Joined in 2023 
82 
63 About this deal
To become a truly mindful cyclist is to achieve emotional equilibrium. To eliminate the external factors that illicit our hardwired fight-or-flight mechanism and mitigate the inflammatory burden upon our health, training, and performance. The bike is quite flattering as it is low loading, but sitting on your turbo trainer at 350 watts for 20 minutes does nothing for bone density or muscle mass,” says Cavell. I would imagine even a pro or their coach has to do a certain amount of trial and error. There is enough information out there in books for amateurs to have enough knowledge to be able to produce a good quality training programme that can be tweaked further as we gain that experience. There is also good enough software available for free to be able to monitor progress and learn to judge how to come into form, peak and avoid over training.
physician or nutritionist, for example. We will meet all of these people in future columns. Exercise may well be the finest drug the pharmaceutical industry never invented, but can we also have too much of a good thing? Should the ideal prescription dose change as we age? And is the advice different for new and returning exercisers compared to lifelong athletes? These questions will be examined next issue. As a last word on data, I’ll leave you with this thought: we may well demand ever more accurate ways to record, slice and dice our training metrics, but every data set is just an abstract house of cards without the solid foundations provided by a deep understanding of biology and psychology, how it is changing over time and how that relates to you and your life. Throughout my early cycling history, I fell victim to the ‘butterfly effect’ of the cycling norm. It wasn’t until I accepted the honesty of introspection and negotiation that my cycling self changed for the better. I am an ‘indoor specialist’ and proud of it. 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.” I’ll finish with my usual caveat. I don’t know the author (although I did have a shoe fitting at his company many years ago) and bought The Midlife Cyclist myself. Neither the publisher nor the author know I’ve written this, but maybe I’ll tell them now it’s done.In Chapter Three, entitled Will I die? – the author lays it all on the line in a way that he admits “can be a mountain.” The reader will consider this an understatement when faced with the depth of research defining the effects of cycling at a performance level on the cardiovascular system of the veteran athlete. Would I push myself to that brink of physical shutdown, either in training or competition, at my current age of 58? 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?” In stark contrast, data was intrinsically dull when I was growing up. It was stored on mainframe computers in bunkers and sat in abstract to the real, vivid and actual world. ‘Data’ is even drab as a word. I am not sure this is different between indoor/outdoor cycling. I suspect that off-road riding is more challenging because you are moving around so much. I remember that my upper body used to be in agony after a cyclo-x race or MTB race! It drives us to develop skills and coping strategies. It is intrinsically a dynamic model. Outside we are also coping with ever-changing weather, road, trail conditions, and topography.
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 The road to becoming a great cyclist in middle age and beyond may well involve doing less cycling in favour of other activities.”Cycling is all about being in flexion, so add a sport with more extension, like swimming, running or cross-country skiing, so you don’t get hunched,” suggests Cavell.
The ‘butterfly effect,’ known as ‘path dependence,’ is when decisions are made for social or political reasons and have long-term effects upon subsequent generations.
Popular Posts
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 Mr. Cavell asks himself and the reader as he lays the groundwork for the cerebral cornucopia to come, In the vast majority of cases, exercise in middle and old age will do you good, mitigating the effects of the infirmities noted above, and significantly reducing your risk of copping cardiovascular diseases (40%), strokes (25-30%), diabetes (40%) and even cancers (20%). And we no longer metabolise alcohol efficiently, so drinking a lot in your 60s is not a great idea. You need to think about your inflammation burden – through stress and training – much more carefully as well.” What changes should I make?
Saturday brought near-record warmth: When I reached Greenwich, Connecticut—the destination or turnaround point, depending on your point of view—early in the afternoon, the temperature had risen to 81F (27C). That is more or less normal for a day in June, or perhaps just after Labor Day. In the beginning, running helped Rachel gain mental strength and she thought she was healing fine. But her depression kept increasing, she tried to come out of it by winning races and collecting medals at Marathons. In Chapter One, The Ageing Cyclist – Growing Old Disgracefully, the author skillfully dissects and disseminates cutting-edge research and interviews of prominent authorities in genetics, metabolism, orthopedics, physiology, endocrinology, pulmonology, and cognition. Male cyclists are now 20 years past their peak in terms of testosterone, bone mineral and muscle mass. “There is an accelerated decline in your 50s,” warns Cavell.Human growth hormone (HGH) – which supports muscle mass and aerobic capacity – also drops, contributing to a decline in muscle mass of 3 to 8 per cent, per decade. So after 40, a cyclist’s testosterone, bone density and muscle mass are at the very top of the down slope.” I was surprised how much is still not known medically about the midlife athletic body. Longitudinal studies are being conducted. I wanted binary answers to binary questions much of the time, and sometimes this was not possible. This is where I think virtual cycling could have a huge advantage over real-world cycling. It is massive potential. It is a virtually clean sheet. The virtual ‘bike’ only has to be a perfect exponent of physical potential.
Great Deal 
New Comment