The Midlife Cyclist: The Road Map for the +40 Rider Who Wants to Train Hard, Ride Fast and Stay Healthy

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If you don’t have a power meter or a heart rate monitor, you can use the RPE (rate of perceived exertion), or Borg Scale. If you want to be a great endurance athlete, most of your training should be at a level where you can have a fairly normal conversation with the person next to you, or sing a whole verse of a song without stopping and gasping for breath. On a Borg Scale this would still be quite low — maybe 12 or 13, where 6 is lying on a bed reading a book and 20 is full effort. My one caveat is that an underlying theme in the book is that we are the first generation where life expectancy is beyond 50 so we are doing things our predecessors did not do. The life expectancy thing is a red herring as life expectancy has always been close to ‘three score and ten ‘ if one survived childhood. However, his key point that we are the first generation to keenly exercise in later years is entirely valid, as his suggestion that the impact of ‘serious’ cycling in later life on our health is still uncharted. Nigel is a friend, a client, and I'm a patient of his. So our relationship is quite multilayered. And he's in the book because one, he is a superb cardiologist and second, he's a superb cyclist. And thirdly, he comes out with the best pithy one-liners I've ever heard. The one you're alluding to, I think, is that we trade cardiovascular and cognitive protection for the occasional orthopaedic incident, which is just beautiful. The heart of the matter is that if you cycle hard or moderately, you're almost certainly going to be cognitively protected and have cardiovascular protection. But you are occasionally going to fall off and hurt something. That's the proposition. Alejandro Valverde, aged 41 and thriving in the pro peloton (Image: Getty)

This book looks widely and informatively at the impacts of cycling on the health of mid life cyclists and although there is nothing to suggest my condition is cycling related, the book’s discussions on the heart , was incredibly useful in understanding my own position. I am blown away by the level of detail Phil Cavell brings to his work.' – Elinor Barker MBE, multiple world champion and Olympic gold medallist 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. We’re almost certainly the first cohort, in a 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 who refuse to succumb to evolutionary stereotyping. How many of our parents were interested in structured training for the sake of pure performance, past the age of 40 or 50? So, nobody really knows for sure what happens if you try to tune your engine to racing performance, at an age when at any other time in history you would have been dead for years if not decades. This is a critical time and we’re the pathfinder generation for those that follow us.The Midlife Cyclist offers a gold standard road-map for the mature cyclist who aims to train, perform and even race at the highest possible level. bike fitting makes good sense for every regular cyclist because the body adapts in potentially damaging ways to an unsuitable bike; Remember, Dr Baker is going out of his way to point out that if you feel good, you should not increase the intensity, meaning no more watts or a higher heart rate, but instead add in a rep or two. Going too deep or too hard will increase the required recovery time and may lead to fatigue. If you assume your real (not inflated) FTP is 250, then your hard sessions using the Dr Baker algorithm will be 250 x 105-110% x 4-6 (8-10 minute) reps. This means that you'll be working at between 262 and 275 watts during those 8-10 minute reps. This isn’t going bonkers and sending your systems haywire — it’s a controlled elevation of training stimulus. The author asks the question - is high level athletic training on a bicycle risky or damaging to one's health as we move from our 20s and 30s, into our 40s and on to our 60s? Phil Cavell draws a balance between referencing research directly and building on it with his own opinion and that of practising cardiologists. Is it hard to work out whether exercising past 40 is good for you? Everyone assumes that within certain parameters, it is, but we don't actually know, do we?

I know you shouldn't rely on anecdotes, but I'm sure you know, and many people I know who do bike racing at a more senior age – a significant number have problems with their heart or something develops with their heart. And that may be connected, or it may not be, but that is a worry, isn't it for a lot of people? With the help of medical experts, leading coaches, ex-professionals, and pro-team doctors, cycling biomechanics pioneer Phil Cavell produces a practical guide for mature cyclists who want to stay healthy, avoid injury, and maximize their achievement levels.Using contributions from leading coaches, ex-professionals and pro-team doctors, he produces the ultimate manifesto for mature riders who want to stay healthy, avoid injury – and maximise their achievement levels.