I’m 55 and a lifelong cyclist, my first 100 miler was in 1979 at the age of 13! On the bike I have lost the speed I had in my 20s but I have better endurance, it’s been like a trade-off. I also need to allow longer for recovery and I’ve become more prone to injury. A few years ago and into my 50s, I was running some pretty decent marathon times and the trend was for getting quicker. Although, I’d been a pretty handy XC runner in my teens I never took running seriously until my late 30s and I started playing around with triathlon. I was starting to see some ag club records in my grasp and that’s when things went wrong. My years of involvement in sport told me I was overtraining and not allowing enough recovery from the higher intensity runs. You can’t get away with it with running. So you do need to listen to yourself and it isn’t always that easy. Sport keeps the mind young, but you have to remember the body still ages.
Agreed … great book!
It’s interesting that for a lot of us aging brings experience to overcome the decline in physical abilities.
You’re experiences sound so very much like mine. I’m just about 10 years behind you in that progression at the moment. XC runner in school - okay, but never good. Got away from running until my 30’s. Have done a number of half marathons since then. Have been prone to back injuries until the last couple years when I began playing around with triathlon. Just ran my first marathon last year. I don’t have any speed, but I do feel I have more endurance and mental fortitude than I had in my youth. The increasing recovery time and more niggles and minor injuries have begun to creep in and become more noticeable.
I am not, however, a lifelong cyclist. I rode my bike in my youth and loved to watch cycling, but lived in the foothills where nothing was flat, so got away from doing cycling and did XC running instead. Didn’t start cycling again until my 40’s. I was ready to give up on endurance sports altogether because of back and shoulder injuries when dad started suffering from Atypical Parkinsonism and gifted me his Ti-bike. Because of my running background I got into triathlon and found it really helped my overall health and prepared me better for endurance sports because I was focusing on my whole body and not just running.
Will be interesting to see what the future holds, but I know I’m both nowhere near my peak fitness that I could have achieved in my youth, but also nowhere near the peak fitness that I could achieve right now.
Hi Glenn - I am same age. Can you let me know your latest FF results? I have not done FF since 2019 and am psyching myself up again - although I do know my overall performance over the last two years show that I underperformed on that test. I have a proper trainer now as well which I hope provides a more accurate assessment. Thanks for your post
Sure thing. Probably best not to compare as there are tons of things that may make us very different from each other despite our age but for what it is, here’s my 4DP profile from Jan 6, 2021 pre-ToS.
Thanks Glen for sharing. I have a fair bit to make up to get that standard. But I am going to do a proper 12 week plan and will see if any improvement then. With a bit of experience, improved technique and a decent trainer I will see how I go and let you know! Cheers and good riding
Just keep in mind there is a HUGE range of results across all of these metrics and across thousands of tests that SUF has done. My strength may be your relative weakness and vice versa and everything in between. If you want to check out the range of results relative to your own FTP there is this great article from the SUF Scientists where, if you scroll down, you can input your FTP and gender and see just how varied the comparative results are in NM, AC and MAP relative to that. It’s fascinating really. Why You Should Drop FTP and Train with 4DP – The Sufferfest
Thanks - I will check it out.
I was just about to suggest reading FAST AFTER FIFTY by Joe Friel, he has done the research and with some fairly impressive associates.
I am 63yo, started bike commuting when I was 51 then got more serious, increased fitness and eventually raced.
The past few years I had a couple of accidents with broken bones, that kept me off the bike and training for long periods. Also a serious illness later. All these things add up and cause a decline in fitness, as I have found out.
However, I still train constantly with equal focus V02max, endurance, RECOVERY.
So somewhere about 60yo one starts to lose fitness but you can limit the losses by training efficiently, particularly V02max.
Get to know your V02max and embrace it 
Vo2 Max - absolutely! That’s why I use a Garmin 830 and a Fenix watch. They estimate your Vo2 Max so I use that as a motivational number to stay on top of over the years with the idea of both quality and quantity in the rest of the years of my life.
Lloyd Fassett
Bend, OR
(541) 848-2440 (PST)
Sent with Mixmax
|
I can add that you can and should maintain a fitness program if you have suffered serious injury in conjunction with your medical team. I suffered a serious fall with several bones broken in the upper body. Doctors wanted me to ‘take it easy’ as in nothing more than a slow strol for two weeks. Then I added longer and more intensive exercise until cleared to ride indoors. Yes, it was PAINFUL, but I continued to grow. Got clearance to ride outside at about two months. I’m still working on VO2 Max and it’s nowhere near where I was a year ago. I’ve been working on endurance due to a 100 mile sportive. Now it’s back to climbing hills and working Tempo efforts.
Those doctors are your medical team should understand exercise and sports.
I have seen examples of where the doctors gave athletes the wrong advice. Sometimes because they did not understand sports science, and sometimes because they imposed their risk aversion profile on the athlete.
This month I’ll be 74. I can tell you I am nowhere near as strong, as flexible or do I recover as quickly as I did when I was 20, 30, 40, 50 or 60. I’ve had an active life and believe I was at my strongest and fittest level in my 40’s but over time my strength levels have diminished. Since the beginning of Covid I’ve trained everyday and in May of 2021 I bought a Wahoo Smart bike and am working to be a stronger and fitter road bike rider next spring by using SYSTM training programs daily. To me continued improvement is more importantly about maintaining our ability to stay active as long as possible. Inevitably we will all have health issues and challenges that no matter what we do will occur. Keep working to build and maintain your fitness as long as possible.
We all have physiological limits regardless of what our age is. At some point, marginal improvements become very hard to achieve. We don’t all have the genetics to be pro riders. And given an infinite amount of time to train, we will all reach a plateau beyond which our bodies cannot improve.
That said, losing fitness can also occur at any age for a myriad of reasons.
Factoring those two ideas: fitness plateaus and obstacles to peak fitness, there is not an “age” when we lose fitness. We wouldn’t expect a 90 year old to be competitive in a bunch sprint with riders half his age.
But there’s not line in the sand where we can say that a cyclist will only decline in fitness from that moment on. No matter what age we are, we can train to improve, up to our physiological limits.
I’d suggest somewhere in one’s 20’s
The difficulty with the question is it depends on when one started and ones training regime.
A person may for example find that they need to be in their 20’s to see the muscle need for their given activity build up along with the huge increase in aerobic capability that’s possible
I’d also guess that someone who has trained (with all the time in the world) in their 20’s for years and years may plateau in the decades to follow.
If one starts at 30, the it will be ‘n’ years after that start point etc etc etc.
In my example, it took me about a year of bike ‘training’ (cough) and that was me. It then just bumps around and about much the same number and has done for a few years
In that scenario it is “age of start + 1”
67 year. Strange enough my Vo2 is raising. (Use Garmin estimated).
Competing in UCI 65+ and does structured training.
Age is just a number and I think it’s much about approach. I’m having fun by race with the 30 year young in my club, and they, on the other hand trying to beat me. Mostly I win.
I’m retired and have time to train after a schedule and have time to lay on the couch (
), which can speed recovery up.
Judt to follow up with some of my comments. I visited my cardilogist yesterday and brought up the subject of an e-bike. He bikes himself so I expected one of two answers:
- you have got to be kidding me. Why would you want to hurt your fitness?
- Get one. You are injuring your heart more if you don’t.
His answer: #1. So to celebrate I did a four hour TEMPO ride up one of the local mountains (NOT that mountain @Sir_Brian_M ). It has several housing developments that have appeared over the last couple of years, but at the turn-around point is a lovely new park.
And I held onto my hydration as well. Still working on improvements, but I’m getting better with age.
yeah you are right fitness level differ from everyonehttps://mobilehealthdata.com/thromboangitis-obliterans-buerger-disease/