What do you miss most about being on the other side of 50?
 

I don't mind the loss of muscle mass. Kind of miss smiles from pretty girls, but that's not a show stopper. I can do without sprinting...when I was 45 , I beat my neighbor's kid in a 40 yard dash.What I really miss is the ability to function on 5 or less hours of sleep. Seems like even 8 isn't enough, if you're exercising everyday.​​​​​​​Saturday is sleep recovery day for me now. Before it was family day or shopping day. Now, all I do is sleep or nap.​​​​​​​Can't wait to retire! Or not? A lot of my friends and social network are through work.​​​​​​​

Nothing

Lots. Most of all, having myself, most of my friends and my family being unambiguously healthy. Now, we all have things going on, and quite a few aren’t as active for health reasons.

Truth. And though some of that was evident as we crossed from below 50 to above, the effects were for most of us pretty slight. now that I'm north of 60, there's a lot more of it for me, and, looking around, even more among my peers.

Not to mention that the frequency of losing friends and family just keeps getting greater.

I know that there are lots of good things about growing older - and I appreciate them - but on the whole, I'd rather be younger and healthier and have more of my friends still alive.

Don't fret. When you pass 70 they start smiling again because you remind them of their grandfathers.

I do kind of like the feeling of presenting as completely non-threatening... moms let me talk to their little kids and don't freak out.

But to answer the OP, the feeling of being tough and resilient... that has diminished quite a bit. Frailness is just up the road a ways.

Like I got a lot of smiles before 50. :rolleyes:

I'm on the other side of 70 and approaching 80. I've alway been in shape and physically active. Now it's a struggle. I miss waking up and being excited about what the day will bring.

I'm on the other side of 80 and miss the sprints, but adding a Cytronex e-conversion to my half- bike as well as to our tandem has made a world of difference to riding pleasure. No sprinting, but at least I/we can keep up with the younger riders and still get a workout.

Pushing 74 I feel like the testosterone is starting to wane :eek:

From a cycling perspective nothing really. At 71 I can still not only ride the trails, but have the time to do it every day and am lucky enough that I have nice trails that I can ride to right from my house,

I miss not having to worry so much about a concept called "recovery".

I miss sleeping through the night without having to get up and pee.

I miss doing a brutal ride one day, then getting up the next day to do another brutal ride.

Everything.

Really the other side of 40 for me.
I loved playing in club and church basketball leagues.
At 40 it was time to call it quits. It was no longer fun being mocked by 20 somethings. The joy was gone.

With cycling, I get out of it what I put into it at 59 y/o. Hope I can get another decade before a steep decline.

My youth!
Tim

You can still get smiles from pretty girls over 50. I did, and ended up marrying her when I was 52. (She was 48)
I beat my neighbor's kid in a 40 yard dash, too. You would think someone with all the energy of a 14 month old would have been faster. :roflmao2:
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The thing I miss most is the group of riding buddies I had. We rode together for many, many years, about 20 in total. Then one day it ended as if we all decided unanimously to move in different directions. Of that group I am the only one that stayed with riding my bike.
Brad died on the operating table at age 54, Brian his brother just stopped riding,
Greg and Tom, brothers, got into a tiff and went their separate ways, neither of them rode after that.
Rick got a divorce and stopped riding.
Dave and I still have contact with each other, however he no longer rides. Dave and I designed and built a sweet frame for him, but he has since given it to his son and it simply sits in a house taking up space.
Sara, sweet Sara is raising a family. She is the youngest in the bunch and the nicest. I talk to her once in a while and she sends videos of her kids learning to ride.
Matt, Rich, and a few others I have no idea where they are, nor does anyone else.

Many of the above people I worked with in the shop and after we left the shop. Interesting how I don't miss the shop, the bikes, the equipment, or anything other than the people.

If you miss the smiling pretty girls, you aren't smiling at them. No need to lech, but everyone likes a smiling face. The pretty girls who smile the most at me are in my age bracket. I like it. My wife knows that I just love all women, can't help it, and likes me the more for that.

I'm one of those people who always did whatever they wanted to do, just because I could. I miss that. I can't ski steep moguls. I can't hike 30 miles in a day - I can't even hike 12. That sort of thing. I've had to stop struggling against limitations and just accept them. I can't simply train myself up to be able to surpass them. That was hard. This is fairly recent, a past-70 issue, not a past 50 one. In my 50s I was still in conquer-everything mode. PBP was over my perceived limit, but it probably always had been, right along with climbing Denali, Everest, etc. I was also never interested in rowing around the world.

I'm about to be 77 on Juneteenth. The only thing I miss is not knowing then what I know now.

I miss those who died too soon

I also miss being a daddy

I don't miss anything on the bike because I was never all that good or serious about it and frankly, cycling was never much more than an escape for my brain and so, it is pretty much all good WRT cycling.

I miss being able to do a century every Saturday, with climbing. Not that I would want to do that again, but just knowing that I could knock out a tough ride anytime, without even having to think about it.

8 hours on the bike and then gorging myself at dinner with friends, reliving the ride. Not worrying about my heart or hip or back or shoulder. Sleeping through the night, a big one!

And, as was mentioned, lifelong friends have passed on. That sucks.

40 was where things started to get noticably more difficult, if not impossible, from an athletic point of view, for me too. No more mountain climbing/peakbagging, hiking trips had to be shortened, long all-day bike rides got to be a drag. But I did realize that I didn't have to do much to stay in pretty good shape. I could still enjoy trail hikes (some with overnight backpacks), bike rides up to 2 hours/30 miles seemed refreshing and not exhausting, I could still jog a little, and I could still surf. I didn't need to get a newer bicycle every 5-6 years, just upgrade parts on the older ones as needed,

Seriously-reduced ability to recover after harder workouts, activities. If that aspect weren't so apparent, much would have long since resolved itself.

The rest, I can deal with. But that can only be slowed, not corrected.

*sigh*

This may sound childish. Back a few decades, I got off the subway to see a huge hoodlum just beating the stuffing out of a well dressed man . I remember bellowing "What the He'll is going on here! " and the bully got up and his victim ran off. He looked at me with evil ,ready to maul another victim. And he sized me up, saw the adrenaline in my face, and thought better off it and slunked away. ​​​​​​​I wonder what I would do at this age. My muscles are long gone and I'm still a nice guy, but cynicism comes with the ages. Would someone do the same for me?
Makes me sad.​​​​​​​

What do I miss? I can't remember now, I had it for a second.

The thought of smiling pretty girls and... Warm day riding here in Queens and one of the hottest sexiest young women on this planet jogged past me, and I got the big smile. Unforgettable, but she smiled really because 'there goes another guy that would THROW IT ALL AWAY' for her, haha.

Haha, she was right.