Please tell us your age.
51
1. What type of bikes do 50+ folks ride?
Road bike: 1986 Cannondale SR400 with upgraded wheels (Campy record/Mavic GP4), pedals (Suntour Superbe Pros), and saddle (Brooks team pro that was off my even older bike). I don't remember if the Cinelli bars and stem were upgrades or not. Still riding with toe clips and my old Detto shoes.
Commuter bike: Some 10 year old Univega low-end mountain bike. I used to haul my kids to and from daycare on the way to work on it and its predecessor (A KHS Montana Pro that eventually had a dropout failure). Had kids late in life: I was 37 years old when my first son was born and 41 for my second.
2. Do you take any special supplements/vitamins/minerals as you have grown older?
No. I eat food instead.
3. How much do you feel you have "slowed down" if any?
A little.
4. How long have you been biking? New, around a while, biked all your life?
Rode a balloon tire Schwinn when I was a kid and didn't ride again until I was a graduate student in the mid to late 1970's. Bought a cheap Peugeot for commuting and discovered the joys of riding in the country and rode ~1000 miles per month for the first summer and just kept on riding. Around New Year's Day 1983 the Peugeot was stolen but now I had a real job and could afford a decent bike and got a mid-level Bianchi that was upgraded over the next few years so that at the end it was almost entirely Campy NR or SR. That bike was stolen out of my house and I bought the Cannondale. Six months later the Bianchi was recovered at a local bike shop when one of my riding buddies that worked there recognized it when someone brought it in. It was really easy to recognize with Celeste paint and pink Benotto tape and cables. The bike shop bought it from the insurance company and I bought back the Brooks Pro saddle that had about 20K miles of my butt on it. I'm still riding that saddle! My wife (dear thing that she is) almost bought the Bianchi from the shop as a surprise for me, but they wanted too much.
During the early child rearing years my riding fell WAY off and only started riding much again (other than commuting) during the last few years. My younger boy (now 9) likes to ride. Last year he rode 48 miles on a rail trail on his single speed 20" fat tire Mongoose with me. He now rides a multispeed 24" fat tire Trek and if he still is into riding next year I'll probably get him a decent bike. I've been looking at some of the small Felt bikes.
5. What type of biking do you do? Long rides, touring, short rec rides, commute, tour, race?
I commute by bike rain or shine all year long. Its a short ride (~2.5 miles each way). Over the last few years I have been doing some rides with my boys in the 20 to 50 mile range with me on my commuter bike to slow me down enough to make it work and occasionally I would get out my road bike for a 30 to 40 mile ride. This summer I was able to arrange my schedule to have Tuesday and Thursday mornings off for riding and generally I would ride 70 miles of Tuesday and 40 on Thursday. Its about 4 miles of street riding to get to a rail trail that is about 15.5 miles long so on Tuesdays I would ride the trail twice and on Thursdays I would ride it once. I had been timing my rides on the trail and my times have gotten down to times similar to what I rode when I was 30 years old (generally 1 hour 35 minutes for the 31 mile ride and 3 hours 25 minutes for the 62 mile ride). So you can see that I'm not a racer. This past week I had off and rode on Tuesday (87 miles at a brisk pace for me, ~ 5 hours and felt great afterwards), 20 mile recovery ride on Wednesday, and 20 miles with intervals on Thursday. So far, so good. On Friday I set out for a 40 mile ride at pace and felt terrible. I decided to slow down a little (ride it at 16 to 17 mph instead of 19 to 20 mph), slog through the ride, and not ride on Saturday.
6. How often do you bike? Your approximate annual mileage?
I bike just about every day. 25 miles per week commuting and I have been averaging about 120 miles per week on the road this summer, but that will fall off to around 50 per week in the Fall.
7. Do you do any other type of physical activities - weight lifting, skiing, running, etc.?
I fence. Way cool sport! I used to play full-court basketball three times per week, but my ankles always seemed to hurt so I gave that up around a year ago. Giving up hoops really started back into cycling more as I needed it as a replacement activity.