Yet at 38, he thinks the best is yet to come. “There’s no reason a guy who’s 40 can’t win Kona,” Amey said matter-of-factly as we talked over coffee in Santa Monica, Calif. recently.

I found myself desperately wanting to believe him as I edge closer to the 40-44 age group myself. Is the best yet to come for me too? Or have I already reached my peak? I struggle with those mental demons race after race. But since Amey clocked a second place 8:01:29 at Ironman Arizona after only nine weeks of training following a nearly three-month hiatus, what’s stopping him from becoming the oldest Ironman world champion? Heck, he’s already Great Britain’s record holder for the fastest iron-distance race by virtue of his Tempe tempest.

The scary part of Amey’s optimism is that he thinks we’ll soon see even faster Ironman course times from older veterans.

In the past, Amey may have said that cramps held him back. They did at Ironman France this summer, where he still managed to secure fourth place and a Kona slot—though at great cost to his quad muscles.  Amey had to rest for the next three months and forgo the World Championships to undo the damage. In that time, Amey met in Europe with longtime friend Chris McCormack, who advised him to change his nutritional strategy by not overloading his electrolyte intake.

“I’ve trained my body to rely on less than what it needs,” Amey said. “If I train a lot harder and spend three to four months training for Kona rather than nine weeks then I have a good chance of being competitive with Crowie (Craig Alexander), Andreas (Raelert), Marino (Vanhoenacker) and all the other boys.”

Amey also believes that age may actually work in his favor along with some of the other near-40-year-old elite pros. He explained that athletes who are over 35 have a greater capacity for endurance than younger athletes who may be faster in spurts, as long as the volume is balanced for a shorter training period. “If someone 10 years ago said I’d be doing close to 40 hours a week of training, that I’d be riding my bike seven hours at a time, I’d have said not a chance. Now I go for a seven-hour ride at a solid pace and come back relatively fine—I’m tired but I’m not dead,” Amey said.

The scary part of Amey’s optimism (for younger pros at least) is that he thinks we’ll soon see even faster Ironman course times from older veterans. While a 2:40 marathon in an Ironman is considered very fast, Amey points out that it’s not very fast in the fast-twitch muscle fibers kind of way. For example, a 2:45 marathon equates to a 38-minute 10K pace, which lots of 39-year-olds (and much older) can run. Doing an Ironman requires more endurance capacity than speed work, however. “That’s why guys like Crowie, myself, Andreas, Macca and Marino can still be competitive at quite an old age,” Amey said.

When I met with Amey, I expected to hear him lament being on the outside looking in. Especially coming so close at both Ironman France and Arizona, and collecting top-four finishes at four other 70.3-distance races this season. Perhaps he might be wondering if at 38—with all that mileage logged from countless 25-plus hour training weeks—his body trying to tell him “this is as good as it gets, mate.”

Amey’s answer to that question is an emphatic “no.” And not because he’s drinking from the proverbial fountain of youth. Rather, Amey is bathing in a purified lake of experience he and a handful of others have stored, drip by drip, year after year.

Perhaps I was projecting my own worries onto Amey when wondering whether I had it in me to one day celebrate in the winner’s circle. Now I wonder, if Paul Amey thinks the best is yet to come for him, then maybe it is for me too.

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Ryan Schneider is an Ironman triathlete and blogger who works in brand development when he’s not swimming, biking or running. You can read his blog at ironmadman.com, follow him on Twitter (@theironmadman), and read his monthly column here at LAVA.