The Tour de France has been won by a 36 ye wiar old man. And Hincapie was a major racer until 40 or so.
yup, but that those type of pro racers are extremely dedicated riders, that is their job too, they get paid to do that, and when they train like that a person could push it till 40 tops, but usually after 35 you play a support role your not the captain.
The average rider, or even one who races up to and including cat3 as I had done in my early years, you don't get paid, you have to pay for all your bikes, parts, gear, kit, motels, food, gas, registration fees, a coach unless you do what my team did the coach was one of the riders and hence we didn't have to pay for his services, but we would buy him parts, tires, pay for his reg, fees, sometimes if we had the money we paid for his motel room. In addition to all of that you pay in time, time away from your family which was the number one reason why I quit, the number two reason was the cost, combine that with a family I wasn't about to sacrifice stuff they needed so I could go play wannabe bike racer. When I say time spent away from family I mean a lot of time away from family, I wasn't a billionaire, just an average person who needed a full time job, so I worked full time with overtime, combined that with 2 to 3 hours a day of training, than be gone on weekends on top of that!
Now lets look at the shocking expenses of amateur racing, i can't recall for sure any more but I believe my expenses were around $3,000 a year which in today's dollars that would be roughly $7,500. So there is a lot of expenses in racing that doesn't even get you to the pro ranks! if I had to do it all over again with what I know today, I would have never gone into racing! Yes I had fun, I'll give you that, but the cost of not spending time with the family just wasn't worth it, and I could had fun with the family on weekends instead.