Orient wrote:
Cavorty,
I am not much faster than you and can hardly be a 100% point of truth, but my feeling is that "yes", a 8 mile run is OK for those who target 3-5K. Even better to run it in a progressive way, but yet not hard in the end. All the rest could be done by consistent 2 "standard" workouts per week: interchanging intervals (from Nx400 thru Mx1500), 3-5 mile tempos and various hills.
Another thing that works for me (at least at our current age of around 65) is a good amount of cross-training to save resources of old joints, tendons and muscles.
Best of luck to you.
Orient,
Thanks. In my 50s I did some 100 minute runs - three or four in a 12 week build up to a race, and I think I did benefit.
As more of a 1500/3000m type though, I always found long runs harder than things like 200m repeats. I've come round to thinking at this age for up to 5k, given the time it would take me to recover, it's not profitable for me to do very long runs (if I was going to run a half-marathon, I'd do the longer runs and take several days easy afterwards).
I'm going to start introducing hills this week. I haven't been doing any cross-training, but as my work gets a little quieter and I have time to go to the gym, it would probably make sense to switch to some cross-training. My sister is a W60+ runner who has won several US Masters titles and one World Indoor Masters, and she only runs three or four times a week (has arthritic knees), but does a lot of cross-training including aqua jogging. She is more a short distance runner, but ran a low 20 min 5k at 60-years-old off that type of training.
I've always liked the convenience of just getting out the door for the run, and I've still generally been running on road or track 6 or 7 days a week, but it's probably coming up time for a change.