This year has been an almost uneventful season for most of us. But the fact remains, though: another year has passed.
And when on Sept. 5, I improved my full-distance PB by 42 minutes, I’ve already thought whether I could go even faster in the future. I am always optimistic when facing these sort of tasks, but the truth is that I’m not getting any younger. Plus (a big one), my family commitments will change over the winter, and it will be harder to focus on my personal development in sports—though not impossible.
On top of that, if I’d only read scientific studies, data seem even harsher.
"Peak endurance performance is maintained until ∼35 years of age, followed by modest decreases until 50–60 years of age, with progressively steeper declines after that," reads the study “Endurance exercise performance in Masters athletes: age‐associated changes and underlying physiological mechanisms" by Hirofumi Tanaka and Douglas R. Seals.
As I'm almost 35, should I say finally goodbye to any future athletic and physiological development?
Not really.
The Facts
OK, endurance performances inevitably decline with age, but that is not entirely true if you have started your athletic development at a later stage in your life. You can still see some progress even in your 40s, although these are more anecdotal examples, and not the norm.
The main physiological parameters that will decline with your age are your VO2max (the maximal oxygen consumption your body can tolerate), your max stroke volume (the amount of blood pumped from the left ventricle at every beat), the max heart rate, your lactate threshold (the exercise intensity at which blood lactate increases significantly above baseline), and a difference in O2 levels in your veins and arteries. The reduction in VO2max appears to be the most important factor connected to a decline in endurance performances though.
Other components connected with the ageing process—as reported in another study—are a general reduction of lean muscle mass and a gain in fat mass, the reduction of type II muscle fibers, and the reduction in blood volume.
On the other hand, your exercise economy (the metabolic cost of exercise performed below sub-maximal efforts) will not change much over time if you keep training.
In trained individuals, the causes of these reductions (on top of the ageing process) are also non-physiological and include a reduction of training volumes and training intensities, and an increase occurrence of injuries. And even if you train consistently, the drop of these values is around 5% per decade.
That’s why even if performances way reduce because of the above reasons, this is not a definitive sentence. We can still slow these processes down to a minimum, and still practice sports regularly.
And why not, keep racing!
What to do
With the ‘coming of the age’, we need to pay more attention to other elements of our training programs and schedules.
Firstly, we need to keep a closer eye to our rest and recovery times, as sleep (and a good quality of it) remains the number one tool to recover from one session to another, and keep injuries at bay.
Nutrition is the other area where we should work a bit more than in the past, as we’ll get away with fewer things that we were used to when we were in our twenties.
Strength and conditioning will also play a very important role. It can positively affect your bone density, maintain your lean muscle mass, and release hormones like testosterone and oestrogen.
Finally—and probably most importantly—to keep training is the best answer to the inevitable effects of times on our bodies.
Yes, our routines may look different than they did 20, 10, and even five years ago, but that's part of a natural adaptation process. Overall volumes may reduce to accommodate more family and work commitments, but it's a good idea to keep some good quality sessions and VO2max sessions as part of your plan. Just be aware that you may need more time to recover from them, and that's OK.
Another approach, at least in triathlon, could be limiting the time you dedicate to higher impact disciplines like running, and focusing more to cycling and swimming instead. That could be a way to keep training the aerobic and anaerobic engines, while limiting the impact on joints and muscles.
If we're able to stick to it and be consistent (and avoid injuries!), we can still pull some PB out of the hat.
As this study has shown, too. And that’s why I haven't stopped just yet.