Experience over youth

[2manyoranges]

Nab - this is seriously uplifting. Respect. And thanks for a long, cogent and involving post. Great stuff.

Reminds me of a time I was in my mid 50s, and saw two hardball skiers in baggy Picture gear hooning down the mountain on twintips. Having a ball. Huh....teenagers. So I popped in behind them and enjoyed matching their turns until they pulled to the side/ But my eyes popped out when they looked uphill. They could not have been a day under 80, even allowing for sun-ravaged skin....excellent.

I think you nailed it....

Old timers can rely on experience, tenacity, preparedness, increased pain tolerance and caution to occasionally best a few younger inexperienced eager beavers.

Gnarly. There....I said it. You need a T shirt with 'Serious Tenacity' on the front....

 

[Tootyred]

Cetainly learning to ride off road on a cow horned Raleigh equipe certainly makes for skills that younger riders will never get. My nephews ride slack head 29ers and whilst the big wheels and springs make things considerably easier to take, their finesse and line choices suck! Why?.....because their bikes will take it! ( well apart from the modern orange that cracked.....oh and the cube that cracked....and the pace)...

I have lent them my modern (92) marin fully rigid......wow they look scared!

Its basically a whole different sport! Bit like rugby vs football.....they both have a ball, but they are not the same.

 

[Nabeaquam]

Nab - this is seriously uplifting. Respect. And thanks for a long, cogent and involving post. Great stuff.

Reminds me of a time I was in my mid 50s, and saw two hardball skiers in baggy Picture gear hooning down the mountain on twintips. Having a ball. Huh....teenagers. So I popped in behind them and enjoyed matching their turns until they pulled to the side/ But my eyes popped out when they looked uphill. They could not have been a day under 80, even allowing for sun-ravaged skin....excellent.

I think you nailed it....

Old timers can rely on experience, tenacity, preparedness, increased pain tolerance and caution to occasionally best a few younger inexperienced eager beavers.

Gnarly. There....I said it. You need a T shirt with 'Serious Tenacity' on the front....

An old girl friend sent me a T shirt, spring of 2020, in the mail, out of the blue. It was during the lockdown, one in our high school class had died from Covid so everyone was depressed, hiding and on edge. I used our class Facebook page to ask the class for donations of a dollar a mile for our class sponsored school scholarship fund. The stated goal was one mile of gravel in a single ride for how old we were. I exceeded a little, went 77 miles. I didn’t think anyone would contribute and I was doing the ride anyway. There were a lot of donations, over $3,000 and the scholarship is now fully funded. The T shirt has a picture of a gorilla riding a bike. My wife cracked up. It was an easy ride terrain wise except for some old snow on the road and too many black flies to stop. I’d be embarrassed to use the shirt now, age just caught up and wimped me out.

 

[M-Power]

Love this thread

 

[Nabeaquam]

Cetainly learning to ride off road on a cow horned Raleigh equipe certainly makes for skills that younger riders will never get. My nephews ride slack head 29ers and whilst the big wheels and springs make things considerably easier to take, their finesse and line choices suck! Why?.....because their bikes will take it! ( well apart from the modern orange that cracked.....oh and the cube that cracked....and the pace)...

I have lent them my modern (92) marin fully rigid......wow they look scared!

Its basically a whole different sport! Bit like rugby vs football.....they both have a ball, but they are not the same.

I have a full suspension fat bike, which I hate. I hear ya, all you gotta do is point the bars between the trees. The only skill required is avoiding over the bar crashes from pedal strikes. It’s like riding a couch so you don’t pay attention to picking a line. By the way, the fat bike frame broke under warrantee. It was factory replaced but I don’t trust it so it has been downgraded to one of my snow bikes, my other snow bike is an ice bike with studs. How in the hell can someone in their 70 s break two mountain bike frames and blow out rear freewheels, all new and under warrantee, is beyond me. Poor quality control, junk passed off as something we need If we want to ride like Renee. For those that want to know the group set I destroyed it’s Campy-no-go. I rode the Marji on a fully rigid home built 26+ 2 x 10 . Geared with it’s 36 and 21 chainrings and 11 to 40 cogs. Perfect geriatric bike. You have to build your own home built beater geriatric bike, the market is too small for bike brands to care. Their attitude is let these old folks go to the storage bin or else get a electric bike. A few years ago I started pooping out on hills so I did 6 months of hill climb training. I never improved, I had to always down shift at the same place. My doctor told me I was screwed, my heart rate max was limiting my performance. I still have the same ejection fraction, my resting heart rate is 62, if I didn’t do a big ride yesterday, and my last BP at his office was105/60. He asked me if I was dizzy when I got up. Too bad docs aren’t allowed to prescribe epo, testosterone and growth hormone. I told him I’m not out to win, I just want to keep going and it was a medical shame that he couldn’t at least prescribe me anabolic steroids. Most of my races are in the masters class, 50+. I think that’s ageism, why not have 70 to 80 as a class, 80 to 85, etc. As the current crop of young enthusiasts age, this will become reality.

 

[2manyoranges]

At 40, over twenty years ago, I entered my first race as a Master. I won. But I think that might have been because there was a limited entry. Me. And only me.

We looked at the entry to the Grinduro in Machynlleth this year - we happened to be in Mach throwing ourselves down the Welsh hillsides at the same time as the event was on. Somewhat scarily, the Vet 40+ entry was massive and the times were impressive. Frighteningly, the Grand Vet 50-59 had a mahoosive entry including Rory Hitchins, and the Super Vet 60+ had five entrants. Five….that’s plenty, given that two of the times were as fast as the top Grand Vets.

Sh+t.

 

[2manyoranges]

M power - my reaction entirely. But I suppose we always thought that when we raced we were probably in around the top 2pc of the total MTB riders in the UK. If you think of those five in Machynlleth, getting to over 60 and still racing probably means they are in the top 0.002pc of the population. Bloody good basically.

Anthony looked at the entry and said ‘Shall we do it next year…?’
After suppressing the urge to run away and hide I heard myself answer in a tiny tiny voice … ‘er…ok…’

Well…that’s going to be fun.…

 

[MattiThundrrr]

I’m a few weeks shy of 76 and my ability to do single track has really diminished over the last two years. I’m done with it except for the beginner trails and gravel

That sucks, Clyde. Sorry to hear that, but glad you are still getting out, even if it's at a diminished capacity. I'm not as far along as you are, but I'm starting to feel the mileage too. Had a simple "over the bars" incident three weeks ago, nothing serious, not too fast, nothing steep. I'm still getting over it, haven't been able to ride trails since.
This is something else to consider in the "age vs youth" equation. They are able to dive into things without fear, whereas when I get to the hairy stuff, I'm more cautious and conservative. I remember pain. I remember recuperating. It's at the back of my mind when I'm out there risking it