Deena Kastor's Tips for Staying Competitive While Ageing

Runner Deena Kastor is no stranger to fast times and world-class results. She competed in high school and college, professionally at the highest level, at the Olympics (winning Bronze in Athens in 2004!) and later as a master's racer. A successful athlete for nearly her whole life, Deena has learned a few tricks for maintaining that competitive edge year after year.

At the height of her professional career, Deena was logging back-to-back 225 kilometre weeks, including some serious intensity and hard-core recovery sessions. As she has grown older and taken on more non-running responsibilities, running that many kilometres would neither be healthy nor feasible. Instead, Deena relies on quality over quantity. Quality sessions, rest, nutrition and relationships - she takes a holistic approach to her health, well-being, and athleticism.

An advocate for positivity, mindfulness, and self-care, Deena places a strong emphasis on setting aside time for herself. By prioritising yourself, you will not only be healthier and happier, but will also be better able to enrich the lives of those around you.

Keeping different shoes in your weekly line-up helps add variety to your running routine and also helps prevent injuries. Deena also brings out different running shoes to serve different purposes in her training. The shoes she uses most frequently in her current rotation are the ASICS Gel DS Trainer, ASICS Gel Nimbus, and ASICS Dynaflyte.