In the following article I will take you into the late 20^th Century and then on to the 2000s, 2010s, and 2020s. Finally, I will tell you my thoughts on where we are headed next when it comes to measuring intensity, and what this may mean for your training and performance.

Let’s start by looking back at the progression of the power meter as we moved on from the 1980s and how it affected training, eventually in several sports—and me.

The first prototype SRM power meter.

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Away from the track, it didn’t make much difference since we had neither measured courses nor personal timing devices. Those were still several years in the future. But we could always tell the effort of a run by how it felt. We described the effort with simple language—very easy, easy, moderate, hard, or very hard. That seemed perfectly normal at the time. And simple. What more could we want?

1960s

Then, in 1969—three years after college—I bought one of the first Japanese-made Seiko wristwatches with a built-in stopwatch. Such a small thing, but it was amazing at the time. If I happened to be on a measured course (which was rare), I could determine my running pace. That was pretty cool. I no longer needed a coach standing on the track to tell me how fast I was running.

Even so, we still relied primarily on those simple descriptions of effort: very easy, easy, moderate, hard, and very hard. Pace was useful information, but how the workout felt remained more important.

Takeaway

Timing workouts was already common, so adapting to the Seiko stopwatch was easy. The watch simply added another piece of information. Most importantly, it fit nicely with my internal sense of effort. Pace and perceived exertion worked together, and for many years that was all we needed.

But things began to change remarkably in the 1970s.

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In SERIOUS TRAINING 24 article last week I described the training of perhaps the hardest working elite endurance athlete of all time—the runner Emil Zátopek. We could certainly make the case that while he trained for long-distance running obsessively, he was highly successful. He was at the top of his sport for nearly a decade. Looking back, it’s clear that his focus was on what we now call “durability”—the capacity to maintain a relatively high output while his competition was fading due to fatigue. This paid off especially well for long races such as marathons.

This week I’d like to explore the training methodology of a cyclist who is well known in the history of sport, but to whom we do not give enough credit for his way of training.

The Italian Fausto Coppi was ahead of his time. But I still wouldn’t say he was the greatest rider of all time although he comes close. He won the Giro d’Italia 5 times over a 14-year period and the Tour de France twice. And he was the first to win both Grand Tours in the same year. Add to that his World Championship win in 1953 and setting a world hour record that remained unbroken for 14 years. These were all remarkable accomplishments. But there was a more accomplished cyclist.

The title of most accomplished goes to Eddie Merckx—or possibly Tadej Pogačar. The latter is still building his reputation in the early stages of an amazing career. With him we are watching cycling history as it’s being made. Only time will tell if he unseats Merckx as cycling’s GOAT. But this is an entirely different matter.

Like Zátopek, his running contemporary, Coppi also raced in the immediate post-World War II era. He trained in his own way, most of which was unusual for his time.

But not all was unique. Some of what he did was quite traditional. What he had in common with other professional cyclists of his era was a fondness for putting in a tremendous amount of saddle time. This is still common today. But otherwise, his training went well beyond that of his contemporaries.

When it comes to on-the-bike training, Coppi was ahead of his time in many ways. He still serves as a good model for how endurance athletes across the sport spectrum should train today.

What can we learn about serious training from Fausto Coppi?

Fausto Coppi

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My college track coach had a favorite workout. We would do it 4-5 days each week (nobody trained on the weekends in the early 1960s). It was simple—440-yard (all US tracks were in yards back then) intervals. There would be a long, leisurely warm-up. Then everyone from sprinters to milers would report to the coach who sat in the stands with a Coke in one hand and a stopwatch in the other. We knew what was next without being told.

He came down from the stands and drew a line on the cinder track with his foot (no nice, all-weather tracks back then). That was the start and finish line. Then he’d blow the whistle and start his big watch. Noone had timing devices other than the coach. This was years before stopwatches were built into a wristwatches.

There was no mention of goal 440-interval times. We were to just run as fast as we could. He never told us how many 440s we were going to do. It could be 8. It could be 28. There was no set recovery time between the 440s. Whenever he felt like it, we’d start again. We ran 440s until the coach got tired of watching. Something we learned early each season was to find someone who could toss his (there were no women in sport then) lunch after a few 440s. We knew that if this kept happening coach would eventually feel sorry for the lunch-tosser and say, “Just one more.”

The only feedback coach gave us during this sufferfest was that we “needed to run faster” –and that we were sissies and crybabies.

That was cutting-edge coaching methodology 60-some years ago. We’ve come a long way.

Don’t get me wrong—the coach wasn’t a bad guy. Track and field just wasn’t his thing. His passion was coaching basketball—which our school excelled at. It was in Indiana, after all. He was just filling in as the track coach until the school found someone else. That didn’t happen during my years there.

Looking back at the “punishment,” it’s amazing I continued running after college.

Those quarter-mile intervals were remarkably popular at the time. We never did 220s, 660s, 880s, or any other distance. Quarter miles only. Why 440s? It all comes down to a very successful runner in the 1940s and 1950s who my coach and others were aware of, admired, and adopted his methodology. Not only was his interval distance popular but also his mindset. He was a role model for all endurance athletes for a couple of decades following his very successful career. There are still athletes in endurance sports who train and push themselves to do more as this athlete did back then.

Who was he, how did he train, and are there lessons to be learned here?

Emil Zátopek

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The key message is this: You don’t stop responding to training after 40—you stop recovering quickly from a heavy training load.

The most successful 40+ athletes slightly adjust training early in their fifth decade and stay highly competitive. Those adjustments don’t stop. They continue to increase with advancing age. What are those adjustments? In other words, how should an athlete’s training change beyond age 40?

The starting place for this discussion is…what changes are most advantageous?

There are three basic changes you should be quite aware of and make training adjustments for:

· Connective tissue health

· Recovery frequency

· Gym training protocols

The following are the most basic changes I’d strongly suggest you focus on after 40 to optimize training and performance. Of course, they also apply to 50, 60, and older athletes. These 3 become increasingly important starting in your 40s.

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Much of what we know about the high-performance and what’s possible comes from studying young professionals, especially their performances with aging. The fastest times at the professional level in endurance sports are generally somewhere between ages 23 and 35. But there are many exceptions at both ends. If we look at 3 of the major endurance events, we can find a few athletes who have raised the aging bar above 35.

For example, American Chris Horner (picture below) is the oldest male winner of any of cycling’s 3 Grand Tours. He took the Vuelta a España in 2013 at age 41. That’s ancient by pro standards. And across all major endurance events, regardless of sport, he is the oldest of all time. On the women’s side in cycling, the oldest Grand Tour winner is Annemiek van Vleuten (below) of the Netherlands who at age 39 won the Tour de France Femmes and the following year at 40 won the 2023 La Vuelta Femenina. She’s another “very old” profesional athlete and also the oldest female of all time in a major event regardless of sport.

How about “old” marathon winners of major events? Romanian Constantina Diță (below) topped the women’s marathon field at the 2008 Beijing Olympics in 2:26:44 at age 38 making her the oldest female major marathon champion in history. The oldest male marathon winner in the major races around the world is American Meb Keflezighi (below). In the 2014 Boston Marathon he won ,at age 38, in 2:08:37.

The Ironman World Championship’s oldest winners were also in their late 30s when they took the top step of their podiums. Natascha Badmann (below) of Switzerlandwas 38 when she won for the sixth time in 2005 and Australian Craig Alexander (below) won 3 times with his oldest at age 38 in 2011.

Across these very different endurance sports, the aging trend is the same. Usually, peak winning ages for such events cluster in the late 20s to early 30s. That roughly 10-year period is typically the golden age range for endurance athletes. As evidenced above, there are exceptional outliers in their late 30s and even in their early 40s—but they are rare. Horner at age 41 and van Vleuten at 40 are unmatched.

What we can learn from this small cohort is that high-performance endurance can be maintained for years if training, health, genetics, and lifestyle are optimized. But the peak physiological capacity that comes with aging still sets limits at the very highest level in sport. We are never going to see a 50-something athlete win any of these events. The bar is too high for that age. Late 40s is also dubious. The mid-40s, however, is certainly a possibility—but I wouldn’t bet the house on it.

Of course, in the real world of amateur sports, these oldest winners of major events are far from being “old” as we typically use the term. They were just older than the others they were racing against. There is also the possibility that they were just at the right places at the right times. Those two 40-something cyclists may be the last that ever win a major event. Time will tell.

What does all this mean for you? Let’s take a deeper dive into what’s going on with your aging body—even though you may only be in your late 30s or early 40s. This may help you decide, with aging in mind, how training can help your performance. You aren’t getting any younger.

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At a glance, they look similar as both involve frequent training, structure, and discipline. The difference isn’t how muchyou train, but how you relate to training and how well it serves your long-term development.

I’ll give you an example of someone who teetered on the thin edge between consistent and obsessed. See what you think.

In the 1980s I owned a running store in Fort Collins, Colo. The running boom was still in its infancy. One of the originators of that movement was Jim Fixx, a magazine editor and freelance writer.

In 1977 Fixx wrote a book, The Complete Book of Running. It was an instant success with people in the US and was on the New York Times Best Seller list for 11 weeks. His book helped the running boom grow. In it he wrote that if you ran a marathon and didn’t smoke you would never have to be concerned with heart disease.

Fixx followed his own advice and by the late ‘70s ran up to 80 miles weekly. Marathons became a big part of his life. He had a best time of 3:15. He was set for long life—or at least thought so.

Prior to becoming a runner, Fixx weighed over 210 pounds (95 kg), smoked 2 packs of cigarettes daily, had a terrible diet, and went through 2 divorces. To make matters worse, his genetics also pointed in the wrong direction. His father had a heart attack at age 35 and died of coronary heart disease 8 years later. To avoid his father’s downfall, Fixx began running at age 35. Seventeen years later He died of coronary heart disease while out for a run. He was cooling down and just 50 yards from where he was staying.

One of his last writing assignments for Sports Illustrated was about the Dallas Aerobics Center started by Dr. Kenneth Cooper, the “Father of Aerobics.” There Dr. Cooper did preventive cardiovascular research. Cooper offered Fixx a treadmill test during the visit. He refused. A few weeks earlier Fixx had mentioned to a friend that he was having chest pains. He apparently didn’t take it seriously.

I recall the day after his death vividly—July 21, 1984. No one came into my store to buy running shoes that day. But a couple of recent purchasers did come by—to return and get a refund for their recent shoe purchases. They were too frightened to run any more. Fixx’s death overwhelmed many and put a crick in the running boom. It took a long time for the running market to overcome the tragedy. It nearly put me out of business.

Was Jim Fixx (pictured below) consistent or obsessive?

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I would stop a hard workout when technique showed even slight signs of breaking down, or when heart rate was too high relative to the prescribed intensity zone, or when a muscle or tendon seemed a bit tight, or when the athlete was significantly slowing down even though effort remained high. And the list goes on.

Athletes will seldom call it quits on a hard workout when any of these vague signs appear. But they are early signs that that it’s time to cool down.

Nearly all the athletes I worked with were very highly motivated. In thirty-some years of one-on-one coaching I only had one who wasn’t. And he was world class with so much natural talent he didn’t need to train as much as most athletes to race well. But even as a professional he was always looking for excuses to not do the workout: “Looks like it might rain,” or “I didn’t sleep well last night.” The list goes on.

Despite usually winning and finishing very high in events such as national championships, he left the sport at an early age. What he could have accomplished with even a bit more motivation was exasperating for me. But, on the other hand, I certainly didn’t have to worry about him training too much.

Such athletes are rare.

Most work very hard to just get to the middle rungs on the performance ladder. Getting to the very top takes extremely high determination and lots of work. When it comes to doing a hard workout, those athletes are in their element. “This will make me faster,” is the notion with which the determined athlete goes into every challenging workout. “I’ve got to wring every last drop of fitness out of this, and nothing will stop me,” is the all-too-common mindset of the exceptionally motivated athlete.

Isn’t that what we should always do? After all, the reason for doing a high-intensity session is to improve performance with a race-like workout—or harder.

Most agree that when it comes to a high-intensity session, “Agony is why I’m here—it will make me faster.”

Unfortunately, this way of thinking leads to small problems that eventually become big problems. Suffering isn’t always productive. There are better ways.

It all starts with timing.

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What is Form? We use that term a lot in sports, from running to cycling to skiing—and even golf and auto racing. In the sports world it continues to be a vague term that roughly translates to “ready for competition.” It’s origin in sport goes back to horse racing in Britain in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. At the time that was the most popular sport in Britain.

Nobody goes to a horse race just to watch horses run. People go to gamble. Before heading to the track to bet a few farthings, a turn-of-the-century Brit would check the newspaper to see which horses were racing. One could also find a list of each horse’s recent race performances which could be used to predict race outcomes for betting purposes. That page was called the “racing form.” You can probably see where this is going. But there’s more.

Bicycle racing was also starting in Europe in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Just as with the horses, one could bet on bike races—especially track racing. And, as with horse racing, there was a race form and a bookie who would take and manage bets.

Being “on form” came to mean the cyclist (or horse) was racing well, according to the form, and could be expected to place high in an upcoming competition or perhaps even win. That’s how the term is still used today.

Let’s take this concept to the next step: How to manage your training so that you come into Form on race day—ready to compete. I’ll do that by showing you another way to use TrainingPeaks’ Performance Management Chart (PMC) beyond last week’s introduction to the topic.

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The PMC example above is mine for the past 365 days. It’s a bit sloppy with considerable down trends except for last fall (mid-chart). That’s because we’ve moved and remodeled twice in the last year. Amazing how that leaves me with much more stress and less time available for training. I would not recommend it for improving your performance. If you are familiar with PMC, you can see that it is only just now (far right end) starting to improve again as my lifestyle gradually returns to training.

I’d like to walk you through how to read—and use—your PMC to not only manage your current training, but to also help you gauge your future training. I’ll try to make this rather complex topic easy to understand.

I won’t use my messy chart above to do that but instead use one from an athlete with quite consistent training and a solid focus on performance. You should come away from this knowing where you are now with your training and understand the basics of what it will take to develop your race readiness.

Let’s get started.

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And I still see the world from a carpenter’s point of view.

That includes training.

In my early days of coaching, around 1980, I began using the term “build” to describe the specific preparation period of training. It seemed appropriate to the “carpenter” in me to describe what happens after the “foundation”—the Base—of training is done. I’ve noticed that “Build” label has since caught on with other coaches.

All of this, of course, is called “periodization.” But in my mind, it’s “construction.” Like a carpenter, I’m constructing something that requires attention to detail. If something is poorly constructed, it will show up when the project is finished. That’s race day.

This attention to detail especially applies to the foundation. It must be carefully assembled. The finished house depends on it. If the foundation is weak, the structure will eventually break down no matter how well it was constructed above ground—the Build period. And it won’t take much for that to happen.

In training for an endurance sport that means the foundation—the Base period—is critical and must be constructed with care. If there’s a weakness in the foundation, it will eventually show up no matter how well you build the above-ground house.

By now I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this. How do we construct the “house” so that it is resistant to stressful forces such as a storm—or a hard race?

Let’s start with the foundation (Base), frame it out (Build), and then do the finish work (Peak).

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There’s also the possibility that concentrating on less critical metrics could start you down the path of improving things that add little value when it comes to achieving your Big Hairy Goal for the upcoming season.

The path to that goal is made up of objectives—mini-goals that, if achieved along the way, lead to seasonal success. For example, the purpose of the Base period is to improve your weakest Base ability—Aerobic Endurance, Skills, or Muscular Force. If you accomplish that, you are well on your way to achieving your goal. A weak ability is a “limiter”—it’s holding you back. It must be your training focus.

The EF Objective

The Base period is relatively simple when it comes to improving limiters. For most experienced athlete, the Base objective is to fully develop Aerobic Endurance. As I explained last week, this can be measured by how much your Efficiency Factor (EF) changes over time. This metric compares power or pace/speed to heart rate for a workout. EF is a good indicator of endurance progress.

If your Aerobic Endurance is always weak, you’ll never come close to your potential as an endurance athlete. Many self-coached, age-group athletes assume this is of little importance. “I’m already good at going slow,” they usually tell me. Those who are students of serious training understand why such workouts are necessary.

To gauge EF progress, count back eight weeks and find a workout like today’s zone 1 or zone 2 steady-state session. Compare the EF for both workouts—today’s and the one from eight weeks ago. Over time, that metric should rise if you are training consistently in zones 1 and 2. But realize that it’s likely to dip down on occasion. That’s normal. It should gradually ratchet upward over time until it plateaus.

The Build period is a bit different. There are three possible objectives, depending on the type of event you do. But, of course, each objective still focuses on improving an ability which is a limiter. For long-course athletes in events lasting longer than about one hour, the most important is usually Durability. I’ve written about this in SERIOUS TRAINING 4 and again last week in SERIOUS TRAINING 15.

There are two other abilities I consider important for some athletes in the Build period. If you do shorter events—those taking about an hour or less—the most important is likely to be Aerobic Capacity training. But if you are an athlete whose performance is based on sprinting (almost exclusively cyclists), then Sprint Power training is a key to success.

In the following article, I introduce the training metrics that give you feedback on how your training for these two abilities is progressing. They’re considerably different from those used for Aerobic Endurance and Durability.

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The purpose of that discussion was to help make your post-workout analysis more meaningful. EF is an excellent indicator of changes in aerobic endurance—both positive and negative. Tracking it after each of your easy (zones 1 and 2) workouts gives you valuable feedback on your progress.

In this article, I want to apply the same concept to the Build period. But before we dive into that, let’s first shift the focus to how to set a season goal since that is why we measure progress.

To successfully reach a season goal, having a clear plan is essential. Don’t just set a goal and forget about it until event day. In its simplest form, a plan means knowing where you’re headed and how you’ll get there. With a plan in place, training becomes not only more focused but also easier to adjust along the way.

An athlete’s goal should be based, in part, on what they’ve achieved in the past and what they believe is possible for the upcoming season. Once you’ve set a reasonable yet challenging goal, the next step is determining how to measure progress toward it.

Over the years, I’ve worked with athletes to set measurable and time-bound objectives—sub-goals. These objectives must be tracked regularly to gauge progress and determine if your primary goal is still achievable or needs adjustment. The best time to measure this is throughout the Build period.

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With so much data it’s easy to get caught up in analysis rather than training. The numbers can quickly become overwhelming.

The key is understanding what really matters.

Given your sport, event, goals, abilities, and limiters, only a few metrics are truly critical. These are the ones you should focus on after each session. Ideally, narrow your post-workout review down to just a couple of metrics for each training period. While it’s fine to glance at the other data, too much attention to all the numbers can be distracting and could even lead you to pursue goals that aren’t aligned with your long-term objectives. Fixing something irrelevant is a waste of time.

But which one or two metrics should you prioritize? What really matters?

Let’s look at a real athlete’s TrainingPeaks Analyze page and see what’s truly important. In this article, I’ll focus on one of the most critical metrics during the Base period—aerobic endurance. In next week’s article, I’ll explore the key metrics during the Build period.

First, let’s review what aerobic endurance training is.

In last week’s post, I shared how super-triathlete Mark Allen improved his aerobic endurance by consistently running and cycling at a very low heart rate throughout his Base. Without ever reaching higher intensity zones (3, 4, or 5), he managed to lower his run pace from 8:15 per mile to 5:20 over several weeks. That’s a 35% improvement, with no high-intensity training. This is a textbook example of how aerobic endurance training works at its best.

To better understand what aerobic endurance is and how it can be tracked, let’s examine a real athlete’s data from a workout.

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I’ve always enjoyed history. As an undergraduate in the early 1960s, I double-majored in physical education and history. I even taught U.S. history at the high school level for nine years in what now seems like another lifetime. That was in the 1970s—after a brief interruption when Uncle Sam wanted me to fight a war in Vietnam.

Whenever I combine physical fitness and history (not teaching and war), I’m having a good time. Studying how the icons of endurance sport trained has always fascinated me. From time to time, I’ll write about some of them here.

This week I want to tell you about how Mark Allen, a remarkable triathlete, trained more than 35 years ago—and what we can still learn from it.

We often think of Allen as perhaps the greatest Ironman-distance triathlete in the sport’s relatively short history. One could even argue that he was the greatest male triathlete of all time at any distance, given his 21 consecutive victories in the late 1980s and early 1990s—including the first Olympic-distance World Championship in 1989.

But before 1989, he couldn’t win the biggest race of all: Ironman Hawaii. Six times he either failed to finish or came up short against athletes like Dave Scott, Scott Molina, and Scott Tinley.

Then something changed.

His training paid off. He went on to win six times in six starts in Kona.

What brought about that transformation?

Mark Allen on the way to his first Ironman Hawaii

win in 1989.

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In the past four weeks, I’ve described aging and aerobic capacity (VO₂ max). The bottom line is that as you age, your aerobic capacity naturally declines. It isn’t just an indicator of fitness—it’s also a reliable gauge of healthspan and even lifespan. When someone’s VO₂ max drops to around 15 mlO₂/kg/min, it becomes extremely difficult to maintain a normal lifestyle. At about this point, most people are reliant on a wheelchair and no longer live independently.

The rate at which your aerobic capacity declines is largely within your control. As I’ve suggested before, your goal should be to train consistently enough that the decline stays below 1% per year. With focused training, it’s even possible to reverse the downward trend—though this is most likely to occur when an athlete who has been inconsistent in their training becomes more committed to regular workouts.

As you age, your training routine will likely need to evolve. We gradually lose our capacity for work, and with that comes a growing need for frequent rest and recovery. This shift typically begins in our forties, increases in our fifties, and becomes a normal part of life in our sixties. Adjusting to this trend can be challenging, but the more committed you are to consistent training and incorporating regular rest and recovery, the better your performance—and overall training—will be.

In this article, I’ll offer some guidelines on how to structure your weekly routine so you can train consistently without accumulating excessive fatigue. Finding that balance can be tricky, but it’s essential for long-term success.

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I also want to mention a remarkable aging female runner I’ve been following over the last year. Jeannie Rice is 78 (pictured below) and ran a 3:33:27 marathon at age 76. She now holds her age group’s world records from 1500 meters to the marathon. A recent aerobic capacity test found her VO₂ max to be 47.8—the highest ever recorded for a woman over age 75.

Male athletes’ aerobic capacities are typically about 10% higher than women’s of the same age and competitive level due to lower body fat, greater muscle mass, higher hemoglobin levels, and other physiological factors. But note this: even though Rice’s VO₂ max is roughly 10% lower than Lopez Garcia’s, she has produced a marathon time about 2% faster. That tells us there’s more to high performance in aging than aerobic capacity alone. Rice is certainly doing something right.

Rice didn’t start running until she was 35. Lopez Garcia began at age 66. Both are late bloomers. Someone recently asked me whether starting a sport later in life might somehow benefit performance. It’s a good question. I haven’t found research on the topic. My guess is that in people such as these two, their outstanding physiology reflects strong genetic endowment. They both did a great job of picking their parents. We weren’t all so fortunate.

Athletes in endurance sports—such as long-distance running, cycling, rowing—can often produce peak performances later in life compared with athletes in power sports like sprinting, baseball, or shot put. While physiology changes with aging, late starters can still develop into high-level age-group performers in endurance events, where experience, consistency, technique, and aerobic efficiency matter greatly. Discipline and dedication are also essential. It’s never too late.

You’re probably not in your 70s or 80s, but you may be beyond the magic age of 35—about when aerobic capacity begins to decline. Let’s take this a bit further as I introduce workouts to help keep your VO₂ max decline in line with the goal mentioned last week: less than 1% decline per year. You may even be able to temporarily reverse the downward trend.

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And your sport also plays a role in determining VO₂ max. The more muscles you use to propel the body in your sport, the higher your aerobic capacity. For example, a Nordic skier using both arms and legs to drive forward will have a higher aerobic capacity than if the same athlete did a bike test as cycling primarily uses the legs to power the bike. In fact, up until recently, the highest aerobic capacity ever reported was for a Nordic skier (the recently reported new record holder’s running test results raises questions).

What is a common aerobic capacity for an 81-year-old man? The normal range is 18 to 25. Exceptional is greater than 40. Lopez Garcia is in a category of his own. It’s especially amazing in that he didn’t start running until he was 66. Why is aerobic capacity so important? It comes down to how much oxygen you can deliver to the muscles. Without oxygen delivered to the muscle there is no fuel. VO₂ max is essentially your engine size. As an endurance athlete, it sets the ceiling for your performance. The higher it is, the more oxygen the muscles get, and the faster you can potentially move.

Notice the “potentially.” There are other physiological factors that determine speed. But VO₂ max is typically the most critical.

When aerobic capacity declines, so does performance. A vast body of research tells us that people generally lose about 5% to 15% of their aerobic capacity per decade after their mid-30s. You may not have noticed the drop in your 30s because it was gradual—and by then, you were likely training and racing more effectively. Experienced-based wisdom can offset small physiological changes. But as your VO₂ max continues to trend downward—which is happening as your age goes up—it becomes increasingly difficult to compensate. Something must change if you want to remain competitive.

Dedicated athletes tend to be at the low end of that range, losing around 0.5% per year. Sedentary individuals may lose 1.5% per year or more. Inconsistent training usually places you somewhere in between, depending on just how inconsistent.

Beyond being consistent, how can you train to stay at the low end of that decline? Can you even reverse it? Can you raise it as you get older? That’s where we’re headed this week.

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The first book, Cycling Past 50, was written in 1998, when there was very little research on aging athletes. I wrote largely from personal experience as a 50-something athlete—and, frankly, it was weak.

The second book, Fast After 50, came out in 2014. By then, much had changed, both for me and for the science of aging. I was entering my seventies, and research on aging and performance had grown substantially. I recently completed a total rewrite of Fast After 50 (it will be on shelves in June) and discovered that there is now even more research on aging and sport to explore and write about—making for happy writing.

The Baby Boomers played a major role in the growth of aging research. They were the first generation considered ‘old’ to take up sport seriously, beginning in the 1970s and 1980s. Before them, vigorous exercise was widely viewed as unsafe for older adults. Over the next three decades, Boomers helped reshape our thinking about aging and physical performance. Now in their sixties and seventies, many are still going strong. Generation X—today’s 50-somethings—is continuing that evolution and bringing a new look to sport.

In this post and the next three, I want to share what I’ve learned about training aging athletes—from being one myself, coaching others, and writing three books on the subject. Alongside current research, I’ll draw on lessons from more than 50 years as an athlete and coach. You may already recognize some of what I will discuss through your own reading and experience with aging, but I hope you’ll come away with a few takeaways that help you train more effectively as the candles on your birthday cake continue to multiply.

In this post and the next three, I’ll explore four broad topics important to aging athletes: healthspan, trainability, training, and recovery. Let’s get started—with mice.

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