Renowned cycling biomechanics pioneer, Phil Cavell, explores the growing trend of middle-aged and older cyclists seeking to achieve high-level performance. 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. 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%). 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:

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. The book starts strongly with chapter 1 analysing the physical decline we all face and offers practical advice how to counteract these effects and maximise the health benefits of cycling. Chapter 2 brings to our attention how unnatural a bicycle actually is, before moving on to the central question in chapter 3, will high level training lead into one's advanced years actually shorten lifespan and thinks about risks and mitigations. It’s an interesting read by an author who really, really likes the word “ameliorate” and who might have spent a bit more time off his bike proof-reading the text – there are a few too many sloppy errors throughout.

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)

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 He makes the point that people like me (65 y+ triathletes) are the first large cohort of oldies doing excessive exercise and that over the next couple of decades, we will learn more about the benefits and disadvantages and consequently be able to design better strategies to avoid the latter and optimise the former. Let's hope so! For me, there was a lot of good news in the book. I’m not just a cyclist. I do resistance training. I run regularly. And I couldn’t help but feel this didn’t need to be a book just for cyclists. Yes, there was a lot of bike-related content, but there is a running book here too, and a book for anyone who is trying to maximize their remaining time above ground. Are you middle-aged? Are you slower than you used to be, more tired? Read this book. It will help you. This book has helped me visualise a rounded training programme that I think I should be able to implement, hopefully into my impending 60s. One of the slightly depressing things about the book is that you detail exactly what goes wrong with your body and what stops working as you get older. And there's a sense that it's almost inevitable, isn't it?. You know, bits are going to stop working or slow down or not be as good.An amazing accomplishment... a simple-to-understand precis of your midlife as a cyclist you won't want to put it down.' Phil Liggett, TV cycling commentator Time's arrow traditionally plots an incremental path into declining strength and speed for all of us. But we are different to every other generation of cyclists in human history. An ever-growing number of us are determined to scale the highest peaks of elite physical fitness into middle-age and beyond. Can the emerging medical and scientific research help us achieve the holy triumvirate of speed and health with age? 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. Hip surgeons and physios love cycling and always prescribe it because it's not traumatic on your body if your bike is set up properly. But actually, your body needs a bit of trauma. It needs a bit of micro tear to try and generate it to heal stronger. So cycling, in some senses, when you get to my age, is too kind. You need to do your base with cycling and then challenge your body a little bit differently.