Age-specific information for cyclists I was reading a discussion (Cycling: mashing versus spinning) in which someone commented ...


  In the big picture, winning against
  other age-groupers is pretty
  unremarkable.


... which implies that cycling performance is affected by one's age.

Now ageing might be, to quote the FAQ, "an actual problem that you face".

Assuming that ageing is in fact some kind of 'problem', can you tell me what's useful to know about it? Especially as it relates to cycling (ability, performance, expectations, and/or training)?

For example a little bit of googling found "Key found to muscle loss as we age" which suggests that one cause of muscle wasting in older people is decreased blood flow to the legs (which cycling presumably helps to counter-act somewhat).

To be a bit more specific:


I'm soon to be 50 (but please feel free to talk about other ages if you know about it and think it would interest)
I'd looking for any specifically age-related information (e.g. I think all articles will say that in general exercise is good for you at any/every age: which is the opposite of being an age-specific statement, or statements about specific ages or ageing)
I'm looking for bicycle-specific information (so perhaps not especially for statements relating to flexibility, memory and other mental abilities, impact-resilience, and/or other such ageing-related phenomena that aren't especially relevant to bicycling)
I'd prefer actionable or prescriptive information
I'm over 50, starting my 30th year of cycling, and raced for 10 years when much younger. I've been tracking my performance over the 30 years with detailed training diaries. 

The main age related issue I've found is that it takes longer for me to recover from hard efforts. The consequence is that I cannot train as hard overall because I cannot handle as many hard days of training. I also find that I need to warm up longer before hard efforts, which reduces the time I can spend working hard in any given training session.

Overall, I haven't found much decrease in performance given the reduced amount of hard training. In other words, if I compare my current performance to earlier times when I was training at the same level of effort, my performance is only a little worse.

I'm curious to find out at what age I will start seeing a bigger decline.

I deal with the reduced number of hard sessions by pushing myself extremely hard during those sessions and taking it much easier on other rides. My goal is that my hard days are very hard and my easy days are very easy.