Articles – Page 3 – Seven Cycles

Public Service Announcement: The Midlife Cyclist

This is not a review. It’s a strong recommendation.

When I first heard about the book The Midlife Cyclist, I thought, “Oh no, not another storybook with goofy anecdotes about getting old on a bike. I already live that every day.” Fortunately, I couldn’t have judged the book by its cover more incorrectly. I read a few early reviews and was surprised by descriptions of the content. I picked it up and was happy to be completely wrong in my presumptions.

The Midlife Cyclist is filled with easily understood and digestible data, research, and smart thinking about riding longer and healthier far beyond midlife. The book’s tagline, “The road map for the +40 rider who wants to train hard, ride fast and stay healthy,” is precisely correct. It is indeed a contemporary map and compass for our riding future. If you’re 40 or older, reading this book is in your best interest.

In this relatively recent era of easy access to too much information, perceived comparative stats, and online competitive riding with real-time data, some of us become captives. Cavell’s book provides a path forward to sustained fitness and sanity. After reading Midlife I expect you’ll have more fun on your bike. You may reevaluate your goals. You’ll rethink your relationship with your bike. All of the questions and answers in this book are worthwhile.

The writing has stuck with me. I keep coming back to it in my head over and over. For me, that’s the sign of a valuable book.

In Cavell’s words,

“the Midlife Cyclist is my attempt to square the holy triumvirate of age, speed and good-health, using the very latest clinical and academic research.”

He has accomplished this seemingly impossible task.

Who is Phil Cavell? Why read his writing?

I don’t think anyone has a more overlapping Venn diagram of skills for this topic. He’s been working on these themes for many years; his performance-based cycling knowledge is second to none; he is technically adept. Cavell’s circle of confidants is among the best in the world for this subject, too; he’s been working with world-class athletes for decades; he has access to the most progressive and cycling-aware physicians and doctors on the planet. And, oh yeah, he’s an excellent communicator and the founder and CEO of Cyclefit.

The book has only one flaw: Cavell didn’t write it fifteen years ago when I was just starting on Team Midlife.

I look forward to the next book Cavell says he’s working on (I hope): The Twilight Cyclist. It better happen soon if I’m going to benefit from it. For now, I’ll reread The Midlife Cyclist.

Read it and ride on.

On Framebuilding: Part Four – Paint

Painted frames get prepped, then hung on the rack just outside the odd looking, seemingly out of place, paint booth. Its silver walls look like nothing else in the building. A sign hangs above the door that reads “time machine.”
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Tools of the Trade: Part One

People who tour our factory almost always comment on the brute elegance of the lathes and mills we use to build our frames. It’s a hodge-podge of heavy equipment drawn from old brick buildings like ours all over New England. Many of these machines have been working at their daily tasks for more than 50 years.

Skip Brown, who builds all our specialized fixturing, also maintains our fleet of behemoths. He shows up with the sun each morning and makes his rounds, oiling, aligning and cleaning. Skip says he can smell a well-cared for machine, just from the freshness of the oil scent wafting above it.

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Something in the Soil, Something in the Water

Seven Cycles sits in a squat, red brick building in Watertown, MA, six miles from downtown Boston and a stone’s throw from the Charles River, which ribbons through the city and out into the western suburbs. Just up stream from us is the Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation, and not even a mile further on is the former site of the Waltham Manufacturing Company.

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A Tiny Meditaion

For all our love of the bicycle, it is but a tool. We’ve heard from cycling advocates, green activists, and city planners how the lowly bicycle is the most efficient method of multiplying energy, of moving through the world that humanity has yet devised. We may nod, but in our bones we know that misses the point. We love the bicycle not because it is efficient but because it makes us efficient. We see the world; we flow through it like water down a river and we move, yes, we move like birds happily tethered to the earth, as if being still is a theft of freedom.

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