Faster isn't everything: How to age well as an athlete

Aged 35, I became a “veteran”. At least in terms of UK Athletics age classifications. I had also just retired as a professional athlete, so there was nothing quite like being labelled a retired veteran to make me feel ancient! Now I’m approaching a landmark birthday – my half century.

When I think back to when my mum and dad turned 50, I remember thinking, “That’s SO OLD!”. But now I’m nearly 50, I don’t really feel ‘old’ at all – but it has led to me reflecting much more on age, capability and possibility. 

Ageing is something that happens to all of us, although it's interesting how rarely we think about it in those terms until we reach a certain point in our lives. As a child I was excited by birthdays, and loved getting older and having more freedom. Adolescence brings enormous physical, emotional and social changes, which can be unsettling (for the teenager and the parent!). This is something my husband and I have been talking about with our daughter, who is ten and standing on the threshold of puberty. Change can be scary: our bodies change, relationships change, emotions change (by the minute). But change, and ageing, is a natural part of life. 

Somewhere along the way, our perception seems to shift. Instead of seeing ageing as another stage of development, we start to see it through the lens of decline or loss: an inability to get out of bed without our joints creaking, greying hair, the loss of firm, smooth skin. We start to measure ourselves against a younger version of ourselves and it’s easy to think about things that are ‘going wrong’ or ‘falling apart’. 

But maybe ageing itself isn’t really the problem? Perhaps the bigger challenge is our perception of it. Of course, there are aspects of ageing that can be frustrating, particularly if you are someone who has spent much of your life doing sport. Over the past few years I have noticed that I don’t recover quite as quickly from hard sessions, the training session I once happily squeezed into an already busy day now requires a little more planning and negotiation, and yes, I feel achy when I get out of bed in the morning. There are physiological changes that we cannot simply wish away, and pretending otherwise would be both unrealistic and unhelpful.

But ageing as an athlete is not only about what happens to our physiology: it is about the interaction between our changing bodies, our minds and everything else that is going on in our lives. Work, family, relationships, responsibilities, priorities, perceptions and environment all influence how we age and how active we are as we get older. As hard as it is to accept, I can’t recreate the athlete I was at 30, but I can understand my body now, adapt what I do and continue to find ways to be active as long as possible. 

What actually happens as we age?

There’s no escaping the fact that some aspects of physical performance change with age. In endurance athletes, VO₂ max gradually decreases, influenced by changes in the cardiovascular system and the body’s ability to deliver and use oxygen, while muscle mass, strength and power also become harder to maintain. Bone density can be impacted too, particularly for women as they move through menopause and beyond. I know that my bone density isn’t what it once was, and it’s something I have to be really mindful about protecting. That being said, research shows that physical activity is associated with much better preservation of cardiovascular fitness, strength, mobility and physical function than a sedentary lifestyle, which is a compelling reason not to regard ageing as an excuse to stop moving.

And whilst we do see changes, they don’t have to be a limiter for performance. I am fortunate to have a brilliant example of this much closer to home. Caroline Powell, who lives in my village, is a British Masters track and field athlete competing in the W70 age group, and she has set European age-group records, including in the 400m. It’s superb to see her training on the local playing field, committed to setting and achieving sporting goals.

In my autobiography I also wrote about Sister Madonna Buder, the American nun better known as the “Iron Nun”. Sister Madonna completed her first IRONMAN® at 55 and went on to complete dozens more, eventually becoming the oldest person to complete a full IRONMAN® when she finished at the age of 82 in 2012.

And in 2025, Natalie Grabow completed the IRONMAN® World Championship in Kona aged 80, becoming the oldest woman to finish the event. A month before, Kokichi Akuzawa reached the summit of Mount Fuji at the age of 102. Just wow. There are similar stories from around the world of people continuing to climb, hike, cycle, swim and compete well into their 70s, 80s, 90s and beyond.

I’m not suggesting that everyone should be completing an IRONMAN® at 80 or climbing a mountain at 102. But it does demonstrate that chronological age can be a pretty poor predictor of what an individual is capable of achieving, and that’s hugely motivating.

Of course, ageing brings physiological changes, but there’s enormous individual variation in how those changes manifest, influenced by genetics, training history, health, lifestyle and whether we continue to challenge our bodies. We should respect the physiology, but we should also be careful not to impose limitations on ourselves simply because a number tells us that we are getting older.

Adaptation is part of being an athlete

Strength training becomes increasingly important as we get older because maintaining muscle mass and strength is crucial not only for sporting performance but for everyday function, independence and quality of life. I certainly did not always appreciate this. Until a stress fracture recently forced me to rethink my approach, if I had an extra hour available to train, I would almost certainly have chosen to run rather than lift weights or stretch. With hindsight, I would have been better served by giving strength and mobility work a little more attention, not only for performance but also for health and for life.

Recovery is also crucial. The hard session still matters, but so does what you do before and afterwards, and there is little point in accumulating training simply for the sake of accumulating it if your body doesn’t have the opportunity to adapt.

The same is true of nutrition. As we age, maintaining adequate protein intake becomes increasingly important for supporting muscle mass and recovery, while overall dietary quality matters for bone health, cardiovascular health, energy and general wellbeing. Calcium and vitamin D become particularly relevant to bone health, and for anyone who is training regularly, fuelling appropriately rather than constantly trying to restrict calories is important. The goal shouldn’t be to find the perfect ageing-athlete diet, because there’s no such thing; it’s to eat in a way that supports the body we have, the activity we do and the life we want to lead.

For women, there’s another important physical transition that sits alongside the general process of ageing, and that is menopause. I’m pleased that we’re finally talking about it much more openly, because women have spent far too long being expected to simply get on with whatever their bodies decide to throw at them, while being told that tiredness, poor sleep, changes in body composition or suddenly finding exercise feels different are simply an inevitable part of getting older. The reality is obviously more nuanced.

During the menopausal transition, changes in hormones can be accompanied by symptoms affecting sleep, mood, temperature regulation, energy, body composition and musculoskeletal health, all of which can have implications for how a woman feels as an athlete. At the same time, we need to be careful about making sweeping statements about menopause and athletic performance, because the research base is still relatively small (that needs to change!) and the relationship between menopause itself and endurance performance remains unclear.

What we do know is that women’s bodies alter, and understanding those changes gives us a much better chance of adapting our training rather than assuming that something has somehow gone wrong. I can see and feel the changes happening to me. It’s strange, feeling your body isn’t what it once was. I have to remember that my body isn’t a machine that I programme once and use to perform identically for the next forty years. It is constantly changing, and my job as an athlete is to change with it.

Performance isn’t the same thing as progress

The physical changes are only part of the story, because there’s also the psychological challenge of watching numbers that once seemed to move in one direction begin to behave rather differently. For endurance athletes in particular, this can be difficult because we’re so used to measuring ourselves with times, distances, watts, heart rates, race results and personal bests. When you’re younger, progress can feel relatively straightforward: train consistently, become fitter and hopefully race faster. Eventually, we all reach the point where we can’t simply train harder and expect the clock to continue moving in the direction it used to. That can be difficult to accept, particularly if sport has been an important part of our identity.

But perhaps it also gives us an opportunity to redefine what improvement means. This is certainly the case for me. I can’t run as fast aged 49 as I did when I was 35, but does this make me less ‘successful’?  

I was scared to race as I got older. Scared to be slower. But I have come to realise that getting better doesn’t necessarily have to mean getting faster (although it may still be possible for some people). It might mean becoming mentally stronger, more consistent, more efficient or better at pacing and fuelling; it might mean returning from injury or illness, or completing a challenge that once seemed beyond you. Your personal best doesn’t have to mean the fastest time you’ve ever recorded. It can mean being the best athlete you can be at the age and stage of life you are in now. I need to remember that I can only be the best in the context of my life. 

For Caroline, that might mean setting a European W70 record. For someone else, it might mean completing their first 5K at 70, returning to swimming after ten years away from the pool (as I have this year), or completing an IRONMAN® at 60. The achievement doesn’t become less impressive because the stopwatch says something different from what it did twenty years ago.

There is more to ageing well than exercise

There’s also a surprisingly emotional side to ageing as an athlete, because sport can become wrapped up in our identity and provide purpose, community, confidence and a sense of who we are. When our physical performance changes, it can sometimes feel as though something much bigger is changing too. For women, menopause can add another layer to this. If your body suddenly feels unfamiliar, if your sleep is disrupted, if your mood changes or if exercise doesn’t feel quite the same, it can be unsettling, particularly when sport has previously been one of the things that made you feel most like yourself.

I think knowledge is powerful. Understanding what may be happening physiologically can stop us interpreting every change as a personal failure. Needing more recovery doesn’t mean you have become lazy, adjusting your training doesn’t mean you have lost your competitive edge, and taking strength work more seriously doesn’t mean you have somehow abandoned your identity as an endurance athlete.  It means you’re adapting, and I think there’s something rather positive about becoming sufficiently experienced as an athlete to understand that adaptation is not the same thing as giving up.

But perhaps we also need to broaden the conversation beyond exercise altogether. We live in an age obsessed with longevity. We are constantly bombarded with advice about how to optimise, extend and biohack our lives, from supplements and wearable technology to cold plunges, fasting protocols and increasingly elaborate ways of measuring our sleep. There’s much to celebrate about advances in health and science, and I’m certainly not suggesting that we should ignore the things that can help us live healthier for longer. But sometimes I wonder whether we have become so focused on lifespan that we risk forgetting about healthspan and, perhaps even more importantly, joy. In other words, a long life isn’t necessarily the same thing as a good life.

Sometimes living well means making choices that don’t maximise every health metric. It might mean staying up late talking with friends, sharing a bottle of wine with family, travelling somewhere new, taking on an adventure or simply embracing spontaneity. My parents, now in their mid-seventies, are as active as they have ever been. They cycle, play golf, compete in table tennis and embrace life with an energy that many people half their age would envy. But what strikes me most isn’t simply the physical activity. It’s the friendships, community connections and sense of purpose that underpin it all.

The evidence increasingly reinforces this broader view of what helps us age well. Some of the strongest predictors of health and wellbeing aren’t found in supplements, gadgets or optimisation protocols, but in purpose, social connection and belonging. The long-running Harvard Study of Adult Development and research into the world’s Blue Zones have both highlighted the profound importance of relationships, community and meaning in our lives. These things don’t simply help us live longer; they help us live better.

Finding a way to fit activity into real life

There is, of course, a practical challenge to all of this, because most of us are not professional athletes with our days organised around training. I’m an amateur athlete now, and I train around 8–10 hours a week while working and making time for friends, family, home jobs and other hobbies. The thousands of athletes who cross finish lines every year prove that combining sport with a demanding life is possible, but it requires planning, organisation, time management and, perhaps most importantly, flexibility. The older we become, the more likely it is that there will be competing demands on our time, whether that is work, children, caring responsibilities, relationships or simply the general administration of being an adult.

I find it useful to think about planning at three levels: the year, the month and the week. The non-negotiable things need to be factored in first, and then you can work out where your training fits.

Within the training itself, identify the sessions that matter most and prioritise those, rather than feeling that every single session in a programme has equal importance. If you have an hour, use it. If you have 30 minutes, use those 30 minutes (and yes, use them for strength work rather than another run!).  

At the same time, we need to be careful not to fill every available minute with training. If you are working long hours, managing a family or dealing with other pressures, sometimes the 30 minutes you have available would be better spent resting than squeezing in another workout simply because the training plan says you should. Even as a pro athlete, I saw recovery as part of the training process. Sometimes the cleverest thing you can do is sleep, spend time with the people you love or simply give yourself permission not to train.

Perhaps ageing is an opportunity

I still get a buzz from pushing myself, from seeing what my body can do and from achieving something that I wasn’t sure was possible. I try to stop asking, “What can I no longer do?” and start asking, “What can I still do, and how can I make the most of it?”  

That’s not about pretending that ageing doesn’t happen. It’s about recognising that the human body remains remarkably adaptable throughout life, that there’s enormous individual variation in how we age, and that there’s a profound difference between accepting the changes that come with getting older and simply giving up on physical activity.

I think this is what I find most exciting about approaching 50. I have a different body, different priorities, different responsibilities and, frankly, rather different ideas about what matters to me than I did when I was 25. The objective is to keep discovering the athlete I am now, and to adapt the way I train so that I can continue doing what I love for as long as possible. Caroline Powell, Sister Madonna Buder, Natalie Grabow, Kokichi Akuzawa and my parents remind us that there is no universal age at which ambition, performance, success and enjoyment of movement have to stop. 

We are going to get older. Our bodies will change, our priorities will change, our ambitions will change and the things that bring us joy may change too. But that doesn’t mean that possibility disappears. In fact, I suspect that one of the great privileges of getting older is that we become better equipped to understand what matters.  For me, that means continuing to move, explore, challenge myself and enjoy the process, while recognising that performance isn’t necessarily about how fast I went at my peak. Perhaps it’s about how long I can continue to participate in the things that make me feel connected, challenged, fulfilled and alive. And if I’m lucky enough to have another half century ahead of me, that sounds like a rather good definition of ageing well.

Further reading

• How to maintain motivation for training as you get older
• Why strength and conditioning is vital for older athletes
• 5 ways to optimise your recovery as you get older