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.