IGX

My wife picked up the book at the local bike shop, and I stole it off of her bedstand and read it myself.

Really enjoyed the book, had lots and lots of useful tidbits of information. Target audience is the aging biker who is starting to feel the steady onslaught of aging, but has useful gouge for everyone. The content of the book is about 50% biking, and about 50% other stuff, which is why I review it here.

A core precept of the book is that biking is a partially complete physical activity, and if all you do is bike you will end up physically out of whack in many ways, to include strong risk of osteoporosis, back pain, poor posture, declining strength and reflexes, even impotence and poor relationships. Ouch.

That is where the "other stuff" comes in. A lot of discussion on weight training, flexibility, yoga, cross training, and other topics always of interest here. The two authors, Roy Wallack and Bill Katovsky, are both world class triathletes who bring in different perspective to these topics. They've thoroughly researched the issues and cite the literature. Obvious fitness wonks who have experimented on themselves.

Interspersed are very interesting essays/interviews of renowned bike riders who are going into their later years. Ned Overend is one, a many time world mountain biking champ who raced and won into his late 40's. Another, whose name escapes me at the moment, rode a 100 mile ride on his 90th birthday, and rides 30 miles per day. He gets his cross training in by raising all of his own food in his garden.

Anyway, highly recommend at least picking it up and scanning it if you are at the local big box bookstore. Good stuff.

I speed-read through it on the shelves at Borders (I'm not a cyclist, but it was a great title), and I have to agree with your assessment. Lots of good stuff in there about balancing out your life and physique.

The surprise was the part where they assessed the affect that serious training might have on a cyclist's marriage and how to compensate for it,a nice little bit of pop psychology Dr. Phil only wishes he'd thought of.

To wit: In order for a marriage to last, the female has to feel that there are more goodwill "deposits" made to the relationship Bank (ie, favors, small courtesies, kindnesses, flowers, doing dishes, mutual orgasms) than there are "withdrawals" ( muddy feet on the carpet, spending all day watching football, poker nights, not waiting for her to "finish" etc).

When researchers asked men and women what the ration of good-to-bad needed to be to make the marriage last, women suggested a "3-to-1" or at least "2-to-1" ratio, and men thought it would require a "1-to-1" ratio. (There's part of your problem right there, eh?)

However, when researchers ran the actual numbers for successful long term (and "happy") marriages, it turned out the ratio of good-to-bad acts was more like "5-to-1". (This probably explains a lot, doesn't it?)

The authors make very practical use out of this: in order to gain enough "good will" to spend all that time on your bike, you're going to have to basically be her "slave" in the off season.

Anyway, a nicely written and assembled book.

Abandoned by Wolves wrote:
However, when researchers ran the actual numbers for successful long term (and "happy") marriages, it turned out the ratio of good-to-bad acts was more like "5-to-1". (This probably explains a lot, doesn't it?)

Not surprising; lots of other research has shown that we remember bad things more easily than good ones. This makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint (it pays to remember where the stuff is that almost killed you) but it also means that we need to make a constant effort to stay positive. Mental laziness leads to negativity.

In the book they spend a lot of time talking about strategies to avoid or fix back pain. They play up these guys a lot. Some useful stuff on their website.

http://www.symmetryforhealth.com/

I refuse to read any books about how to live to be a hundred or bike or play golf or whatever till you are 100 unless the author is at least 100 years old themselves. Anything else is just guessing.

For sure, riding a bike such as this (below, current steed) down a 30 degree rock-strewn slope at 30+ mph is exactly 1000 times more manly then hiding in the bushes next to a dead, rotting zebra waiting to shoot a lion in the ass with a bazooka. And that extra testosterone is what leads to living to a ripe old age. Assuming you don't crash and burn.

You could get your skirt caught in those spokes.

Nice DH bike, what did that set you back, btw?

Road biking is gay, though.

steamboatwillie wrote:Nice DH bike, what did that set you back, btw?

Road biking is gay, though.

It was $2K for the previous year's model. Specialized Stumpjumper.

I agree with the road biking, I don't own one. I do have a cross bike, which looks kind of like a road bike but with stronger frame, bigger tires, lower gears. Use it for the long rides on gravel and fire roads.