Ultra-endurance athletes peak in their late 30s, yet physiological gains plateau much earlier. In this article, we review the science in an effort to understand this anomaly.
I’ve always thought there’s some survivorship bias at play here, too. In ultra-endurance sports, experience often outweighs other factors, so athletes can continue improving into their late 30s and beyond as they accumulate more years of hard training.
*Unless* they leave the sport because of the toll that same training takes, in which case they wouldn’t be included in studies on peak age.
It is definitely a complex problem with multiple variables. For example, there is a pretty popular research paper which tries to capture all the factors which determine Ultramarahon performance (https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/japplphysiol.00016.2012), so for me to say that the improvement is 'just' from durability is probably a stretch.
I agree that experience, and just the accumulation of training over time, is one of the most performance determinant. I guess for me what I wanted to find out is how does it impact performance? How is it possible that training you did 10 years ago still determines your performance today? Durability seems to answer that question, even if just in a small part.
I will keep looking at this - maybe in a few years we will have some studies where we understand this more.
Oh, for sure, even just anecdotally, you can recognize durability when you see it in a race setting. There’s so much to be studied there—does it have a genetic component, a psychological one, can it be developed/improved outside of ultrarunning… So I too hope the inquiries into this topic continue.
I’ve always thought there’s some survivorship bias at play here, too. In ultra-endurance sports, experience often outweighs other factors, so athletes can continue improving into their late 30s and beyond as they accumulate more years of hard training.
*Unless* they leave the sport because of the toll that same training takes, in which case they wouldn’t be included in studies on peak age.
Fascinating article, thank you!
It is definitely a complex problem with multiple variables. For example, there is a pretty popular research paper which tries to capture all the factors which determine Ultramarahon performance (https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/japplphysiol.00016.2012), so for me to say that the improvement is 'just' from durability is probably a stretch.
I agree that experience, and just the accumulation of training over time, is one of the most performance determinant. I guess for me what I wanted to find out is how does it impact performance? How is it possible that training you did 10 years ago still determines your performance today? Durability seems to answer that question, even if just in a small part.
I will keep looking at this - maybe in a few years we will have some studies where we understand this more.
Oh, for sure, even just anecdotally, you can recognize durability when you see it in a race setting. There’s so much to be studied there—does it have a genetic component, a psychological one, can it be developed/improved outside of ultrarunning… So I too hope the inquiries into this topic continue.