford it.

That post-run beer? A protein shake does the opposite job. One closes the window. The other props it wide open.

#2- Alcohol Drains Your Fuel Tank and Your Fluids

Endurance runs on two things: stored fuel and water. Alcohol comes after both.

After a long run, your muscles are scrambling to refill their glycogen stores — your body’s premium fuel for the next effort. Drink alcohol during that refueling, and glycogen resynthesis slows by as much as 50 percent.² You show up to your next run with a half-empty tank and wonder why your legs feel like sandbags.

Then there’s hydration. Alcohol is a diuretic — it makes you flush out fluid you just spent miles sweating away. Studies show that drinking after exercise actually delays rehydration and reduces the plasma volume your heart depends on to move blood efficiently.³ You finish a hot Saturday long run already down a couple of pounds of water, and the beer that’s supposed to replace it pushes you further into the red.

Try this: This is where my Garmin became my truth-teller. The mornings after one or two beers, my resting heart rate sat five to eight beats higher than normal. Check your morning heart rate after a dry night, then after a couple of drinks. The number doesn’t lie, even when we want it to. And if you’re doing low heart rate training, that drift makes it almost impossible to hold your aerobic pace below 130 bpm the next day.

#3 - Alcohol Steals the Recovery You Only Get While Sleeping

If you take one thing from this piece, take this: the single most powerful recovery tool you own is sleep. And alcohol is sleep’s quiet thief.

A nightcap feels like it helps you drift off. It does — at first. But alcohol suppresses REM sleep, the deep, restorative stage where your nervous system repairs and your body does its real rebuilding.⁴ You sleep, but you don’t recover. One athlete I read about put it perfectly: one night of drinking can cloud three days of training.

My mentor in this work, Dr. Phil Maffetone — the man whose low heart rate method brought me back after my heart attacks — has said it plainly for years. When he coached athletes one-on-one, he had them list every stress in their lives in three columns: physical, biochemical, and mental. Right at the top of the biochemical column, alongside too much caffeine, he wrote one word: alcohol.⁵ Stress is stress, whether it comes from overtraining or from a bottle. Your body can’t tell the difference, and it can only absorb so much before performance and health both start to crack.

There’s a longevity layer here too, and it matters most to us. The endurance we’re chasing in our 60s and 70s lives in our mitochondria — the tiny power plants in every muscle cell. Lifelong endurance athletes studied in their 80s showed mitochondrial function that looked decades younger than their sedentary peers.⁶ That’s the real prize: not just a faster 10K, but a body that keeps running for another 20 years. Alcohol works directly against the cellular machinery we’re trying so hard to protect.

The Bottom Line

Alcohol isn’t a moral failing. I’m not here to preach — I drank my way through 70 ultras. But I won’t pretend it’s free anymore, because it never was. That finish-line beer charges you on three accounts: it robs your repair window, drains your fuel and fluids, and steals the deep sleep where recovery actually happens.

You don’t have to quit cold turkey to win this one:

• Skip the drink in the recovery window right after a hard effort.

• Swap the post-run beer for a protein shake and water.

• Watch what your Garmin tells you the next morning.

Small changes, big returns — the kind of trade a longevity runner makes every time.

I’ve actually switched to drinking NA beers. They’re not that bad, now available everywhere, (so you don’t miss your friends at the pub) and no after effects on your metabolism, recovery and driving!

Imagine showing up to next Saturday’s long run with a full tank, a quiet resting heart rate, and a body that slept the way it was built to. That runner is faster, steadier, and still toeing the line decades from now. That runner is you — if you decide the next 20 years are worth more than the next drink.

Because here’s the truth I’ve staked my whole second life on: we are Not Done Yet!

Which costs you more — the drink in your hand, or the runner you could still become?

What’s your relationship with alcohol and your running? Hit reply and tell me — I read every one.

Have a great week!

-Herb

Run Smarter, Live Longer

P.S. Ready to go deeper?
The Forever Runner Method is a proven, step-by-step framework built specifically for runners over 50 who are tired of getting hurt and are ready to run smarter. If you want to discover how, Grab a copy of my book at Foreverrunner.com.

1. Evelyn B. Parr et al., “Alcohol Ingestion Impairs Maximal Post-Exercise Rates of Myofibrillar Protein Synthesis Following a Single Bout of Concurrent Training,” PLoS ONE 9, no. 2 (2014): e88384.

2. Louise M. Burke et al., “Effect of Alcohol Intake on Muscle Glycogen Storage After Prolonged Exercise,” Journal of Applied Physiology 95, no. 3 (2003): 983–990.

3. Ronald J. Maughan, “Alcohol and Football,” Journal of Sports Sciences 24, no. 7 (2006): 741–748.

4. Irshaad O. Ebrahim et al., “Alcohol and Sleep I: Effects on Normal Sleep,” Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research 37, no. 4 (2013): 539–549.

5. Philip Maffetone, The Big Book of Endurance Training and Racing (New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2010).

6. Scott Trappe et al., “New Records in Aerobic Power Among Octogenarian Lifelong Endurance Athletes,” Journal of Applied Physiology 114, no. 1 (2013): 3–10.

P.S. If you are passionate about running, and you don't want to lose that passion, then getting your copy of my new Forever Runner Method book is the right move. Click this link to get yours: https://foreverrunner.com/

Runners over 50: Pain free running without injury with slow running!