I wandered between groups of riders and found John (almost 45) who raced in D grade alongside (or more realistically behind) BNA’s Christopher Jones who placed second. John is a relative newcomer to the sport, having competed in 7 or 8 races with the Waratahs since February of this year. “I wanted some competition, but not too much”, says John, “I took up riding again about eight years ago because I didn’t enjoy going to the gym. My wife and I bought some cheap mountain bikes because we didn’t know if we’d like it or not and didn’t want to spend too much money. But we did like it and we kept it up.” John and his wife now have three bikes each, four of which live in the dining room.

When he went out for his first group training ride with the Waratahs he realised he was quite a bit younger than most of the guys in the group. “They weren’t the fast bunch”, he confesses, “but they rode at a higher speed than I was used to and did more climbing, which I was feeling two days later.” Racing has gotten to him, though. “There’s a lot to learn. Racing isn’t just about aerobic fitness and power, it’s about using your brain as well. These older guys have got the experience, so there’s a lot to learn from those guys. Some of them are very, very fit because they ride so often and look after themselves. It’s pretty impressive to see that. I’d like to continue racing for some time yet, at least another 20 years.”

Richard (aged 45) and Paul (aged 39) are of a similar opinion to John, though it’s only their first race today and they rode in E grade. Richard has two years of regular cycle commuting on his tyres, with some recreational riding with family on the weekend, while Paul describes himself as “a bit of a hacker out to have a bit of fun”. Paul rates his first race as “hard, with a lot of pain, but it’s addictive”. Richard agrees with that. Both of them promise that they’ll be back; “It’s worth getting into trouble with your family for”, Richard adds.

Dr. Peter Reaburn is an Associate Professor in exercise and sport science at Central Queensland University. He’s also 54 years old and has been a competitive athlete for most of his life. He wasn’t at the Waratah’s race, but he is well known as an expert on masters athletes, in particular cyclists.  I contacted Peter to ask him for his thoughts on masters cyclists.

“When we look at national and international performances, it’s the 25-35 year age groups where cycling performance peaks. In general, the longer the event, the more important experience (peaking, pre-race prep, and pacing) become. This means that in road events or longer track events, the older the 25-35 year olds are, the better they will go.

This said, it is never too late. There are always exceptional athletes in any age group who, if they train smart by using scientific training principles (as espoused in my book “The Masters Athlete”), together with the principles of listening to their body and learning from experience, will outperform younger riders on any given day. We all know people like that.

Successful aging is about not only physical health but also being mentally stimulated and socially engaged. We cyclists know that our sport gives us all of these. While many masters sports can also give us this, there are few sports where 60 year-olds can train and race with 20 year olds on an equal footing. Mixing with younger riders keeps us young and the young inspired!”

I like that phrase, “successful aging”; it makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something by not dying. Obviously, it’s more than that, so I asked Peter about any drawbacks he sees with being a competitive masters cyclist.

“Drawbacks? Maybe the risk of crashing might increase as reaction speed drops and sight or hearing becomes impaired. However, experience can usually make up for this if we are smart and pick the right wheel, foresee what’s ahead, and stay vigilant and focused in the bunch.

My strongest advice is to ensure anyone, cyclist or not, gets along to their family doctor for an annual check up. I do every year. My doctor is pro-exercise, open-minded and supportive of aging being no barrier to exercise, and he has a small hand!

The other advice I’d give is to ensure the older you get before you start endurance exercise like cycling, even if you’ve come from other sports, is to ensure good bike set-up, start slowly and build distance progressively, then frequency, then intensity of training. The other thing I always believe is listen to your body. And for the guys, listen to your wife!”

I was going to end this article with a quote, something trite like The Man in the Arena, but I decided against it. Rather, in the tradition of old men everywhere (oops, I mean masters), I’ll finish with a story about my youth.

My first real job after I finished university was at the CSIRO. I was young and full of enthusiasm and I was working with men who were very near to retirement age. They were still very active researchers and they in turn worked with men who were older than they were, and retired to boot. I thought it was a bit sad that these old guys didn’t have anything else to do with their lives and they still wanted to come in to work everyday. When I started to work with them, however, I saw that the fire that burned within them was as strong as the fire inside me, but better tended and controlled. When I went back to uni to do further study I encountered the same situation, retired professors who maintained active links with the university and who were always willing to give guidance and advice while still working on their own new ideas. I realised what it was that these people had, they had passion and that was a real lesson for me.

You can see this same passion in people who restore old cars, who build wooden toys for kids, who put together model railways, or who bake for the CWA charity stall. And it’s the same passion you see every Sunday in the men and women who wear the yellow and orange lycra of the Waratahs. They may be further down the road, but they’re riding strong.

The Waratah Masters Cycling Club holds regular Sunday morning races for riders over the age of 30. They can be contacted through their website.

Dr. Peter Reaburn’s book, The Masters Athlete, can be purchased through his website which contains lots of useful resources for cyclists and other athletes.

Photos © Mark Gunter Photography

The Waratah Masters Cycling Club is a Sydney based cycling club that caters for cyclists over the age of 30. The Waratahs are very well known in the Sydney cycling scene; the club’s members are quite visible in their orange/yellow jerseys and their year-round weekly races are always well attended by members of other clubs. It was at one of these races, early on a cold Sunday morning, that I found myself with a recording device looking for some Waratahs to talk to. BNA’s glorious leader, Christopher Jones, was racing in D grade and he had arranged for legendary cycling photographer Mark Gunter to come out to the Lansdowne Cycle Track in Sydney’s south west to take some shots of the action.

If you want to talk to cyclists, the best place to position yourself is near the source of coffee. The source at Lansdowne is Dave from Black or White Mobile Café. He has been dispensing coffee and cakes to the Waratahs for a few years now, ever since a weekday customer of his told him about the Waratahs and invited him to a race. That customer has since moved on, but Dave is still there early every Sunday morning. I could be cynical and say that it’s a good business situation and he has a captive audience, but after observing him this particular morning, I can see it’s something else. He knows many of the riders by both name and brew and he is an apt cycling pundit. He takes pre-orders for coffee and makes sure they’re ready with no waiting when the customer finishes his ride. He even takes coffee orders from riders in the peloton, shouted out from the back of the bunch between laboured breaths.

I’m not there long before I’m talking to John (aged 54) and Keith (aged 69) about the performance enhancing benefits of Dave’s brews. They’re intelligent and well-read gents and we discuss the physiological and psychological benefits of coffee for the competitive cyclist, how long it should be “taken” before riding and whether sugar is a good idea or not. This is the type of discussion you would have with any sports person about supplements, energy drinks or training methods, but the conversation with John and Keith deviates into how coffee affects your heart rate and blood pressure and what that means for the masters cyclist. I don’t think younger riders talk about heart stress tests in the same way, or with the sense of finality, that these guys do.

John started racing only about 3 years ago, and it grew out of social riding with friends. He was looking for some more groups to ride with during the week and stumbled across the Waratah’s group rides. He finds racing to be “a bit of fun, addictive, and a good excuse to buy some bling”.

“It’s a great leveller too. On my first ride when I went out with the Waratahs, I told my kids that I was going out with the grandfather’s group and I went home with my head hung in shame”, John Confesses. “I got absolutely thrashed up hill, down dale, on the flat, everywhere. You can live with a younger person beating you, that’s OK, but I went home the other day and bragged to my neighbour that I held off a 74 year old in a sprint”.

“That was the day he was crook, wasn’t it?” Keith asks cheekily, and the conversation halts temporarily as a sprint prim is contested. When the racers have passed I ask Keith, who started racing at 55, why these guys get out here on a Sunday morning to race.

“The Waratahs did a survey a few years ago”, he replies, “on why people join the club and came up with about 25 well supported reasons for doing it. It starts with staying healthy at our age; [cycling] is one of the few sports that you can do until you die. Sir Hubert Opperman died in his 90s while on his trainer at home!”

“Then there’s the camaraderie. The average age of the riders is about 56, with blokes ranging from 30 all the way up to about 80, all racing. It’s something to do on a Sunday morning: have a chat, tell lies, drink coffee. Then there’s the hubris of old age, that if I practice just a little bit more I’ll be as good as I was at 18; tomorrow I’ll be right, I’m not really deteriorating at all.”

“And”, he adds, “you get to wear all the sexy gear and buy new bikes – we can’t buy Lamborghinis or Ferraris, but we can buy top of the line bikes.”

Keith and John wandered off to watch the rest of the race in progress and I found another group of friendly Waratahs (a redundant statement; they’re all friendly) consisting of Greg (aged 55), Mike (aged 65) and Felix (aged 67). Greg was dropped from D grade today and puts his poor performance down to a lack of training. “There’s a technique here [in the Waratahs], you get to retirement and then you’re alright because you can ride four days a week. I’m still working, there’s not a hope.” Greg runs a ground maintenance business and claims that riding to work to increase his hours on the bike isn’t an option for him. I suspect he’s just not trying hard enough. Greg started racing in his 40s; he played division 2 soccer for 36 years but couldn’t do double headers on the weekend anymore. He had to find something a bit easier on his body and “bikes don’t break the body, except when you fall off”.

Mike, who is retired and can ride 4 days a week, rode in C grade which “started off like a bunch of school boys” and after half the field got dropped he managed to come at the rear of the front bunch. Felix had more luck in E grade, coming second in a break away. Why does he still do it? “It was either the nursing home or here, so I chose here”, says Felix, “Cycling is my medication”.

It’s not just the Waratahs who have positive things to say about the racing in this club. Gert (aged 41) from my club, LACC (Lidcombe-Auburn Cycling Club), grew up with cycle sports, being from Holland, and has ridden competitively since he was young (with a bit of a career break in the middle). Gert believes that the racing at Lansdowne, and with the Waratahs in general, is better than a lot of other club racing out there. “The older guys seem to sort themselves out a bit better when it comes to the last laps”, he says, “and that makes it safer for everyone – a bit more sanity and a bit more experience”.

The question I’ve been asking everyone this particular morning is “Why?” Gert suggests that “it’s the next logical step after they’ve done enough social riding. They meet people who race and then they give it a go and become hooked“. Interestingly, he doesn’t see cycle commuting as a way into sport cycling, but rather the other way around: “commuting is something that serious riders do”, at least in Australia. “Sunday social rides”, according to Gert, “are the way into racing. Social rides, then training rides, then racing and probably then commuting. Obviously, there are non-racing commuters out there, but the serious ones seem to demonstrate skills that you get only through racing”.

It wasn’t only experienced sports cyclists I spoke to that day, there were plenty of race virgins and neophytes braving the cold as well. I’ll speak to them in Part 2 of this article and get some advice on masters cycling from Australia’s leading expert on the subject.


Waratah Masters Photo Gallery

At the starting line with the Waratah Masters Cycling Club

Laps to go at the Waratah Masters Cycling Club

Sprinting to the line with the Waratah Masters Cycling club

Post race with the Waratah Masters Cycling Club

Waratah Masters welcomes men and women

With racing each weekend, there are a lot of riders from other clubs

Michael Pugh is a regular and friendly club member

Showing the men who's boss

Time to reflect on the race and how to improve next week

The finishing straight at Lansdowne

Young Keith looks after the club newsletter and takes a moment to recover

The lower grades usually stay to watch A and B grade riders finish

Pro rider - Keith of the Waratah Masters

The strategy and planning of competitive cycling

A colourful lycra clad masters cyclist

A Waratah cyclist takes it on the line

The crest at Lansdowne before the fast left and right

If there was no coffee, would the cyclists come?

Setting the tempo, but leaving enough energy for the sprint finish

Masters Cycling - enjoying life

Photos © Mark Gunter Photography