Older runners are having the times of their lives

Even though he's eased up, 73-year-old Chris Catoe has a running routine that could whip someone half his age.

He's dropped back from running 55 miles a week to a mere 35. He runs every other day instead of every day. He's cut back on marathons, but still competes in a dozen or so half- marathons and 10K races a year, shoulder-to-shoulder with people who weren't even born when he started running in the late 1960s.

"I know they must think, 'Here comes the old guy,' but personally I feel as young as they are," says the sinewy, sun-tanned man.

Although runners like Catoe are still a rare breed, their ranks are growing. He's one of 155 competitors older than 65 running in the Rock 'n' Roll Half Marathon in Virginia Beach on Sunday. That's almost three times the number that age who ran just seven years ago.

The oldest registered to run is 84.

Runners who are swelling the higher age ranks - many of whom started the sport during the 1970s "running revolution" - are finding that it's not so lonely at the top after all.

Running USA's 2007 report of marathon participants found that 46 percent were in the so-called "masters division" - those 40 and older - compared with 26 percent in 1980.

Longevity may be part of the reason. While the prevailing sentiment might once have been that joggers would wear out knee joints and back discs in record time, a recent Stanford University study of 500 older runners released this month shows the sport can delay both death and disability.

The study, which followed runners over two decades, started when they were in their 50s. Two decades later, they had fewer disabilities and a longer active life and were half as likely as nonrunners of the same age to die early deaths.

The runners' first disability came an average of 16 years after the nonrunners'.

"That's just the kind of study runners glom onto," Catoe said with a laugh.

 

Catoe started running for sport in the late 1960s, about the time famed Dr. Kenneth Cooper began preaching the benefits of aerobic exercise.

"It was an easy way to get a workout. You didn't have to arrange schedules; you just went outside."

The retired Marine said a competitive streak fires his decades-long habit, stoked over the years by running with a group.

One recent morning, the light had barely started to color the sky blue when he came running down an asphalt road at First Landing State Park, the glow from his runner's headlight piercing the dark.

He had already run four miles from his condo to meet up with six fellow runners. The youngest in the group is 57, but most are in their 60s, and they come here twice a week for a 10-mile run down tree-canopied trails.

Up ahead of Catoe on the trail is 61-year-old Betty Brothers, who runs a pace-setting position the others call "Betty duty." She grew up on the Eastern Shore and attended a school that didn't even have a gymnasium, much less a sports roster for girls. She knew she was a good runner, though, because of the comments she'd hear rounding the bases of neighborhood softball games.

She started running in her 30s but didn't compete until she was almost 50.

"I placed in the first race I was in, and the rest is history," Brothers said. At 55, she ran her first marathon, and last year she broke two state marathon records in her age bracket.

Her enthusiasm is reflective of a larger group of women: The number of females participating in U.S. marathons went from 11 percent in 1980 to 40 percent in 2007.

Brothers' biceps and firmly toned legs glistened with sweat during the run. Her blood pressure, she said, is right where it ought to be.

"My doctor says, 'Whatever you're doing, keep doing it.' "

 

A question like, "Have you had many injuries," though, elicits a round of laughs and a litany of war stories with this crew.

Torn hamstrings, pulled muscles, stress fractures, strained backs, frayed knee ligaments - they've seen them all.

Preston Fitzgerald, 68, another runner in the group, said he's twice had his knee "scoped," a procedure in which a small camera is inserted into the knee joint for tissue repair.

But instead of crying "uncle," his attitude is, "When can I get back out?' "

It's a refrain orthopedic surgeon Dr. Jack Siegel is all too familiar with.

During his 16 years of practice at the Jordan-Young Institute for Joint Reconstruction and Sports Medicine in Virginia Beach, he's seen an increasing number of patients in their 60s, 70s, even 80s with sports injuries.

"They're fortunate to be able to run, because weight-bearing sports are healthy for the skeleton; it's good for bone mass."

But it's important to remember that not everyone can run with the lions. People who have had serious knee, hip or back injuries earlier in life need to know when to call it quits. "Our discs tend to degenerate over the years, and the impact of running can aggravate a back problem."

He recommends cross-training, or even switching to lower-impact sports such as elliptical training, swimming or biking for people in too much pain.

Hard-core runners, though, he said, are a special breed. The endorphins released during a "runner's high" are hard to replace.

"The people who get this chemical high, it's hard for them to give it up."

Treatments for injuries such as a torn anterior cruciate ligament, or ACL, used to be done mainly on people in their teens and 20s and 30s. If you were 45 or 50 and tore your ACL, you'd normally go through physical therapy rather than reconstructive surgery, he said.

But now those types of procedures are becoming more common among the middle-aged.

"They want to maintain their lifestyle," Siegel said.

Or they might opt for a surgical procedure instead of letting time heal an injury, "so they can get back in action sooner."

The discouraging thing for Siegel is that at the same time he's seeing a growing corps of older athletes, there's another group on the rise - overweight people with joint injuries that might have been prevented with more exercise earlier in life.

"You don't have to run a marathon or five miles a day," Siegel said. "You can do three times a week for 45 minutes, and that's going to keep you in shape."

 

For Mel Williams, studies like the Stanford one are as exhilarating as a runner's high.

The exercise physiologist spent 29 years at Old Dominion University teaching and researching exercise and nutrition. He once taught an ODU course on marathon running in which the final exam was to run in the Marine Corps Marathon in Arlington.

And the professor emeritus has practiced what he preached.

During the past three decades, the 69-year-old Norfolk man has run in 121 marathons.

He's run the Boston Marathon eight times, placing first in his age bracket at the ages of 51, 60 and 61. He's now training for his 33rd Marine Corps Marathon in October. He'll be one of only four "Groundpounders," people who have run in every Marine Corps Marathon since it began.

Over the years, he's seen the races adapt to aging runners. "Boston used to have a 50-and-above bracket, then they added 60 and over, and now 70 and over."

He hit his personal best in his 40s, but because there are different age brackets, the competition continues, though he says it's not as important to him as it used to be.

Still, he admits he's looking forward to turning 70 in December. "That's the one thing about running: People can't wait to get older because it's a whole new age group."

He used to run every day, up to 100 miles a week. "You can't do that as you get older. You need more recovery time."

Now he's down to about 40 or 50. He throws in a couple of days of elliptical training and walking instead of running every day.

He takes medicine for blood pressure - a family ailment - and nurses a sore back from time to time, but other than that, he's in good shape.

"If I get to the point where I can't run, if I can walk it, I'll do that."

Longtime runners like Williams and Catoe look lank and lean, especially compared with others their age, but they're not always keenly aware of it.

Why?

They hang out with other runners.

In fact, it's the camaraderie of the group that keeps many running. Duane Lougee, 71, of Norfolk runs with Catoe and the others at First Landing in the group he calls "the geezers."

"If you run alone, and you wake up in the morning, and it's raining, it's very easy to roll back over. But if someone is picking you up, you get out there. And if you don't go, they talk about you."

Catoe is joining the other runners in the Rock 'n' Roll Half Marathon on Sunday, but he said he's backed off competing in full marathons because of the beating his body takes.

As soon as he says that, though, he hedges.

"I'm not saying I'm never going to run a marathon again."

The competitor deep inside won't let him.

Elizabeth Simpson, (757) 446-2635, elizabeth.simpson@pilotonline.com