Sometimes it’s good news when a study’s hypothesis is not
proved. That was the case, certainly, with a new study of older
runners, in which researchers assumed that athletes over 60
would be noticeably less efficient than their younger
counterparts. For the experiment, published in The Journal of
Strength and Conditioning Research, researchers at the
University of New Hampshire and other institutions recruited 51
competitive runners, ranging in age from 18 to 77. Each trained
regularly and had placed in the top three in his or her age
group in a local 5-kilometer or 10-kilometer road race. Their
goal was to assess running economy, a measure of how much oxygen
someone uses to run at a certain pace. Economical runners can
continue at a given speed longer than inefficient striders,
outdistancing them. Going into the study, the researchers had
assumed that runners past age 60 would be less economical than
youthful athletes, since older runners, as a group, are slower
than younger ones. But as it turned out, when