About 20 years ago at about 37 years old I started jogging again and it costed me years (decreasing weight from 98 kg to 90 kg) to get to 1:37 on a HM. When I started triathlon 12 years ago with 45 years old I soon did HMs just under 1:30 and with just I mean not under 1:29. Weight went down to 84 kg.
With 57 years old now I did a HM in 1:31 just a couple of weeks ago.
My running speed thus does not seem to decline upto now, but stays rather the same taking into account the four seconds per km per kg rule.

However, in my early twenties I did (also with 84 kg) HMs in1:21.

Swimming is always the same crap and the bike improved massively until about 4 years ago: since than it levelled off.

Drops in performance are worse than "the decline".

When looking at data with large N=XXXX, we lose sight of the drops caused by injury or illness. Whereas in N=1, the drops are far worse than the decline.

We might be very lucky athletes and people if we only had declines and not drops. OTOH some want to go full force and die very quickly while racing or love making.

Two N=1 that I recently encountered. My doctor in his 50s, college level swimmer and still swimming 5x a week, had a heart attack that required three stints - big drop for him. Jim, at the same pool at 58, had a swim goal of 58 at 58 and then a melanoma popped up that required surgery.

So yes a gradual decline would be nice. Yet reality is that all of our N=1 drops are lost in the collection of N=XXXX data so we are much abused by data when using it to compare what could be coming for us individually.

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Indoor Triathlete - I thought I was right, until I realized I was wrong.

Unsure if it's the "personal circumstances" or something else for my own tremendous decline in everything...I'm just so fatigued all of the time.

At 45, I'm stressed more than ever due to young kids (6 & 3) and my wife's declining health due to MS. Because I'm finally legitimately concerned (first really noticed the extreme fatigue around mile 85 of the bike at IMAZ in 2016—and it's only gotten worse from there), I've a full physical lined up for week after next and a sleep study slated for just before Thanksgiving.

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#cureMS

Sorry to hear about all this bad stuff going on Dale, I think the sleep study is a good place to start. Recovery becomes the most important thing when we get older and stressed. The physical thing is good to do, but don't expect much unless there is something big wrong. They won't find chronic fatigue viruses, or anything that is out of the box. Hell, I had a severe heart thing going on, but for my 15 second EKG I was normal and they sent me home..

But do it just to eliminate some stuff, then expect to do a lot more to eliminate small things one at a time. And stop the ironman training, resolve yourself to just train a little bit when you feel good, if not bag it. And for races, wait until you have a few weeks of solid training, then plan a race a week or two out, but forget about long term planning and all the stress that comes with that. Train for health, and race when it suits you and your health...

Hey Monty, life is an accumulation of experiences. We get faster with more training and recovering around life's responsiblities, but also acquiring bad luck such as health issues which could just be bad luck genetics, or accidents (now who the heck plans to get run over by a bus or go head first into a building in switzerland) all can conspire against the decline.

Where I can measure and I am not limited by injuries from bad luck, at almost 53, my engine can put out pretty well the exact same output. I'm starting to ride again, and seeing the same wattages. I recently took up rowing on the erg and I am seeing wattages on there that by all accounts map directly to my bike wattages which it appears are the same as I was doing in my early 40's which are not indifferent from my early 30's (by inference, I had no power meter there).

Unfortunately, I have no historic pool race times to compare, so all my swim PB's are coming now as I recently took up 100/200 fly and 200/400IM....this is actually quite motivating being excited about improving tourist times.

Meanwhile, on the running front the decline was pretty clear almost digital every 5 years or so. There was a time that in canvas armed forces gym shoes, I ran 7:08 for the 1.5 mile fitness test (so 4:44 through the mile and kept that to the end)....according to Slowman, if I actually trained for the mile then, I could have been low 4:30's, but I never did it. But I ran 33:27 10K in my 20's and jumped in a marathon off a winter of XC skiing and speed skating and zero run mileage and then did 2 months of 80-100K per week and ran a 2:48. Fast forward to my early 40's and I could no longer break 3:05 off "Proper" marathon training. I gave up running marathons at 40 because i was getting slower and slower and slower and I never really enjoyed them. Through my 40's I really did not get slower at triathlon because the running is much slower than open run racing. I never broke 37 minutes in my 40's in open 10K running so roughly a 10% decline from my 20's.

In any case, drive by bragging aside, it seems my engine is doing good when it can apply force through broken body parts that won't cooperate across the board. My goal is to get my 100m fly under 1:30 and 200m fly under 3:20 this year and get the 400IM under 7 minutes....then i can have a whole new set of benchmarks to measure decline against and there are no busses to run over me in the pool. I just have to avoid the triple bypass surgery that my dad had at 58 since I am only 5 years out from that. Before my aerobic decline dramatically kicks in, I would like to see if I can get the 200 fly under 3 minutes and 400 IM down to 6:30. I should have the engine to do that, but technically, well, adult onset swimming banishes me to lane 8!

That's kind of where I am, now, but even basic training is leaving me winded & fatigued well beyond what I would have expected given my history. Finding time to train, too, has been problematic; a consequence of factors well beyond my control.

Thanks for the feedback.

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#cureMS

To me the answer to the question depends where you're at when you start. So if I am a novice and have solvable issues, then I can take time off the clock as I age.
Including but not limited to: better SBR technique, tons of PT, diet and better training.

For example, If I take my benchmark annual sprint race I've advanced from age 53 to 58. The numbers below are taken as a %-age of winning times* which typically in the 30-45 AG's.

2018 111%
2017 113%
2016 122%
2015 126%
2014 team - Achilles injury
2013 128%
2012 team - unable to swim :)


For 2019 > like last year, trying to run better.

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Training Tweets: https://twitter.com/Jagersport_com
FM Sports: http://fluidmotionsports.com

Oh, certainly.

Me, though, I've noticed so much more fatigue just since mid-August---to the point where (what was once) my regular run route leaves me winded and fatigued for 2 - 3 days.

I'm able to pinpoint it back to mid-August, as that was when I started back to work (I teach and was able to work from home for most of June & July) and when my wife's fatigue & symptom levels associated with MS hit a current crescendo.

The bulk of this can be attributed to stress, but the forthcoming medical stuffs are to help ensure there is nothing else "wrong" with me.

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#cureMS