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We are all aging!
In my experience, as a ‘well aged’ and experienced triathlete, there are several [erroneous] myths regarding us over 50’s athletes, often revolving around the aging process, our endless training volumes (particularly us retirees), and our ‘elite’ origins. The truth ✅is us more mature age-group and race seasoned triathletes thrive typically by prioritising smart recovery, balancing work-life commitments, and focusing on race and training consistency rather than sheer mileage or ultra-expensive new gear. If you’re interested in specific triathlon information and sports longevity for mature athletes, check out FB page Triathlon Tri-ing Over 50.

Common Myths & The Truth
✅Myth 1: Over 50’s Train Non-Stop Daily: Many assume we spend every waking hour training. The truth is that seasoned triathletes know that quality trumps quantity. Most race-day successful age-groupers follow personalised and appropriate training programs that maximise fitness and longevity while preserving time for family, friends and career (if you’ve not retired!) and enjoying life.
✅Myth 2: You Need Expensive Gear to be Competitive: While flashy bikes, carbon parts, aero helmets, latest tri-suits, etc. are highly visible, experienced triathletes are frequently dispelling the myth that you need top-tier equipment to be competitive. Performance is largely built on a ‘diesel’ engine, form, and strategy, and triathlon can be made more affordable by buying used bikes or choosing local, shorter-distance races or non-big brand races.
✅Myth 3: Aging Means Slower Times: While biological changes do occur, many mature triathletes remain incredibly competitive well into their 60s, 70s and beyond. Consistent aerobic training, combined with some high intensity and strength work, significantly staves off age-related decline. A competitive mindset also doesn’t automatically mean competitive with other athletes either but finding alternative challenges too!
✅Myth 4: You Have to Train All Three Sports Equally: A common misconception is that you must do identical amounts of swimming, cycling, and running. Experienced triathletes emphasise training your weaknesses while polishing your strengths, reap rewards at any age!
✅Myth 5: It's Just Swimming, Biking, and Running: While those are the race disciplines, mature experienced triathletes know that strength training, active recovery and appropriate nutrition are crucial for sports longevity and injury prevention. The sport requires a long term balanced approach to the body's kinetic chain.
✅Myth 6: It’s a Midlife Crisis at Their Age: Physical and mental resilience is born out of life experience. It comes from a developed challenge mindset, goal orientation, emotional regulation, deep experience with setbacks, and a better understanding of the body’s capability and capacity, enabling mature triathletes to bounce back from adversity faster than younger or less-experienced competitors.

Sometimes those around you won’t understand your journey, they don’t need to it’s not for them! Enjoy what you’re doing.

The Brick or Split Workouts?
There seems to be a lot of ‘social media’ posts recently on the need for, what is historically a gold standard workout for triathletes, The Brick and like most things in life it’s nuanced. For most triathletes, splitting the bike and run into separate sessions on the same day is better for physiological adaptation, running form, and injury prevention than a traditional brick workout, but not always!
However, both workout methods serve distinct purposes in a well-structured training program. Here is how they compare:

Split Workouts (Bike + Run or Swim + Bike)
What it is: Doing a bike session in the morning and a run session in the evening (or vice versa), allowing for recovery between workouts.

Why it's better:
☑ Higher Quality: You can tackle both workouts with fresher legs, allowing you to hit higher power outputs on the bike and faster paces on the run.
☑ Better Form: You practice running with good biomechanics and efficiency rather than forcing your body to run on fatigued, exhausted, and jelly-like legs.
☑ Lower Injury Risk: Running on heavily fatigued muscles alters your stride, significantly increases your risk of overuse injuries and potentially increases recovery period, compared to an extended Brick workout.

Brick Workouts
What it is: Doing a bike workout immediately followed by a run (or swim/bike) with no rest in between (i.e. Transition rehearsal).

Why it's necessary:
☑ Neuromuscular Adaptation: Bricks are essential for teaching your body the specific "heavy leg" sensation of transitioning from cycling to running.
☑ Race Specificity: This is a big one. You only need to do these to train your mind and legs for the feeling of T2 (Transition 2), (or T1) not to build cardiovascular fitness.
☑ Time Efficiency: If you are short on time, it is an efficient way to get both disciplines done.

The Verdict: When and How to use them
Use split workouts for most of your weekly volume to maximise fitness gains and minimise injury risk. Incorporate Brick workouts sparingly—typically for athletes competing in sprint and standard distances, in pre-race season phase, every 1 to 2 weeks during the middle and end of your training block—focusing on short 10 to 30-minute runs off a bike of 30 to 60-minutes just to practice the transition (lower end for sprint). Focusing solely on locking into your goal race pace.

For half and full distance athletes, like above, but extended bike of 60 to 90-minutes to rehearse transition (early race season) and use two or three ‘durability’ bricks of moderate-to-long bike followed by an aerobic run to practice your nutrition and pacing over distance, closer to your priority race.

A well-paced bike leg and overall fitness are the best predictors of a strong run in racing. Relying blindly on doing brick after brick, week on week, for extended periods, can lead to overtraining and risks injury.🏊🚴🏃🏋

Do we all know the 5 stages associated with injuries?

Endurance athletes primarily become injured due to overuse, rapid increases in training volume, and muscular imbalances. This is particularly relevant to triathletes, because the sport involves balancing three highly repetitive, demanding disciplines, even minor biomechanical flaws can quickly compound into chronic pain or tissue damage.

I’m sure you’ve heard of the 5-stages and potentially experienced them yourself; they are:

1️⃣Denial is a conscious or unconscious refusal to accept facts, information, reality, etc. It’s a defence mechanism and perfectly natural. However, some athletes can become locked in this stage causing more damage! “I know my calf hurts but I went out the door to do 25k, not let a ni**le stop me!”.

2️⃣Anger can manifest in diverse ways. People dealing with an injury can be angry with themselves, and take it out on others, especially significant others (SO) to them. Don’t take it out on yourself or significant others! SO “How was your run?” You “OK, why are you asking, I’m FINE….There's nothing wrong with MY CALF”

3️⃣Bargaining with yourself or seeking to negotiate a compromise rarely provides a sustainable solution e.g., Inside voice “If I reduce my running [volume or intensity] now my calf will improve, I’ll be fine by race day!”

4️⃣Depression will manifest differently depending on whom it involves and the nature of the injury. It’s natural to feel sadness and regret, fear, uncertainty, etc. It shows you have begun to accept the reality. Moving through this phase quickly can come from seeking appropriate support early. “It could mean I don’t make race-day and the seasons shot!”.

5️⃣Acceptance again definitely varies according to the person’s situation, although broadly it is an indication that there are some emotional detachment, objectivity, and proactive solution. “It could mean no upcoming race but an appointment with the doctor will mean a diagnosis and the season may be recoverable.”

To help ‘move through’ the stages quickly you need to rest, recovery and if this doesn’t help, seek the support of your coach, and/or appropriate medical professional, sooner rather than later! ‘We are all an experiment of one!’

Giraffe gets in quicksand with emotions A situation gets nasty, by using methaphors, negations, and so on, ...

Lifting heavy stuff🏋🏋🏋
It’s never too early or late to include strength and power into your annual program and weekly routine. Why? Well, you look, feel, and perform better, as it improves strength, power, mobility, body composition, metabolism, bone density and endurance performance. As you mature in age, power, has other advantages too, by reducing and stalling the negative natural body composition and health changes.

To clarify, power is different from strength. Strength is your ability to exert force to overcome resistance, like lifting a barbell off a rack. Think higher slower repetitions with lower weight or even body weight exercises. Power includes speed and it’s the force you can generate in a short amount of time. Think low fast repetitions but heavy or weight progression over sets. Both are important. But if you want to keep kicking ass at any age, power is important.

Resistance training in the gym, where you lift heavy stuff, provides the strength-building stimuli, along with improved metabolism, bone health, power, and cardiovascular health. However, lifting heavy stuff has its risks so, lifting any stuff to support strengthening your muscles is important.

Plyometrics: Whether you jump, hop, or bound, plyometrics, is a compound movement, which gives your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and bones the extra stimulus that comes when you push off against gravity and land back down. It is those impacts—big or small—that generate important physiological and neurological changes. Even skipping before your strength workout can be a low-risk starter exercise.

What do you need to do today? Ask an accredited sports coach or a qualified PT (who have experience with endurance athletes) to assist you to develop a program specific to you, your gender, needs and age (e.g., taking account of your sports, capabilities, medical or injury history, age, gender, and goals) that includes some form of weekly resistance workouts, and you don’t even need to spend copious amounts of time in the gym either. A well-designed program which includes 2 or 3 by 30-minute a week is all that’s required. Message me if you’d like a free starter program.🏊🚴🏃🏋

Longevity in endurance exercise and younger brain age

“Higher cardiorespiratory fitness levels were associated with “younger brains” as reflected by reduced brain-predicted age difference (brain-PAD) at baseline.” Research published in Journal of Sport and Health Science, Aug 2025.

This was one of the conclusions from a randomised 12-month clinical trial which included 130 ‘healthy’ participants (including 67% females), age range from 26-58 years, with 65 undertaking moderate to vigorous exercise and 65 as control group during the trial.
The exercise group attended 2 supervised 60-min sessions per week in a laboratory setting plus engaged in additional home-based exercise to achieve 150 min of exercise per week. Further study needs to identify the key pathways by which the positive effects occur.

Two primary goals of mine, when starting triathlon over 40 years ago, was longevity in the sport and maintaining endurance fitness. This and other studies I’ve come across over the years highlights the benefits of maintaining endurance (aerobic) fitness not only on a physical level but psychological level too. This and other studies highlight endurance exercise offers numerous psychological benefits, including reduced stress, anxiety, and depression, alongside improvements in mood, self-esteem, and cognitive function. These positive effects may stem from the release of endorphins and other neurochemicals that enhance mood and reduce the impact of stress on the brain.

Practical implications.
Regardless of when you start your endurance journey, think not only about race and season performance goals but, for me at least, ensure you have a longevity goal too. As we mature as athletes there’s a need to reassess our goals, thinking performance against others in our age-group or at varied race distances (if performance is a current or future goal) and continued enjoyment of training and racing! It also helps to encourage those significant others to share your exercise longevity. My partner has completed one triathlon in my 40+ years of endurance competition, however from an exercise perspective she undertakes aerobic and weight exercises 3-4 times a week and like me has a health-conscious diet. We both enjoy what we do and have included exercise as part of our lifestyle and contributed back to the multisport community as race organisers, event volunteers, coaching, and club/state committees.

Let’s Pump It Up
For triathlon races (and road bike races), CO2 inflators tend to be the go-to for race day due to their lightning-fast inflation speed, minimal weight and ease of storage. Whilst electric mini pumps have stolen the show for training and pre-race transition prep because they offer more attempts, accurate digital pressure control without guesswork, and no airline travel restrictions.

CO2 Inflators (Race Day)
Pros: Inflates a tyre in 5–10 seconds; compact and lightweight (roughly 70–120g for a setup), and lower upfront cost.
Cons: "One-shot" use—no idea of actual tyre pressure (and can run the risk of tube blowout); if you pinch the tube or improperly seat the bead, you waste your only cartridge; CO2 gas escapes the tyre through the rubber faster than regular air overnight; extreme cold can freeze and damage tubeless sealant; strictly prohibited on many airlines (both carry-on and checked), a big one for me as I travel a lot for racing; not environmentally friendly, and can fail to fill tyre if incorrect seal on value or CO2 too old.
Best Uses: Sprint, Olympic, and possibly 70.3 distance races where seconds count.

Electric Mini Pumps (Training, Travel and Longer Races)
Pros: Reusable via USB-C; allows for multiple attempts if a flat repair goes wrong; built-in digital gauge allow you pre-set and hit exact pressures (e.g., exactly 80 PSI), more environmentally sustainable, and easy to travel with on planes.
Cons: Quality units expensive, noisier, heavier and bulkier than CO2; takes 60–90 seconds to inflate; requires battery management (can die or be forgotten); slightly slower to re-seat tubeless tires, and if extension valve not used can heat-up tyre value.
Best Uses: Training rides, remote training areas, traveling to destination races, and longer races (i.e., 70.3 IM distances).

The Best of Both Worlds!?
If you plan to use a quality electric mini pump, you can use it every pre-race ride to dial in your race pressure, eliminating the need for a bulky floor pump in your hotel room (also use for training too!). However, race day, the speed and ‘security’ of a CO2 cartridge (or a hybrid manual-CO2 backup for tubeless tyres) generally outweigh the cons for shorter races (however you must remember to buy new CO2 canisters if you’ve flown to the race!). For me doing long distance races, I prefer a quality floor pump for pre-race transition, and the dial in pressure, multi-use, environmental and airline advantages of an e-mini pump during the race.🏊🚴🏃🏋

We all need bone health
If you’re interested in health longevity, engaging in regular endurance exercise is just about the best tool in the box. Numerous studies have demonstrated that compared to their sedentary peers, endurance athletes who undertake rigorous training can expect to enjoy several health benefits, all leading to improved functional age. These include:
1. Enhanced insulin sensitivity;
2. Reduced blood pressure;
3. Improved blood cholesterol profile;
4. Reduced body fat;
5. Reduced risk of coronary heart disease (as the result of 1-4);
6. Better quality of life as we mature;
7. Improved mental health.
Despite all these numerous health benefits however, there’s one aspect of health that is not necessarily improved by endurance exercise and could be worsened by it – and that is bone health. If insufficient bone mass has been developed during early adulthood, for whatever reason, and then excessive bone mass loss occurs later in life, due to menopause for example, the mineral structure of the bone becomes progressively more porous and can lead to osteoporosis (or porous bones!). I’ve posted previously about the benefits of strength workouts to support better bone health and muscle mass as we mature, which is vital!

Research and subsequent clinical application have established blood tests are valuable for assessing athlete bone health by measuring markers like Vitamin D, calcium, parathyroid hormone, and markers of bone turnover (e.g., P1NP, CTX-1). While not directly imaging bone structure (which are expensive), these tests, if undertaken regularly, reveal nutritional deficiencies, turnover imbalances, and systemic factors that indicate increased stress fracture risk and poor bone density. The first thing to say is that while regular blood testing can yield some very useful information about bone metabolism, it is no substitute for a specific bone DXA scan.
All endurance athletes (and their coaches) should remember the golden rule: if you are an endurance athlete in a chronic calorie deficit and short of bone-building nutrients such as calcium, magnesium and vitamin D, no amount of impact loading or strength workouts will arrest the decline in bone density. Seeking professional medical and/or nutritional support, including regular blood testing, to support long term bone health is a viable option.

If it’s not on Strava it’s not counted

The ‘sweet spot’ in your training program for endurance improvement, enjoyment, and longevity in your sport means enough volume, but not too much, too soon. Going fast but not too fast too often or when you should be training slower (the slow stuff builds speed in differing ways). In a well-structured, and written, periodised training program, to enhance endurance performance and longevity, this is referred to as overreaching. When you will be fatigued but when working out, with adequate rest and nutrition, improves fitness, but before the onset of overtraining, which leads to illness or injury.

Far too many endurance athletes I encounter don’t consider some everyday factors, not thought as physical stressors by them, and which don’t appear on Strava (or their training plan), however which can lead to overtraining. Some of these include sleep disruption over several days, a physically demanding or stressful job, extensive or overly long air travel, minor illness (e.g. head cold), that ‘extra’ activity (e.g., long hilly walks, Boot Camp, F45, etc.,) or even the intensity of racing too frequently.

It’s a simple* formula: Optimal Physical Stressors + Rest + Nutrition = Improved Performance, longevity and Enjoyment

*Yes, fair point it’s not always that simple however we do tend to make things too complex and forget the final factor of ‘enjoyment’.

Knowledge into practice. Your heart rate is a great guide during training however it can also provide excellent markers of fitness outside of training too. Measuring your resting heart rate (RHR), same day each week, before you get out of bed, and recording the outcome to assess trends over time, will provide you an indicator of potential overtraining or illness onset – if RHR varies by over 5-beats from one week to next, re-measure for the next couple of days, and if you feel overly fatigued have some time-off or amend a high intensity workout to shorter recovery session. Also, measuring your heart rate immediately post a high intensity interval session or workout to see how long it takes to drop back to pre-exercise HR, is a good indicator of fitness improvement (short time to drop back to or close to, the better).

All Australian and New Zealanders.

Become involved in a short questionnaire research study about how endurance athletes in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand use sports foods, why they choose certain foods, and what they know about food processing. The perspectives of performance staff who support endurance athletes such as sports dietitians/nutritionists, coaches and exercise physiologists will also be explored to gain a broader understanding of how food choices are made and supported in endurance sports.
For full details follow the link:

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