Wow, I'm sorry to hear that. 25 percent is fairly major. Freaks me out a bit just to read it. Whereas I am still sure 25 percent off of where you were still leaves you faster than most hikers up there (and you can still outhike most of your students, I'd guess), a similar sort of thing is not something I'd look forward to for the future.mokelumnekid wrote:My number one challenge is that my max heart rate has dropped a lot- by that I mean typical for aging drop, but in the end that really impacts my back country durability. What is vexing is that it seems that conditioning exercise doesn't change that much. My *strength* is better than ever, but the heart rate tops out like a VW bus going over Sonora Pass. A second issue is recovery time. This is what sunk me in summer 2012. I had miscalculated my recovery time- and by over-extending myself on day one, set up an accumulation of fatigue.
The most surprising thing was how fast these changes have occurred. I have always been someone who seemed to be able to pretty much take it to the limit. But in say, only two years, I have lost maybe 25% of my mojo. It is freakin' me out a bit to be honest.
My dad was super strong until age 63 and then was done in by a mess of things: a degrading hip from a 1977 fall on Mt Goddard, strokes, and a massive heart attack, before eventually getting felled by pancreatic cancer at age 71. I hope all of us manage to stay active a bit longer than that, although my dad certainly didn't get cheated on his swings while he lived.
By the way, here's an update/revision to the vertical jump, fast twitch decline test. The vertical jump figures in the earlier post are a bit non-standard and need to be revised. I did it by subtracting from the highest touched height my one armed reached on tip toes, reasoning that you can't get finite jump credit for going on your toes. However the "official" (such as NFL combine) way is to subtract flat footed straight extended arm distance--this adds a few inches to the numbers above, so 1976-1988 (age 17-29) vertical jump of about 34-35" declining to about 28" by 2004 (age 45). I just checked out the VJ yesterday by the "official" method and it comes to 22" at age 53.
In any case, we all know we are all better off staying diligent in our off season training, rather than letting it slide.