In my youth (ages 9-18), I swam for a club team in the summers and was really only a middling swimmer. I never swam year round and focused on other sports. We only swam SCM back then. I had a 1:22.5 best in 100 m breaststroke and a best relay split of about 35.5. In freestyle, I swam only the 50 in the relay on occasion and I clocked in about 28.7.
After a 35 year layoff, I got back into swimming in 2012. I was pleasantly surprised to go under 40 in 50 m breast (39.42 my first time at age 54, and a masters PB of 38.82 in a non-sanctioned meet at age 60!) and I got down to 30.37 in 50 m free at age 55. In yards, I did 35.11 in 50-breast, and 15.47 in 25 yard breast the same day, which is the best time listed for that year (I understand many serious swimmers skip this event, so I take it with a grain of salt, but I still think it is a very good time). I once did 39.8 in LCM at 60, which I was also pretty happy with.
I'm now 65. After still getting under 40 last summer in a non-sanctioned SCM meet (39.55), at age 64, I did 41.28 this year. In 50 m free, I did 32.10 last summer at 64 and 33.28 this year. My training was not a lot different. I'm guessing some of it could be hand-held timing which is done mostly by teenagers and is probably a bit unreliable, but assuming these times are accurate, is slowing down this much expected? It looks like the difference in world record times between the 60-64 and 65-69 age groups in 50 SCM breast is about 2.73 seconds, but this doesn't necessarily mean anything (Rick Colella is a former Olympian and a great swimmer, but Arturo's times are insane). Increasing almost two seconds in a year is pretty disappointing.
So I guess I have two questions: 1) Is this normal and should I just accept the inevitable 2) Is there anything I can do to slow down or even reverse aging (as a swimmer). I'm already taking a ton of supplements, including P2Life, and I've lost a lot of weight and kept it off.
