I did my first road race in about two years and my first as a 50 year old this weekend.
I've had a number of injuries over the last three years. (Knee/twice, once skiing and once playing soccer; hamstring/twice, once playing b-ball and once running track intervals; back strain/stiffness from a long mountain biking ride; foot (plantar fascia) from increasing running mileage to fast.)
For a while there I thought that I would have to take up golf like all those other old guys
I was completely off from Memorial Day to New Year's Day because of the fasciitis but since then I've been able to work up to about 25 miles/week although most of it has been at a slow pace because the foot still acts up if I try to run to fast.
Even so I decided that it was time for a race. The race was a 5k. I ran a 21:20 (6:53 mile pace) which was about as expected and is respectable for a 50 year old so I'm happy with that (for now)
But a couple of years ago I was running 5ks at a sub 6 minute mile pace so I've slowed down a lot
But trying to be the optimist, I figure that I'm just setting myself up to set a whole lot of new 50+ PRs over the next couple of years
But mostly I'm just happy to be back in the race
MB