u/MaleficentFloor822

Joe Friel has been coaching endurance athletes for decades, and has written seminal books on the subject (Fast After 50 being the newest one) At 82 he is still training, lifting, and thinking pretty seriously about what changes as we get older.

One thing I wanted to understand from him was: when recovery gets harder, what should we actually cut?

His answer was not simply “train easier.”

A few things I took away from my chat with Joe:

• Don’t automatically remove intensity. For older athletes, Joe’s general approach is to cut unnecessary volume before abandoning the harder work that helps preserve performance.
• Strength work becomes more important, not less. He said one of the biggest mistakes older athletes make in the gym is simply not being consistent enough with it.
• Power is worth thinking about too. We naturally lose fast-twitch capacity with age. Joe talked about using lower-rep, more explosive strength work when maintaining power is a goal.
• Recovery has to influence the plan. This doesn’t mean always taking another easy day. It means paying attention to whether your body is actually ready for the workout you planned.
• Sometimes the right move is to stop. He gave me an example from his own training. He went to the gym after a couple of hard sessions, started lifting, realized he was basically going through the motions, and stopped. His attitude was: this isn’t the day for this workout; I’ll do it another day.

That last one stuck with me because it’s different from just “take it easy when you’re older.”

He still believes in showing up consistently and challenging yourself. But consistency doesn’t mean blindly completing every workout exactly as written.

At 65, 70, 80+, the skill perhaps is to becoming better at deciding which stress is still worth keeping and which stress is just costing you recovery.

Listen with this link

Watch with this link

Full disclosure: I host the Ageless Athlete podcast, and this came from my conversation with Joe Friel. I thought his perspective was particularly relevant to this group.

Cherie Gruenfeld is 82 and still racing triathlons. After 28 Iromans and multiple world records, she's considered a GOAT of the sport.

That’s obviously impressive. But the part of our conversation that felt most relevant to everyday aging had less to do with Ironman and more to do with what she changed in her 70s.

I spoke to her on the [Ageless Athlete podcast](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ageless-athlete-healthy-aging-for-a-strong-capable-life/id1725368341?i=1000790023500). She told me that as she got older, she became much more serious about strength training.

Not because she was trying to look stronger.

Because she was watching older people around her lose the ability to stand upright, climb stairs, carry things, and move confidently through the world.

She didn’t want that.

So she started lifting three days a week and working with a trainer. She also singled out **balance** as something older people often overlook.

One example she gave me was a mud run she does with kids from her nonprofit.

Over time, she noticed that pulling a leg out of deep mud was getting harder. Her balance on slippery ground wasn’t what it used to be. Climbing a wet rope was harder too.

That became very concrete feedback: if she wanted to keep doing things like that, she needed more strength.

So she trained for it. And she can still do it.

She also has a simple philosophy around challenge.

If you can go around the hill or up the hill, sometimes go up the hill.

If you can avoid the wind or ride into it, sometimes take the wind.

Not because suffering is the goal. Because she wants to keep reminding her body and mind that they can still handle difficult things.

I think that’s the part that applies far beyond sport.

You don’t have to race an Ironman in your 80s.

But being able to get off the floor, climb stairs, carry groceries, recover your balance, and still take on something hard once in a while — that seems worth training for!

Full disclosure: I host the Ageless Athlete podcast, and this came from my conversation with Cherie Gruenfeld.

I recently interviewed Rob Lea on the Ageless Athlete podcast who just became the first person in history to complete both Seven Aummits, and the Oceans Seven.

One of the stranger things he told me was how he prepared for the English Channel after coming straight off Everest.

He was around 175 lb after the climb. An experienced channel swimmer told him not to cram in more swim training. His bigger problem was going to be staying warm.

So Rob spent the next month gaining weight.

He got up to roughly 205 lb on lots of pizza, whole milk, heavy cream. He said he barely trained during that stretch beyond what he needed for the qualifying swim.

What convinced him was an earlier training camp in Mallorca. Rob was one of the faster swimmers there, but the water unexpectedly dropped to around 52–53°F. He managed the shorter swims, then had to get out while slower swimmers stayed in and completed six hours.

That was pretty humbling for him.

A few things I found interesting:

• He realized being the fastest swimmer in the group did not matter much if he could not stay warm.
• He later deliberately carried more weight for cold crossings, including the North Channel, where he spent about 10.5 hours in water around the mid-50s.
• His body weight for some of these swims was roughly 190–205 lb, versus more like 160–180 during his triathlon years.
• Most of his training was much less elaborate than I expected: a lot of pool swimming, some 2–3 hour open-water sessions, and very few training swims longer than three hours.
• He also strongly believes in not cramming training close to a major swim. A week out, he would rather arrive rested than squeeze in one more big session.

There was a much scarier lesson too. During his Molokai swim, he finished 14.5 hours in the water feeling like he was drowning. He later developed swimming-induced pulmonary edema and said it took roughly two to three months before his lungs fully recovered.

Rob has now finished all seven Ocean Seven swims, along with the Seven Summits.

Full disclosure: I host the Ageless Athlete podcast and interviewed Rob for the show. I thought the body-composition and cold-water side of his story would be especially relevant here.

Rob goes deeper into the full conversation.

Feel free to listen on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen.

You can watch on Youtube as well.

Joan Price is one of the best-known voices on sexuality and aging.

She’s 82, has been teaching and writing about older-age sexuality for more than 20 years, still teaches dance twice a week, and got married last month.

I had her on the Ageless Athlete podcast recently, and she was terrific. Very funny, very direct, and incredibly practical.

A few things I took away:

• Exercise before sex. Joan’s reasoning is simple: aging slows the rush of blood flow to the genitals, and exercise helps get that circulation going. Her other advice: eat afterward, not right before.
• Desire may stop showing up automatically. She’s a big believer in scheduling intimacy instead of waiting for hormones to do all the work.
• Ask: “What hurts and what works for you today?” Bodies change. Knees hurt. Necks hurt. Energy changes. Joan thinks adapting in real time is much better than pretending nothing has changed.
• Sex can actually get better with age. You know yourself better, communicate better, and can stop treating intercourse as the only “real” version of sex.
• A lot of the decline is cultural, not just physical. Joan talks openly about the shame and “ick factor” society places on older bodies and older sexuality.

The part I liked most was her refusal to treat aging as some embarrassing deterioration!

Her phrase was : accept the changes, stay curious, adapt, and keep pleasure in the picture.

The most useful advice I felt that I'll likely want to implement today at 48 - start building communication skills now before it's too late!

Full disclosure: I host the Ageless Athlete podcast, and this came from my conversation with Joan Price.

Joan goes deeper into the actual episode. Listen on any podcast app, including Apple or Spotify

The best athletes over 50 seem to know a few things the rest of us learn too late.

I'm the host of Ageless Athlete podcast and went back through 140+ conversations and more than 200 hours of interviews with athletes, coaches and scientists to see what kept repeating.

A few patterns were surprisingly consistent:

• They still train power and intensity. Speed does not disappear just because they got older.
• They make recovery part of the plan. Some of the strongest athletes I’ve interviewed now take 2 or 3 days off after a really hard session.
• They train for the exact demand. Joe Barr cut some long-distance volume and added intensity before riding 2,448 miles of Route 66 in 10 days.
• They lift, even when their sport is already physically demanding. Steve Swenson, in his 70s, is very clear that hiking, skiing and cycling alone are not enough to preserve muscle.
• They get more selective about risk. Some have stopped doing sports they enjoy because an injury there could take away the activity they care about most.
• They deliberately surround themselves with active people. Bob Babbitt said being around younger athletes changes the conversation from medications and decline to PRs, races and what’s next.
• They protect continuity. The goal is not one heroic workout. It is still being able to do this 10 years from now.

What I found interesting is that these athletes are not pretending aging does not exist.

They are adjusting aggressively to it.

More recovery. More strength work. More specificity. Better decisions about risk. But still plenty of ambition.

I turned the patterns into a new solo episode of Ageless Athlete: How the World’s Best Athletes Over 50 Actually Train.

If you’re interested in staying strong, capable and athletic into your 60s, 70s and beyond, this is probably one of the most useful episodes I’ve put together.

You can find it on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or any podcast app by searching Ageless Athlete. Apple link below https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ageless-athlete-how-to-stay-strong-curious-capable-for-life/id1725368341?i=1000782955161

I interviewed ultracyclist Joe Barr recently and this is probably the part of my conversation with him that I liked most.

He talked about reaching the point where selectors and people around the sport started putting him in the “too old” box. His reaction was basically: who decided that?

So he kept riding, kept looking for where he still fit, and eventually built a whole second chapter for himself in cycling.

A few things older riders might appreciate:

• He cut some long-distance volume and added more intensity as he got older.
• He did heat work in Spain and altitude work in North Carolina before Route 66.
• He tapered heavily before the race, including a few days with almost no riding.
• He started the race feeling off, backed off instead of forcing it, and said his form really arrived around day four.
• He still uses data, but puts a lot of trust in decades of knowing what his own body is telling him.
• He was heavily tuned into his nutrition and planned every single meal and for every adaptation that may be required.

Then at 66 he just rode 2,448 miles of Route 66 in 10 days this summer and called it the best performance of his career.

His view on age was pretty simple: it is a number other people often use to decide what box you belong in. He didn't accept it and started figuring out where and how he could get better as he aged. I found that different and inspiring.

Full disclosure: I host the Ageless Athlete podcast, and this came from my conversation with Joe Barr. Thought his story was genuinely useful for the older riders amongst us.

EDIT: Adding link to the podcast as some folks have asked. Apple link here but can be found anywhere by searching 'Ageless Athlete - Joe Barr'

Edit: Fair criticism in the comments. The first version was overworked and didn’t sound like me, so I’ve cut it back to what I actually found most interesting.

I recently spoke with Joe Barr. At 66, he rode 2,448 miles of Route 66 in 10 days and called it the best performance of his career.

Joe Barr was told, decades ago, that he was getting too old for the traditional elite cycling path.

He didn’t accept that as the end of the story. He kept riding, kept looking, and eventually found ultracycling.

That seemed to suit a different set of strengths: endurance, patience, planning, self-knowledge, and the ability to stay calm when things go wrong.

What also resonated with me is that this wasn’t just toughness. The ride took nearly two years to put together. There was a nine-person team, route planning, sleep strategy, heat management, nutrition, and constant recalculation along the way.

From the outside, it looks like this one man suffering on a bike, pedaling relentlessly on.

In reality, it was experience and strategy being used very well.

The other thing I liked was how he talked about retirement. Cycling has been his work and his life for as long as he can remember. His view was basically: why retire from the one thing you still love doing?

That may be the most relevant part for older riders.

Yeah, the answer is most certainly not to keep forcing yourself into the version of the sport that suited you at 30. It may be to find the version that fits us now, and see how far you can still take it.

Full disclosure: I host the Ageless Athlete podcast, and this came from my conversation with Joe Barr. Felt Joe's story was highly relevant to masters riders amongst us. Feel free to listen to the whole conversation on Apple with this link or wherever you listen to podcasts.

When I spoke with Joe Friel, I expected a lot of discussion about intervals, recovery and aging.

What surprised me was that early in the conversation, one of the most influential endurance coaches of the past few decades told me he had bought an e-bike.

Of course he still cared deeply about performance. He wanted to keep exploring longer rides and more terrain without every outing becoming a major training load.

That seemed to capture his broader philosophy, which I capture as adapt the tool, but do not abandon the qualities that matter.

A few things he said that stood out:

• Older athletes often remove intensity when they should first remove unnecessary volume.
• Hard training still matters, but it has to happen at the right point in the plan. More intensity at the wrong time is not discipline; it is bad periodization.
• When he coached athletes, he would not keep pushing the plan forward if they had ignored the prescribed recovery or intensity structure. You cannot skip the preparation and then expect the peak workout to work.
• Strength becomes more important with age because cycling alone does not preserve all the muscle and force production you need.
• Recovery is not automatically “take it easy forever.” It is what allows the next important session to actually be productive.

The e-bike point made an impression on me because it is easy to interpret adaptation as surrender.

Joe seems to see it differently: use whatever helps you stay in the sport, but remain deliberate about where you still challenge yourself.

For older riders, where have you adapted—and where are you determined not to back off?

Full disclosure - I host the Ageless Athlete podcast and this came from my discussion with Joe. Thought Joe's persective is genuinely valuable, esp for masters riders amongst us. Feel free to check out the entire conversation via Apple on this link, or via Spotify, Youtue or wherever you listen.

I recently spoke with Matt Fitzgerald about the 80/20 approach, and the biggest takeaway was not simply “run slower.”

It was that many recreational runners spend too much time in the middle: hard enough to accumulate fatigue, but not hard enough to create the adaptations they are chasing.

A few ideas that stood out:

• Easy running should feel genuinely easy
If every run requires concentration or grit, the intensity distribution is probably drifting upward.

• Moderate fatigue can become invisible
Matt compared it to sleeping one hour less than you need every night. You can function, but eventually “slightly tired” starts to feel normal.

• The gray zone is not useless
Moderate intensity has a place. The problem is making it the default intensity for most runs.

• Intensity distribution matters more than pace pride
The purpose of an easy run is not to prove fitness. It is to support consistency, recovery and the quality of harder sessions.

• Slowing down can feel harder psychologically
Many runners know how to push. Holding back requires patience, confidence and a willingness to stop turning every run into a test.

• Recovery becomes increasingly important with age
The training principles do not completely change, but the cost of repeatedly carrying unnecessary fatigue tends to rise.

I was also interested in how this idea extends beyond running. A lot of us seem to live in a permanent moderate-intensity state: always active, rarely fully focused, and rarely properly recovered.

Have you deliberately slowed down your easy days? Did it improve your workouts, race performance or general energy?

Full Disclosure: I’m the host of Ageless Athlete, and this came from my recent conversation with Matt Fitzgerald. Thought this may be genuinely valuable for the masters runners amongst us. You can find it on Apple via this link or Spotify, Youtube, or any other podcast app.

Full disclaimer: I host a podcast called Ageless Athlete, and I recently had a long conversation with Greg Benning, a 64-year-old masters rower who is still competing at a very high level and is still getting faster!

I thought this group might appreciate some of the ideas we got into, esp those of us still trying to perform in middle age and beyond. Even though Greg is a rower, a lot of it felt very relevant to paddling: efficiency, feel, recovery, technique, and how to keep improving on the water as you get older.

A few things that stuck with me:
1. Small gains only matter when they solve a real problem.
Greg is very interested in the little things: setup, pacing, technique, warmup, recovery, equipment, even how he reviews training afterward. But what I liked is that it isn’t random optimization. He’s not trying to tweak everything. He’s looking for the few changes that actually make the boat move better.
2. Technique is fitness.
This was probably the biggest takeaway for me. Better movement isn’t just cleaner or prettier. It changes the cost of each stroke. If you can hold the same pace with less wasted effort, that’s fitness too. Especially as you age, efficiency becomes one of the ways you keep speed without simply piling on more volume.
3. Recovery becomes the real limiter.
At a certain point, the question isn’t just “can I do the work?” It’s “can I absorb the work and come back again?” Greg was very clear that the margin for error gets smaller with age. You can still train hard, but the hard work has to be something your body can actually adapt to.
4. Data is useful, but feel still matters.
Greg uses numbers, logs, video, and even AI to look for patterns. But the goal is not better spreadsheets. The goal is better movement and better decisions. That distinction felt important. Track enough to learn, but not so much that you stop paying attention to what the water, boat, paddle, and body are telling you.
5. He still talks like someone trying to get better.
That was the part I found most inspiring. He isn’t framing everything around managing decline. He’s still solving performance problems. The constraints are different now, but the mindset is still: where can I improve?

I came into the conversation thinking rowing might be too specific to translate.
It wasn’t.

The details were rowing, but the bigger ideas felt useful for anyone who wants to move well on the water for a long time: improve the stroke, respect recovery, make fewer random changes, and keep asking whether the work is actually making you faster or just making you tired.

Feel free to listen via Apple Podcasts or anywhere you listen

I recently interviewed a molecular biologist who has spent most of his life studying aging, telomeres, inflammation, and whether aging itself can be slowed or even reversed.

Some of his ideas are bold and controversial, especially around telomeres and age reversal, so I’m not presenting this as medical advice. But a few of the practical takeaways were surprisingly grounded, and I thought this sub might appreciate them.

Here’s what stood out.

1. Inflammation is one of the big things to reduce.

His view is that aging has a biological clock, but that many of us speed that clock up through chronic inflammation and oxidative stress.

The obvious examples were smoking, chronic stress, obesity, poor diet, toxins, and overtraining. But the broader idea was simple: aging is not just about time passing. It is also about how much unnecessary damage and repair your body is dealing with.

2. Exercise helps, but intensity is the trap.

This was probably the most useful takeaway for me.

He said endurance exercise has a “Goldilocks effect.”

Too little is bad.

Too much can also be bad.

But the real issue is often intensity. If every workout becomes a sufferfest, you may be creating more inflammation and oxidative stress than you realize.

His advice was basically:

Move consistently.
Train often.
But keep it fun enough that you can repeat it.

When it stops being fun, back off.

3. Consistency beats heroic effort.

One brutal workout does not make you age better.

One perfect supplement stack does not make you age better.

One “clean” month does not make you age better.

The boring stuff seems to matter most: regular movement, sustainable effort, decent sleep, lower stress, better food, and not repeatedly pushing the body into breakdown.

4. Don’t confuse looking younger with aging slower.

This was an interesting point. He was critical of approaches that temporarily make people look younger by damaging tissue and forcing repair.

In fact, cosmetic interventions can make us look temporarily, but give us prune-like appearances later. Just look at some of the aging movie stars out there!

5. Healthspan matters more than lifespan.

The part I keep coming back to is that most of us don’t just want more years.

We want more capable years.

More years where we can walk, travel, climb stairs, exercise, think clearly, play with grandkids, and still feel like ourselves.

So for me, the simplest takeaway was:

Slow aging by reducing unnecessary inflammation, moving consistently, keeping intensity sustainable, and building a life you can actually repeat for decades.

Again, not medical advice and not an endorsement of any supplement, test, or protocol. Just a few ideas from a wide-ranging conversation that I found useful.

Full disclosure: I host a podcast called Ageless Athlete. Felt the takeways here were genuinely usefly for this community. Feel free to listen via this Apple link or wherever else you listen.

For those who may not know Bob, he started running in his late 50s and, last year, at 80 years old, became the oldest official finisher of Badwater 135. What makes it even more remarkable is that just a couple of years earlier, he had covered the entire course but missed the cutoff by only 17 minutes. Most people would've let that be the ending. Bob came back and finished the job.

I thought this conversation would be especially relevant for those of us who are not just training for the next race or the next season, but hoping to keep running, performing, and taking on hard things well into our later years.

A few things that some of us here will appreciate, esp if we want to keep our love of running strong as we get older :

Consistency beats almost everything else - Bob has some lung issues and freely admits he probably shouldn't be able to run the distances he does. He credits two decades of consistently staying fit far more than any single training block or breakthrough workout.

Learn the difference between productive pain and dangerous pain- One of my favorite parts of the conversation was hearing how he decides whether to keep pushing or back off. That judgment isn't something you're born with. It's something you earn over years of paying attention to your body.

Your training has to evolve with age- He doesn't try to train like a 40-year-old. Recovery matters more. Strength work matters more. Listening matters more. His goal isn't to prove he hasn't aged, but it's to keep adapting. He gives lots of credit to his coach Lisa Smith-Batchen.

One race doesn't get to write your story.-Missing the Badwater cutoff by 17 minutes could easily have been the final chapter. Bob never saw it that way. He simply viewed it as unfinished business.

Starting late isn't a disadvantage.-He didn't even begin running until his late 50s. I think that's a pretty humbling reminder that endurance is a long game, and there are still reasonable goals waiting for people who start much later than they think they should.

For folks out there, are there are practices, routines etc you are following to continue to run strong in your 50s, 60s, 70s, or even beyond?

Full disclosure: I host a podcast called Ageless Athlete. This post came out of my second conversation with Bob, which was released this week. Feel free to listen via this link on Apple or wherever you listen.

Full disclosure: I host the Ageless Athlete podcast, and this came up for me after a conversation I recorded with Beth Rodden.

One part of the conversation really stuck with me. Beth talked about how the old climbing story was often built around athletes as superhumans: bold, certain, tough, always progressing. And she said that never matched her real experience. She had insecurity, self-doubt, injuries, days where she was good at what she did, and days where she wasn’t.

I related to that more than I expected.

My hardest grade was 5.13a, about 13 years ago. I still carry that around as part of my identity. But the honest version is: I’ve been injured, at 48 now, I'm not the same physically / mentally, and there are days that I'm struggling on 5.11s.

And I notice how much ego shows up around that.

Sometimes I catch myself apologizing before I even climb something easier. Sometimes I don’t want to get on certain routes if people are around. Sometimes I want to explain the old version of myself before anyone sees the current one.

Which is ridiculous, but also very real.

For a sub like this, where many of us are trying to improve and chase harder grades, I’m curious how people think about this. Does protecting your climbing identity make you worse? Does it create unnecessary tension, bad route choices, or avoidance? Or is some amount of ego useful fuel?

Also, those who have dealt with injury, aging, long plateaus, or big gaps between your past and current ability: how do you stay ambitious without constantly measuring yourself against who you used to be?

Feel free to check out the pod if you are so inclined. Apple link, or wherever you listen....