The difference is that most of the best athletes in 35-39 race as pros.

And no, that is not a pattern that holds for Kona etc. Just look at the top spots in AG overall.

I did an Olympic Tri a couple of weeks back, as M50-54. Delighted to finish 5th M overall.

Ahead was 1 M50-54 and 1 M55-59. The three of us had beaten every M40-44 and M45-49.

Smallish race, thus probably an outlier. But I do think certainly age 50 and above there are a few pointy end athletes who, due to early retirement/family circumstances are training almost full time which may explain why the expected age deterioration is not evident.

I understand that Kona AG winners are faster in M40, compared to 45 or even 50. But maybe Kona is the exception?

And I am not talking about anything that goes towards a Pro level or includes former Pros who show up at age 45. Looking at the local races I have been participating in, I am just comparing the fast M40 age groupers vs. fast M45/M50 age groupers. No ex-Pros in any of those races and its M45/50 divisions.

Well, but confirms everything that I have been observing. You are one of those who make me feel bad winning M40 but still being slower than M50 ;-)

5 year AG too much dilution. Should be usatf set up...

Under 40
40+ masters
50+ grand Master's
60+ super grandmaster

Can someone explain to me how the hell all you old dudes are so much faster than the young guns?

Local Olympic I do every year to support my town. 9/10 the people who win overall are 45+, except for this year when I won. People were surprised to see a kid (I'm 21) win.

Am I not going to go to Kona until I get grey hair?

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Gone with the wind

Instagram: palmtreestriathlon

It's because of several reasons that M40 and even 45+ 50+ tend to outperform the younger AGs:

1. As mentioned, the true speedsters in the <M40 group typically race pro/elite in big races, and often don't show up in the AG standings. If it's a true national-class field counting pros-elites with the AGers, the top younger folks will definitely beat the top older folks as expected.

2. It takes time to learn to swim/bike/run to capacity. I think it takes about 5-7 years for even a 'serious' AGer to really get it all together, so probably longer for the early dabblers. I've def beaten the large majority of <30 AGers in triathlon that I race in local events, and the ones that beat me tend to be going fast enough that they're going to be racing elite the following year, and it's not because I'm so great, but because as a M45er, I don't get killed in one of the S/B/R disciplines like most of the youngsters do (most of them either can't swim at all, or swim so well from competitive swimming that they run/bike poorly.)

3. Kids and job responsibilities absolutely kill the 'normal' AGers under 45 years of age. I've been experiencing this firsthand as a triathlete from age 30 to my mid40s now. At 35-40, my young kid required tons of attention and time, pretty much sucking up nearly all of my time. And my job required more time as well, as that's the peak time for job advancement and learning new skills to solidify a better position. Once I turned 40-45 and my kid was 5-9 yrs old, things got a lot better timewise every year. Now my kid is approaching teenager years, and it's frankly shocking to me how much time I have on the weekend to at least do stuff on my own in the house - as great as I love spending time with my kid, I'm literally dreaming of the day that she's old enough as a teenager that I can actually leave the house and do an outdoor bike ride for 3-4 hrs in the middle of the day. I'd say my time availability to train now at age 45ish is literally 3-4x what it was when I was 37, mainly due to the kid and less so but also my job. It's becoming really, really clear to me why in my local 5k, I've won the M30-35, M35-40, M40-45 AGs nearly every year, but I've been beaten by different M50 guys nearly every year - there is just soooo much more time to train as the kids are teenagers+.

4. Last note - don't hope to wait until you're an oldster to do some great training! As coach Matt Dixon says, be your best self NOW. This doesn't mean you're going to sacrifice family and life to shoot for some KQ pipe dream, but to make the most of what time and resources you realistically have available NOW. The reason being - once you're over 40, weird but significant health issues absolutely start limiting you. A big one is early arthritis - a little niggle in your knee suddenly becomes a complete limiter for running fast or long. Other health issues become more and more frequent. So don't take your health for granted - triathlon training is one of the first things to go once a health limiter pops up, so enjoy it NOW.

I was doing other things... didn't even know what a triathlon was until I was an old dude. I was fast and had good cardio but was playing team sports when I was younger. For instance we'd run a timed mile before basketball practice sometimes and I'd run it in the low 4's. I really had no idea that was good.

For me triathlon is a good fit for my personality.. I still love breaking a sweat and competing.

I actually do not think that this is generally true. I've seen it occasionally, but far less than half of races. Also, the larger the race, the less likely it is to happen.

I just looked up results for the last couple years of the Boulder 70.3 and 40-44 is faster than 45-54 in both years (and 35-39 is a bit faster than 40-44) - although in 2018 50-54 was faster than 45-49, in large part because of a former elite marathoner in the 50-54 category that ran a 1:21 to come in at 4:27.

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook

Starting a family and just getting in to triathlon at about 30ish means that most AGers aren't starting to get competitive against the field until about 35-39. I was totally impressed at the local OLY I did in April, there were a lot of 30ish and under faster racers, so there is hope. In the offroad races, several of the fastest guys in the country are all over 45, but they were also fast before that, it's just that I believe that triathlon was bigger when they got started and thus were selected from a larger pool of interested individuals.

In my case, it took me 3-4 years to get decent against the field, then had a kid, so my 35-39 years took a bit of a hit. Now at almost 41 and my daughter is close to 5, I'm doing pretty good for available time. Squeaking back in to a pretty decent placing for the overall, but around here, only a few of them are in the 45+ age groups, but there's a 59 year old still placing top ten at the local and very competitive Xterra. I didn't see that at the local OLY tri I did back in April.

I may catch flak for this, but I'm going to mention the elephant in the room. Why do the oldsters do better?

• Yes, empty nesters generally have more time to train. But they NEED more time to train. If an oldster doesn't train with intensity year round, he/she loses a lot of speed. And the older they become, the less likely it is that the speed ever, EVER returns. So, the older an athlete becomes, to be competitive they MUST train more. The 50+ people are essentially forced to train more if they want to keep playing the game. They're in a race against time.
• Younger athletes train less than they could both because they're busy and because they don't have to. I know plenty of younger athletes who win their AG at local triathlons and who only train for the 30 to 45 days leading up to the race. I see it every single year for our local triathlon. The roads are packed the 45 days prior to the race with runners and cyclists that you never see any other time of the year. In an area sprint triathlon a couple years ago, the 20-25 AG winner had never ever run a full 5k before. The race win was his first time to run the distance!
• The two items above could also indicate that the oldsters just want it more. They take it more seriously.
  
• I also suspect the prevalence of 45- and 50-year olds outperforming 40-year olds is inversely proportional to the likelihood of them being drug tested at the race. For some reason, masters athletes are a lot slower when they know they will be asked for a sample. Must be performance anxiety, or something.
  

M45 has had an extra 5 years to hone their skill than M40

A few years ago someone posted AG results based on age and the first 2 years took a significant amount of wins. Add 5 more to that and its going to turn some away. The physiological differences between a 40 year old and a 49 year old are huge, and the same applies to the 50's and 60's.

So in response to FlashBazbo: You basically just defined triathletes as either steroid junkies or candy ass snowflakes incapable of training hard year round. Nice!

You made me look back as I'm now 45-49 and slower than 40-44 but:

The last 3 races I've done.

Winner 30
4'th - 56
5;th - 53
8'th - 47
14'th - 40

Winner - 46
3'rd - 52
7'th - 15
9'th - 59
No 40-44 in top 20

Winner 34
3'rd - 17
7'th - 39
9'th - 46
14'th - 25
15'th 22
17'th - 50

No 40-44 in top 20.

Seems a bit odd as I was never outside of the top 20 (usually top 10) in the 40-44 age group.

Cold be the 40-44 doesn't play triathlon anymore.

No, I didn’t. Not at all.

OK, everyone seems to be buying into the idea that what the OP says is in fact true, but let's put at least a tiny bit valid effort into looking at this - Here is the average USAT score for the men who were given All-American status in 2018 - so the top 220-260 guys in each age group.

M35-39: 97.2
M40-44: 94.9
M45-49: 93.1
M50-54: 91.9

So at least from M35-39 on, as top US male amateur triathletes get older, on average they get slower. Therefore this whole discussion seems moot.

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook

Yea well the joke is wait till you age up

Bc we're not racing like a bunch of just got kicked, overly sensitive testicles whining about the water being cold or the wind blowing or it's raining or my goggles are leaking. We show up, do our job (which is to whip your ass) and head to the bar to have 3 pints while you finish your run. We also enjoy beating the F out of the young kids. Truth be told, sometimes we even taunt you guys as we do it. "Hey good job you're almost to the finish line..no wait that's me, you're only on lap 1 of the run, sucks to be you". (I can't decide if this entire paragraph should be in pink or not.) I say all this in half jest half seriousness.

In all seriousness now:

I remember reading something from USAT when I was in the M40-44. That was the most competitive AG in the country with more overall wins in USAT races than any other AG.

Now those dudes are in the M45-49. And we're still beating the snot out of you young punks. We're like Clint eastwood in Grand Torino in this scene

It's so much fun to use old age and treachery against youth, enthusiasm & inexperience.

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

Last race I was in, small local race, too 5 included a 60 year old and a 62 year old

Old guys have more money for dope.....

I think is just a dearth of fast 20-somethings in the AG ranks (statistically speaking). When I was racing in the 90's, the podium was always 20 and early 30-somethings. Some of those guys are still podiuming in their 50s; they are not as fast as they were in their 20s, but no fast 20 somethings are showing up.

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ECMGN Therapy Silicon Valley:
Depression, Neurocognitive problems, Dementias (Testing and Evaluation), Trauma and PTSD, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)

I'll try an answer to this too, even though I've shown that on average, it's not really true when you are comparing the top athletes of each AG.

But when we do beat the young guys, there are a few reasons. Lots of people are using local races as their data points. In local races in Colorado, I've placed 2nd overall in the races I've done this year and my coach/teammate has won them. I'm 42 and he's 43. A big part of the reason for this is that the really fast guys often do not show up for these races. I don't know why, they are tons of fun. They only want to do IM branded races.

At IM branded races, I'm often like 20th-28th overall amateur. So there are plenty of people beating me, but I beat plenty of 20-39 year-olds too. Good race execution is a huge part of this. I often beat people who are demonstrably faster than me at all of the three individual sports, but put it all into one race, and a guy who can run a 1:18 half marathon suddenly is running 1:38, whereas I can run maybe a 1:25-26 half mary and run a 1:30-31 in a HIM. I'm patient and relaxed in the race. I know exactly how I should feel at all points in the race. I mete out my effort very carefully and I don't do stupid hard 1-5 minute efforts on the bike, I don't brake on the turns (as often as others), I'm comfortable descending in my aerobars and when somebody passes me, I don't stress out about it and I let them go. Basically, I'm not a hot-headed teenager anymore, and I have a lot of experience in race execution.

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook

Couldn't agree more that the younger the faster starting in the 20's....

I was trying to give the OP a thought - perhaps there are a lot less 40-44 than 45-49 and then you would see 45-49 beating 40-44 just based on the numbers at certain races.

As it turns out - there were slightly less 40-44 ranked in 2018 than 45-49 but not enough to make a difference.

Also looked back at the 3 races I pointed out and it was roughly the same participation between the 2.

So I guess its just some races have the faster 40-44 show up and others have the faster 45-49.

It only takes 1 or 2 to show the results we are looking at making it dumb luck to see the result.

If you're looking at races with only a few hundred entries or less, you can get screwy results. Races with >1000 entries will be more representative.

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook

Outside of nationals or IM brand. Are there any 1,000 plus races? None near me.

Speaking of nationals, I was looking at the winners of all AG's from 35 to 50+. In the mens anyway, you could have thrown a blanket over the sprint race in those groups, with the 50+ guy actually having one of the fastest times in that 20 year span of men. Robert Skaggs was the dude's name, I have never really heard of him. But he is doing something to defy Mother Nature, clocked in a low 1;01 time, only 3 minutes slower than the overall winner, and beat up a bunch of younger age groups...

So using this larger and about as stacked field as you can get, it goes to the OP's query about old guys slotting in among the several younger age groups for overall..

Attrition is also a factor

The guys left >45 could be the by-products of the unfortunate natural process of weeding out that occurs as we age up. So the guys at the top of these "older AG's" are the survivors with years of quality training = fast times.

I think you will find as you get outside of the top 5-10 in the older AG's you will find the real story.

It also appears at age 55 and up there is a bit of an inflection...no one outruns father time.

I would partly agree with this, that it is those who stuck with it as a lifestyle rather than a thing they did from a pure competitive standpoint (yet were competitive at a point early on) continue to be near the pointy end. People have families, start businesses, personal issues, develop sport ending injuries, financial ruin, all things that can take someone out of the game as they get older. Those who survived all that--the lucky ones, are still doing it without losing a whole lot.

Those getting into the sport later in life (where you see the gap usually between them & the ones at the very top--seemingly HUGE gap at that...) have lost so much in experience and build up years, that this is where we are getting that difference from. Well--to a point...the rest is who knows what. 50 is the new 40 & 40 is the new 30.

What does it all now mean for me? Is there a pattern (for whatever reasons), does it only apply to smaller races? No pattern at all (look at results from bigger races)...?

I am 42 now, I am slower than I was at age 35 or 36 (I would say that it is due to age and, mainly, due to significantly less training because of family commitments) - 15~20 min. on long course and around 10 min. on 70.3). With my latest 70.3, I won my age group, but would have finished 4th in M45 and 2 in M50. Assuming that I will keep my rank once I will turn M45 - will I become faster again by then or will M40's be slower than today!? ;-) Well, odd questions and assumptions .... let's turn this into another question:

We know that age mainly results in loss of power and flexibility. But that's maybe more towards 48 ~ 50 when you start feeling that decline significantly. However, do you think/know that you can still become faster at e.g. 46 compared to 42 if you ramp up training again? I am at around 10 hours/week now. Not sure if my body would actually stand going back to 15~18 hours/week...

Other than that: I will participate in German AG Nationals this Saturday and at 70.3 Worlds. I will take a look at the results again.

From a personal perspective - I'm 46 and am perhaps a little faster than I was at 41.

Maybe this is because I wasn't doing it right. Since then, I have had a few years of better focused training, lost some weight, found a fast run training buddy. I now rarely miss a training day, whereas in my 20s and 30s I could sometimes go a week with no training if family and work conspired. Also because I'm more financially secure, I've been able stop working on call / at night and at weekends.

Or maybe it's all the drugs

But, I think a lot depends on your trajectory up to age 40. If you have been elite/ top AGer in your 20s and 30s then possibly you have already seen your best performances in absolute terms. However, you can still dominate your age group.

That is still my goal ;-) Well, let's rephrase: Be in the mix for the podium....

Well, I definitively will not swim any faster than I did some years, I might be able to bike almost as fast and run a bit slower compared to maybe five years ago. I am not expecting any improvements in speed. Naturally, I would expect that I would rank higher in M45 with the same time as what I am capable to do today in M40. But I am not sure if that will really be the case. This is why I came up with this topic.

All depends on how fast you were at 35 or 36. I'll be 41 in a month and am quite a bit faster than I was then. Based on overall finish though I'm about the same, so it looks like the field in the races that I'm doing are getting better. I'm still making year over year progress, as this is year 3 of consistency after having my daughter, so I had some years where I regressed fitness/weight wise. Seems to me that consistent work, without going too crazy in volume, but making sure that there isn't a huge valley in training gets me a year over year improvement of: 5s/100y in the pool, ~15 watts on the bike, ~10-15s/mile on the run. Each year though I've had to find a way to get a nice bump over the previous year, even if it is just a small bump in time/volume per week, but when looking at hours/month (and then hours/year) there's an increase. Sometimes its not about bigger weeks, but just being more consistent and controlling the off-season valley. If you can start your base period only 5-10 watts off of your previous year's best, you're going to make some improvements. I believe that there are early indicators of when that decline is going to happen, as in it will take a bigger block of training to make those incremental gains, or you make very modest gains in the off-season. Looking back on my logs, most of the times that I didn't improve much in year over year performance is because of taking 2 months off in the fall and starting back at too low of a point to make year over year improvements.

All true, as far as I can tell from my experience and feedback from friends. Consistency is key to remain at a certain level and to have at least a chance to ramp it up again later...

Anyway, for me personally, I feel like there is not much room for improvement in terms of consistency and efficiency. Would be the question if I could still improve (i.e. get to the same/similar level as 5~7 years ago) if I added more training volume. I might find out if my family will let me do so in a few years ;-)

I think it really depends on who shows up. I'm in the F45-49 AG and I've seen faster times in my AG compared to the F40-44 in many IM events (full and half). In 2016 I was 4th at IMMT in the F45-49 AG. My time would have placed me 3rd in the F40-44 AG. Plus in my AG there seems to always be at least one woman who raced as a former pro (or qualifies for a pro card) or has some sort of elite athletic background. I was 15 seconds behind Ashley Tappin a 3x Olympic gold medalist (swimmer) at IMTX 70.3 this year. The 45-49 AG is fierce. It's sometimes the largest AG too. And I would assume the same goes for the men.

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Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.

Yes, I think so, too. I do not have the exact slot allocation numbers in mind, but I believe that M45 or F45 typically have the biggest number of Kona or 70.3 Worlds slots.

"Anyway, for me personally, I feel like there is not much room for improvement in terms of consistency and efficiency. Would be the question if I could still improve (i.e. get to the same/similar level as 5~7 years ago) if I added more training volume. I might find out if my family will let me do so in a few years ;-) "

There is alot to be said for training "smarter".

That may be the reason for alot of older (wiser) people doing well.

This is my experience in the small (100-200 participants) local races. The age groups from 40-59 have more participants. Looking at who ends up in the top ten overall, they overwhelm the 20-year olds based on their strength in numbers at these smaller races. And the 45-49 age group has a lot of people with their FOP folks still posting some fast times.

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"Human existence is based upon two pillars: Compassion and knowledge. Compassion without knowledge is ineffective; Knowledge without compassion is inhuman." Victor Weisskopf.

35-39 here (I am actually 34)

I have almost no interest in racing local anymore. I got into the sport at the end of 2017 and have now done:

5 Sprints (3 of which were in a 1 month time frame at the end of 2017, 1 was on vacation, and 1 was a benchmark to see my improvement from the prior year)
3 Olympic (All 3 were done last year. It is a fun distance to race, but I was being told to race elite at future "regional" events. I am not that good.)
2 Half Ironman (Totally under prepared for them 26th M30-34 in my first one and 20th M30-34. Told you in not that good.)
1 Full Ironamn- (Worked harder but still felt way under prepared. 25h M35-39.)

I will be doing 70.3 races in back to back weekends in a few weeks coming up.

I do not plan on racing locally right now. I tend to either win my age group of podium overall at the events and feel like a jerk.

I would argue that the faster folks in the age groups being discussed have mostly stopped racing local and are focusing on competing on a larger stage. Unfortunately, that means travel, paying more money, and going to M-dot races is a general requirement. I could be totally wrong about this.


Edit: New Jersey State Triathlon gets like 1,000-1,200 entries and has a pretty darn deep field racing. It's the only Oly I really considered this year...just didn't work out.

Indeed. And I believe that I could talk to it. I am on a level to do KQ (Ironman Frankfurt) with an avg. of 10 hours training per week (without any specific former elite level). Sure, there is always room for improvement. But I am confident enough to say that I spend those 10 hours already pretty smartly ;-)

I know of skaggs. The guy doesn't age. At big races 5150, ITU San Diego, he beat all 20 year olds for overall win. Would be a good interview if ST reached out him ... Dan is near by

I think its really hard to draw these conclusions, every race is sooo different.

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2024: Bevoman, Galveston, Alcatraz, Marble Falls, Santa Cruz

He lived and raced fast some time ago in Florida.

He lived fast? That's doubly impressive

I'm sure the answer to this question is multifaceted, but don't discount modern pharmaceuticals as one of the reasons. I've been paying attention to this phenomenon for several years, both at a local level (Phoenix, AZ) and nationally. I've been racing since 1996. Over those years there are a handful of guys that I've completed against season after season. During our 20s and 30s the overall performances remained stable. There were those guys that I knew would always beat me. There was a group that I would beat 50% of the time. There was a group that I would beat without much issue if I had a semi-normal race. Then there was a group that I didn't know the names of the people because they were always way down the standings. Starting in our 40s that pecking order got all screwy. Some of the guys that I didn't know the names of starting smashing me consistently, along with a good portion of the guys that beat me consistently. Some of the guys that would consistently end up 5-7 behind me in Olympic distance races over 20 years started ending up 3-4 in front of me, consistently. I went back and did some research. One thing stood out. Relative swim times stayed similar over the years. So did run times. The normal decline you would expect was observed. Swim times got slower over the years at a smaller rate than did our runs times. But on the bike, many, if not all had vast improvements on the bike from their 20s. They were setting PRs, but only riding.

I went back and looked at finish times at a local race that has maintained the exact same course since I first raced it in 1997. From 1997 to about 2013 there were only 3 athletes of the 45+ AG that were in the top 10. In the past three years there were 12. The majority of those that were in this group slowed or maintained performance in the swim and run, but now crushed the bike. Some guys were going 4 minutes faster on this Olympic bike course than they did 5, 10, 15, even 20 years ago.

I've also been riding the same Tuesday group ride for the past 12 years. About three years ago everyone started commenting on how many "older guys" (50+) were now pushing the pace on the group ride. On the few hills and sustained hard climbs we do, it was not the college aged guys at the front, but many of the older guys.

Then I had my epiphany. A guys started chatting me up during another large group ride. He was a "doctor" at one of the many anti-aging clinics we now have in the Phoenix area. He was soliciting me to come to his clinic for his male-enhancement, anti-aging protocol of testosterone replacement therapy, HGH, vitamin B and nicotinamide riboside (NAD). Then the dumb-ass started pointing out the people in the group that were his patients. I guess he forgot about HIPPA. He went into great detail about how his therapy translates into more increases, thus much faster ride times as well as overall enhanced training. Up to this point I've always suspected this was the case, but now I had a guy verifying what I was thinking and seeing.

So, when you wonder why the 45+ AG might be getting faster than those in the 35+ groups, don't discount the crazy explosion in guys using Testosterone and other substances, especially the super competitive guys at the front that tend to have more disposable income that most.

So, when you wonder why the 45+ AG might be getting faster than those in the 35+ groups, don't discount the crazy explosion in guys using Testosterone and other substances, especially the super competitive guys at the front that tend to have more disposable income that most. //

I've been beating that drum for over 15 years now, glad to see someone else doesnt have their head in the sand. Not to point at any one individual, although many have been actually caught now, in an almost non existent testing culture. That says a lot right there. But the overall times and performances across the board, triathlon, running, cycling, and swimming, is just off the charts. It bums me out two fold, one is that I have to actually compete in this environment, and as I age, the drugs get more effective. That is just putting some things out of reach anymore. And lastly, I would love to have confidence in some of the performances I see in the old folks, a benchmark so to speak to reach for. But I dont anymore, so just ignore most to what is going on, and just do my best.. I would just like to know how prevalent it is, hopefully not as bad as I imagine.

Would be fun sometime for some organization to come in one day after some big race, and take a hair follicle from everyone and test them. Just for data purposes, just to see the enormity of the problem, or not I guess...

That’s a disappointing story.

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Dimond Bikes Superfan

While I don't discount the prevalence of pharmaceuticals, I know some if the guys my age who are faster than me are taking something, just don't know which ones. I think the advent of the current indoor training options for the bike are somewhat responsible. The monotony of the trainer has been greatly reduced. I've really only trained seriously over the winter on the bike the last 5 or so years; that has led to significant gains.

Yeah you guys have a pretty big problem with that up there. It doesn't even amaze me anymore when dudes who have never been within 15min of me in an oly are now only 3-5 min back. Or guys who are 48-55 turning in 15-30 min 70.3/IM PB's who have been racing for 10+ years.

I have a pic somewhere of one of the pros I used to coach a few yrs back who was up in the PHX area standing next to a 50+ yo up there after a swim in their swim trunks.

If you chopped the heads off you'd have thought the pro was the 50yo and the 50yo was the 24yo just based on how lean, how ripped, and how young their skin looked.

Unfortunately for us AG athletes USAT has shown very little interest in testing AG athletes outside of national championships events.

You racing the LTF tri in Sept? I'm debating it, will probably head up for it.

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

IDK, maybe you're venting here a bit...has this actually happened? I mean, like in a real USAT sanctioned race, or is it an extrapolated virtual race and not a head-to-head matchup on race day with factors you've not fully considered?

I'm not going to extrapolate. That's what USAT ranking are for!

It's happened, IRL.

I should have put around 15 min and around 5 min back from me. Not absolute values as in 15:00 to 3:00-5:00.

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

I race both races at Nationals. I only cared about the Olympic race. The sprint Race was for fun. I had IMMT the next weekend and didn’t want to go to hard or to deep for a sprint. Smashed IMMT today. I am a long course guy that short course stuff is to short.

Cool.

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MS: Exercise Science
Your speed matters a lot, sometimes you need to be very fast, where sometimes you need to breakdown your speed.

Did a local OLY today about 75 peeps. 3 of the top 7 OA of the 75 were in the 40 to 45...

What I notice with the older guys is better at swim and bike and much less on the run which makes sense in my opinion for an aging athlete.

This is sad to hear. Glad I stopped racing six years ago.

I raced German Olympic distance National Championships two days ago. I finished 2nd in male 40 age group. Would have finished 2nd in M35 and M50, too. However, would have been 4th in M45. Again, M45 seems to be stronger...

Let's see what it will be at a really big race. Next stop 70.3 WC in Nice ;-)

This is sad but not surprising. My day job is analyzing data. Lots of data! And I do this with Ironman race results. The Obsessed Triathlete website is like crack for someone who loves numbers like myself. You can drill down on anyone and look back at their Ironman branded (full and halves) race history back to 2003. I only started Ironman in 2016 at age 46, but I'll be tackling IM #5 in the near future. Many of my fellow athletes (F45-49) have been racing IM since their 20s and 30s. Is it normal to get significantly faster in your mid to late 40s when you started so long ago? Swim times don't fluctuate that much but bike times are getting insanely faster with many individuals in my AG over the years. I'm sure there could be many legitimate reasons such as more time to train with kids older, more financial resources (higher income at an older age), faster equipment, coaching, etc. But my gosh I have to raise my eyebrows at some of the amazing improvements in times I seen from mid 30s to mid 40s for many (not all!!) women. If I'm totally off base than that is great news. I have a lot to look forward to as I hit the 50s next year. Maybe I'll be faster in my 50s (but sort of doubt it as I'm putting everything I've got into the sport already)

I do stand by my previous post that it also depends on who shows up. I was tracking a couple people doing IMMT yesterday. I noticed the winner in my AG used to race as a former pro from 2004 to 2017. So she crushed the age groupers yesterday. And a woman who raced as a former pro won my AG at Whistler a few weeks ago. Totally legit. But tough for us ordinary working slobs who don't have sponsors and work full time :-)

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Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.

I made the joke earlier in this thread about better PED's, but I wasn't joking. I seriously believe that's what is going on. You don't see any pro cyclists get better in their mid 40's, why would it happen to the age group triathlete bike splits?

Swim times don't fluctuate that much but bike times are getting insanely faster with many individuals in my AG over the years. //

And of course this make sense if people are using PEDS. Swimming is so technique oriented, that doping would just make ones crappy stroke a little stronger, and maybe slow down less on one ages, because you can continue to do more training, like when you were younger. Running will be similar, you can only run so much, or so fast before getting injured. Drugs do let you recover quicker and be less injury prone, but it also requires technique. Now cycling, that is just basically motor sport, so make the motor stronger, and it is direct gains to the bottom line. That is why many who are observant, see that it is the bike times that have been improving astronomically over the years, while the swim and runs just seem stagnant, where they should be declining.


Now for actual lifelong swimmers, drugs absolutely work as one ages. Because you have the technique, your limiting factor is training intensity and ability to recover. That is why masters swim times have been advancing at such huge rates. I takes basically the same time to get top 10 at nationals in the 50-54/55-59/60-64.. And often even in the 65+ you see some times that would win 3 age groups down..Of course there can be outliers in all of this, but if you look at the macro numbers, something indeed is going on outside of normal aging and training.


Same goes for runners, if you were a national caliber runner in your day, drugs are going to help you a lot more than some triathlete plodder who was never fast to begin with...


All quite depressing, and Phoenixtri's experience is happening all over the country, in every group ride...)-;

I just got back from a lunchtime open water swim (working remote has some advantages). I was hoping to come back and find some replies that proved me wrong in my assumptions. It is depressing. I work so hard and wonder if it's worth it to keep pursuing my goals in Ironman.

I was a competitive road cyclist in my 20s from 1995 to 1998. I didn't race long enough to reach my potential (due to an injury) but I was strong back then on a bike. MUCH stronger than I am now. I did take 12 years off from riding any bike and didn't race my first triathlon until 2014 which was my first time being competitive on a bike. So that much time off from cycling made me a lot slower....but I'm also over 20 years older which is also a reason I'm not as fast. So I can't use myself as a good example of slowing down in my 40s when I took that much time off from when I was faster. But I do agree with another poster that you don't see pro cyclists getting faster in their mid 40s. It doesn't mean you can't be fast, but most pro cyclists peak in their late 20s or mid 30s.

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Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.

This whole thread is so depressing.

I feel like I'm learning 2 things

1. As I get closer to 40, I'm just going to decline...unless

2. I start doping like other men over 40.


I don't want either of those things to happen.

Yep, sad but true. For reference, I'm 42 now. I've never been anything special in triathlon but when I was in M30-34 and M35-39 I could land in the top 1/3 to top 1/4 of my age group regularly in almost every distance. Once I got into the 40-44 AG I started to slow a little bit, but I was disproportionately down in the age group rankings, lucky to stay in the top 1/2 on a good day. I know some of it is just me and my own body, but I sure felt like I was automatically sucking wind the whole time when I aged up.

The older I get the faster I was!

Pro cyclists have easily done their 10000 hours or whatever it takes to achieve full mastery of their skill. A lot of age groupers have not. Instead they have spent a lot of hours sitting at a desk or in a car

So the age grouper may have room for improvement, unlike the pro.

One of the guys I train with is 49 and recently ran a new PB 16.45 for 5km. He was a track runner at school, took a 25 year break, then picked up his running shoes again and keeps getting faster.

No drugs.

Good point. I assume they are also fresh from not running themselves into the ground for many years.

I am in M50-54 now, and really, since I was in M30-34, my age group was the largest or very close to it at most races, and that didn't change as I went into M35-39, 40-44, etc.

I think there was a large group of athletes that came into the sport in the late 90's and early 00's who were about 30 years old. That was a big growth period for the sport overall, and unfortunately, the sport seemed to rest on it's laurels (and that groups spending), and didn't attract a lot of new, young people after that.

Being large, that group has a good talent pool to draw from, and the many of them now have 10-20 years of experience/training under their belt. A 40 year old today, to have started when they were 30 would have had to get into the sport in 2009, post recession, and when things were getting more and more expensive.

I'd actually say that swim times decline most (not in absolute time, but in percentaged numbers). I have the impression that hardly anyone above 40 can swim front pack in any race, small local or big while you will always find very fast cyclists and runners.

Loss of strength and flexibility might be the main reason. Especially because strength is important to those you learnt swimming pretty lately. Good swimmers get slower because of loss of flexibility, I would say...

Coming from someone who has gone from 3.5 w/kg to a tad under 4.5 in a few years I'm not so sure cycling only gains at an older age is a red flag for peds. Considering it is largely an aerobic non- impact sport many amateurs will hit their peak later in life even though that is not the peak they could have hit 10 years before. Power meters and indoor training programs are much more prevalent now.

People get slower as they age - especially past 40. Joe Friel has a great book on covering the subject called Fast After Fifty. Of course lots of variability between individuals, but if old guys in the 45+ or 50+ category are beating the younger guys - its simply because talented younger guys didnt show up. If I use myself as a example I have raced and trained consistently for 35yrs (between 10-20 hrs a week). I found a way to get it done when my kids were young (have 3 daughters). I didnt really feel a big difference in performance till early 40s and it became more noticeable for me as I approached 47. Lower FTP by a couple percent on the bike, couldnt get to the same times on my k repeats that I would do for years, and its getting tougher to hit the same intervals sets in the swim. My 40yr old self would kick my 50 yr olds selfs butt!! No doubt. Sad to read the discussion on PEDs and anti-aging stuff. I see guys like that from time to time show up - but they rarely last.

Best regards
Michael Hay

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Michael Hay - helped on the journey by the great folks at ZiZU Optics, (for the custom fit), and Bialkowlski's TRYSPORT

That's a nice jump in power for sure! You mentioned in a previous post you're 41 and that makes sense that you had a nice increase in power/performance from mid 30s. Early 40s is very reasonable to be quite fast and strong and actually peak as a female. There are several female Olympian cyclists who were successful in their early 40s. Everyone is a little different but generally you start to feel the decline after age 45. Trust me :-). My PR marathon at age 43 was a 3:07:56 after doing my first open marathon at age 41. I'll be 50 in March 2020. I can tell you that there's NO WAY I could still run that time in an open marathon again if I trained specifically for another one. That was probably my last good year as a marathon runner. I do believe if I had been doing triathlon/Ironman back in my 30s with most of my rivals, I don't think I'd be posting my fastest bike or run times in my late 40s or early 50s (like I've been noticing). And that's just based on my running abilities over the years. But you have a good point about indoor training programs and working with power. Maybe some of us old ladies can get faster as we approach 50 using power metrics. I just don't know. All my experience says differently. But I want some older women (over age 45) out there to tell me I'm wrong. That gives me hope as I approach 50 :-)

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Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.

I'm going on the record and say there's not 1 45yr old plus out there that can beat Dan....juiced or not.

I'm 44 and at every 70.3/140.6 I've done, my place in the 40-44 would have been higher in the 45-49 age group. I was 4th at Chattanooga this year which would have easily put me 2nd and just a few seconds behind 1st.

I'm going on the record and say there's not 1 45yr old plus out there that can beat Dan....juiced or not. //

You would lose a lot of money on that bet. Here are just a couple(unjuiced), Cameron Brown and Craig Alexander. I could probably come up with 5 or 6 more if I dug around, but 45+ is not what it used to be thanks to these guys...And forget about the pro designation, when you get to 45+, you are entitled to be compared to your peers the same age...

I don't think anyone is challenging the notion that if you're looking at the very top performance (folks who are near-maxxing their potential), younger folks will always win.


It's the phenomena that at quite a few races, particularly smaller races, the older age groups can lay a serious smack down on the non-maximally trained younger ones. Just go to any local smaller triathlon and watch how much more of a beatdown the M40-45 puts down on the M20-25 group fairly frequently. For all the reasons mentioned above.

That's the nice thing about tri that I think does attract the 40-55 age groups to some degree - you can compensate for your age-related slowdowns with significant gains in your weakest discipline for quite awhile.

I'm air quoting here and trying to stick to the topic. No 45+ age grouper is beating Dan.

Better?

Thanks, yeah I'll be 41 in about 2 weeks and fitness gains still come in decent bumps as long as I am consistent. I'll be doing savageman in about a month, so I can check back in after that. I really think bike fitness has a pretty good longevity compared to running, but even in the amateur ranks, there will be a lot of faster guys around 40 even if there are some really fast younger guys. The older age groups are just deeper.

I'd be willing to bet you'd find some Europeans that are amateurs that would, who just don't race this side of the pond or Kona. Often due to financial limitations or because they just prefer to race Euro side (maybe some Aussies, NZ guys too). Hard to say when not everyone encounters everyone at any given race (Kona is not a good indicator either as some aren't heat acclimated & do better in cold/cooler weather).

I’m guessing he was assuming a non-draft, non-doper race.

True. But last weekend I missed my favorite race and a 18 year old ( who I know) smoked a field of 500. I’ve know him since he was 10’ish. Really wish I was there to see him win. As an old guy, seeing a kid crush the field is awesome.

seems legit

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https://www.strava.com/...tes/zachary_mckinney

Michael, agree with you on getting slower as we age. I think I may have still been getting faster up to 40 or 42, just from getting better at running, after that, it's been a long slow decline.

I remember you (or at least your name) from Muskoka in 2005. They had you in my age group results at first, and I was pretty sure I hadn't seen anyone pass me. ;-)

Most definitely time to train. I am 42 and my kids are still pretty young. On the weekends I don’t do long bike rides like some of my older buddies. I drive my sons to tennis and soccer tournaments. My training is in the early morning hours and I am expected to be back for breakfast which limits my bike rides to three hours max. I also train late at night on zwift. But I also work 50hrs a week and need to sleep...