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. Persuasively, Cavell argues for the abolition of “medium” intensity training which is (I think) what I’ve come to know as threshold training. All you need is: As a parent, I look at my 11-year old daughter and encourage her to revel in her youth and energy. To run and jump and cycle with glee whenever she can.

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? Phil is eminently qualified to write the Midlife Cyclist. Well, he is certainly old enough ― Fabian Cancellara, Tour de France rider and two-time Olympic champion cleats are only for keeping a firm connection to the pedal in a pre-adjusted stance to suit the user’s feet; I think The Midlife Cyclist is an important book. One of the curses of our age is that people live for a long time but endure poor health for a large chunk of those years. Phil Cavell is trying to do something about that by showing that you can remain fit and healthy through exercise for far longer than most people think possible. The cover pitches it at racing cyclists, but I found it equally relevant to me as someone who rides a lot but doesn’t race. Much of what it contains is relevant to anyone getting older who wants to maintain good health, regardless of their sport, or even if they do no exercise at all (because this might persuade them that they should!).Just because we can - does it mean we should? What are the health risks of intense training into middle-age and beyond?

Ep. 4: One Woman’s World of Esports with Special Guest Team USAs and World #1 ranked Zwifter Liz Van HouwelingThere may well have been plenty of times when our human ancestors pushed themselves to the brink of physical collapse, fleeing predators or pursuing food. But until very recently, the chances of someone surviving to even 40 years old were vanishingly rare. Indeed, the life expectancy of pre-industrial humans was about 30 years, so for all but a handful of our 300,000 generations of evolution from the great ape, a 40-year-old human is genetically irrelevant, a selective aberration. They opened Cyclefit bike-fitting classes in 2009 and went on to work with Trek Bicycles a little while later to help create their worldwide bike-fitting educational program. Cyclefit’s educational DNA is in almost every fitting studio in the UK and many around the world. They worked with Trek’s professional racing teams for many years.

This book also looks at whether research and guidance is different for midlife women and midlife men (spoiler alert – it is), and how that may be differently expressed in our training and racing instincts. Do men have a lot to learn from women in this regard? (Second spoiler alert – they probably do.) We want to help both sexes to ride fast and live long. A true renaissance man of modern cycling, Mr. Cavell utilizes a holistic approach to bike fit, harnessing the entropic variability of athlete vs. machine and making the analytic an art.

A must-read... this brilliant book shows you that getting older doesn't mean getting slower! ― Alan Murchison, The Cycling chef and masters cycling champion If some exercise is good for you is a lot better or worse? The popular press is happy to run stories about the hazards of exercise, or age-group marathoners dropping dead at events, recounting the tale of runner Jim Fixx, who got America running yet died at only 52 (while running). “The Midlife Cyclist” quotes from studies of hard-core athletes and it seems that male elite athletes have a higher incidence of heart issues than non-exercisers and, interestingly, elite women. While the jury is out on what all of this means, Cavell’s experts (including doctors who are themselves immoderate exercisers) offer some speculative views. 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. In 2012 Cavell and Wall started the International Cyclefit Symposium ICS) – an annual and then bi-annual conference that hosted speakers from all over the world. 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)

The three most liberating words in my profession are ‘I don’t know.’ It helps if you can immediately follow them with ‘but I will find out’ or even ‘but I know someone who does.’” Data from Dr Jon Baker, who was a coach with Team Dimension Data for four years, says that his amateur clients (that’s you and me) are closer to fatigue and nearer to being overtrained than the professionals who ride for a living and race nine months of the year all around the world! That statement was genuinely worthy of an exclamation mark. And underpinning this startling mismatch is a fundamental misunderstanding about how the human body works, and therefore improves.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? 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?”