Originally Posted by DougG

I'm not a competitive cyclist, but I do compete regularly in running events and can track changes in my performance over the years. When I started running, I progressed in distances from 5Ks to 10Ks and eventually up to doing marathons, but only ran a few of those. Then, for a while, half-marathons (13.1 miles) were my favorite events, but in the last 10 years I've slid back down the distance scale and am back to doing 5K races with an occasional 10K that I actually have to train for as opposed to when I could run one at will. So much for changes in endurance.

As for performance, I've discussed this with numerous other runners my age -- including one who is in the "elite" category -- and we all agree that when we passed 70, our performances fell off noticeably from year to year. I've never been a great runner, but have generally been in the top third of my age group. When I was in the 65-69 AG, I could sometimes place well when I was 68 against runners who were 65-66. But since 70, that has not generally been true. When I turned 70 and entered the 70-74 AG, I ran a lot of races that year since I was placing really high and even winning a couple of local events. But now, at 73, I can see that my 5K times have gone down in the past 3 years by about a minute a year (out of a typical time for me of about 30 minutes). Pace-wise, this is the loss of about a minute-per-mile since I was 70. So now in a decent-size field, I'm often beaten by some 70yo young whippersnapper and am looking forward to when I turn 75 and can be at the top of the field again.