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There’s no doubt that maintaining regular exercise throughout your life can slow and even reverse many factors associated with the ageing process,” says Carlton Cooke, Carnegie Professor of Sport and Exercise at Leeds Metropolitan University. He says too many people give up their usual form of exercise when they age, when what they should be doing is adapting it to suit their changing physiology and lifestyle. Here’s how to stay smiling in the saddle, whatever decade you’re in…

YOU’RE IN YOUR 20s

In your 20s you’re at the ideal age for time-trials, Olympic distance triathlons and cyclocross

YOUR STRENGTHS

You’re virtually bulletproof (handy when sprinting as hard as Cav). Your bones are as dense as they’ll get and you’re as muscular as you’ll ever be. Wear your Lycra with pride and lick the competition from the race track to the sportive, even if you haven’t been doing speed work. Your fast-twitch muscle fibres, used for quick acceleration, are most plentiful in your 20s, and your VO2 max – the rate at which your muscles can use the oxygen pumping around your system – is primed.

“It’s now that you need to make the most of your super-efficient anaerobic system with high-intensity sessions lasting anything up to two hours,” says Andy Wadsworth, director of My Life PT (mylifept.com) and an elite cycling trainer. “Events you should be able to really nail in your 20s are time-trials and other shorter, faster rides – think power over persistence.”

YOUR WEAKNESSES

Endurance isn’t your strength now, according to Wadsworth. “I’ve seen 20-something riders suffer from burn-out because they push themselves too hard for too long – your body can’t cope with really long training rides, although you can recover quickly from shorter, higher intensity workouts. Your VO2 max capacity really won’t take you much past the 2-3 hour mark. I wouldn’t advise doing more than 30 hours training a week as an upper limit – your focus really should be on intensity, recovery and form.”

As you approach 30, don’t be surprised if you start getting aches and pains in your joints, says Dr Mark Hamer, exercise physiologist at University College London. “Shock-absorbing cartilage starts to degrade from your early 20s, and people who focus on just one activity tend to suffer muscle imbalances which put extra pressure on those joints, which in turn wears out the cartilage even quicker.” On top of that, chondrocytes, the cartilage cells in charge of repair, also decrease with age.

 THE FOOD FIX
“There’s a direct correlation between nutrition and performance, something most 20-somethings only learn after years of denial,” says Matt Rabin, nutritional advisor to Team Garmin-Cervélo. He recommends focusing on easily digestible carbs so you don’t tap into your body’s protein stores, and drinking pomegranate juice after hard rides to cope with the oxidant load resulting from high-intensity exercise. “Go for simple organic foods and wholegrain energy bars, and snacking on unprocessed cashews and almonds for heart-healthy fats.”

THE FITNESS FIX
Wadsworth says your 20s should be a decade of fitness foundations. “High power, high intensity short rides and training mean you’re more likely to suffer injuries because you’re less likely to ease yourself into rides,” he says. “Regularly see a physio or chiropractor if you have any niggles, and follow their advice.”

John Herety, team manager for Rapha Condor JLT, says younger riders don’t have the ‘reference point’ older riders do. “Riders in their 30s and 40s don’t take as many chances as they know how much it hurts – becoming more calculating and self-aware makes you a better rider.”

And, he says, don’t discount stretching. “It’ll benefit your riding much more to do 20 minutes of stretching than an extra 20 minutes in the saddle.”

Tomorrow we’ll look at cycling for 30-somethings!

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Last November, I had a stupid idea. I was due to be in the Lake District to take photos of the World’s Biggest Liar competition. Doing some research, I realised the pub was practically at the foot of the Wrynose Pass, the infamous ‘final kick in the teeth’ of the Fred Whitton sportive, which I’d photographed two years previously.

Naturally, I decided to take my bike. Considering it was November, there was a rather large amount of blind optimism involved. Luckily, I managed to go for a ride on the only dry day in the lakes in the past three months. I decided on a 35 mile route that took in the Honister, Newlands and Winlatter passes, starting and finishing in Keswick.

After the ride I had a sudden realisation – I wasn’t totally knackered. In fact, it seemed my body had barely noticed it, despite the fact I was riding 25% inclines with a 34-25 bottom gear (I’d been racing at Hillingdon – pretty much the opposite of the Lake District). While this sounds impressive, trust me, it didn’t look it. At one point I might have been doing 3kph – essentially a very painful trackstand.

On the descent back into Keswick, my mind started whirring. If I could do that ride without lactic acid burning my legs into submission, stick some appropriate gears on, give it 6 months of training, and I could do the Fred Whitton. This started me thinking – which would be harder, the Fred Whitton, with it’s short but vicious gradients reducing your legs to jelly, or the slow attrition that is climbing in the Alps?

After a call to editor Rob Spedding, I was committed to a Fred Whitton/La Marmotte double. It was at this point my friends started calling me crazy.

 Three months later…

I knew this couldn’t be good for me. It really, really couldn’t be good for me. The world looked different from down here, and I was viewing the tarmac rushing by from a new and interesting angle. I’d just hit a patch of diesel at 60kph and was sliding along on my shoulder. I don’t know how long I slid for, but I know it was long enough for me to look around while I was sliding. Luckily, my winter jacket was astonishingly sturdy (Altura, my skin salutes you!) The windproof front panel was not even affected.

The same could not be said for my winter tights, however. It turns out, I’d put my knee out to control the slide (imagine a superbike rider in a corner). There was a large patch of road rash on my shin, but that didn’t worry me. It was the hole in my knee that concerned me most. It was about 10-15cm wide, and was a few millimeters deep. All hint of skin was gone, and I can only describe its appearance as ‘fleshy’, with a long strip flapping about at the bottom of the wound. Years of BMX had taught me to fall properly, and I have that experience to thank for the lack of broken bones.

After posting this image to Facebook, a BMXer friend of mine (a man who considers roadies with the same disdain that Dennis the Menace has for Walter and the Softies), made the comment ‘Oh dear, you’ve laddered your tights!’

Then I thought about my bike. My brand new Boardman SLR 9.0, which has been loaned to me by the good people at Boardman Bikes for my endeavour. When the front wheel started to disappear to the right (it was on a long and gentle right-hand corner), I’d compensated and gone into a two wheel drift, causing the bike to spin around and fall to its drivetrain side.

Not Tom’s Boardman, not yesterday…

As the road rapidly approached, I’d tucked into a ball, braced against the coming impact without putting an arm out, in fact, sliding along the road, I was still holding on to the drops. The long and the short of it, as my clubmates inspected my bike, was that the only casualty was the mech-hanger, which had been scraped along the tarmac.

After a long, expensive taxi ride back to my home in Peckham (Sunday, rail replacement buses, don’t ask…) I dressed the wound and even took a quick bike ride to Dulwich Park for a coffee. I’d been lucky and I’d be over this quickly, I thought.

Waking up in the morning, however, I realised that while the former was true, the latter certainly wasn’t. My entire leg had swelled up to double its normal size and couldn’t be moved. The Fred Whitton was looking incredibly unlikely. A quick scan of the UK sportive calendar however, and I saw the Wiggle Dragon Ride. While the gradients may lack the vicious punch of the Lake District, the 130 mile length could make up for it.

A month after my crash, I’ve started riding and training again. Thanks to the wonder that is the hydrocolloid gel patch, my knee is almost healed, there’s just a scab the size of a 10p piece left, and the road rash is almost completely gone. After a week taking in around 250 miles, I feel I’m back to the level I was at pre-injury – even better perhaps. And now I’ve just got three short months to build the endurance necessary to ride the 130 miles of the Brecon Beacon’s vertiginous slopes which make up the Dragon Ride. Bring it.

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Dave Lloyd ’s got something from another era, its either an old school work ethic or just pure enjoyment from riding his bike – either way he is still fast – very fast – even though he is now well into his 60’s. It made a refreshing change to spend the day with Dave. His 2013 Fondriest was cutting edge, but you see plenty of people with top end bikes plodding around. Not Dave – plodding around is an alien concept to him.  He’s fast on the flat, fast around the corners and fast up the hills. The second he feels his speed drop, he’s out of the saddle.

Dave is from a time when you had to almost justify riding a decent bike with decent performances in races, when nobody would dream of wearing a World Champion jersey – unless they actually were a World Champion. To get into cycling you had to join a club, in return for joining, the club elders would teach you how to ride. I like Dave and I like the toughness involved with riding in the 70’s & 80’s, cycling was hard and unpopular – I think in an odd way that was part of its appeal for me as a youngster.

Dave has always been fast though. Between ’73 and ‘75 he rode in the iconic red and yellow colours of the TI Raleigh Team under the legendary manager Peter Post, picking up several wins and some great results;  11^th place in the Tour of Switzerland (a race he won as an amateur), 14^th in the Paris Nice stage race. During 1975 Dave was diagnosed with an ectopic heart beat condition which back in the 1970’s meant stopping racing – effectively robbing Dave of the most productive years of a professional bike rider age 26 – 29.

Dave in a rare pose – stopped! ©Rick Robson

“Yeah just as I was getting there I had three years away from the sport, I was pretty much suicidal at the time but thank goodness Chris (Dave’s wife) got me through those horrendous times – I had worked so hard and was getting some great results” Once given the ‘all clear’ to race again his comeback, in 1979, saw him dominate racing in the UK. In the next six years he became as well known for his time trial starting effort roar as for his use of aero overshoes and balaclava. He won 125 out of the 133 races he rode; high quality races too, in 1981 he won the classic Isle of Man Time Trial by seven and a half minutes from Laurent Fignon, who went on the win the Tour De France in ’83 and ’84.  The same year, Dave put the 10 mile time trial record on the shelf for seven years when he recorded 19.11 – a 31mph ride on a steel bike with spoke wheels. Like I said – always been fast…

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Produced by Tifosi – a leading brand in the sports optics market – this great set comes with 3 interchangeable lenses including smoke, all conditions red and clear. You also receive a hard shell zipped case and microfibre cleaning pouch. Plus you can choose from Black Gloss or White!

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Buy a Cycling Plus subscription and get a pair of Tifosi Ventus Sunglasses worth £35!

It’s been an amazing few weeks for Bradley Wiggins with a historic 2012 Tour De France victory, followed up with gold in the Olympic time trial.  This special collector’s edition magazine contains everything you need to know about the man himself.

Inside our special collector’s edition magazine you will find all of the below:

• Wiggins’ early years – Young Brad’s obsession with all things cycling
• Landmark interviews in the run up to this year’s Tour
• How the Tour was won. Stage-by-stage coverage of Wiggin’s victory
• Olympic medal glory – photos from all three of Wiggins Olympic years

The Bradley Wiggins Special Collectors edition magazine is available to pre-order online now, from just £4.99 including delivery!

You can also find the collector’s edition magazine exclusively at WHSmith High Street and WHSmith Travel stores.

Editor Rob Spedding heads down to Enigma Bikes in Eastbourne to get himself measured up for our upcoming bespoke bikes feature and proof, if it were needed, that he’s related to apes…

I’ve always been lanky but have always assumed that my spindly limbs were perfectly in proportion with my round shoulders and pigeon chest. After a few minutes of having various bits of me measured in a small industrial unit on the outskirts of Eastbourne, East Sussex, it looks like I might have a couple of bodily anomalies after all. “Your arms are longer than the norm,” says Enigma Bikes’s frame building guru Mark Reilly. As my knuckles don’t drag along the ground I could argue, but Mark’s the expert and his observation is backed up by the huge database on bikefitting.com. This is the tool that Mark and many other top bike builders use to get the geometry of bespoke bikes spot on.

My, haven't you got long arms?

Mark’s typed my measurements – including shoulder width, torso length and foot size – into Enigma’s bikefitting.com software and it’s compared me to thousands of other people of my height. Where I hit the norm the measurements show as green, where I’m different it’s red. So, my arm length is red… “This means that I can tweak the geometry of your bike so that it takes this information into account and you get the perfect fit,” explains Mark. On screen he’s making small adjustments to the outline of an Enigma bike and changing details such as top tube length – it ends up shorter than the 58cm ‘off the peg’ size I tend to favour – top tube angle, stem length and reach from saddles to bar. I’m not going to pretend to understand it but it all makes sense… And once I sit on a ‘jig’ that has all the relevant measurements dialled in I’m happy. (And, more importantly, so is Mark.)

And this is the 'handlebar' right?

Of course, having a bike made isn’t just about getting the angles and lengths right so before my measuring session Mark and I chatted about the kind of riding I want to do on my Enigma. And the bits I want on it. And, most importantly, the material I want it made from. Now, unlike tech. ed. Warren I’m not really a bike geek so I’m not going into this with the dream of colour co-ordinated tubing, cables and spoke nipples. And I’m also not an out-and-out racer like tech writer Robin Wilmott so I’m not in need of a machine that’ll get me to the front end of the field… But I do know that want something that’s comfortable enough for big rides, climbs well but can provide me with plenty of fun in the twisty bits.

"Yeah, throw in some wheels and I'll take it..."

As for the material I was seriously considering going for steel as I’d recently had a lot of fun riding my father-in-law’s old Gios, however think of Enigma and you really do think about titanium. And Mark does a pretty good job of selling Enigma’s expertise in the art of crafting Ti.  I worry that my slightly vague wishlist might not be enough for Mark, but he seems happy. We agree on hand-built wheels – Mavic Open Pros on Chris King R45 hubs, a matching Chris King headset and Campagnolo Athena Carbon shifting. I toyed with Shimano Ultegra Di2 but as much as I like it, I’m not sure I need it. And, it’s a personal thing, I think Campag will just look better on a metal bike.  So, we’ve got the ball rolling – Mark’s going to send me the final confirmation of size and geometry. And then I’ll sit back and relax while Mr Reilly works his magic in the Enigma workshop. I can’t wait!

Our shocking revelation that 48% of riders will admit to making cute ickle baby cats cry is the result of an “exhaustive” poll carried out on our Facebook page. Other frankly astonishing findings from our survey revealed that a worrying 21% of cyclists have punched a cow whilst riding and more than a quarter (29%) have hurt the feelings of a sensitive child. Less surprising is the ‘fact’ that only seven per cent of cyclists have kissed a girl and liked it while pedalling.

Look at its face. Now make it cry. (istock)

Yep, our survey of, ooh literally 28 people was rubbish and proved nothing. A bit like the the IAM’s survey which has drawn a uniformly negative response from journalists and cyclists alike. Kaya Burgess, writing in The Times, and The Guardian’s Peter Walker are among many who’ve already poured eloquent scorn over the IAM’s shonky sensationalism.  Here at Cycling Plus we believe that every road user should obey The Highway Code and, therefore, we say simply don’t jump red lights. However, we can’t help but feel the IAM missed the real headline  – 31.8% of drivers questioned in the same poll say that they also jump red lights. Surely, the Institute of Advanced, erm, Motorists should be highlighting this figure. The facts are incontrovertible* – a pedestrian, cyclist or car driver is far more likely to be seriously injured or killed by a car jumping a light than a cyclist. In chasing cheap column inches the IAM has missed the mark by a massive margin.

* According to the Department for Transport (DfT), in 2009 no pedestrians were killed in Great Britain by cyclists, but 426 died in collisions with motor vehicles out of a total of 2,222 road fatalities