Easier Week!

I may be old and crotchety, but I constantly try to continue to learn! weather it is investing, exercise, home maintenance, or good old fashioned world affairs, I just keep at it. I continually evolve my exercise routine based on research, and I found an interesting short book recently about exercising later in life. It is one of those titles I find so amusing....how to run to age 100......I don't think I will live past my 70's, so I doubt running will be as issue beyond that! Anyway, the gist of the book, by a guy a few years older who has run more than 50 years, is that when things change from your competitive life to just trying to keep active, your focus has to change. He still runs short races, but just for fun, and says your plan should be more focused on physical vitality. To insure that, you still run, but you must focus much more on weight training to combat the most destructive force in aging, specifically beyond age 65....the loss of muscle mass. His plan calls for 3-4 runs per week, with no run longer than an hour, two runs with just a few intervals, but as reasonably fast as possible, and more weight work than I am doing, especially lower body that I always skipped, thinking running was enough. He limits intervals to around 5 quarters one time, and two halves the other. The lower body weight work includes abductors (pushing legs outward),lateralis (pulling legs inward), one leg presses, and calf raises. Anyway, got more work to do at the gym, and my spine would probably appreciate less running!
Got 4 shorter runs in this week. My spine was bothering me, as well as the fact that I felt like I needed an easy week....On Tuesday I did 8K with a 22 minute tempo interval. Thursday I did 8K with just 4 three minute intervals hard with two minute recoveries. Friday I did 6K easy, and tonight, 10K easy for a total of 32K for the week. Felt good without feeling too beat up. May be more of what my running future looks like!