Well, thanks so much for your advice. It's always nice to know where one is going wrong.

I'm 57. I'm in my first season racing bicycles. Obviously it's a little late for me to aspire to the Tour de France, if I made it into Cat3 I'd regard that as an achievement. But while I may not be as fast as I could have been when I was thirty, I am certainly faster than I actually was when I was thirty, and I fully intend to get faster still.

In this context, keeping track of my performance is anything but a waste of time. And striving is not a source of stress, as you seem to assume, but of satisfaction. In this as in many other fields of activity, it is possible to learn new things about one's potential despite getting older.

You may not wish to do that. That's fine, it's not for everyone. But we'll all take our own road, if that's alright with you. Or even, dare I say, if it isn't.