A lot of articles we write here are about getting fit while you’re younger, and many of us like to focus on that because we assume that once we get older we’re not going to have much strength or gas left in the tank. We do lose muscle mass every year starting at age 40, but if we continue to strength train (or start to strength train), we can slow that muscle loss.

A new statistical model shows that you can probably keep going a lot longer than you think. This was all based on runners and, well, we’ll let this article explain:

Nonagenarians can expect to be “about twice as slow as they were in their prime,”…

Interestingly, the new study’s extreme-value analysis also suggests that older runners have not yet become as fast as they could be.

The complicated calculations indicate that current world records for older runners theoretically could drop by as much as 8 percent in the future…

That means that while older runners are significantly slower than they were when they were younger, a 90-year-old running half as fast as a 25-year-old is pretty dang impressive. And with this better understanding of performance, we can expect senior citizens to show off their speed even more in the future.

If you’d like to measure your own abilities based on this statistical modeling, then check out the calculator right here.

We’d like to take this opportunity to mention our friend Diane Hoffman who broke the US 100 meter sprint record for the 90+ age group by… SEVEN seconds this past summer. She clocked a speedy 23 seconds for the sprint. Time to call up grandma and get her to lace up the sprinting sneakers.

-Shane M.