Peter Giles, an 82-year-old competitive runner, credits coffee and a cigar after races as part of his routine. He won five gold medals at the World Masters Athletics Championships in Sweden last year and is part of Britain's oldest running team, launched by sports brand Altra, with a combined age of 321.
Simple Training Approach
Giles, a former carpenter and bass guitarist who took up competitive running in his mid-forties, runs about 30 miles a week, avoids the gym, and takes only vitamin D supplements. In December, he broke the British 5km road record for his age group, finishing in 22 minutes and 29 seconds.
“Most runners overtrain and over-complicate everything. The older I get, the simpler it all becomes,” he said.
Wider Trend of Giving Up
Research commissioned by Altra suggests many British runners abandon the sport earlier. Around seven million people ran in England last year, yet the average runner gives up at age 39. One in three who quit do so due to injury, and more than half of those surveyed had a setback that stopped them running for three months or longer. One in six of that group said they never fully recovered, while nearly a quarter said life got in the way.
Inspiring the Next Generation
Altra formed Britain's oldest running team to inspire younger runners to adopt good habits. The team includes Rajinder Singh MBE, 79, who has completed marathons worldwide; Laurence Cummings, 85, who holds 204 age-category parkrun records; and Pritpal Kaur, 75, the oldest British Asian woman to complete this year's London Marathon.
Rob Herdman, marketing director at Altra, said: "Last year, our team spent a lot of time at races across the UK and we kept finding ourselves inspired by the same people. Not necessarily the fastest runners or those standing on the podium, but the runners in their seventies and eighties who were still out there doing something they loved."
"Every time we saw them, we'd say the same thing: 'I want to be like that when I'm older.' That simple thought became the inspiration for this campaign. The Legacy Team is a celebration of runners who show what's possible and a reminder that the choices we make today can shape whether we're still running thirty or forty years from now."
