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This seems to be suggesting a polarised training approach although he doesn't name it as such, which generally works on a 3 zone model rather than the more regular 7 zone model but whichever is used I agree with much of what is said with the odd caveat. 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. Currently, there’s a quiet revolution occurring in the ranks of middle-aged and older sportsmen and women. Virtually nothing happened in several hundred thousand generations, in terms of mass participation of veteran athletes in structured training, and now for the first time, in the space of just two generations, we are seeing a fitness surge at scale. Most of our parents and grandparents wouldn’t have participated in hard training post-marriage and certainly not after the birth of their first child, as soccer and netball were inevitably replaced with fondue parties and trips to the pub. At the very most, our parents may just have embraced (probably way too late) the ’70s and ’80s keep-fit crazes – jogging or aerobics. As our middle-aged generation ages, we’ve decided to plant our flag on the more distant but brighter star of elite performance, achieved through the application of quasi-professional sports science and technology. There 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.
If you're going to exercise immoderately after certain ages, is cycling worse or better for you than something like running or swimming, or are there different advantages? The complex and highly interactive relationship between age, health and athletic fitness is the holy triumvirate – there are many out there who feel that only two can increase significantly at any one time – age and fitness or age and health. As 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. Just because we can - does it mean we should? What are the health risks of intense training into middle-age and beyond?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 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.
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. Is this where old school training, my chaotic school (my basic philosophy was to ride my bike enough in the winter for adventure, fun and relaxation, to be able to race myself match fit-ish in the spring), and the new-data school intersect? We all seem to be saying the same thing. That to build yourself into a persistence (or endurance) hunter you need to train yourself to be a hyper-efficient aerobic machine, ruthless at scavenging sustainable fuel stores at as high-power outputs as possible.The author also points to the truism that the challenges we face are primarily caused by “information and moderation deficit.” Mr. Cavell, a lifelong competitive cyclist himself, risks being seen as biased when he asserts that cycling can be “used as a panacea for solving the worst physical and cognitive effects of ageing as an athlete.” The MidLife Cyclist‘s discussion of heart health was particularly timely for me. I had a serious dehydration experience about a month ago, literally while I was reading the chapter on heart conditions. Getting some depth of understanding about what might be going on in my chest helped me feel more at ease. It also motivated me to make a doctor’s appointment. Why worry, when you can get answers and move on with your life? Which leads us onto the most important question of all in ‘Will I Die?’ Will doing more of what you love, kill you or make you better? The press loves to run poorly researched, sensational articles about how intense exercise could hurt or even kill you, should you exercise hard into middle age. They are cynically exploiting a temporary knowledge gap to sell their newspapers and magazines. We consult with world-leading cardiologists and cyclists, and review the latest research for a calmer, deeper assessment of the likely outcome of riding as hard as you like as you get older. And whether outcomes may differ for men and women. For Mr. Cavell, the balance also includes the trade-off between the brain-building stimulus of riding and racing outdoors with the neural-induced stress it creates. 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.
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