How do you deal with your clock getting faster as the years go by?
 

How do you deal with your clock getting faster as the years go by? I'm at that stage now. My 90 minute ride has turned into a 97 minute ride. Initially I blamed it on my bike. I also faulted the weather. Next it was exercise fatigue. Or my sleep.Lately I realized what's going on. I don't know if I will ever really accept it, but I guess I have to admit it.Or maybe I'm just overtrained? I've been through bouts of that and bounced back stronger. LOL I guess you see what I mean.Dealing with this can be amusing.

I ride alone more, don't worry about getting dropped if I ride with a group, and spend more time exploring my urban/suburban environs while on the bike. I never raced and have never been fast, so maybe it was easier to let go of performance aspects of cycling. (For reference, I'm 69M.)

Also, most of my bikes are vintage (pre-1985) and I'm tallish, so they tend to be heavier than today's CF bikes. I have an automatic 5-10 pound weight penalty, not even considering my waistline. I try not to worry about that too much. ;)

Edit: I failed to mention that I was in a serious crash in 2017 and have a titanium rod in my right leg to show for it. That probably has a) a bit to do with my performance reduction, and b) a bit to do with my desire to simply enjoy the ride more and worry about the second hand less.

At 71 I have grown up a little, not much but a little, and have come to fully appreciate every ride I do. I average 25-30 miles a few times a week when it’s above 40 degrees and while I still obsess about my mph I can’t say it takes away from the experience. Now with Spring on the doorstep I am even more grateful that I can get out more and stop riding indoors. My peace comes from just staying present and feeling grateful I can still enjoy some exercise on my bike, leaving the competitive mindset at home. For a good portion of my life I was an avid runner, competing in road races and forever trying to get faster and while I enjoyed most of it it certainly took its toll on my body. Knees and back took most of the stress but (and here’s my age showing up) I’m still tickin like a Timex. Enjoy the day all.

I ride, I push myself, I enjoy myself...nothing else matters including how fast I'm going or how long it takes...

I don't notice it so much lately since I ride on mixed surfaces alone for my daily rides. I figure it is to be expected at my age (71) though.

I had a custom 'kit' made for myself. SORTIE Cycling - Slow, Old, Relaxed, Taking It Easy. Across the backside of the bibs it says "I'll Get There Eventually"

However, I look really fast at the rest stops. :lol:

If you don't have somewhere else you need to be then the extra 7 minutes shouldn't be an issue. If you only ride twice a week, you'll probably see some improvement in that time if you ride 3 or 4 times a week.

I thought you were referring to how fast tine goes by as you get older. I’m totally comfortable with getting older and slower. It’s a privilege not everyone gets.

Greatest issue, for me, has been the realization I simply don't repair and recover as easily as I once did.

No way around that, so far as I know ... assuming, of course, similar general age-appropriate fitness the comparison, one "era" to another. I've always gauged my runs and rides on time spent doing it, not time-per-mile measures. And so, an hour's an hour. Used to be that I could pump a lot more oxygen and cover many more miles in that hour, as compared to today. But I've always reasoned that if I give it similar effort (for my age/era), I'm getting about as good a benefit out of it as I can. (Of course, that's a non-competition mode of travel, one geared toward health and fitness; reasonably fast, back when I ran, and moderately so with cycling, but still more toward fitness-type riding and not competition-grade riding.)

Can't say that I know if it'd work for others, given their goals and fitness levels. But that approach has worked well for me. I sure don't do any personal bests, anymore, not at my age. Too many old injuries conspired to, um, accelerate the change of "gearing" for me, and there's little I can do about that.

Amen to that. I used to run a lot, up until a meniscus tear and surgery in (I think) 1998. I continued to run, but tapered way off, especially as swimming and cycling became my preferred exercises. (Don't even suggest I try a triathlon.)

Fast forward to right about now and I realized the local YWCA's Race Against Hate is coming up on Father's Day. I've run or walked out off-and-on over the years. I'd like to run it, so decided I'd start "training" for it. 25 years and 25 pounds has really taken the joy out of running. I think of what I do now as "hobbling." I can't realistically even call it jogging at the moment. Right now that "repair and recover" thing is taking longer than I'd like. I will persist though. It's a worthwhile event.

I try not to look back at prior year times. The questions I ask myself are:

How am I doing versus a month ago?
How am I doing versus all of this year?

Strava segment leaderboard makes this easy, with their "This Year > My Results" option. It also lists heart rate and power, further indicators of fitness.


https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...1cfc5c88ca.png

Lately I find the best thing to do is not watch the clock. I even avoid the security camera on my garage door. So I have no idea of my time.Of course, maybe I could set my tire pressure at 156 psi. Or buy a CF bike. ​​​​​​​. Or just be grateful that I'm still riding and that everyday is a gift.

Not recommended. Unless you want a slower and more uncomfortable ride.

Unlike a lot of 50+ members, I ride with others a couple times per week. These days I am often the oldest rider in the group and often the slowest, too. This is the only speed metric that matters to me, can I keep up and not make them wait too much.

Like Biker395, when I read the thread title I thought it referred to the clock speeding up as we get older.

Growing Old is Getting Old

late part reminds of early U2 / The Edge

.

it’s all relative

you’re doing some fairly robust rides

and on a continual basis

The other day my phone rang and it was on the other side of the house. I was expecting an important call. And I had to ask my daughter to get it because she's got those spry teen legs. Actually I had them but I lost them recently. It got me thinking, boy I got some adjustments coming!
Maybe I'm going off the topic here, but Max Schmeling , the famous boxer , lived into his Hundred's. And near the end, he couldn't accept awards because of his frailty. ​​​​​​​ So I guess we all accept this.​​​​​​​

Ditto

On the inability to do new PRs and so on... You can do that at any age with mountain biking if you ride new routes over the years. Pick a new route to concentrate on and you can improve for a year or more by honing lines and training. You may not be getting faster overall, but can for that route. It adds an element of fun that may have been missing for a while.

BTW being retired and able to ride every day and what time of day you like is a real nice perk of getting older.

That's the fifth stage, right?
Denial
Bargaining
Depression
Anger
​​​​​​​Acceptance

You can always cheat like I did. Bought aero socks and aero wheels and other wind cheaters and am still getting PRs. If PRs aren’t your thing, the aero aids will give you a bit of speed and maybe get you back to 90. Over training is a big, no bueno - take a day off now and then and you will be amazed how fresh legs and being antsy to ride again will get you.

Look up orchiectomy and you will know where I have been for 8 years now and even at almost 73yo I am trying my hardest to stay on top of the game. It is extremely difficult but on those increasingly rare occasions when the feeling I get is like old times, it confirms that I AM and not WAS.

Short answer: I don't look at the clock and don't have a speedometer on my bike.

Longer answer: I used to get a little thrill when my Strava app showed a new PR on a segment. The problem is that three years ago I massively trained for the Markleeville Death Ride and rode very hard on every single route around where I live. Since my conditioning has declined from that massive effort I almost never get a PR any more. I've realized that this is going to happen to everybody eventually. As we get older and our lung capacity and strength inevitably decreases there will come a time when we receive our last Strava PR. It seems to me that it would be good if Strava had a reset for PRs, etc, so that you could go back to zero each decade or season. I realize that I could just delete myself on Strava and create a new login, but then that would delete the record of all my prior rides. I wouldn't want that.

How old are you? I'd imagine that stuff only turns the clock back so many years. There aren't enough "aero cheats" to get 71 year old me riding as fast as 40 year old me did. I am okay with that though. It is great to still be riding regularly.

It sucks. It's depressing. I was never FAST but now it's getting ridiculous. Not that long ago I was doing double centuries at at average speed faster than I can keep up at 30 miles now.
But what's the alternative? Die? Stop riding?
I cling to "faster than the guy who didn't get off the couch" but really, it doesn't help that much.