There I’ve said it. It’s out in the open. The secret is out, and the angst in my cyclists soul is laid bare, but that’s fine. You see they say with age comes wisdom and experience. Well I’m not sure about wisdom and all experience seems to tell me is that getting up in the mornings doesn’t get any easier.

What increasing age and the remorseless passage of time do give you is an increasing sense of ease with your limitations and failings, both physical and mental. When we’re young that heady cocktail of youthful enthusiasm, elastic muscles and supple joints gives rise to the notion that we are invincible specimens who could achieve almost any feat if only we could afford better equipment. In my teenage junior racers mind it was the fiscally uneven playing field that meant my rear mech said ‘Exage’ on the side rather than ‘Dura Ace’ that was keeping me down rather than a lack of innate genetic talent. After all I was training loads, absorbing all the latest training tips and wisdom from Cycling Weekly and the still lately lamented Winning magazine and even trying to eat reasonably healthily.

Now of course I realise that no matter how hard I trained it wasn’t going to be enough to propel me beyond the level of mid pack mediocrity. Don’t get me wrong I’d like to think I was a reasonable rider back in the day, and obviously in those innocent pre FTP and heart monitor times when it was all done on feel rather than spreadsheets it was harder gauge how well you were training , but looking back I was probably getting pretty close to the maximum out of my limited physical attributes.

These days I know for definite I’m not. I’m not even close to what I’d probably still be capable of if I really worked at it, but that’s fine and I’m totally at peace with my failings and meagre FTP score. The favourite line from my school reports could now be applied to my riding, ‘Could do better if he tried’. The thing is the wealth of research and science that has been applied to the art of riding bicycles fast over the last two decades or so has to a large extent taken all the guess work out of training. You can download training and nutrition plans from the internet to help you achieve almost any riding goal. Fancy your first 100km sportive?, no problem here’s a twelve week training program for you which will boost your endurance and V02 max. Oh, you’re looking at riding some local club races? Try this structured program of high intensity intervals laced with some high protein meals to aid recovery. That’ll have you sprinting clear of the pack in no time. Time trials? Long intervals at just below your threshold power are what you need etc, etc.

I know what I need to do but these days I’m simply not motivated enough to make the required sacrifices. Riding the bike although still an important part of my life is no longer high enough up the list to make me forgo my morning bacon sandwich or keep me out of the pub on a Friday night. I know I’m probably the thick end of five kilos over my ideal riding weight, but there’s absolutely no chance that you’re ever going to catch me on one of the healthy diets so beloved of the free training supplements than come with the magazines every spring, you know the ones that promise to make you a new rider if you only eat nuts & berries for twelve weeks with the occasional dollop of ludicrously expensive yogurt thrown in for taste. It’s just not going to happen. You see I might really want to be two minutes faster up my local climbs, but I want my Saturday afternoon in front of Sky Sports watching football with a beer (or three) in my hand just that little bit more.

It’s the same with training. I’m now closer to the big five – zero than forty. I’ve work a shift pattern that keeps me away from home four days out of every eight, and on those four home days I owe my long suffering wife and kids time before the bike gets a look in, and that’s how it should be. This is why I spent two of the last four days I had off decorating our downstairs toilet instead of smashing out intervals on the turbo trainer. I did squeeze in a couple of Zwift sessions before going back to work, but its pointless me signing up for one of these structured training plans because I know I wouldn’t even able to stick to the first couple of weeks of it.

So its all bad news then. The long slide into inactivity and couch potatoness is well underway………

Not at all, well not yet anyway. The key I find is managing ones expectations with a good old dose of hard nosed realism combined with not getting down on oneself. I’ll try and maximise my limited time and use the resources at my disposal wisely to make sure I’m not wasting time on the bike. I won’t beat myself up about missing out on Strava or Zwift sector times and if and when I do take on a rare Zwift training session and I can’t hold the last interval I’ll not beat myself up about it and resolve to get it next time. I’ll use the advances in training techniques to my advantage as well. For instance the old training adage about ‘getting the miles in’ now seems to have been largely debunked by modern science. We now know that fewer quality miles at the right intensity are far better than those long cold miserable torture sessions which used to leave me wondering if some of my toes and fingers would need to be amputated due to frostbite. So instead of heading out in the depths of winter wearing every item of cycling clothing I possess, I’ll strap on a heart rate monitor and spend a couple of hours on the turbo knowing that every pedal stroke is hitting the spot.

And that my friends is why I’m pretty much at peace with my current lowly position on the cycling tree. Do I wish I was faster? Of course I do? Do I know I could be faster, leaner and fitter? Yes to all three. Am I willing to give up beer, bacon and more of my disposable income to make that happen? No, because I also know it that the single minded pursuit of a slightly less mediocre me wouldn’t be worth the sacrifice required. That’s not to say of course that my rather haphazard approach to trying to ride and train is going to go completely out of the window, but if I feel like uncapping another beer on a Friday night knowing I’ll pay for it in seconds lost later I’ll be reaching for that bottle opener……..