Cycling UK Forum

Now my excuse here is i read the first page so i'm reacting to it primarily, some 26 years back my significant other the love of my life a fit good looking 40 year old lady with whom i've been with for 48 years had a massive brain anneurism surgery clipped,followed by a heavy stroke on her dom side she was a leftie.. it knocked the heart out of me and its taken some years to adjust and i still am, however i always loved my cycling and my bike when i was younger and was doing solo 50mile return jaunts to local seaside towns on my 11plus present a Raleigh gran sport.. so something deep inside me put me on a cheap MTB where i got my initial leg fitness and then into late 2000 a Bianchi 602 in steel when i began with a friend an old school hard man, he'd cycled Scotland flat, and he taught me about longer rides ,we went out usually 2 days a week.. what i did find was it took in my late 40's at the time some months to get the fitness required to do 5/60miles on a sunday without feeling knackered next day.. thats where i think older men and women lay down forgetting that if you are office or factory bench grounded your latent strength isn't what a postman a delivery wagon driver, a builder ,a carpenter can call upon and that makes a significant difference.. i see it all the time watching younger cyclists removing a tight 23 tyre they dont have the finger and wrist strength that is needed.. they 'd have great lungs though.. also its a fantastic stress remover, now in my 70's still very active weather permitting i rebuilt a couple of sports cars in my yard during covid, I was in under working cleaning, rust removing painting, removing suspensions, engines, gearboxes, mudguards, exhausts, and refitting with new or restored items, up and down On my knees or sat on a low seat maybe for 6 hours a day something i'd done on maybe 45 vehicles in my lifetime, i love cars too and did i notice some difference from the car i did in 2014 to the recent ones even i didnt have good hips back then and have 2 new titanium ones since 19..I was sleeping after my tea until darkness fell in the summers of the covid and last year, totally hammered..what i have discovered is weather and i dont ride in poor weather neither does my friend and the poor weather these past 3 months have meant our wheels are hung , and looks like our fitness will be hard to get back at our advanced ages .. will

Currently many people have bought into labour saving devices and do not need to do physical work around the home. Simple tasks such as brushing,hoovering,ironing washing up by hand were activities done by earlier generations. Pegging out washing, washing a car by hand, dusting on hands and knees, skirting boards, etc. These tasks are avoided but they are workouts....bending lifting stretching.
We have access to a wide range of fresh food. Preparing this food with no additives or sauces , steam cooking, provides filling nutritional meals low in calories.

With central heating, fleeces...we need minimal amounts of fats and sugar products.

End of sermon.
Cheers

willcee wrote: poor weather these past 3 months have meant our wheels are hung , and looks like our fitness will be hard to get back at our advanced ages .. will

This is my experience - I was regularly commuting 45 minutes each way (with an uphill at the end each way) and when I retired some years ago, my fitness levels dropped off a cliff, never to return.
That regular riding meant I could do between 50 - 120 miles on a weekend ride and still feel human on Monday.
Stopping the commute and being unwell put paid to that, now I lack both the fitness and the motivation to ride any distance - and that is very much a chicken & egg affair (if I had the motivation I'd ride, if I rode more I'd have the motivation).

My experience tells me that it's persistent all-year round riding that is important to maintain a base level of fitness (and motivation!)

^ millimole
"My experience tells me that it's persistent all-year round riding that is important to maintain a base level of fitness (and motivation!)"

Very much so. When I quit (almost fatally heavy) drinking very nearly 21 years ago I told myself I would cycle an average mimimim 10 miles per day. 2 miles was all I could manage at first, took a few months to get to 10, but that is pretty much what I have stuck to ever since ,- not fallen below 3,500 p.a. and often over 5,000.
At 75 with copd and prostate cancer in the meantime I am exceeding 10 p.d. so far this year. If I stop doubt i could start again!

millimole wrote: ↑24 Mar 2024, 5:34pm My experience tells me that it's persistent all-year round riding that is important to maintain a base level of fitness (and motivation!)

Age and/or letting fitness levels drop, can be difficult to recover from. Am two decades younger, but ten years back, doing a quick 24 mile round commute, c/w 2300' climb just to get to the gym was routine. As were the routine 70+ mile rides. Only 100+ mile rides felt long

But three yr's with almost rides being a generic 28-30 mile circular, minimal gym, fitness level had dropped through the floor. But ? just finished fourth week prioritising the gym, increased mileage on the side. Realised on finishing yesterdays quick 38 mile spin, half against a 20mph+ head wind, that fitness levels were heading upwards . Felt great, time for a quick 4-5 day coast / coast / lakes / dales

A couple of weeks ago I had a dental checkup.
My dentist remarked that I didn't look my age and asked me what medication I took.
I don't take any medication and I explained that I cycle and walk plus lift weights a couple of times a week.
He told me that his father and uncle never took any exercise and spent a lot of their later years sitting in armchairs - both living into their nineties.
We agreed that long life was probably mainly due to genetics.
Who was it that said "whenever I feel like taking exercise I lie down until I feel better"

ANTONISH wrote: ↑25 Mar 2024, 9:52amHe told me that his father and uncle never took any exercise and spent a lot of their later years sitting in armchairs - both living into their nineties.

In the same way that some smokers don't get lung cancer?

ANTONISH wrote: ↑25 Mar 2024, 9:52am ...
We agreed that long life was probably mainly due to genetics.
...

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life ... ?tab=chart

Jonathan

^ Genuine question. Do you present the graph in support of the genetics are all argument or as rebuttal? I rather assume the latter, with economic, standard of living, factors looking "obvious" in the country rankings. Possibly a combination of the two?
The older I get and the fewer of my contemporaries, with very varied life-styles, survive the more I attribute longevity to "luck"! Or is that just another word for "genetics".

djnotts wrote: ↑27 Mar 2024, 8:33am ^ Genuine question. Do you present the graph in support of the genetics are all argument or as rebuttal? I rather assume the latter, with economic, standard of living, factors looking "obvious" in the country rankings. Possibly a combination of the two?
The older I get and the fewer of my contemporaries, with very varied life-styles, survive the more I attribute longevity to "luck"! Or is that just another word for "genetics".

Possibly more to do with epigenetics than just purely inherited genes. So a combination of lifestyle and genetics.

Here's a thought.

Surely in evolutionary terms, "being lazy" is a good thing. The more you move about, the more energy you burn, the more you need to move about to find food. So once you have a full stomach, don't move. Hence lions sleep a lot, cattle chew the cud lying down etc.

Humans are no different, we evolved in the same way, so it is only natural that the majority of us spend as much time as possible in a state of inertia. It was only, as Chris Packham once said,

"Then some idiot invented agriculture, then it all started to go wrong!"

And now that we have every labour saving device imaginable, food delivered to the door, travelling the whole universe, courtesy of the box in the corner and the internet, doctors to fix us when we break down, for the vast majority of us, in the developed world at least, why would you want to move? Read "The Machine Stops", by E. M. Forster.

Perhaps the question should be, not so much why are people so resistant to getting fit, as why do they get fit at all?

Dave B

djnotts wrote: ↑27 Mar 2024, 8:33am ^ Genuine question. Do you present the graph in support of the genetics are all argument or as rebuttal? I rather assume the latter, with economic, standard of living, factors looking "obvious" in the country rankings. Possibly a combination of the two?
The older I get and the fewer of my contemporaries, with very varied life-styles, survive the more I attribute longevity to "luck"! Or is that just another word for "genetics".

The graph show the recent massive effect of changing the environmental factors.

Any discussion of cause needs to start with:

1 Recognition that there's a lot of different factors.

2 A pretty tight definition of the group being studied, eg dates and locations. Because the relative contribution of those different factors to variations in outcome might vary between groups.

And there's a lot of unexplained variation in any group, and even more in any individual... "luck"... until it's explained.

Jonathan

Surely in evolutionary terms, "being lazy" is a good thing.

I made the very same point waaaay back up-thread, and mentioned studies that look at how people who don’t have easy access to excess calories (i.e. most people for most of history) economise on energy, and how we are adapted to build stores within our bodies in anticipation of famine.

Any attempt to get people to waste energy by exercising (which is what it often amounts to) should really take account of that in the psychological approach adopted, and indeed the best do.

DaveBeck wrote: ↑27 Mar 2024, 9:56am Here's a thought.

Surely in evolutionary terms, "being lazy" is a good thing. The more you move about, the more energy you burn, the more you need to move about to find food. So once you have a full stomach, don't move. Hence lions sleep a lot, cattle chew the cud lying down etc.

Humans are no different, we evolved in the same way, so it is only natural that the majority of us spend as much time as possible in a state of inertia. It was only, as Chris Packham once said,

"Then some idiot invented agriculture, then it all started to go wrong!"

And now that we have every labour saving device imaginable, food delivered to the door, travelling the whole universe, courtesy of the box in the corner and the internet, doctors to fix us when we break down, for the vast majority of us, in the developed world at least, why would you want to move? Read "The Machine Stops", by E. M. Forster.

Perhaps the question should be, not so much why are people so resistant to getting fit, as why do they get fit at all?

Dave B

Maybe it's more complex? Nature of muscle physiology means keeping fit can also be useful eg when running away from a hungry lion a fit individual has a distinct advantage over a lazy unfit person. Similarly, when chasing that prey animal again, fit muscles give the healthier person a distinct advantage.

But also we are increasingly being told (from credible sources) that staying active and fit helps avoid many major medical issues that can affect people of breeding age (and thus a more direct impact on natural selection).

Ian

Psamathe wrote: ↑27 Mar 2024, 12:15pm ...
But also we are increasingly being told (from credible sources) that staying active and fit helps avoid many major medical issues that can affect people of breeding age (and thus a more direct impact on natural selection).
...

And the more we study the subject the more we recognise the usefulness of survivors beyond breeding age. The grandmother effect has recently been identified in giraffes!
https://www.popsci.com/animals/giraffe- ... ypothesis/

Jonathan