I just turned 60 last month, and I am confident that if I wanted to ride a double century my body would have no problem: My cycling fitness is pretty darn good (if I do say so myself), not quite where it was ~10 years ago but still up to the challenge without feeling like I'd need to do something extraordinary to survive the effort.
But here's the thing: I have absolutely zero desire to ride a double century. None. Nada. Zip.
For that matter, my interest in riding just a bog-stock single century is pretty close to zero.
And that's not necessarily something new. Once I'd ridden a few centuries, the appeal kinda dissipated. And the more centuries I rode, the more I recognized that there was a genuine identifiable sweet-spot for distance that was somewhere short of 100 miles. The amount of joy, exhilaration, satisfaction, and start-to-finish This-Is-Why-I-Ride-A-Bike! fun that I experience on a ~70-80 mile ride is palpably greater than what I feel after 100 miles.
I still ride 2 or 3 centuries a year, but I rarely look forward to them or consider them "accomplishments" the way I did when I first started out as a recreational road cyclists.
And a double century? Ain't gonna happen. I will happily go to my grave never having hit that milestone, and feeling no remorse about missing it.
And I'm pretty sure that has nothing to do with age.
Last edited by Bob Ross; 01-26-21 at 12:23 PM.