I would say the sample size is too small to draw much out of it. I agree that rando crowds tend to be older, and for the reason you stated--older riders are less competitive in shorter events. In the ultra events, other things factor in your performance, like eating right, hydrating, pacing, training... So, 40-somethings can still perform well by carefully monitoring these other issues.

But those results were nicely broken down by age, and they do seem to show a limit where age hinders performance. The 50 and 55 year olds were impressively close to the overall leaders, while there was a big drop-off to the next groups up, where 60 and 65 year olds were lagging 100 miles behind. Small sample or not, there was a huge drop:

Place No. Name Age Laps Time Miles
MALE RAAM AGE GROUP: 25 - 29
1 44 Alberto Blanco 29 71 23:53:33 450.4
MALE RAAM AGE GROUP: 30 - 34
1 48 John Tountas 32 17 18:03:07 207.7
MALE RAAM AGE GROUP: 35 - 39
1 36 Chris Galuppo 35 14 15:01:18 172.9
MALE RAAM AGE GROUP: 40 - 44
1 40 Mike Abney 44 64 23:59:18 408.4
MALE RAAM AGE GROUP: 45 - 49
1 53 Per Jakobsen 48 57 23:42:54 374.2
MALE RAAM AGE GROUP: 50 - 54
1 67 Mark Metcalfe 52 66 24:00:16 415.9
MALE RAAM AGE GROUP: 55 - 59
1 12 Valerio Zamboni 56 63 23:50:55 400.8
MALE RAAM AGE GROUP: 60 - 64
1 39 James Owens 63 46 23:49:08 317.0
MALE RAAM AGE GROUP: 65 - 69
1 75 Gerald Eddlemon 65 47 23:53:24 320.8

**p.s. I only posted tops in each division to save space; take the link in post 54 to see all; note the dip in the 30's guys--both dropped out early.