My book of the year for 2023 is The Race Against Time by Richard Askwith. It was the book I didn’t know I was looking for. Having run and cycled for some 40+ years, maintaining times and performances in later life becomes increasingly challenging, especially following three years of ‘ticking over’ during Covid (although some people have been affected far worse, of course). The Race Against Time reassured me that I am not alone and provided numerous accounts of people competing competitively well into their eighties and beyond, if health and fitness can be maintained.

And being lucky enough to have retained a reasonable amount of fitness in ‘middlish’ age, this blog will document how I use it later life. It will contain references and ‘rose-tinted’ flashbacks to previous cycling trips generally between 1988 and 1998. It will also include the painful bits that I’d forgotten and subtle references to songs that have shaped me. And just as I have benefitted from others’ blogs, I hope that this will provide a source of information and inspiration for others.