I was thinking about athletes who were dominant in the last few years but then immediately became irrelevant when they hit mid 30s. Jenny Simpson is an obvious one that comes to mind. But is it really that we decline drastically in mid 30s or do priorities change? I was in a lot better shape in my 20s, but that was because I cared a lot about how I looked and thought being fit would help in finding a partner. Mid 30s now, still alone, and work a soul crushing job so I don't give a d'amn anymore. My focus is on saving enough so I can buy a house in cash, not having a six pack to impress anyone. I think its the same thing for women, plus baby fever. what do ya'll think?
I don't think it necessarily is drastic. Maybe some elites are just done in their mid 30s and priorities change. The desire is gone. But your body will decline in the years due to the decline of testosterone production -- it's hard to say how much is because of life-style choices. If you don't work at it your body will start to fall apart. I actually improved to about the level of my teens during my 40s. 4:34 vs 4:49 on the mile and 5k was almost even so it is possible that the decline need not be as drastic but there will be some decline. Knowing what I know now I think keeping up the longevity in the sport very difficult both mentally and physically.
I don't know but I've always appreciated that so many of them understand it. Bolt and Phelps made sure their final Olympics was early 30s, not mid 30s when they would have made comparative fools of themselves. Contrast to someone like Lochte who had no clue, still trying to make the team at age 36 yet not coming close despite limiting himself to one event, the one in which he remains the world record holder.
By far the best related quote I've ever heard sourced from Sugar Ray Leonard prior to his comeback fight against Marvin Hagler in 1987. A reporter asked him if he was worried about his reflexes being gone after such a long layoff. Leonard said (paraphrased), "No, I'm not worried. I'm 30. At 35 I'd worry."
Of course, Leonard later betrayed his own advice and instincts by fighting well beyond age 35. That was a sad sight against Camacho.
Also, life gets in the way. Job responsibilities grow along with promotions and salary. The kids start doing their thing on Saturdays (soccer games, gymnastics meets), and you get to race less as a result. It's harder to motivate yourself to train when you get to race less.
There's also the "been there, done that" factor. Your PRs are probably permanently set by your 30s (at least if you raced through school), and you begin to ask, "what's the point?"
I was thinking about athletes who were dominant in the last few years but then immediately became irrelevant when they hit mid 30s. Jenny Simpson is an obvious one that comes to mind. But is it really that we decline drastically in mid 30s or do priorities change? I was in a lot better shape in my 20s, but that was because I cared a lot about how I looked and thought being fit would help in finding a partner. Mid 30s now, still alone, and work a soul crushing job so I don't give a d'amn anymore. My focus is on saving enough so I can buy a house in cash, not having a six pack to impress anyone. I think its the same thing for women, plus baby fever. what do ya'll think?
I feel very similar to you, but my main reason is from developing an imbalance on one side at age 29 and never being able to correct it the past 2 years. Hoping to fix it and hit one last round of PRs before age 35, but long term injury is hard to overcome.
Wear and tear on the body. By your 30s distance runner would have already racked up thousands of miles. Such pounding has to reflect somewhere, somehow.
Also, life gets in the way. Job responsibilities grow along with promotions and salary. The kids start doing their thing on Saturdays (soccer games, gymnastics meets), and you get to race less as a result. It's harder to motivate yourself to train when you get to race less.
There's also the "been there, done that" factor. Your PRs are probably permanently set by your 30s (at least if you raced through school), and you begin to ask, "what's the point?"
This is it right here. When you are in your 20s, you can run and recover easily without thinking too much about it. You probably don't have any crazy stress yet. Life is overall pretty easy.
By the time you are in your mid 30s, it doesn't work like that. I was talking to a running buddy of mine a few weeks ago about how you have to work twice as hard just to not get slower. The small stuff becomes very important. You really do need to have your training/diet/sleep/recovery/outside stress be completely controlled. It gets hard to justify.
I think its actually worse for a hobby jogger like me. There's no retiring when you are slow runner. You just fade away gradually. The final nail in the coffin is mental. You just don't want to do it anymore and that's that. You may not even know you "retired" when you do.
I was thinking about athletes who were dominant in the last few years but then immediately became irrelevant when they hit mid 30s. Jenny Simpson is an obvious one that comes to mind. But is it really that we decline drastically in mid 30s or do priorities change? I was in a lot better shape in my 20s, but that was because I cared a lot about how I looked and thought being fit would help in finding a partner. Mid 30s now, still alone, and work a soul crushing job so I don't give a d'amn anymore. My focus is on saving enough so I can buy a house in cash, not having a six pack to impress anyone. I think its the same thing for women, plus baby fever. what do ya'll think?
Prolonged wear and tear or life coming in the way are unnecessary as explanations, as in even without any injuries and with a supporting family, the decline is inevitable. Wear and tear can injure you and sometimes injure you irrecoverably, but tissue microdamage and reformation are also essential to strength and conditioning, so assuming you are not overtraining to the point of detriment, training less in your twenties to avoid wear and tear will only make you slower in your twenties as well as thirties and beyond
Factors like bone density, muscle mass, testosterone etc. that are instrumental to sport performance all start declining by late thirties. You could go one level deeper and explain those as synergistic with underlying usual suspects like oxidative stress, glycation, telomere shortening, side reactions, mutations, aggregation of proteins, etc., but we don’t fully understand the nature of the body’s ticking clock called “aging” and to what extent it can be circumvented.
Wear and tear on the body. By your 30s distance runner would have already racked up thousands of miles. Such pounding has to reflect somewhere, somehow.
Exactly. For other sports, it's even worse. A pro boxer has probably thrown hundreds of thousands of punches by then and taken a considerable fraction of that.
I'm a fan of soccer and cycling, very few people are top soccer players or top cyclists after the age of 35. There has to be a biological reason for that.
There's also the "been there, done that" factor. Your PRs are probably permanently set by your 30s (at least if you raced through school), and you begin to ask, "what's the point?"
Yeah, that's definitely a huge factor as well. You spend all of high school, college, and beyond trying to chase something like a sub 2 800 or a sub 15 5K. You finally break the barrier at age 30, and that hunger and determination just won't be there the second time around.
When it's windy and rainy out there, are you still going to do that run after achieving your main goal and knowing that you have no teammates counting on you, no coaches motivating you, and no scholarship or significant prize money on the line? No, most people, including former D1 guys, would just stay home instead and hobby jog the next day.
Max heart rate capability declines. This becomes obvious in swimming events, 100m & 200m, running 400m & 800m. I am sure in speed skating too but I do not know speed skating equivalent distances. A person can keep adding more miles and maybe do well to age 40 10000m to Marathon to maybe 50K.
This post seriously needs to have guardrails put on it. The world record in the marathon was set by a dude who was 37 (almost 38) at the time just last year for Christ’s sake. I know a number of people in their early 40s running comparable times to their early 30s in the HM and M. For many hobby joggers, training and lifestyle are the biggest factors vs. physiological age.
Now if you are talking about events where top end speed is a factor then ya… late 30s starts to become an issue.
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