Why I Stopped Chasing PRs

Wednesday morning I climbed onto my rower, set the monitor to 2,000 meters, and pulled the handle. However this morning was different than previous 2ks because I was no longer chasing PRs.

If you have never done a 2K test on a Concept2 rower, here is roughly what it feels like. The first four hundred meters are a lie. You feel strong, the splits look easy, and you start doing math about how fast this might be. Then somewhere around the halfway point the negotiation begins. Your legs start sending invoices. Your brain suggests that maybe today is not a PR day, that maybe 7:40 would still be respectable, that maybe you should just hold this and see. Then the last ninety seconds happen, and there is no negotiation left. You finish with your hands on your knees, your ears ringing, and a number on the screen.

My number was 7:30.0.

Seven years ago that number would have wrecked my morning. My best 2K is 7:19, and I have been chasing it, or defending it, or quietly mourning it, for most of my thirties. Eleven seconds. That sounds like nothing until you have sat on an erg. Eleven seconds over 2,000 meters is about two and three-quarter seconds per 500 meters, which on a Concept2 is roughly seven percent more power, close to twenty extra watts, held for over seven minutes. There is no version of this where eleven seconds is a rounding error. It is the difference between two different athletes.

So no, I am not going to pretend 7:30 is secretly better than 7:19. It is slower. I am slower.

Here is the part that surprised me. I looked at the monitor and I felt fine. Not resigned, not “well, I guess I am getting old.” Actually fine. And it took me a couple of days to understand why, because the answer is the whole point of this post.

What A 2K Test Actually Measures

The 2K is popular because it is standardized. Same distance, same machine, same suffering, so your time means something compared to last time. It is also used as a field estimate of VO2 max, and that estimate is not a gimmick. Concept2’s calculator is built on thousands of lab-tested data points collected by Dr. Fritz Hagerman, who ran direct gas-analysis VO2 max tests on rowers and then had the same people row a maximal 2K, correlating the two 1. When you row a hard 2K, you are not just measuring how tough you are. You are getting a decent read on your aerobic ceiling.

VO2 max is the maximum rate at which your body can take in, transport, and use oxygen. Because of that, it sets the ceiling on everything aerobic you will ever do, from a Saturday hike to the last five minutes of a hard workout. It is also one of the strongest predictors of long-term health we can measure in a gym. Each additional metabolic equivalent, or MET, of fitness is associated with roughly fourteen percent lower risk of dying from any cause 2.

That connection is why I test at all. If VO2 max is a proxy for how much aerobic reserve I have as I age, I want to know the number. I do not want to guess.

But there is a catch that most people miss, and it is the reason my flat 2K time is not the bad news it looks like on paper. VO2 max is expressed relative to body weight, in milliliters of oxygen per kilogram per minute. The rowing monitor measures work. Your VO2 max measures work per kilogram. Two men can row identical times with very different VO2 maxes because they are carrying different amounts of body weight. And more importantly for me, a man can hold the same time for years, which looks like stagnation, while his relative fitness is actually being protected. The time only tells you about your fitness if your body weight has been stable.

Mine has been.

A rowing machine performance monitor showing a 7 minute 30 second 2,000 meter result

The Number That Has Not Moved In Seven Years

I have done this test two or three times a year for six or seven years, always all out, always the same distance, always first thing in the morning before I eat. My times have bounced around in a narrow window, mostly between 7:20 and 7:35, and my body weight has stayed within a few pounds of the same number the entire time.

Put those two facts together and you get the result I actually care about. My VO2 max has been parked at fifty-four to fifty-five for years. This week’s test came back at 54.8. Call it 55.

At first glance, seven years of the same number looks like the definition of a plateau. It is not. For a man in his forties, flat is the achievement.

The published data on this is unambiguous. In one long-running study that measured peak oxygen consumption repeatedly in the same people over nearly eight years, the decline was three to six percent per decade in people’s twenties and thirties, and then accelerated to more than twenty percent per decade by their seventies. The decline was steeper in men than in women from the forties onward, and it showed up whether you indexed oxygen use to body weight or to lean mass 3. The treadmill data from the largest American database of lab-measured fitness tells a similar story, with the median man losing something close to ten percent of his aerobic capacity every decade of adulthood 4.

So a typical man my age is giving back somewhere in the neighborhood of eight to ten percent of his VO2 max every ten years. I have given back none of it in seven. That is not stagnation. That is a quiet, unglamorous win that nobody hands you a medal for.

What 55 Actually Means At 41

I am 41. In the Fitness Registry and the Importance of Exercise National Database, which is the reference dataset most exercise physiologists use, the 90th percentile for men aged 40 to 49 is about 52 milliliters per kilogram per minute, and the 95th percentile is about 55.6 4. A 54.8 sits between those two lines. Depending on the test mode and the day, that puts me somewhere around the top eight percent of men my age. Different protocols shift the decimals, but the neighborhood is right.

That is a good place to be, and it is worth saying plainly that most men my age cannot get there without a few years of consistent work. I am not being modest about it. I am being specific, because the specificity is what makes the rest of this argument work.

Now convert it. One MET is about 3.5 milliliters of oxygen per kilogram per minute, so 55 is roughly 15.7 METs. In a study of more than 750,000 adults, each one-MET increase in exercise capacity was associated with about fourteen percent lower all-cause mortality, and the fittest group had less than a quarter of the mortality risk of the least fit 2. The same study found that for people aged 30 to 49, roughly eleven METs was the level associated with about half the mortality risk of the least fit group 2.

Eleven METs. I am at almost sixteen.

This matters because of the shape of the curve, not just the size of the numbers. The relationship between fitness and mortality is steep at the bottom and flat at the top. Moving from the bottom fifth to the middle is worth an enormous amount of risk reduction. Moving from the eightieth percentile to the ninety-fifth is worth something real, but much less, and the training cost of that last move is not linear. In the largest study to look specifically at extremely fit people, the elite performers did have the best survival, but the gap between “elite” and merely “high” fitness was not statistically significant in younger age groups. It only became meaningful in people over seventy 5. In that same cohort, being in the lowest fitness group carried a mortality risk comparable to or greater than smoking, diabetes, or existing heart disease 5.

The message is not that fitness stops mattering. It is that the biggest returns are already banked by the time you are in the top quartile for your age. Everything above that is a smaller prize at a much higher price.

The Price Of Chasing PRs

So could I get to 60? Maybe. Let me walk through what it would actually cost, because this is the part of the conversation that fitness content usually skips.

The first problem is that gains get expensive at the top. Untrained people can improve VO2 max by as much as twenty percent. People who are already well trained often manage three to five percent, and that is with dedicated work 1. I am not untrained. Getting from 55 to 60 is a nine percent improvement from a base that has been stable for seven years. That is not a six-week block. That is a project, and the odds of coming up short are real.

The second problem is the training itself. To move that number now, I would need more high-intensity intervals, more total volume, and more days per week. At 41, with a full-time job and kids at home, my limiting factor is not willingness. It is recovery. I can find the hour. I cannot find the second hour, and I cannot find the sleep to pay for both.

The third problem is the one that actually decides it for me. That kind of aerobic work competes directly with strength training. A meta-analysis of twenty-one studies found that combining endurance and resistance training blunts strength and muscle growth compared to lifting alone, and that the interference gets worse as the frequency and duration of the endurance work goes up, particularly with running 6. More meters on the erg means fewer quality lifts and worse recovery from the lifting I still do. I would be buying aerobic capacity with muscle.

chasing prs might cost you more than you think

And muscle is not a consolation prize. A meta-analysis of sixteen cohorts found that thirty to sixty minutes per week of muscle-strengthening activity was associated with roughly ten to twenty percent lower risk of all-cause mortality and cardiovascular disease, and that combining strength work with aerobic work beat either one on its own 7. Strength training and aerobic training are not competing hobbies. They are two separate insurance policies, and the research says holding both is better than maximizing one.

So the honest accounting looks like this. To gain roughly five points of VO2 max, I would spend the resource I have least of, which is recovery, and the time I have least of, which is family time. I would pay for it with strength and muscle, which carry their own independent protective effect. And I would be buying a small improvement in a metric where I am already in the top decile, at a point on the curve where the returns have already flattened.

That is a bad trade. Not a humblebrag. A bad trade. If I were 31, single, and chasing a sub-seven 2K, it would be a completely different calculation. I am not, and it is not.

The Scoreboard Problem

Here is the part that took me longer to admit. The reason this decision is hard for men like me is not physiology. It is identity.

When I started taking training seriously, the numbers were the entire point. Body fat percentage, PRs, splits, weight on the bar, times on the erg. I wrote those numbers down. I compared them to last month and last year. That obsession is exactly what built the engine I have now, and I would not trade it. Drive like that is a gift.

But the same instinct that built the engine will happily eat the thing it built, because it never stops asking what is next. It does not know that the season changed. It does not notice that the guy chasing 7:19 in his mid thirties had different responsibilities than the guy who has to help with homework on a Tuesday night and be sharp in a meeting on Wednesday. It just sees a number and wants a better one.

For a competitive person, the answer is not to stop caring about numbers. That advice never works, and it is not even good advice. The answer is to change which number you are defending.

7:19 is a number I can only defend by borrowing time and recovery from things I care about more. Fifty-five at 51 is a number that is hard, measurable, and does not require me to torch my strength or my Saturdays with my kids. One of those is a scoreboard. The other is a standard.

I am not retiring from training. I am retiring from one number so I can defend a better one for the next thirty years.

Maintenance Is Not The Same As Doing Nothing

When people hear “I am maintaining,” they assume it means coasting. It does not. Holding a VO2 max in the top decile for two decades is a training project. Done seriously, it is more disciplined than a one-off peak, because a peak has an end date and maintenance does not.

The good news is that maintenance is much cheaper than improvement, and we have known that for a long time. In a classic study, people trained forty minutes a day, six days a week, for ten weeks. Then they cut their training duration by a third to two-thirds and kept going for another fifteen weeks. Their VO2 max stayed at the trained level in both groups. They held essentially all of their aerobic gains on a fraction of the work 8. What they could not do was improve further on that reduced dose.

That is exactly the trade I want. Keep the intensity honest, keep the frequency, cut the volume that is not buying anything. Two hard aerobic sessions a week. Two or three lifting sessions. A lot of walking. Sleep I actually protect. That is a plan I can run for twenty years, which is the only time horizon that matters here.

And notice what it is not. It is not “stop pushing.” The hard sessions are still hard. The 2K test is still all out. I am still going to be on the floor afterward. The difference is that the purpose of the work has changed from raising a ceiling to holding a floor.

What This Means For You

You do not need to care about rowing to use any of this. The same logic applies to your 5K, your bench press, your body fat, or whatever number you have quietly been measuring against your younger self.

Test one thing, the same way, twice a year. Pick a metric that is standardized and repeatable, and do it under the same conditions every time. A 2K row, a hard 5K, a benchmark workout. One test is a story. Three tests over eighteen months is data.

Read the trend, not the day. Bodies are noisy. Sleep, stress, humidity, and whether your kids woke you up at 2 a.m. all move the number. Judge yourself on the line, not the point, and expect the line to be flatter than your ego wants.

Set a maintenance target, not just a performance target. “Hold 55 for the next ten years” is a legitimate, ambitious goal, and for most men over 35 it is a better one than “beat last year.” Write it down and defend it.

Do not let cardio eat your strength. Two lifting sessions a week, totaling thirty to sixty minutes of real muscle-strengthening work, is one of the best-protected investments you can make. Protect it when the endurance volume creeps up.

Know where the curve flattens. For most men in their thirties and forties, roughly eleven METs, or about thirty-eight to forty milliliters per kilogram per minute, is where a large share of the mortality benefit is already banked, and the top quartile for your age is a strong place to defend from. Past that, the returns get small and the bill gets real. Chasing the last five points is a choice, not a requirement, and it should be a conscious one.

Ask what the training is for. If the honest answer is “so I can be the dad who hikes the hill at the end of the trail without stopping,” then train for that, and let the scoreboard serve it. If the honest answer is “because a younger version of me did 7:19,” that is worth knowing too.

I am not the fastest I have ever been. I am the healthiest, and for a while longer, I am holding the same engine I built in my thirties. This week I rowed 7:30, and I am not chasing 7:19 anymore.

That is not giving up. That is finally knowing what I am training for.

Want help figuring out which numbers are actually worth chasing for your age and your life? I work with busy men who are tired of guessing. Book a free discovery call and we will build the plan: https://optin.rjbhealth.coach/discoverycall