Pedal power: Mid-life men on the health and social benefits of cycling

Interest in cycling has soared since the pandemic, particularly among males who sign up for exercise and stay for the challenge and craic  

Cyclists Adam Brophy and Jim Hennessy enjoy the mix of exercise and camaraderie. Picture: Dan Linehan

Jim Hennessy nailed 37,000km on his bike last year, but he’s a little shy about revealing this year’s target. “I can’t say, because I haven’t told my wife yet,” he says with a laugh.

Ah, go on. 

“A few members have shown a lot of interest in Malin to Mizen in 24 hours,” he says.

Well, Marcella, now you know.

Hennessy, 43, is secretary of the Clonakilty Cycling Club in West Cork and having played no sport between his late teens and the end of his 30s, he discovered cycling — and then some.

A few years ago, he cycled Malin to Mizen as part of an 18-strong group over four days, raising €65,000 for Irish Community Air Ambulance. Last year’s focus was the Wicklow 200, one of the hardest cycling sportifs in Ireland, across 210km, and which he successfully navigated. Not bad for a man who only started cycling in January 2019.

“Physical fitness would have been the thing,” Hennessy said. “I wanted to get a bit healthier and lose a bit of weight, and the second part was it would relieve a bit of stress. It helps mentally to clear my head a lot as well.

“I’ve got the bug, basically.”

He’s not alone. In 2021, the Central Statistics Office revealed an increase in cycling since before the pandemic and that more males were cycling more frequently. Sport Ireland data also showed a surge in participation in cycling in 2020, compared with 2019, and, if anything, the numbers are likely to have risen further since, driven by people in middle age taking to the roads.

According to Adam Brophy, 52, assistant chair of the Clonakilty Cycling Club, getting on the bike ticks multiple boxes.

The club’s membership has grown steadily, all but a handful of whom took to the roads in their late 30s or older — much like Brophy, originally from Dublin, and who moved to Clonakilty in 2008 and who began cycling two years later.

“I got in to it to do triathlons, but then discovered the best part of training was the cycling,” he says. “Cycling is fun.”

Brophy believes the reduced risk of injury in cycling compared to other sports, such as running, is “incomparable”, amid all the other benefits.

“You cover so much more distance, there is the speed element, you have the racing with people in your club: I love it,” Brophy says.

“You will meet people from every walk of life; you are making friends at an age when you don’t tend to make a lot of new friends.”

The club has been in existence for six years and is actively seeking new members, particularly women.

Brophy jokes that, with some exceptions, the club is “a sea of blokes poured into Lycra”.

But the camaraderie is a clear draw, and the group dynamic helps cyclists achieve rapid improvements in performance.

“Cycling in the group is a lot easier than cycling by yourself,” Brophy says.

“It’s 30% more work at the front than in the middle, just through breaking the air.”

Cycle of life

Jim Hennessy and Adam Brophy from the Clonakilty Cycling Club started cycling competitively in their late 30s and early 40s. Picture: Dan Linehan

As ever, there can be deeper meanings to participating in group sports. Dr Tim Dunne is a Dublin-based psychologist who deals with a number of middle-aged clients. In his view, there are three questions that we ask at three main points in our lives — and cycling may help answer the second one.

“The first question is: Who will I be? That goes from 18 to 30 and we answer it by the choices we make: Our choice of college, our partners starting a family, getting a mortgage.

“Then, at midlife — which can start early for some people, at 35, and for most people at around 40 — the question changes to: Who am I? And what happens is we re-evaluate the answers we gave to the first question.”

Dunne believes that this re-evaluation means that what is important in life can change, sometimes boiling down to the question:’Is this all there is?’ The answer places a fresh emphasis on passing something on to the next generation, and he believes it’s no accident that it’s often people in this mid-life phase who begin coaching younger people.

“By the age of 40, most people know ‘I am not going to make chief executive, so what am I going to do?’” he says.

This realisation can mean shifting creative energies away from work and career and in to other areas — including physical fitness and a new passion, like cycling.

“In terms of cycling, one of the main benefits is doing it in groups,” Dunne says. “The social connectivity is important and that validates people’s world views, there is the physical fitness, the health benefits, and just doing something in a group is a pleasurable activity. We are social animals and the whole lockdown thing was anti-social in what it was trying to do.”

Once we make it past the midlife transition and answer the second question, we reach the third. “That comes in later life, from the age of 60 on and it changes to: ‘Who was I?’ Dunne says. “That’s when people write their autobiographies.”

Or, just maybe, they stay on the bike.

Lifelong habit

Adam Brophy and Jim Hennessy on their bikes in Clonakilty, Co Cork. Picture Dan Linehan

The Irish Veteran Cyclists’ Association is based in Dublin and welcomes new members, males over 40 and women over 35. But it also has members well into their 70s and 80s, and they are still competitive. They’re not alone, either.

Hugh Byrne is coach with Sundrive Track Cycling Club in Dublin. He namechecks the wonderfully titled ‘Le Plonkers’ club in Co Kildare, with which he sometimes cycles. It includes an 83-year-old man who has some serious pedigree.

“He would go out for the spins and you’re not waiting around for him,” Byrne says. “It is amazing what they can do.

“All it takes is for you to do it regularly: It is that simple.

“If you cycle once a week, you’ll stay where you are, but if you cycle more than once a week, you will get better.

“It’s very rewarding, it’s not like other sports [such as golf] ]where you can try and belt a golf ball around the course and not get any better. With cycling, if you put your effort in, you will get better.”

Adam Brophy agrees. “If you mentioned a 30k to a non-cyclist, it would be, the first time out, a bit of an effort, but if you do it once a week, you will find you can do 50k and 60k.”

Such endurance over long distances opens up the possibility of big days out, like The Ring of Kerry cycle or the Wicklow 200. It can be as competitive or as light as required, from high-level racing down to the Sunday spin with a coffee break in the middle.

According to Dunne, the very fact of making a commitment to meet other people, and to cycle with them for a few hours, puts a physical and literal distance between you and other concerns.

Brophy says it’s not quite a golfing day out, “but it does give you a bit of time to chat with people you haven’t met before”.

Of course, there are risks, not least the age-old issue of flying off the bike or, in Brophy’s words, “taking a smash”. He also sees a growing frequency in motorist aggression towards cyclists. But the passion for the open road is evident when he and Hennessy talk about the simple joys of getting on the bike.

Malin to Mizen in 24 hours? It would be a club effort, with as many as 10 taking on the challenge, ably supported by others along the way. The idea is germinating.

“It has been done before,” Hennessy says. “I think we will achieve it.”