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Ed Clancy (second right) made his name in successive British team pursuit squads. Bryn Lennon \/ Getty Images<\/p>\nIf you’ve cycled for many years, you\u2019ll likely have been through different phases of your two-wheeled adventures, where your goals, aspirations and interests shift up and down, and side to side \u2013 and may eventually change out of all recognition.<\/p>\n
What you did as a teenager on the bike \u2013 had fun, rode fast and dreamed of the endless possibilities of where this machine might take you \u2013 will be very different from where you might find yourself in your 70s, still riding for the sheer pleasure of it and the memories it evokes from a life on the bike.<\/p>\n
Because of the possibilities that this simple contraption promotes, your relationship with your bike constantly shifts. Not to mention how your life, the responsibilities it brings and the time it eats up, affects your time in the saddle.<\/p>\n
Few cyclists experience this gearshift quite like a professional when the time comes to retire and hang up their cleats.<\/p>\n
Many will have been on the pro pathway from an age that they can barely remember. Some may have had all the talent but had the enjoyment for the sport squeezed out of them, as their childhood hobby turned into a pressurised job, one that the livelihoods of many others depended on.<\/p>\n
For others, their life as a professional becomes such a part of their identity that life on the other side of retirement is impossible to fathom.<\/p>\n
Would they ever be able to relocate the simple pleasures of riding a bike again, after years of compromising it through fame and fortune?<\/p>\n
Retired British three-time Olympic team pursuit champion Ed Clancy is a poster boy for how bikes can remain as the fulcrum of a life through changing times.<\/p>\n
Enduring love
\nEd Clancy (second right) made his name in successive British team pursuit squads. Bryn Lennon \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u201cMy love for cycling is as alive today as it was when I was three or four years old, scuttling about on balance bikes,\u201d he tells me over the phone from the office of one of his new day jobs, which you can probably guess is tied up with cycling (he\u2019s South Yorkshire\u2019s active travel commissioner).<\/p>\n
We\u2019re chatting because he\u2019s got a new book to promote, which he\u2019s written with flexibility expert Lexie Williamson.<\/p>\n
Full Gas Forever: A 40+ Cyclist\u2019s Guide to Riding Further and Faster is a practical manual that capitalises on the trend for midlife cyclists to push themselves harder than at any time in history.<\/p>\n
Clancy just about qualifies to write such a book, having turned 40 in March. It’s filled with hard-won advice from the pair on the training, nutrition, recovery and off-bike conditioning required for a long life on \u2013 and off \u2013 the bike.<\/p>\n
Clancy and Williamson complement each other well, bringing their own expertise from very different backgrounds. \u201cBloomsbury, the publishers, approached me about it and with turning 40 this year I thought it sounded like a great idea,” Clancy adds.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I was honest with them about the things I was interested in \u2013 the technical side of bikes and the technique of riding them \u2013 and the things I didn\u2019t have the first clue about.<\/p>\n
\u201cThings like stretching and nutrition \u2013 things that I managed to miraculously avoid as a pro rider. And why it made an awful lot of sense to partner up with someone [Lexie] who was better and smarter than me in every regard.\u201d<\/p>\n
The last time I rode with Clancy was on a Club Med press trip last summer in Alpe d\u2019Huez, where he was bounding up and down the high mountains of the French Alps with the enthusiasm of a newborn foal.<\/p>\n
Three years post-retirement, he was in fabulous shape. Not any better or worse than when he was propelling himself around a 4,000m track race. Just different. Lighter, less muscled and better prepared for this new chapter of his life.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/DSC05230-scaled.jpg\")
Clancy on Alpe d’Huez in the summer of 2024. Club Med<\/p>\n
The particular physicality of his old job on the track left him with worn-out discs in his back that required surgery. These days, the ability to simply ride, as opposed to train, frees up his body and soul.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re all going to get older \u2013 that\u2019s a given. But it\u2019s also a given that cycling is the absolute best thing for us,” he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho wants to be trying to play stop-start sports like football in your 50s, 60s or 70s when there\u2019s the option of riding a bike.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m clearly very biassed but cycling is the best sport, leisure activity and means of transport \u2013 add all that together and it\u2019s the best way to age gracefully.\u201d<\/p>\n
Life begins at 40
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/MG_7683-scaled.jpg\")
The Fred Whitton Challenge has the most challenging route in amateur British riding. <\/p>\n
While hitting 40 might be a time when some cyclists decide it\u2019s time to start racing at master\u2019s level, for an ex-pro such as Clancy, who\u2019s been riding bikes at full throttle from a very young age, organised racing is low on his agenda from this point onwards.<\/p>\n
He wants to experience new things on a bike \u2013 which at times has overlapped with his old career.<\/p>\n
\u201cI \u2018won\u2019 the Fred Whitton<\/a> this year,\u201d he says to explain how his love for cycling has never been stronger.<\/p>\n Won is a strong word, he clarifies, because the event is a sportive<\/a> (albeit the most competitive of its kind in the UK), but he got a thrill out of it nonetheless.<\/p>\n \u201c2,500 riders do that event, whippersnappers in long-sleeve skin suits who take it dead seriously,” says Clancy.<\/p>\n \u201cI haven\u2019t touched a power crank or heart rate monitor since the day I got off the track in Tokyo [2021] but I still love riding bikes.<\/p>\n \u201cI commute \u2013 I\u2019ve cycled into the office in Sheffield today. Sometimes I ride to British Cycling in Manchester to do some work there. <\/p>\n “If I have a free Saturday, I\u2019ll get on my electric mountain bike and head into the hills with people who have nothing in common except enjoying the fun and freedom of doing that.<\/p>\n \u201cI have no desire to hit a certain weight, or coefficient of drag \u2013 I just love riding my bike.”<\/p>\n But let\u2019s hear more about that Fred Whitton ride\u2026<\/p>\n \u201cI do some ambassadorial work for a company called CAMS [Cycling Accident Management Services, who help cyclists through the process of making a claim after a crash on the road]. One of their managers is Ian Bibby, a friend who I used to race with.<\/p>\n \u201cWe went up for the Fred, had a couple of beers the night before, and as is often the case, rumours start circulating around the village that the fast group is going to set off at 8.45 in the morning.<\/p>\n \u201cSo me and Ian sat on the back of the 8.45 train. Our tactics went out of the window after 30 minutes and we just went flat-out through and off for the rest of it. And we had a thoroughly enjoyable day out.<\/p>\n \u201cThe lad that really should have won it, I sat on him for about 90km, he was so strong that I couldn\u2019t give him a turn. And then the poor lad got heat stroke on the final climb and I never saw him again.<\/p>\n \u201cIf I was a better man, I would have waited for him\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n That competitive instinct is clearly harder to shift than the legs sometimes.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s just good fun,” says Clancy. “I\u2019ve done a few of the big sportives. The Majorca 312 and I’m doing the Contador one [Gran Fondo Alberto Contador, in Valencia] later this year.”<\/p>\n Contador rode the 312 the same year as Clancy, in fact.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd if you look at the results, guess who finished one place ahead of him. He did puncture, mind you\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n Build back better For now, back to the book. Although Clancy and Williamson each contributed their own expertise \u2013 sometimes independently in different chapters \u2013 one in which they both added their two cents was the section on strength training<\/a>.<\/p>\n Off-the-bike strength exercises are under-utilised by so many cyclists, no matter their age or ability.<\/p>\n The home or gym-based location can seem boring and less stimulating than the great outdoors, and it requires more planning, knowledge and often motivation than riding a bike.<\/p>\n
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/GettyImages-149753668.jpg\")
Clancy, on the front here, in action at the London 2012 Olympics. Bryn Lennon \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n