Okay full disclosure: I haven’t run at all since I got a sore knee in September 2024, and [whispers] I don’t actually miss it.
But this isn’t about me, it’s about you brilliant midlife women who are out there doing the running. Those of you who know just how convenient, sociable and relatively inexpensive it is, as well as how great for your mental health.
But if you are over 40 and finding you’re getting slower and sorer – should you keep going?
As usual, my answer is this:
Hell yes – If you love it, you can usually find a way.
The thing is that estrogen is generally a woman runner’s friend. It gives us energy, helps us build muscle and improves recovery. That’s why your running is pretty fine in the middle of your cycle, and maybe a bit rubbish in the week before your period (assuming you’re not using hormonal birth control).
In the early stage of perimenopause estrogen levels fluctuate, so your performance might be unreliable.
In the later stages of perimenopause, estrogen drops. This can make running hard, because muscles, tendons, ligaments and fascia all love estrogen, and can struggle to do their jobs well without it. Mitochondria, the parts of our cells that create energy, need estrogen to rebuild. This means that aches, pains and injuries can become more frequent (like the evil gluteal tendinopathy which affects one in five women aged over forty) and it’s harder to recover and adapt from training.
Know this: there’s less wriggle-room when you’re perimenopausal. Things you used to take in your stride are harder to work with now.
If you’re getting slower and sorer, it’s not that you’re too old to run. It’s that you’re not recovering well enough between runs.
You used to be able to have a few glasses of wine the night before a run. Hell, you used to be able to stay up half the night with a baby and still run the next day! Now running needs more planning.
If you’re lacking in sleep, good nutrition, quality stress management or post-run recovery, you may find you’re getting slower or losing your motivation. So here are five ways to keep running through menopause so you’re still strong on the finish line when you’re in your seventies and beyond.
Eat enough calories to fuel your running. If you’re menopausal you probably lived through the eighties and nineties when food was for losers, meaning that low energy availability is common in midlife women runners. Well, now you know better, don’t you? Don’t stint on healthy fats, plenty of protein and enough carbs (yes, carbs!) to give you the energy you need.
Strength train. Instead of running five days a week, turn two of those sessions into structured, progressively overloaded strength sessions. That can be gym or bodyweight but it needs to challenge you. This means increasing the intensity (heavier weights, slower tempo) so you’re usually close to failure, and changing your exercise selection every six weeks. If your pelvic floor needs strength, seek assistance from a women’s health physiotherapist.
Get a great physio or sports therapist in your corner to keep check on the niggles. I see Carly Cowell once a month for a tune-up and while she doesn’t keep me running, she does keep me deadlifting.
Change your pre-run routine. If you’re straight out of bed and out the door, try something else. You need to eat and warm-up before you run. Even if you didn’t do these things before, you need to add them to avoid injury and fuel your performance.
Manage your lifestyle. Ah the easy one – sort out your stress, eat well and get eight hours of sleep. And if you can’t do these things, learn to notice how they’re impacting on your mood, running speed and ability to get on with daily life. What gives your brain fog, what increases hot flushes or other menopause symptoms?
Adding in plyometrics – three sets of five jumps, as high as you can, with a good 60s rest between sets, add springiness and explosiveness which is great for muscles.
