I’ve been feeling good lately because I’ve been doing well in my age group on some local Strava Koms. But before my head gets too big I thought I’d put things in perspective. First of all, these are all flat routes so don’t really deserve the title “king of the mountains”. King of the flats, or KOFs, maybe?
Second, I wanted to see how my times compare against elite athletes in my age group. So I looked up the times in national time trials, put on by the National Senior Games Association in the US, with similar groups keeping us aging athletes challenged around the world. As of 2019, the 10K record in the 70-74 age group was a time of 14:00 minutes, which is an average of about 26.6 mph. If I work really hard at it, I can get my average a bit above 20 mph. That would make me a champion in the 90-94 age group (for which the record is 21:57, or about 17 mph). So to be an elite athlete I’d have to get a lot faster now, or not slow down any for the next 20 years. I still feel pretty good about doing decently in my local area in my age group. But my hat is off to all the really fast older men and women out there.
I think the most astonishing record I came across was 80 year old Guiseppe Marioni’s 80-84 hour record. He went 24.24 miles in an hour on a velodrome.
Guiseppi owns Cycles Marinoni in Montreal, Quebec. I’d love to visit Montreal and pay his shop a visit.
I’ve competed in the local Bay Area Senior Games in the past in both the 5K and 10K time trials. So reading up on these records gave me the idea that it would be nice to have local 5K and 10K segments on Strava. Most of the local time trial segments are point to point, unfortunately. It is better to have an out and back or loop course so the wind doesn’t factor in. So I mapped out a 5K and a 10K route in San Martin, the little town to the south of us. The roads there are ideal because they form a good grid and are lightly trafficked. Here is the 5K route:
https://ridewithgps.com/routes/42337188
And here is the 10K. I couldn’t come up with a simple loop that was exactly 10K so I did an out and back with a loop for a tail:
I’ll try the 5K out on our next sunny day (thursday) and the 10K in the near future.
