Oldies – at what age did you notice your fitness tailing off

My cycling VO2 Max has increased by 3 points this year, so it very much depends on your starting point 🤪

Happy to say at a ripe old 51, I feel fitter than I ever have. And that’s after a serious medical incident last year presented me with a cardiac arrest and induced coma while my brain decided whether or not to give up on me!

I’ve never been a sprinter and never monitored heart rate, so don’t have those benchmarks to compare, but I can beat most of our group up a hill (on the bike), swim and jog good distances, can punch out 60+ press ups without too much thought and hold my own on a bouldering wall.

Sit ups are a bit of a mess compared to my youth, so core strength has certainly dipped. That’s probably the ale tyre getting in the way

In terms of actual real possible fitness about 31.  I was running a lot at a high standard and noticed at that point that improvement came harder, recovery took longer and so on.  20+ years later no way am I running under 40mins for 10k let alone under 30, and I can’t even imagine trying.

However , if you train smart, and you haven’t been ‘elite’ before you can get very fit.  I’m climbing pretty well as well as I was as when I was in my 20’s, but again, mid 50’s , start to notice the same things.

Riding I’ve always been a trundler.

I’m 53; until last december my resting heart rate was 48bpm, my Garmin generated fitness age was 21 & my VO2max was 57. I exercise 5-7 days per week, mainly level 2 but with resistance & intervals/fartlek chucked in.

Around the 10th December I went into Afib. My fitness age is now 61 & VO2max is 35.

I’m utterly depressed & struggling to get my head round it. Doctors reckon a virus has caused it, I had a “covid like” bug back end of November into December.

I’ve been told that because I’m deemed low risk, an NHS cardiology appointment can be up to 18 months wait. I paid privately to have an echocardiogram & have been told my heart is healthy without any discernible problems, & given the all clear to resume exercise.

However, whilst the turbo trainer at low to moderate levels feels the same as before my heart rate rockets (despite the beta blockers). Doing basic strength stuff like press ups etc. I now hit a wall after about 8 of anything.

I rode to work yesterday for the 1st time since November & it was like I’ve never ridden before. Again, utterly depressed… is this what getting old feels like? ☹️

Again, utterly depressed… is this what getting old feels like?

No, it’s what getting ill feels like.

Mid 50s. Fitness is OK, but I’m picking up niggly injuries that I can’t shift.

^^^+1

I’m 56 now and can sometimes push too hard and overdo it, and so suffer more as a consequence, especially in the legs.

cheers,

Keith

@intheborders

Stu, do you wear your watch 24/7 and has it got the correct age/weight/gender set up?

Yep watch only comes off for cleaning and charging and it’s setup with all my correct stats.

Maybe it’s measuring my mental age and **** given about day to day stuff.🤔

No, it’s what getting ill feels like

Funnily enough I had a chat about it with my work Doctor, who had more time than my GP. He sort of put it that way but also said in fairness most people wouldn’t be aware of it – I only spotted it because I wear my Garmin all of the time & noticed a very high resting pulse, & at the time did not feel in any way unwell.

He said words to the effect “How you feel now is very much like how many people feel at your age, whether it’s an unknown medical condition or just years of inactivity, either way they just write it off as getting old & then pack in exercise all together. Lo & behold they then do get old & infirm”.

28 for me.  Im now 62

I used to play hockey quite seriously.   I tore ligaments in my ankle badly and was out for many months.  First game back i tore a hamstring.   That was the end of my competitive sport.

Ive never been fast but i have good endurance.  I can walk 15 miles a day or ride 50 miles a day week after week with little fatigue.   I cannot run more than a few hundred metres

I always laugh when folk say to me ” all that cycling you must be fit”  copared to what?   The average 62 yr old yes i am.  A keen roadie no i am not and a competitive  yclust is in a whole different place.

I’m 55 and loving it .I feel like a kid still

I’ve just turned 50 in December and last year felt like harder work than normal to get fit.
I had an Ironman-distance triathlon in July and a trip to the Alps (road biking) to train for. I’ve always felt that 4-5 consecutive weekends of 50-60 mile rides on top of normal commuting and social rides was enough to give me some fitness and ‘cycling legs’. But with no other apparent external factors, it just seemed to take twice as long last year to get comparably fit.
Hey ho, inevitable and nothing to worry about. My old man said it was the same age for him. He took up marathon running to get fitter / maintain his fitness, and was running 3.30 marathons in his early 50s. So just makes me want to double down and do more cycling!! Also doing some reading, and from how I feel, I definitely need to do some weights / exercises to keep strength, more core work, and more stretching / pilates / yoga.
So very happy to have got to 50 feeling very healthy and with modest fitness, but now want to do more to maximise fun and longevity!

For anyone who’s interested,  a little while after posting the original message, I changed my routine and started doing two pretty intense turbo sessions a week (45 mins, average hr in zone 4, including warm up/down).

While I’m not going to be winning any races, it seems to have made a massive improvement not only to my riding performance, but general fitness, both physical and mental.  I seem a lot more focussed, almost like a bit of brain fog has been cleared.

I was even wondering if I had a bit of mild long covid (if its possible to have ‘mild’ long covid) but could just be imagination or placebo.

The crappy weather we’ve been having has actually helped too. Normally in summer I’d go for a real ride, but that would never be at the same intensity.

Either way, I’m hooked. As far as the turbo is concerned, flat out FTW.

I am interested.

Just returned from a mtb ride where I felt like I weighed twice as much as normal. Really laboured up the hills and hit the wall on the fun stuff. Can’t quite put my finger on what’s going on. Have been doing a hard flat 1h45 gravel ride once a week quite well but the mtb seems harder than ever.

Hard to notice, it was gradual and masked by injuries finally forcing me out of some usual activities.  Then came Covid (the illness, not 2020) and it fell off a cliff (62).

On the illness principle I already documented 3 x respiratory illness in a row (actual flu, Covid, bronchitis) triggering mono / EBV in Oct-Dec ‘22 then age 50.

After a 2023 of what I now know to be chronic fatigue I’ve trained from November to May to get back to a massive 3.2wkg 😖.   I’m having a torrid June, seemingly getting fatigued very quickly – 1 race last Sunday followed by a vo2 max workout on Tuesday pretty much knocked me out for the week.     It’s very hard being “back of the pack” in races and rides, but conscious of the Dr’s advice to stay fit and not overdo it which will result in a fitter and stronger individual in time compared to giving up.

TLdR: exercise is of course good for you and will keep you healthy, just be aware of fatigue and tiredness if you train & compete as you age.

Late 40s here and the main thing I notice is my ability to ‘burn’ my legs climbing has dropped in the last 5-7 years. My top end output isn’t the same and I find it harder to work at a level that used to produce the gains. Then again I’m not training for racing so performance/fitness to me is simply about feeling capable and quick relative to my own benchmarks.

My fitness has been endurance and long climb ability rather than sprint/roadie fitness. Endurance is all about being able to put out decent power (ie move at a decent speed) at a low heart rate. In the last 2 years or so my power feels like it’s dropped, a change in riding patterns through injuries and maybe covid effects, so a long ride feels slower or I max sooner and don’t ride as efficiently as easily. I certainly need more recovery than 10 years ago but some of that will be lower conditioning Vs the training I was doing back then.

They say muscle mass fades over 50-ish so weight training is needed to keep it. I keep my faith in singlespeeding because I don’t like gyms.

Difficult to say. I was bombproof until I got covid in summer 2022 when I was 48. I’d noticed some ‘is it really real?’ extensions on recovery time after demanding rides, but it was not impactful in any meaningful sense.

2020 lockdown at 46 yo and the time available for riding meant I was the fittest I had been since my kids were born 16 years previously.

Covid had me bed bound for a week and left me unfunctional for two. I tried to pick up riding straight away but had to stop for a further 4 months.

Since then, I’ve struggled to return to fitness. My Max HR has been reduced by 15bpm. Power generation, something I’ve historically been pretty good at is even more expensive than it used to be. Fitness has obviously dropped due to reduced activity in that 4 months, but my recovery is smashed and my energy levels appear to be lower. I can take 3/4 days post ride to lose that bone-tired heavy legs/empty feeling and if I push through it like I used to do, I just end up deeper in the hole. That’s made it difficult to be regular enough to build anything significant.

I don’t have long covid, because I live an otherwise normal life (bar seeming to need more sleep), but I think age is a factor too. I wonder if as well as ageing I’m dealing with some lower level chronic impacts from covid. NHS is useless at this stuff, so I guess I’ll probably never know.

All of this means I’ve had a crash course in acceptance of diminishing performance and managing expectations. I was a bit down about it last year, but the reality is I still have enough beans to enjoy my riding, even if I’m a bit slower and the rides are shorter – in reality speed has never been a metric I’ve cared about on mtbs – Its all about the ride, man.

Fortunately, ebikes have come to my rescue. I was able to ride the Lakes for 4 days over a long weekend last week with chums both fitter and younger than me, and had a lovely time doing some of the lairier classics that would otherwise have seen me be a passenger on the bike from fatigue, or a dead man walking. Its been a great foil to mix in with my meat bikes.

Ho Hum.

For me 61, endurance is still good but peak sprint is diminishing. My difficulty is beer the night before a ride.  I used to be able to drink say 4 pints on a Saturday night and then go full pelt on a Sunday. Now I’m limited to maybe two light ales otherwise I completely blow on the Sunday. Weird.  I suppose my liver is f@@ked!

cant believe i am saying this, but i feel good rest is just as important has fitness has you get older.

i have always until recently, tried to ride every single day, and to be honest always felt tired, with aching legs.

the last couple of month, i have a couple of days off each week. i now feel better, and can do a longer harder ride each week without suffering too much. i now ride 4 or 5 days a week. And i have a mid afternoon  nap most days no i am retired.

so yes, i feel rest is as important as exercise.

Now at 40. Endurance is still the same but lacking power. Tried doing pistol squats but just cant maintain and muscle.

Being much older than most of the people on here, I have to say it just happened gradually. A few years ago I bought an ebike but carried on riding my normal bike. However at the beginning of this year I had a chest infection that took a month to even start to clear and this was what made me really realise what fitness I had was going. I stopped using my normal bike and stuck to the ebike. However what really did it for me was walking to the local. It is just up and over a tiny hill which I had barely noticed until recently. However I am still riding!

50. Everything started to fall apart at 50.

– eyesight (had to get reading glasses at 50 😖 and now dependent on them 😖😖😖).

– back problems

– anaemia

– near rigormortis levels of inflexibility.

– taking longer to recover / knackered at the end of the working week, half the weekend now needed to be back on an even keel.

This does nearly  coincide with covid lockdowns, so I suspect they are all inter-entwined between

(a) sitting on arse at a living room table using a laptop

(b) no exercise to get to the office, or walking around at the office

(c) swimming pool closure for Covid, so lost that exercise + that 3-4 hours flexing / rotating of the back whilst stretched out per week.

(d) cancelled races so no imperative to go train hard

(e) many pools are still fecked up from the £££ impact of Covid / Gov incompetence.  (Our local one went into administration, many others cut back opening times, etc, all making it harder to get to when not working)

I did my last full iron distance tri at 49 3/4 YO.

My peak fitness was at 48.5 after I’d trained well for  another iron distance Tri.

I reckon I am fitter now than I was in my 40s, just by being more physically active. I foolishly pretty much gave up with bikes in my late 30s, having previously always had a bike of some sort it just fell by the wayside…

2019 I bought a new bike–I had not had a new bike since I was about 13!–nothing fancy but enough to rekindle the love of being on two wheels again, but boy did I suffer, thinking I could just hop on and do what I used to do 20 years before!

Pandemic for me meant less travelling for work, more time WFH, quieter roads, coinciding with the new bike, so my fitness built up, plus I had been told by the doc I was pre-diabetic, so I stopped drinking beer and lost weight.

Four years on, post-pandemic, still trying to keep up the fitness but a recent trip with my son to the Cairngorms shows I have work to do! Not helped by me doing myself an injury last September trying to keep up with him on the bike 🙁 no idea what I have done but I’ve been dogged by muscle tightness/soreness since, it’s annoying but I keep going–this is why:

50 was my peak, then the pandemic knocked my training (not through illness, just lack of events) and 5y later I’ll not get back to where I was. Still performing at a decent level, but enough of a drop in power and speed to notice.

Looking at WAVA performance tables for running and vet standards for time trials, it seems to me that 40s are sort of ok(ish) and performance generally starts to tail off in 50s. I’m happy to just roll with it, I’m enjoying myself and no-one lives for ever.

I’d say same, 50-55 was very good, 40 was also good, now early 60s and I reckon it’s a good bit down over last 5 years.

Kcal +1

I was fine until I had a heart attack in my late 50s. After this I am much slower.

I went camping and riding near Loch Ness a week ago and managed to cycle on 5 consecutive days between 20 and 40 miles mixed, road , tracks and off road.

My performance on a bike is pathetic but at 70 with 5 stents I am happy to be able to ride at all.

It improves my mental state to get out and see what wildlife is about and I intend to continue for as long as possible.

It helps that I no longer have to consider myself a fit young thing and don’t care a jot when someone goes past me. I’m not racing, I don’t care that I’m not the fastest thing on the road. I’m out to get some exercise and enjoy the ride. There have always been plenty of people faster, and there are still plenty slower, even if there are more of the former and fewer of the latter.

It seems that Covid is knocking alot of people back, causing heart issues etc. Seems a real lottery.

Back on what I wrote three months ago, I recently did a 130 mile sportive with 11,000 feet of climbing including two 25% climbs at the 40 mile and 80 mile (evil barstewards) mark.  I’ve got the endurance from a diet of commuting 3 days a week plus 20-40 miles at weekend.  I think speed definately drops, but endurance goes up.

Got my first bike packing trip over 4-5 days in early September with two mates – that should be fun.

Seven years ago to the day I was riding the Tourmalet on my 70th birthday. At that time I was covering decent road distances and doing a lot of road climbing quite deliberately. Since then I’ve gradually moved away from road riding and gone over the mtbing. In the last year I’ve started to find the climbing more and more of a chore to be endured more than enjoy. So at the beginning of this year I went the emtb route which has been a revelation and I’m riding about 4 times a week usually for a couple of hours or so. By the very nature of having an emtb the climbing is no longer a problem and I can fully enjoy the downhillls and singletrack stuff.

I’ve been lucky so far in that I’ve maintained full mobility and am still reasonably flexible and strong so I can muscle the heavy emtb around to a reasonable degree (although lifting over things is a bit of a problem).

Now that seven years have past since the Tourmalet  and at 77 the biggest challenge I have is to ride when standing out of the saddle for any length of time. My legs burn so much that I have to ration out of the saddle time and plan ahead for technical stuff whenever I can so that I can ride it half decently.