STAYING AT YOUR PEAK-WHY MASTERS HAVE THE EDGE

(excerpts from "Fitness is less fragile in the older athlete" by John H. Bland, M.D.)

"The bad news is, were lost," says the pilot in an old airline joke. "The good news is, were making good time." It is this kind of two-faced report masters athletes know well. Science giveth to us - uncovering more and more ways the body can "train around" what were once thought of as the inevatible declines of aging. And science taketh away finding that though the training ceiling is indeed pretty high for masters, it takes more and more work to get up there. You can absolutely be a threat on the race circuit, but be ready for the commitment. Quit your job, hire a coach, drop your friends, and train. You can get whatever you're willing to pay for. But the cost keeps going up. Who would be blamed for wondering if it's even worth trying to get to the next level?

Before you answer that question, there's something else you should know. Though it's not much discussed, science also realizes that once you get into whatever shape you want as a masters athlete, your fitness stays with you longer if you get hurt, cancel a string of workouts, or have to back off for some other reason. At 25, the slide would start much sooner than it will at 50.

Take that gold standard of conditioning, VO2max, the rate at which your system can move oxygen from your lungs to your muscles. Though we do not know the precise chemical reasons for it, we do know that a young athlete who stops training is going to start slipping in anywhere from two to three weeks, where as someone over 50 might not see a dramatic difference for as many as 12 weeks.

While nobody is saying that lungs of a 50 year old work the same as lungs of a 25 year old, we are saying that fitness seems to grow less fragile as one gets older.

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