At 76, I'm still like, "F all that stuff." Denial is not just a river in Africa, it's the ability to change one's reality. It doesn't have to be like that. If there's something I want to change, I try to find a way to change it. There are some things one can't get around, like slower recovery, but there are techniques to get around most of that sort of thing. A couple decades ago, I remember hearing a guy about my age then saying, during an event ride, "I just can't do this anymore. I don't recover fast enough." Of course he can still do it, he'll just be slower. Etc. As we said in the 60's, don't feed it negative energy, get lower gears instead. My wife and I still do hilly rides on our tandem, still do 10-day backpacks in the mountains, just not as many miles as we used to.
All that said, of course there are injuries and diseases that can take one out. It happens. But for those of us for whom that hasn't yet happened, it's still game on.
Twice now, we've had youngers in the gym approach my wife and myself (we work out together) and say, "You're the strongest OOOOOLD people we've seen." I guess that's a compliment. We've been gym members since "79 so maybe so. I went out on a little 28 mile loop from my house today, got a TrainingPeaks TSS of 190 because I attacked every hill hard and tried to never let my PM go below 100w. The funny part is that I only averaged 13.6, but who cares! We'd come down from a 3-day backpack the day before and I got completely wasted, which was the point.
Ride on!
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Results matter