Welcome!

Welcome to my new blog.

The idea behind Rider's Cafe is a place to hang out with friends and like-minded cycling loonies anywhere on the planet. Somewhere we can share information on great rides, riders, frames, wheels, videos, books, races, training methods, gadgets, food, drinks, and pretty much anything that gets a cyclist's pulse going...

I intend to share my ideas and offer what I've learned in the hope that it can help others, and also in the hope that through feedback on these ideas my understanding and awareness will also grow. I offer my humble opinion not as a fixed position, but as a point of view open for discussion.

In the past 3 decades I've been involved in training my body to adapt to the stresses of competitive sport, first as a triathlete and then, as my passion for cycling outgrew the other 2 disciplines, a road cyclist. Though I've amassed a fair amount of ideas and information along the way, what I've learned through good old trial-and-error has given me a fairly good take on how my own mind and body can most efficiently be cajoled into going faster for longer.

Nowadays I still train in the belief that I can improve on what I have achieved in the past, even though I should actually probably be happy with not slowing down too much as I reach my mid 50s! I'm always looking for a way to train smarter. I always question established ideas on the subject, and I am aware that there is very little information available on research done on the athletic human body beyond 40 years. I know of some pretty remarkable individuals in cycling and triathlon who defy the ageing process by still being world-class competitors in their 40s and 50s.

So there it is - my first post - not much to argue about yet, but I'm working on it!