Stay fit and fast as you get older - lessons from a cycling master

As you get older, staying in shape can become more difficult. But if you love cycling, ageing isn’t something you need to fear. Whether you're looking to maintain your fitness or reach new highs, the right training and a sensible approach will help you reach your goals.

To find out how to gain or maintain fitness as you enter middle age and beyond, we caught up with Nick Craig, an ex-professional mountain biker and cyclo-cross rider. In the 1990s, he was among the best mountain bike riders in the world, and a multi-time UK national champion in mountain biking and cyclo-cross.

At 54, Craig is still one of the top riders in the British cyclo-cross scene, despite being twice the age of many of his competitors. Craig is no longer a professional cyclist, so he has the added challenge of fitting his riding in around a full-time job and we wanted to find out what kind of training he does to maintain that elite level of fitness, and to hear how he's changed his training to accommodate the changes in his body as the years have ticked by.

Whether you’re a racer, an experienced cyclist, or new to the sport, Craig’s insight into training and racing can help all of us get the most out of our cycling as we age.

How does performance change as we age?

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Craig training near his home in northern England

For Craig, there's a couple of big differences between how he feels on the bike now versus when he was a young man.

Less power

First of all, he's noticed that he's lost top-end power. Craig told us, "I love the feeling of speed but it takes more effort to get to speed, and I don't feel as powerful so I don't tend to get up to speed as quick."

This is due to something called sarcopenia, a natural process that happens to everyone once we pass around 40. At this age, our muscles begin to weaken, and we tend to lose about 3% to 5% of muscle mass each decade.

Subsequently, Craig can’t race in the same way he used to: "I'll get to a climb in the ‘cross race now and I'll definitely just downshift, downshift, downshift and stay seated, because I don't feel like I've got that big powerful muscle anymore that I probably had when I was in my 30s."

To keep up with the pack, he needs to be tactical and use his experience and skills: "I have to get all the other stuff right, so I have to get the lines right, the grip right, the tyre pressure right, and the actual, you know, where I sit in a race. I'm having to think and be even more efficient than I probably was before."

Slower recovery

Craig finds that recovery takes far longer than it did when he was younger. These days, a weekend of cyclo-cross racing, which for Craig means "40 minutes on Saturday and then race for the full 60 minutes on the Sunday", will leave him exhausted until Tuesday.

The reason Craig is taking longer to recover in middle age is due to changes in his body. When we exercise, our bodies break down muscles, and rebuild them stronger during recovery. As we age, each step in this rebuilding process slows down. Our inflammatory response is delayed, meaning it takes longer for white blood cells to begin the recovery process, and our bodies don't utilise proteins and other nutrients as efficiently or quickly, slowing the process down even more.

Craig's cycling tips for ageing riders

Lower your intensity

To account for his increased recovery time, Craig has reduced the amount of high-intensity work he does in his training. “Volume-wise, I don't do less, but intensity wise, I do less." Low-intensity riding works almost like active recovery, giving Craig's muscles a chance to recover while he continues to work on his aerobic base.

Craig advocates for polarised training, where 80% of riding is done at a low intensity, which he describes as "zone 1, touching zone 2", and 20% of your riding is spent doing harder efforts.

When it comes to getting in that high volume, there's no need to do it at any particular time of year. Traditional training plans, ones that are based around a summer racing schedule, often put base training in the winter. For most of us, though, it makes much more sense to do longer rides in the summer and keep it short and sweet in the winter.

This is exactly how Craig structures his training: "I don't really want to go out in the dark on the roads around here so I've done all my volume in the summer, all the bike riding that I love."

The winter months are when Craig does shorter, tougher rides, usually on Zwift. It's still the polarised 80-20 rule, just spread all through the year, rather than through a week or month.

For more about the benefits of polarised training, have a look at our interview with Iñigo San Millán. Iñigo is one of the most prominent proponents of polarised training. He's a sport scientist and researcher at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and coach to Tadej Pogačar. If anyone knows about putting together effective training, it's San Millán.

Listen to your body

Forcing yourself to do predetermined, structured sessions on certain days of the week might have worked when you were younger, but as you enter middle age, that approach could lead to injury. Instead, listen to your body and only increase the intensity of your riding when you're feeling up to it.

For Craig, he works his 20% intensity into his riding based entirely on feel: "I don't really tell myself I'm ever going to do [efforts]. I just go out and see what I feel like. If I feel good I'll just get out of breath, simple as that."

By listening to his body, Craig avoids injury while finding room for the intensity he likes to include in his training. Most importantly, by riding based on feel, he keeps his riding enjoyable and rewarding.

Do what you love and it won't feel like training

For Craig, the key to getting or keeping fit is doing what you love. If you enjoy it, you'll find more time to get out on the bike, and the efforts won't feel so much like hard work.

With higher intensity work, it's really important to find a type of riding that you enjoy when you're pushing yourself. Having spent a lifetime riding on the rough stuff, for Craig, that's mountain biking. He prefers to disguise his high-intensity efforts on tough, technical climbs: "The technicality of the climb would take away the fact that I was doing it, and I’d get to the top of the climb and I wouldn’t even know what I've done to myself. I've done an effort without knowing it."

More generally, regardless of whether it fits into a structured plan, simply doing whatever kind of cycling you love is the best way to maintain your fitness, as that way, you'll find more time to ride. Craig always has his eye out for an opening in his schedule to squeeze in a ride. His week is unpredictable with work, but he told us that "one little window will open up and I've got two hours, I'll get my kit on".

Consider core-strength exercises like yoga or paddleboarding

A lot of us have probably got away with skipping strength training and conditioning as young adults. But as our muscles begin to degrade and our flexibility decreases, we’ve got to be proactive to keep fit and healthy.

Again, finding an enjoyable way of introducing this into your schedule is key. That way, you'll be sure to keep at it year after year. Craig has found that yoga is both beneficial and enjoyable for him: "I've always done a lot of stretching but I was finding stretching just seemed to be a bit of a bore and a chore whereas, you know, just finding some yoga, following a routine on YouTube has been really good for me."

To develop his core strength, Craig has got into stand up paddleboarding. Again, it's about finding a core-focussed activity that you love doing.

On the bike, Craig noticed a real improvement: "I've really noticed that if I do yoga and I do some paddle boarding, my core and delivery of power – what power I still can manage – is so much better for having a stronger core. If I could go back to the 90s when I was in my 20s, I would have done that then."

Be realistic with your expectations

The final word from Craig was about expectations and priorities: "Just remember that for all if you've done cycling through your life, all you've ever done is thought every year and year you'll get stronger and better and fitter, and that goes into your 30s: you get this bigger engine, you've built all this stuff, and then all of a sudden you get to 40."

As we pass our peak, it's really important to decouple our happiness and our cycling performance. Improvements in our performance will only get harder, and cyclists who are already at a really high level might find their fitness deteriorating, no matter what they do. The solution? Focus on enjoying riding, not on your stats or performance.

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Si Richardson rides with Nick Craig

Entering middle age can seem daunting, but for many of us, especially people who are new to cycling, these can be some of the best years of fitness in our lives. For more established cyclists, it can take some work to maintain the level of fitness you've become used to, but Craig is living proof that it's possible to remain at an elite level of fitness, even in your 50s.

With some extra strength and conditioning to compensate for the changes that our bodies are going through, and a more flexible approach to training, you can still give the young guns a run for their money. Ultimately, though, as we pass our peak, the most important thing is to focus on doing what you love. There’s far more to cycling than performance gains, so don’t be too hard on yourself and be sure to enjoy your riding.

Simon Richardson

GCN Presenter

Former pro road and mountain biker racer