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I should start by saying I really like The Midlife Cyclist. It’s quirky and has a few issues, but is invaluable for anyone, male or female who wants to make the most of bike riding over the age of 40. It would say try and look at a broader basket of metrics other than just FTP, (functional threshold power). I would say enjoy your cycling, enjoy how you increase your performance: how you climb, how you descend, how pleased you feel on the bike, how much you enjoy cycling.
First, the bad news. As we grow older, in addition to our declining senses (eyes, ears) we must also contend with reducing muscle fibre, hormones and bone density. Not everything goes down: our blood pressure, cholesterol levels and body weight, for example, move right on up. But our heartbeat max takes a drop and, as if all this wasn’t bad enough, our very cells just don’t work as well as they used to. Atrophy. Would I push myself to that brink of physical shutdown, either in training or competition, at my current age of 58? That’s the main question behind this book. If the answer is ‘no’, then where is the line that I will not cross and what is its intellectual underpinning? If the answer is ‘yes’, and I should push the performance envelope without regard to age, then am I risking injury or even death? Reading this book, you sometimes feel that Cavell doesn’t really buy into his recipe of sensibly balanced training for the midlifer. “I’m the last person you should listen to when it comes to structured training”, he says. Another subtitle says “Lord save us from moderation.”Pluses of the book are Mr. Cavell knows bicycling and what it takes to both race or just ride as we get older. This is shown repeatedly as he talks about his experience and brings in knowledge from experts in the field (sports medicine and doctors in general). There’s also his own personal knowledge base as a bike fitter who’s done it at upper levels. This is stuff to be respected and readers should pay attention to what’s discussed. Interesting discussion points included the myth of power when you pulling up with your legs while pedaling, use of power meters, what type of riding you should do regularly, and the use of indoor trainers (for the record I feel Mr. Cavell is light in this information and needs to reassess things given the different types of trainers and the use of virtual training aides). These items were driving me to a 4-5 star rating for this book, I have to say it they’ve influenced my riding and training. The conscious part of me wants to exercise because it’s good for me – the benefits are proven, uncontroversial and listed in various forms in nearly every chapter of this book. I’m also fairly sure that I’m compelled to exercise unrestrainedly and push myself physically as an unconscious death-avoidance strategy. I’m trying to pedal or run away from the inexorable pull of an unyielding rope that’s attached to all of us and extends an unknown distance across into the horizon. Getting old and dying is as much a part of our psychological DNA as it is our physical DNA – kids are aware of dying from a young age and talk about it openly. Their natural inquisitiveness is ameliorated by the fact that it tends to happen around them to fragile animals and elderly relatives. We start the book with rather humbling first principles – that reaching middle age at all is a formidable achievement, as we’ve seen already. In a quarter of a million years we have wandered and now cycled the planet, but it is only in the last century that getting past 40 years of age has been a real possibility. And as a possible consequence, how the veteran human form reacts to being physically pushed to the extreme is still fairly poorly understood. Bluntly, in evolutionary terms we are not really meant to be alive at all, and almost certainly would not be at any other time in history. The experts and doctors in part hypothesise, speculate and theorise about how the ageing body reacts to high performance. Their frustration at not having all the answers at their fingertips is palpableand provides the impetus for much of their current research and thinking.
An amazing accomplishment... a simple-to-understand précis of your midlife as a cyclist - you won't want to put it down. ― Phil Liggett, TV cycling commentator
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How important is stress/inflammation as we age and train? Is this burden different for men and women? short bouts of high intensity interval training - anaerobic sessions which may be hard work but will (and this is from Lieberman again) “make us not only stronger and faster but also fitter and healthier”. The final chapter, ‘The Mindful Cyclist’, gathered importance during the writing of the book. It grew from a single sentence into an entire chapter. Why? Because every consultant, medic, coach and athlete that we interviewed went out of their way to highlight the emerging importance of a holistic mind-body approach to effectively balancing hard training, ageing and general life health. All the cardiologists flagged up unspecified ‘inflammation’ as a possible contributor to potential problems. We look in depth at the role of the autonomic nervous system, alcohol and even sleep to help you become faster, calmer and healthier. If there was one piece of advice you would give someone who wants to advance their cycling past the age of 40 or 50, what would it be? If you’ve read this far, let me tell you, before I get into the weeds, this is a brilliant book. I am a skeptical person, a cynic, but I can tell you honestly that The MidLife Cyclist changed my behavior on the bike (and off), and even improved my relationship with cycling (read: less burn out efforts, more fun). What I want after all is fun. I want health too, and I want longevity. I want to be able to do the things I enjoy doing as long as I possibly can.
Starts well. Good science - especially about potential adverse effects of excessive exercise on the ageing cyclist (and by extension) the older athlete (all a bit scary but the literature cited is slim). Useful stuff on nutrition and the value of cross-training. oxidative (sorry, aerobic) training to build endurance where the heart beats below 80% of its capacity - as hunter gatherers we evolved for many thousands of years as an endurance species, and It provides sensible guidance on training and for those of us in the U.K, on utilising the strengths of the NHS should we have an accident on our bikes or other wise. The author puts himself in our shoes as he talks to the relevant health experts and condenses their advice to make it relevant and easy to understand
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As you’d expect, the committed cyclist will find lots of info here on the bike itself and biomechanics. For example, do yourselves a favour and don’t be worrying about the technicalities of the “upstroke”. In ‘Food for Sport’, we ponder how our nutritional requirements alter as we get older, but as we still endeavour to exercise at the highest level possible. We also review how we might change our dietary strategies to both maximise performance and maintain long-term health. These concepts taken together are not something written about much. We have a lot of books on training plans, some designed for older athletes, and the author does not stray into this area at all. But Cavell’s views, both from his past as an amateur racer as well as his profession, are food for thought. He gently ridicules our attachment to numbers, pointing out that V02 max is nothing really useful and even FTP, the measure of functional threshold power, should not be our focus. As someone with biomechanical expertise, he feels that some drills, such as one-legged pedalling, are useless or injurious. He is not impressed with our pursuit of high cadences, or even smooth pedalling, noting that the people who stomp on the pedals tend to be the ones winning the races. I was reminded of watching a Giro d’Italia stage years ago where a Russian and a French rider had escaped and Phil Liggett pointed out how awkward and gawky the Russian looked compared to the elegant spinning of the Frenchman but Paul Sherwen interrupted, pointing out that they were both going the same speed so what did it matter? As someone who has spent years building souplesse, that effortless and beautiful fusion of man and machine, well, I was a bit disappointed but sometimes looking good is better than being fast, yes?
This subject goes in layers, so let's deal with it in layers. Overall, yes, exercise is tremendously beneficial for you – tremendously. That's the overall, overarching message. But then, within that, it's more nuanced. If you exercise moderately into middle age and beyond, even into old age, it is unquestionably good for you: the cognitive benefits or cardiovascular benefits, the feel-good benefits, everything is positive. But to exercise moderately – and by that, I mean the kind of exercise that the people we know do – there are question marks. Now, probably when all this washes after longitudinal studies and I do the revision of this book in 20 years time, it will almost certainly be the case that that was good for you. That's my opinion, and I have no evidence of that right now. So the book is taking up the evidence that we do have, looking at all the research conducted, and then on every subject, making an informed judgment. Phil Cavell: author of The Midlife Cyclist But just because we can, does that mean we necessarily should? Using contributions from cardiologists, pro-team physicians, coaches and nutritionists, this book evaluates the newest research, and where that research is missing, adds informed opinion, to formulate the gold-standard paradigm for the midlife cyclist, who wants to ride fast but also live long and stay healthy. Controversially, I’m going to suggest a few midlife amendments to current training orthodoxy. The first is that we drop all the other strata of training, other than low intensity (LIT) and high intensity (HIT) training. We'll define LIT as anything below aerobic threshold, which coach Fox recommends could be as high as 70-80 per cent of maximum heart rate, but thinks is actually better executed at around 60-70 per cent of maximum. Dr Baker agrees with this and adds the context that ‘it's almost impossible to go too low’ for LIT or oxidative training, meaning that the most important principle to observe is that you must actually be oxidative, which you won't be if you go too high. A must-read... this brilliant book shows you that getting older doesn't mean getting slower! ― Alan Murchison, The Cycling chef and masters cycling championAs an example, the revelation that serious amateurs (like me) typically do more high-intensity workouts than the pros is a brain breaker. And that whole ethos around working hard, all the time, no matter what, just sort of crumbles under the simple evidence that it doesn’t work, that what it produces is deeply embedded fatigue, injury, and demotivation.
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