I was going to post this to the Health & Fitness section of the general forum till I saw all the nasty comments flying round at the moment on a similar post.

Yesterday I received a message from a fellow sexagenarian this is the answer is sent him, I thought it may be of interest to others so I am posting it to the forum.

Hi
You asked how I manage to run at 9 min miles at the age of 64, there is no easy answer so I will give the long story. 13 months ago I weighed in at 306lbs and could not walk upstairs without gasping for breath. I started on MFP and now weigh just under 200lbs. I started out by visiting my doctor who cleared me to try exercise I then began walking short distances a couple of times a week. Until I had the confidence to try to jog (shuffle) about a mile in half an hour. I kept increasing the distance till I was jogging 2 – 3 miles at about 15min miles. The legs and joints, and lungs would give me pain, most runs for the first mile or so but I was OKish for the rest of the run.
I then signed up for a 10K race in Jan 2013 as a target to aim for and was now, Dec 2012, running 3 times a week I now included a 4 mile long run and pushed a little harder on the shorter runs and found that I could now achieve 13 min miles. I kept up this regime until Jan 20th 2013, when I ran my first race 10k in 1:28, just over 12min miles. I signed up for more races, a 10k In May, A half marathon in June and another in October.
I was now running 3 times a week and steadily increasing the distance of my long run to 7/8 miles. I learned to warm up properly and stretch out the muscles before I started to run and to warm down after it. The aches and pains slowly disappeared.
In my May 10k I ran 1:09. Just under 11min miles. Again I increased the distance of my long run till I was running 9/10 miles My short runs were now5/6 miles still running three times a week.
My June half marathon was run in 2:28. I now added something extra instead of 10 mile long runs every other week I walked 20miles at a brisk pace taking about 6hours. I was very surprised to find that my speed on my short runs increased quite dramatically at this stage. I went to 10min miles and on to 9:30 min miles fairly rapidly. I started doing regular Park Run Races 5ks which also helped with the speed.
3 weeks ago I ran my second half in 2:06 and my PB for my 5ks is 27:16 so I can now run sub 9min miles
Now the short version, 3 Ps are needed Patience, it takes time to build up to your full potential. Perseverance you have to keep going, no matter what is going on in your life, the training miles have to be put in. Pain, at times it will hurt, but keep going. I hope this helps.