God this is pessimistic - in response I throw at you the white-haired guy in his 60s who is still soloing E2 routes in my local quarry and moves like a ballet dancer, Rannulph 'across the icey things' Fiennes, who is still capable of whupping the butt off people 30 years younger than him in adventure races, John North of Karrimor, who is still as hard as nails, Chirs Bonington, still climbing hard in his 60s etc, etc, etc.
A few hundred years ago, most of us would have been dead before we reached our 40s, so we're quite lucky really...
Anyway, more practically, the one thing I've found makes a huge difference is taking the time to stretch properly after any sort of outing and to allow proper recovery time between hard sessions. The stretching makes a massive difference to muscle soreness and stiffness the day after. Definitely worth the time.
Also, more optiomistically, mountaineers tend to peak in their late 30s and 40s when natural stamina's supplemented by better judgement and ability born of experience.
So stop making excuses :-)
