56 here. I am getting faster, I went 57 minutes faster at a half last month than my first half 25 years ago. I attribute it to finally getting my nutritional lifestyle changes,( I am down about 35 pounds from March of 18) and consistency in training.

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All I Wanted Was A Pepsi, Just One Pepsi

Team Zoot, Team Zoot Mid-Atlantic

How many miles do you run per week?

I turned 47 last year. I was doing really well maintaining my times and slowly pushing up my age group. I did not really get much quicker, my swimming got 'better' through improvements in technique and my bike times improved a tad as I invested in a disc, aero helmet etc. I did not get 'quicker' though - just a bit better with better equipment.and technique work if that makes sense?

Last year I got injured and had to have some time out. This year I have just had to have 3 months off with a hamstring problem. All of a sudden I can feel my top end has completely disappeared! I can still ride for 6 hours and swim 4K easily. What I no longer seem to be able to do is keep up in the pool with the sprints or the hard sets. As soon as I see a hill I struggle on the bike - although power numbers have only dropped slightly? I have not got back running yet - time will tell on that one.

I think the advice to keep strength and speed work going is essential for anyone approaching 50. I can feel to get myself back to where I was 12 months ago will need a boat load of gym work and intervals. I have no idea if I will get 'it' back whatever 'it' is but interesting times ahead I think.

My main advice once you start aging is to avoid injury. Its really hurt my triathlon these last two years and I will be looking to avoid injury rather than make big gains in future. I can see my time getting 'faster' is over and to advance further in my age group I am now reliant on others getting slower!

Hope that helps.

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He who understands the WHY, will understand the HOW.

Just give it a few years....

No amount of HTFU will help.

I ran a 1:19 half at age 46.5 - then I started getting issues w my calves & knees, and have never been able to get back to consistent enough run training to even sniff that sorta run fitness again.

I’m still pretty strong on the bike, but even that is a few % lower than what I used to be able to do.

I definitely feel like I don’t recover from hard efforts as quickly as I once did.
Which means I typically can’t do them as often.

It really comes down to avoiding injury so you can remain consistent w the training.

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float , hammer , and jog

MrTri123,

Right now 20-25 miles/week, 2-3 runs per week, but I've been training for a half coming up this Saturday.

After that I'll cut back to more like 8-12 miles/week. 2-3 runs/week, and ease my long runs back to 6-8 miles (tops).

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"The first virtue in a soldier is endurance of fatigue; courage is only the second virtue."
- Napoleon Bonaparte

Yes. At age 60 I'm running 5Ks at a pace that I used to be able to run marathons in my 20s. My rate of decline has been similar to the world bests by age, so I'm content that I appear to be aging appropriately. The keys for me? Consistent multisport training, doing most running off pavement and keeping the weight as close to HS weight as possible.

40, will be 41 in September. Getting fitter now that I'm using more structure than when I was 30. There was also a block in there with having my daughter that things slowed down for a bit and I was at a plateau between 35-36-37. Got a power meter and joined Trainerroad, go from 3.5 W/kg up to almost 4 first year, small bump 2nd year and this year sitting right around 4.4 W/kg. The way fitness has come this year, thinking that I can get another 10-15 watts for next year while still slowly losing weight to help improve run speed. Big bump in fitness this year was in two parts.. Didn't have a huge valley in the fall, did 6 weeks of less structure and then got back in to focused training starting about 10 watts down from the previous year's best. Then started following more of a polarized/80:20 model during my build and had the biggest fitness gain during a TR build since I joined. Consistency is key and having intensity discipline to do less # of hard sessions/week and even calling them once quality drops means that I had almost no missed workouts, just slightly easier ones than target.

I got faster 38 to 44 ..... stopped doing tri after that. My running has not really slowed any more than I would expect from a reduction in training load. My 800's are around the same time, or, given a focus on running for a few weeks, marginaly faster than they have ever been. Regular running is not the easiest as I now travel full time so heat, humidty, altitude or just shitty roads / trails make it tough BUT ... I would expect to be faster now with a proper consistent schedule bearing in mind I only run now and don't have to juggle the other two sports. I PB'd a marathon 2 years ago at 45 - which was my last race.

I would say such a rapid decline is unusual for sure.

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https://www.pbandjcoaching.com
https://www.thisbigroadtrip.com

Anyone who gets faster past the age of 30 highly likely under-performed when they were in their 20's? (This is true for 99.9% of the population. Yes, there are a few outliers.)

The problem with tri is that most of us didn't get introduced to the sport proper until later in life. There's no real tri-development program, such as in swimming or running. (I don't think that there's a cycling development program either, at least in the US.) That means your window of growth in sport gets extended far beyond what biology would suggest.

Biology might also suggest that you're ability (whoever 'you' are) to maintain fitness and speed can potentially be maintained with diminishing levels of return. So, if you've already reached your potential at a rather young age, you'll get slower as you get older, especially past 30. If you never achieved your potential, then you can continue to increase speed until your speed finally matches your decline in potential. Then biology takes over and your best course of action is to minimize its effect by staying hungry and setting realistic goals.

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Take a short break from ST and read my blog:
http://tri-banter.blogspot.com/

This is true. Right now I am 53 and last two 10Ks were at 8 min/mile pace. When I was in 20s 5:45 pace but I weighed 15 pds less. Now I have more of a swimmers body lol. Doing more speedwork and trying to drop a few pds. I could drop 5 pds and that would probably make for 15 sec mile faster.

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They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within
Dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good T.S. Eliot

I'm running faster than ever at age 42, but there are a few reasons, some which may apply to you.

I didn't really start running until age 35 so that helps... nowhere to go but up! At age 38 my PR 5k was 19:11. I recently ran one sub-18. 4 years ago my Olympic run pace was around 6:45 and now it's 6:20. My 70.3 run times have decreased by probably 4 minutes or so since I turned 40.

I had seemed to plateau around age 40. Up until then, when I went for long runs, I pretty much always chose as flat and easy a course as I could. But then, the group I trained with started doing long runs up on Magnolia road near Nederland, CO - doing 1:30 to 1:45 on a very hilly dirt road at 9,000 feet elevation. I think doing the hills on my long runs started helping my flat racing very quickly. It really helped train my legs to push out the back and propel me forward.

I also do track workouts every week. Something that changed with that also right around age 40 is that the track workouts used to be longer, slower stuff. 6x1 mile - or if we did short stuff we did A LOT of it with little rest. Now we do shorter faster stuff at track. l400's and 800's, occasional 1200's (even 200's sometimes). Usually we get a minute to 90 seconds rest between intervals - so my track workouts contain more speed and intensity now, less distance. Most of my track running used to be at like 6:20 pace. Now most of it is 5:30-5:50 pace.

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
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Good stuff. It is entirely possible that the VARIETY of training you got made the big difference. But it is true that most triathletes (me included) tend to not do enough very short-very high speed intervals with lots of rest (and instead favor longer intervals/short rest since it 'feels' more like race speed) and thus we miss out on some good gains.

depends on your fitness and training age before you where 40 ... if you havent trained/raced at your absolute potential when you where younger, then you should not see a rapid drop off. You should try and train smarter not harder. I saw a big drop off when I went into my 50's but i think that is down to doing my quality sessions too tired and doing a lot of middle ground training that I am not recovering from as I used to.

I am still trying to get my head around that and when i get over this current injury I certainly plan to do my easy stuff a lot easier than I used to and save my hard sessions for when I can actually do them properly.

I would echo what IT said - get blood work done, and a medical evaluation.

my anecdote for what ever it is worth (probably not worth much since everyone is different): started runing in my mid-twenties and did OK - 2:41 marathon, 1:17 half, etc, although i never had the 5k speed to match :-) At age 38, i got slower and slower, tired, put on weight, all in a fairly short time. Diagnosed with Hasimoto's disease, which is a form of hypo-thyroidism. Have been taking synthroid ever since then. I got some of the energy, fitness and speed back, and PB'd at 10k in 1995 at age 41. I never did get the marathon speed back. Started doing triathlons in 1997. In my early 50's, i started to lose the the run speed. I thik it was partly due to age and partly due to spending time and energy biking. Now, I am 64 and slower than ever. I think this is mostly due to age. And it could be that I am just too wimpy to push myself that hard anymore. But without the Synthroid, i would be obese and maybe dead.

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run well, run happy
george

I have a similar experience (maybe because of simlar background to) as you, I suspect.

I literally *never* ran, not even a local 5k, etc., until I turned 38yo.
So, I got faster as I got older.
Anything 1600 and shorter on the track was ~5:50/mi pace.
OTB pace was 6:20/mi for the short things.

At the time, when I picked up tri as different and secondary sporting outlet, I had taken a 20yr hiatus--not a single stroke--from swimming.
It was humbling going from <60"/100 to <80"/100s.
So, my fastest swimming was decades ago.


What I have noticed in mid-40s is
1) Recovery time after track sessions has increased. I am sore the next am.
2) Recently, overall, my running has gotten slower (directly due to curtailed mileage; running is *boring AF* and I do the perfunctory absolute minimum, at most)
3) High end power on the bike has decreased; I'm not punching up to 1100w regularily any more, but my ability to produce sustained power ~4w/kg is still not unreasonable.
4) Even when I tried swimming 20000scy/wk, I was not getting proportionally faster; gains were small, and tradeoffs were not worth missing time on the bike, etc.

I regularily see another Slowtwitcher who is my age, blast the "kids" at local TT's, posting 30mph+ speeds, etc. So he's not slowed down too much.

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My 5k time got slower but my marathon time got faster after 40