Originally Posted by Hermes

John: There are not a lot of bike races by age category above Masters 55+ but there are some and you may have to travel to compete. I have a teammate in my racing club who is 71 and races a lot. He races both road and track. He races in the 55+ peloton in road races and crits, does time trials and hill climbs and competes in the state and national races. Race promoters are the ones that set age categories. And in some bike races, they may combine all the 55+ together and score them separately so there may be a 65+ group. My friend travels all over to race where there are 65+ categories. The races that always have age categories are state, national and world championship events. The senior games start at age 50 for men and women.

It is very hard to get started racing 50+ and there is a significant barrier to entry due to the skill and fitness required to race in mass start races. Of course you can do time trials and hill climbs where you are on the road by yourself against the clock. These can be sanctioned or just unsanctioned "training" races. The other potential frustration is that many masters mass start races exclude category 5 racers which is the category you will have to start in. You can upgrade to Category 4 after completing 10 qualifying mass start races. That means you will be racing with the Cat 5 men which are typically 20 to 30 year olds. I did that and had a lot of fun racing with the Cat 5 men before upgrading to Cat 4 in road and track.

My suggestion is to start with time trials and hill climbs and ride your current bike. Do not buy a time trial bike immediately until you see if you like doing them. It is not any easier on the TT bike and in fact it is harder due to the position and you will probably be faster initially on your road bike riding in a low position.

I ran competitively before racing bicycles. Running, one goes hard to the point where any harder and you physically collapse. It is easy to train since all you need are running shoes and going to a local track to do measured intervals is logistically easy. Bikes are different. Since the body weight is supported, you can go deeper into exhaustion and push yourself even harder. Some like that and some do not. And it does not get any easier over time. You just get better at suffering deeper and longer. When you watch the pro racers on TV, they are suffering immensely and way beyond what amateurs are capable of doing. Training on the bike is logistically more difficult to find terrain the is a suitable proxy for the race course. Biking takes a lot more time and requires more hours per week.

However, IMO, it is so much more fun than running and once you get into it, the equipment is a lot of fun to ride and the training and racing totally cool. YMMV