Sine the ‘60+’ category appears to be mostly dead, I am posting this here.
I just read through Joe Friel’s ‘Training after 60’ blog post, but was left wondering a few points that are relevant to folks like me. It is pretty unusual to make it into the 60+ category without at least a few health-related bumplos in the road. How does that affect training plans? I am now in the latter part of my 8th decade. I have never been particularly competitive in sport, though have tried to remain in an active training regimen for at least that last 30 years. What Friel dis not touch on is the effects of various health issues that we encounter as we age. In my case, I started treatment for high blood pressure in my 40’s, so my training has helped keep that under control while reducing the need for pharmacological intervention. Chronic back issues have been with me for 30+ years, hip arthritis led to shiny new titanium hip 3 years ago, and now cardiac issues have started to rear their ugly heads. This last year has been a bugger. Here is a graph of my training load in intervals.icu:
Note the increase in activity in Jan, due to nearly daily skate skiing at our local Nordic ski venue. Then a day with Atrial Fibrillation and two back-to-back viral infections reduced my activities. After two more short bouts with AFib, and on consultation with physicians and reading information online, I figure it is probably best to reduce my intensities a bit. Instead of moderately intense (bike or skate ski) nearly every day, I am now going out every other day for the moderate intensity rides, with walks or hiking on the off days. My VO2max chart suggest this routine is helping me build back from the winter doldrums:
Training for Triathlon Alpe d’Huez, turning 67 in a month’s time.
Started the 60+ group, filled it up with Prose, Yarns and talked about art. Seems most members were more interested in what was ahead of them in current standing.
Must say that lately I tend to agree with them. Or as you state, as time passes by, the list of bodily faults expands.
Have followed Friel since his bible, and was surprised by how much he cut down in training as he passed 70. Suggested to him that TP would have all the knowledge needed from same aged participants, to actually come up with suggestions. He answered that there weren’t that many.
Surprised by your Training Load Level og around 35 and your VO2Max at 50. I am currently at 130 and 47. Seems you have some potential.
There are actually 299 people over 70 according to the intervals.icu Power page power profile. That seems to me to be a lot – especially compared to the sample sizes in most sports science papers. TP must have more, surely…
@ CaseyB23 You make an interesting point about age-dependent interruptions to training. They do poke holes into consistency, which we are told is one of the foundations of “success”. So what does lack of consistency mean for training?
If the scientists and coaches are right, then it means that we are likely not making as much “progress” as we would if we were ill / injured less often. But if we are training carefully but enough, and if we are looking after nutrition and other sources of stress, then we are already doing all we can to reduce the incidence of illness / injury. So there is nothing else we can do about that. So we just have to get on with plodding along the path that we have chosen, training for the events or reasons that we do, in the manners that we have learnt work for us. As one write put it: endurance sport is an infinite game [a game without end], which you cannot win. But you can lose [for example, if you give up].
In terms of your specific problem [a run of disruptions in the past 6 months], I can only say that in my own experience, it is still possible to recover some of the loss in performance caused by a long interruption [in my case, hospitalisation after a crash]. Of course, in the longer term, we are trying to minimise the rate at which performance declines. It’s amazing how the meaning of “progress” changes as one ages …
And, finally, @Kim_Bonde it’s nice to see you’re still alive and kicking!
Thanks to both @Michael_Webber and @Kim_Bonde for comments. First, my VO2max is likely closer to 45-46 than 50+, the graph I showed is coming from my own algorithm (https://cyclewatts.pythonanywhere.com/). I am having trouble getting anyone interested in helping me validate it more thoroughly, so its current validity is an N=1 (me), with one clinical VO2max test to compare against. A VO2max of 50+ would put my FTP at over 200. No way it is that high, more like 170-180.
My biggest concern in training currently is to find ways to further avoid the the 3 short A-Fib episodes i experienced since Feb, and my long history of hypertension, which maintained physical activity helps keep in check. Ran into a great article on PubMed that goes into management of athletes with A-Fib ( Practical guidance for management of atrial fibrillation in sports cardiology, Curr Probl Cardiol. 2025 Apr;50(4)). It is one of those rare articles in the professional literature that is free to download. They detail nice literature reviews of the subject of AFib in athletes, particularly older folks. Seems two major factors contributing are atrial fibrosis, inflammation, and enhanced vagal (parasympathetic) tone both related to consistent training, particularly endurance training. They also indicate that best guidance for training with paroxysmal AFib is to avoid higher intensity or prolonged endurance training, but to definitely maintain some kind of training regimen. So that is why I am now backing of my nearly daily rides to every other day. It will be interesting how my old-fart body handles that as time goes on!
From your first posted image, “Training Load per day” seems to hover between 30 and 35 …
I’m doing around 15 hours a week, about half running which tend to give a higher load reading than cycling, with a daily training load currently around 130 … going for 180 within two months … but then I’m younger …
I’ve just turned 70 and glad to have got this far. I don’t have anything to add to the discussion, just glad to read what’s there and understand what others are going through and doing.
I am not really a coach per se but I did happen to coach a 75 year old that won his state championship while following my advice. He had had heart surgery and no one wanted to coach him. He was an over achiever and going hard too often so the only thing I did is tell him to do more “zone 2” HR about 65-70% of max HR especially if he had any other stressors in his life, travel, sleep, … then he should focus on only zone 2. He has adopted this strategy and won his championship and now almost exclusively zone 2 and still on the bike 4-5 days a week at 85.
Anyway this advice was not really from me. Meaning all I did is taught him what Maffetone teaches. Which is a very health first approach to training. High intensity is stressful on your body, as we get older we need to save that for more special occasions or like once a week is likely in your case. Maffetone is running focused but the principals still apply.
Good luck… At 58, I am also setting my sites on cycling after 70, 80 and beyond…
Thanks for the response. This sounds like pretty sound advice and pretty much what I’m doing. I have no aspirations to compete at all, somehow it just doesn’t sit with me. just staying in shape and healthy are my primary goals here.
Yes, just most people need to get more strict because going uphill can be a real challenge at first keeping at a low HR but you should get faster at this low HR and it should get easier in general. Best of luck with your health and training.
