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the midlife cyclist. phil cavell. bloomsbury paperback 282pp £14.99

"Let's be clear from the start - this book isn't a training manual."

the acronym mamil refers to middle aged men in lycra, aimed more at those who, with the necessary financial wherewithal, bought themselves pinarellos, colnagos, bianchis et al, combined with rapha, castelli and assos clothing, despite having little previous experience of cycling. following these not inexpensive purchases, they then proceed to enter sportives and gran fondos without much in the way of a clue, and body shapes frequently compared to that of billy bunter. that is, of course, a sweeping generalisation, but i don't doubt that we've all come across riders who closely resemble my description.

personally, i have reached the age where the acronym ought best be altered to oamil, or old age man in lycra. granted, i have been riding a bicycle for almost forty years, so i'm hopefully excused from several of the above excesses, but nonetheless, the vicissitudes of the ageing process are not unknown. oddly enough, despite recognition of the latter, i have just returned from a round trip to debbie's of 28km at an average speed of 28kph, a pair of numbers i thought i'd never again witness on my garmin, espceially when half of that ride was into a modest headwind. so are those aged demands on the elderly athlete (if i can still refer to myself as such) overstated? i seriously doubt it. that average speed, i'd be inclined to think of as a fluke, encouraged by the sense of pride and ego that would not let me drop off the back of my two younger colleagues.

should you harbour any doubts that such is the case, i'd urge you to read phil cavell's the midlife cyclist, the chapters of which provide the definitive information as to why age might not be your friend in the peloton. the author is one of the two gents who operate cyclefit in london's macklin street, and admittedly a man who is already in his late fifties. that the author is particularly well-acquainted with pretty much every aspect relating to his wide-ranging narrative, i can attest first hand, having benefitted from a lengthy bike-fit several years ago. the changes made at that point to my position on the bicycle are still assisting me today.

phil makes it plain in his opening chapters, reiterated when necessary, that we are amongst the first to discover what it means to continue riding into middle-age. "We're almost certainly the first cohort, in great enough number, to be statistically relevant, to push our bodies into and beyond middle age, towards peak performance. We're the virtual crash-test dummies for future generations..." if we accept this to be true, and i see no evidence to the contrary, few of us have any real idea how to improve our fitness as the years roll by. which gives us the perfect incentive to add this book to the velocipedinal bookshelf.

i recall robert millar (as was) stating that, past the age of thirty, it was necessary to train twice as hard, just to maintain parity with younger upstarts in the peloton. that being the case, how much harder does the 40 or 50+ rider have to train to stay fit and to fend off the worst of the ageing process? but then, none of us are filling in entry forms for the tour de france, so what need is there to work so hard on the bike, once middle-age beckons? "We evolved to persistence hunt, not to sit and browse the internet; and endurance cycling obviously more closely mimics persistence hunting than playing video games." as we age, we lose muscle fibre, whether we want to or not, so assuming continued fitness is likely to make the ageing process more bearable, then hunting it is.

the author is demonstrably a fan of getting out on the bike, rather than plying the world of watopia in search of geriatric fitness, predominantly on the basis that riding in the 'real world' forces any rider to maintain stability in the face of many an expected and unexpected hurdle. "Training outside is palpably better for your balance, riding skills and cognition. It's also better for your general mood and mental health."

he also advocates, in a chapter entitled 'Bike, what bike?' that, given the choice, we ought to opt for a disc-brake equipped machine, (probably the one point in the book with which i'd take issue), but having earlier pointed out that the bikes we ride today are of a design that has basically remained unchanged since the latter part of the nineteenth century. this is predominantly at the behest of the uci (in which the author finds little favour) who effectively disparaged and subsequently banned the recumbent design which had arrived in the 1930s. "This UCI definition was essentially the same criteria that the Wright brothers used in 1895."

but phil cavell has the perspicacityto realise that it's not only not all about the bike, it's also not all about power output, heart-rates, or even functional threshold power (ftp). in a chapter entitled The Mindful Cyclist, he looks at the variables not encompassed by choice of bike, bike-fit (a subject on which he is eminently qualified to comment), but perhaps a less obvious factor in the quest for progress, and the staving off of age-related degeneration. "The 'mindful cyclist' is one who takes care of their whole self and in doing so makes themselves a faster cyclist and almost certainly a better parent and partner."

phil cavell's credentials for writing such a book as this, are encapsulated by fabian cancellara on the back cover: "...Well, he is certainly old enough", but that only tells a fraction of the story. not only is this a highly desirable publication because the author has been on the same quest as his readers, but because he has an impressive ability to write about the subject in plain, unequivocal language. happy to (metaphorically) hold his hand up to personal foibles and predilections, he is also rarely dogmatic in his presentation; here are the facts, and here's what might help you cope with them. my only gripe is that he didn't write this ten years ago. and though little of the contents can be viewed as hypothetical, to bolster his case for included advice, the book ends with several, real world case studies, underlining the veracity of that advice. there is also a copious and comprehensive index at the back, for finding important reference points easily and quickly.

as stated at the opening of this review, it's not a training manual, and very much the better for that being the case. no matter what age you are now, you're inevitably going to get older; buy a copy now and prepare in advance.

saturday 3 july 2021