In 2014, Meb Keflezighi arrived at the Boston Marathon aged 38.
He was already an Olympic silver medallist and a New York City Marathon winner.
But he was also at an age when elite distance runners are usually being asked a fairly blunt question:
How much longer can you keep doing this?
His answer was interesting because it was not to train like a younger man and hope for the best.
He changed the week.
For years, Meb had followed the kind of seven-day rhythm you would expect from an elite marathon runner: a long run, an interval session and a tempo run fitted into the normal Monday-to-Sunday calendar.
As he got older, that spacing stopped making as much sense.
So before the 2014 Boston Marathon he moved to a nine-day training cycle.
The key sessions stayed.
Long run.
Intervals.
Tempo.
What changed was the recovery around them. Instead of forcing three demanding sessions into seven days, he gave himself more space between them.
Then he went to Boston.
He won in 2:08:37, a personal best, becoming the first American man to win the race since 1983.
That does not mean a nine-day training cycle is some secret formula for men over 50.
Meb Keflezighi was an exceptional professional athlete. His training volume, history and physical ability bear little resemblance to most of us.
But the principle is worth stealing.
When recovery changes, the answer does not always have to be giving something up.
Sometimes you change the rhythm around it.
This matters because so much of adult life is organised by the seven-day week.
Gym on Monday and Thursday.
Long walk on Saturday.
Football on Wednesday.
Heavy garden jobs on Sunday.
Then Monday arrives whether you have recovered or not.
The body does not know it is Monday.
If two hard days now leave you flatter than they used to, you do not necessarily need to stop doing the things you enjoy. You may need more distance between the demanding bits.
That might mean strength training every fourth day instead of trying to make the same two weekdays work.
It might mean putting the long walk a day later after a heavy week at work.
It might mean treating a physically demanding weekend as something you recover from rather than expecting to be fresh again because the calendar has rolled over.
The part of Meb’s story I like is that he did not respond to getting older by assuming the best was behind him.
He adjusted the structure.
And in Boston, the result was not merely “still pretty good for his age”.
It was the fastest marathon he had ever run.
There is no promise that changing your own rhythm produces a personal best.
But it can change the question.
Instead of asking, “What do I have to stop doing now I’m older?”
Try:
“How could I arrange this so I can keep doing it well?”
That is a much more useful place to start.