Eight years of Mallorca, and the Lincoln run in

An Anathema, a Head Cold, and Eight Years of Mallorca

A Drop Bar Diaries dispatch that begins in Port Alcudia with a broken bike and a head cold, and ends, several weeks later, on the eve of my biggest ride of the year.

Despite best intentions, and taking a little bit of bike-bag packing tuition from Richard, my invaluable local mobile bike mechanic and fixer of my myriad attempts to destroy my bikes and subsequent botched attempts to repair them, I arrived in Port d’Alcudia to the prospect of not cycling at all.

Unduly pleased with myself that I had avoided the disaster of a bent rear mech cage after the last time I flew back from the island (a very expensive mistake I was not planning on repeating) by taking the whole derailleur off the frame before packing it, I optimistically put it back on thinking I would be riding in no time.

But that was before I remembered that my name is Tim, and I am an anathema to smooth and easy mechanical procedures.

After reconnecting the derailleur to its hanger, the first thing I noticed was that the di2 cable had loosened and fed itself from the tube. I could not persuade it back in. I reconnected it to the derailleur and, yes, the gears still worked.

The bike clamped into a stand, I started to turn the pedals hoping that the smooth shifts Richard had fine-tuned for me would still be there. They were not. The chain slipped cogs, clicking and clacking away as my head started to write stories of a disastrous trip to my favourite cycling destination.

I should add, due to the combination of a Frank Turner gig the night before and a ridiculously early alarm call for the flight, that I had had three hours' sleep and was definitely not in the right state of mind to be confronted with unexpected mechanical puzzles.

So I did the only thing I thought was right. I tried to fix it.

A few minutes later, after fiddling with the tiny limiter screws and other bits that looked like they could be adjusted, I had, inevitably, made things worse. Honestly, it is like my brain gets taken over by that idiotic monkey who persuades me that if I just twiddle this, faff with that, then the problem at hand will miraculously be solved. It so obviously wasn't.

So I left it, unpacked, and took stock. Three hours later I woke up, having fallen asleep on the very comfy bed, just in time for dinner in the hotel. Which was a stroke of luck, because I had not eaten since waiting for my gate to be called at the airport some twelve hours earlier.

The next morning, sat in the sun outside a bicycle repair shop while the very helpful local mechanic sorted out my mess, I decided that this was, in fact, a very Drop Bar Diaries way to start a Mallorca trip. The island has, over eleven visits since 2018, taught me a lot of things. One of them is that everything will probably be fine if you let the right person fix it, and order another coffee.

Eight Years In

Eleven visits. I almost cannot believe that number when I write it down. Mallorca should, by now, feel routine. A place I have done. A box ticked, more than once. It does not feel like that at all.

The roads here are now as familiar to me as the lanes around home. I know the climbs, the cafés, the wind directions, the stretches that always look easier than they are. I know where the switchbacks are, where the road surface lulls you into bad gear choices, where the promise of a beer and a club sandwich by the beach helps you make it all the way back into town. And yet, every visit, the island still does this thing where it surprises me. Around a corner I have ridden a hundred times, the light changes. The sea looks different. Some quirk of the day makes the same road feel new again.

I think the reason is that you do not really visit Mallorca, you renegotiate it. Every trip is a new conversation with the same place. You bring a different version of yourself each time. Different fitness, different head, different company, different problems, different reasons. The roads do not change, but you do, and so the relationship updates.

This was my eleventh updating. And the version of Tim who showed up this time was carrying a head cold I could not quite shake, an extra few kilos that the indoor winter had not entirely cleared, and a quiet sense of building toward something later in the year. It was also, mercifully, a version who had finally cracked fuelling, which is saying something for a man who last time out needed a jelly baby airlift up Sa Batalla.

The Week, With Its Unwelcome Companion

The week was, by any sensible measure, a great riding holiday. Glorious weather. Roads I love. A working schedule (yes, it was a working holiday) that left afternoons free for proper riding. Five rides over six days, with one rest day toward the end that wouldn't have been a rest day if it wasn't for the snotty nose and heavy head.

The head cold was the holiday companion who refused to take a hint. Not bad enough to take me off the bike, just bad enough to be present. A scratchy throat in the morning, a slight head heaviness in the afternoon. The kind of low-key passenger who reminds you they are there every time you stand up too quickly. I kept expecting it to disappear by the Wednesday. It was still hanging around on the Thursday when I flew home. By the lighthouse ride on the last full day, with the temperature reading 30 degrees plus on the climb up to Cap Formentor and the cold still doing its quiet thing, I was riding more on accumulated weeks of training than on whatever the day itself wanted to give.

But the riding was amazing. The Friday afternoon "legs and bike reliability" check (which, mercifully, the local mechanic had restored to actual reliability) was a 30-mile loop in the cooler late-afternoon air, just enough to remember how the bike feels under me on real road. Saturday was the big one, 74 miles including Sa Batalla and the long way home, finishing close to seven hours later in a haze of heat and sticky energy gel residue. Sunday was a flat 30 to the 1919 café for lunch in Port de Pollenca, the morning after the ride before, where I was genuinely surprised to find my legs felt better than they had any right to. Monday afternoon was a sharp little 20-mile out and back to take in the climb up to the Mirador at the top of Coll De Sa Creueta, fitted in around work. Then the cold won the argument, the rest day arrived without my consent, and Wednesday became the lighthouse.

Five rides, 193 miles, fourteen hours of moving time. A proper week for me at this stage of things.

Sa Batalla, an Honest Update

Sa Batalla is the climb I always come back to. Not because it is the hardest, or the most beautiful (it kinda is), or the most photographed, but because I have a relationship with it. I have a benchmark on it. A 2022 personal record of 39 minutes that I have not since matched. That's not particularly fast if you compare me to the top of the Strava segment standings, but it's pretty damn impressive for me.

I did not match it this year either. Closer to 50 minutes by the time I crested at the Repsol garage, more if you include the short rest stop just before the final steep switchbacks. And I want to be honest about that, because as you know by now, the Drop Bar Diaries does not really do the "everything is amazing" version of cycling.

What is actually true is this. I am, at around 100kg, a heavy cyclist. And it’s a harsh truth that every additional kilo of human costs you on a 5% gradient in a way that the indoor world genuinely cannot replicate. The garage is a magnificent simulator of effort, but it is not a simulator of gravity. Indoors, you can build the engine. Outdoors, on a real climb, your engine has to drag everything else with it.

So Sa Batalla in 2026 was not slower because the winter training failed. It was slower because the rider on the climb was a different one. With a head cold, in 30 degree heat, hitting the climb around 75km into the ride. The 2022 version of me was lighter, fresher, lockdown-fit, and probably had no business being that fast.

The truth I have made my peace with is that I am unlikely to beat that PR without a serious focus on weight, and the upcoming Lincoln sportive with Alan does not particularly care about Sa Batalla. Lincoln cares about durability, and durability is something I do have. Sa Batalla is a side quest now. A friend I revisit each year, not a benchmark I am trying to humiliate.

Watopia versus Worcestershire

Coming home was strange in the way it always is. The roads I left for Mallorca were grey and reluctant. The roads I came back to were green and willing. Spring had decided to show up while I was away. I rode 40 miles with my Chawn Wheeler mates on Saturday and a punchy 18 miles solo on Sunday, and it felt like cycling had quietly become enjoyable again.

And there is one small comedy in all of this.

After two solid weeks of outdoor riding in two countries, my AI coach has been very politely sending me back into the garage. For Z2 work specifically, the garage is just better. My local roads are too lumpy and undulating to hold a steady aerobic pace. There are too many rises that lure me into Z3, too many descents that drop me into Z1. To do an actual disciplined Z2 anchor session, I have to leave Worcestershire and head into Watopia. It is the most absurd geographic inversion I can think of. The real roads are too unpredictable, the imaginary ones are too consistent. Both are useful, for different things, and I have given up trying to make them mean the same thing.

A New Coach, Quietly

Worth flagging for those of you who have been keeping track. Partway through this build, I changed AI coaches mid-stream. ChatGPT has been brilliant, and a lot of the structure I am still riding is its work. But I wanted to see what a different model would do with the same data, the same goal, and the same slightly chaotic life.

I will write more about that another time, when there is more to compare properly. For now, the new coach has turned out to be fluent in the same restraint that the previous one taught me, which is reassuring. We are still pointing the bike toward Lincoln, and the plan still adapts when life gets in the way. So far, so similar. So far, so good.

Back Home, Back to Work

Coming home from Mallorca, the maths looked faintly uncomfortable. Five weeks until Lincoln, and a calendar that resembled a game of Tetris played by someone actively trying to lose.

My chimp, predictably, wanted to panic. It looked at the days ticking down and started its familiar lobbying. Cram the miles in. Do more. Do it harder. You are running out of time, Tim.

But here is the thing I have slowly, grudgingly learned over the last six months. The fitness for an event like Lincoln is not built in the final five weeks. It is built in the five months before them. By the time you are counting down the days, the engine either exists or it does not, and the job is no longer construction. It is maintenance, sharpening, and above all, not being an idiot.

So the run-in was almost boringly sensible. A long ride at the weekend. A quality session or two in the week, indoors on Zwift where I can actually hold the zones. Easy spins in between. Rest days that I no longer feel guilty about, which is possibly the single biggest change in me as a cyclist this whole year. The numbers, for what it is worth, kept quietly improving. The same efforts at a lower heart rate. The same wattage feeling a little less like a confrontation and a little more like a conversation.

The Real World Intervenes

And then work did what work does, which is arrive all at once.

I spent a week filming Marillion at Real World Studios. Four days, nine hours apiece, of moving cameras, capturing performances, chasing interviews, and the particular flavour of exhaustion that comes from concentrating very hard for a very long time. I drove home on the last night running on the sort of sleep debt that makes motorway signs start to feel halucinary.

Not a single pedal stroke all week.

The old me would have been quietly horrified. A whole week off the bike, this close to the event. The new me, coached into a calmer place, recognised it for what it was: an enforced deload. A rest week I had not planned but probably needed, arriving at more or less the right moment in the build.

And the proof came the following Saturday. I got back on the bike expecting heavy, reluctant legs, and instead found them springy and keen. The week away had not cost me fitness. It had let me absorb it. The body, it turns out, does its best work when you finally stop bothering it.

The Dress Rehearsal

Then came the big one. The last proper long ride before Lincoln. Four hours, sixty miles, 100km, alone.

The brief from my coach was specific. Ride it like a rehearsal. Find the flattest route I could, which around here is a bit like asking for the driest patch of the sea. Pace it as though I had another two hours to do afterwards. Eat early and often. Wear exactly what I will wear on the day. Find out now if anything rubs, chafes or complains.

So I did. I picked a route that involved getting over some hills in order to reach the flatter roads, because that is simply the geography I live in. I kept the effort honest. I ate before I was hungry and drank before I was thirsty. The café I had earmarked for a mid-ride stop turned out to be closed, which a few months ago would have thrown me, and instead I just kept rolling and ate what I was carrying.

Four hours later I got home with tired legs but, crucially, with something still in the tank. No bonk. No crisis. No bargaining with gravity. Just a long, steady, slightly unglamorous ride that did exactly what it was supposed to do, which was prove that the engine is ready.

That ride was the moment the whole winter quietly justified itself.

The Coach Earns Its Keep

With the training essentially done, the focus shifted to the plan. And this is where having an AI coach stopped being a curiosity and started being genuinely, almost suspiciously useful.

I fed it the route file for the Lincoln 161 and asked what we were dealing with. What came back was, broadly, the most reassuring news of my cycling year.

Lincoln is flat. Properly, comically, gloriously flat.

There is an irony here that I am choosing to enjoy rather than overthink. The first half of this blog is a heavy rider making his uneasy peace with gravity. Sa Batalla, the climbs, the honest admission that a 100kg cyclist pays a tax on every hill that lighter riders simply do not. And then the event I have actually been training for, all these months, turns out to be a hundred miles of Lincolnshire and East Yorkshire. Terrain so flat it barely troubles the contour lines. No climbs worth the name. No gravity tax. Just long, open, steady roads, which happen to be exactly what a diesel-engined endurance rider is built for.

So, the route has been broken into four segments of roughly 25 miles each, neatly divided by the feed stations. Heart rate targets for each one (if I can find my HR monitor which has mysteriously disappeared since the dress rehearsal ride). A fuelling plan measured in actual kilometres rather than vague good intentions. A pacing strategy built around the single rule my chimp hates most, which is to start slower than you want to. There is even a checklist, a proper document, covering everything from what to eat for breakfast at an unsociable hour to the faintly humbling reminder to make sure that the bikes actually fit in the car.

It is, I will admit, a slightly strange thing to be coached by. But six months in, the proof is not in the novelty of it. It is in the fact that I am about to ride a hundred miles once more, at 55, feeling genuinely prepared rather than quietly terrified. That will do for me.

Two Hurdles Left

Which leaves only the small matter of the next ten days. Because the calendar, never one to make things simple, has saved two final obstacles for the run-in.

First, Berlin. A lads' weekend, involving what has been officially classified as a "very, very, very gentle cycle tour that ends with a beer." I am choosing to file this under tapering. My coach, to its credit, agrees, on the strict condition that the word "gentle" is honoured and the word "beer" is not pluralised too enthusiastically. Yeah, we’ll see how that goes.

Second, and more alarmingly, the bank holiday Monday before Lincoln I am helping Jake move into his first flat in Bristol. A flat which is, of course, up three flights of stairs and no lift. So roughly five days before riding a hundred miles, I will be performing an unscheduled and entirely unwanted strength workout consisting of furniture, boxes, and a large leather armchair Jake has excitedly procured from a local charity shop, none of which have been briefed on my training plan.

Will a weekend of Berlin and a day of furniture-hauling undo six months of careful work?

Almost certainly not. But it would be very much in keeping with this whole ridiculous, joyful project if the final test before the biggest ride of my year turned out to be a large bookshelf and a tight stairwell.

Lincoln is on the 30th of May. Alan, my partner in this whole enterprise and the man who cheerfully entered us both into it in the first place, has been quietly stacking up his own miles around the glorious Yorkshire Dales and is, by all reports, in fine fettle. We will roll out together, somewhere in a field near York at half past seven in the morning, and find out what a hundred miles of flat Lincolnshire has to say about six months of work.

The next blog will tell you whether the man, the plan, and the slightly weary legs made it round.

For now, the bike is ready. The plan is ready. And I am, give or take an armchair and a stairwell, ready too. Pivot!

See you on the other side.

Winter Miles, Wet Roads, and the BronchoStop Blues

It’s been a while. But I have an excuse. Honest. This is a Drop Bar Diaries entry about the bit nobody posts on Strava: when the weather is vile, your lungs go on strike, and you’re convinced your fitness is dissolving with every swig of cough syrup.

There’s a particular kind of bravery required for winter training, and it’s not the heroic kind you see in glossy cycling adverts.

It’s not soaring over Alpine passes with a sunlit grin. It’s not a cinematic slow-motion sprint with cheekbones, veins and orchestral music.

It’s standing by the window in the dark, watching rain arrive sideways, asking yourself the eternal question:

Is this dedication… or is this just poor decision-making?

Winter, in other words, is the season where cycling becomes less about romance and more about paperwork. Laundry. Layers. Negotiations. The kind of training where your biggest opponent is your own sofa, quietly whispering: “You’ve done enough. Look, there’s a blanket. Come and be warm.”

And still… this is, alledgedly, where the year gets built.

The Year Has Shape Now

This winter grind has been different because it’s had a point. Actual lines in the diary. Actual reasons to keep showing up.

Mallorca is booked: April 16th to 23rd. Port Alcúdia base. Work until mid-afternoon, then ride. A Saturday and Sunday in the middle for bigger days. The Tramuntana waiting like an old friend with a slightly judgemental eyebrow .. ‘You again? You’re back for more?’

And York to Lincoln is now properly real too: 161 kilometres at the end of May. Not 161 miles, which I believed for a brief period and have still not forgiven Alan for allowing me to believe. We’ve booked an Airbnb for the night before, which is the moment it stops being “an idea” and becomes “a thing you’ll have to do with your actual body.” Ouch.

So yes. The plan exists. The structure is working. Fitness was starting to return in that suspicious way it does when you stop trying to bury yourself every ride and instead train like a functional adult.

And then I went to Yorkshire.

Yorkshire: Ironically, where Plans Go to Die

In my head, Yorkshire was going to be crisp winter air, moody but rideable roads, and a couple of steady rides with Alan up in the Dales. Even if the weather was questionable, surely I could sneak out for a short hike, keep the legs ticking over, feel saintly.

What I got instead was weather so foul it didn’t even feel like weather. It felt like an organised attempt to remove joy from the atmosphere. But the Dales still looked beautiful as ever. How does that work?

No rides. No hikes. No wholesome “fresh air.” Just wind, rain, and that peculiar northern grey that makes you wonder if you’ve accidentally entered a black-and-white film.

And the irony is, I wasn’t even there purely for cycling.

I went to see Alan and Claire and to film a Wonky Tree Bookshop event - taking author Jon Lock and illustrator Nich Angell into schools to share their children’s graphic novel Tiny Hercules. It was brilliant. Kids properly engaged. Books landing. The kind of day that restores your faith in humans. We need those kinds of days these days, don’t we?

It was also, as it turns out, exactly where I picked up a chest infection.

So yes… I went to see the bloke I’m riding Lincoln with and came home feeling less fit than I was before I saw him.

There’s a metaphor in there somewhere, but I was too busy coughing my lungs into next week to find it.

The Part Nobody Logs

This is the part of winter cycling you don’t post.

No elevation graphs. No heroic captions. Just you on the sofa with a hot drink, wondering if you’ve swallowed a small hedgehog, and doing mental arithmetic with panic.

Because cycling doesn’t just live in your legs. It lives in your rhythm, your routine, and your sense of yourself as someone who still does the thing.

When that routine gets interrupted, your brain starts telling stories. Mine more so than perhaps the next ill cyclist, or am I paranoid?

Quiet stories. Convincing ones.

All that work? Gone. Every day off is a step backwards. Every cough is a loss of fitness. Every swig of BronchoStop is basically an exit interview with your aerobic system.

It’s absolute rubbish, obviously. But winter is when your brain is most vulnerable to rubbish. Less light, less movement, more time alone with your thoughts, and an alarming familiarity with cough medicine.

The Truth (Annoyingly)

Fitness doesn’t disappear overnight.

It doesn’t evaporate because you miss a week. It fades when you stop showing up for months, not because you got ill and took the sensible option - which, for once, I did.

And here’s the cruel irony: getting back too soon is often what keeps you ill longer.

So I stayed off the bike. Not because I lost motivation. Not because the plan failed. But because lungs are quite useful, and I’ve reached the age where I’m trying to treat my body less like a disposable machine and more like something I’d like to keep using.

The Return (Light Duties, No Drama)

Eventually the cough loosened. No tight chest. No scary breathlessness. Just the odd lingering reminder that my immune system had briefly been freelancing.

And when I finally got back on the bike - gently, sensibly, obediently - something really important happened:

Nothing went wrong.

The first ride back was a tiny, boring little re-introduction. Z1. Low Z2. No heroics. No testing. Just turning the pedals and confirming I still knew how.

Then another.

Then another.

And suddenly, without fanfare, I was back in it.

Not fully. Not instantly. But enough to remind me the engine hadn’t melted.

The Great Outdoor Test

The real proof came when I finally got outside again for the first time since October.

A group ride. Five of us. Fresh air. Real roads. Actual countryside. The kind of ride that makes you remember why you put yourself through winter training in the first place.

It wasn’t “pure Z2” because unless you live somewhere pancake-flat and ride alone with monk-like discipline, pure Z2 outdoors is mostly theoretical. There were kickers, long drags, and the inevitable group-ride surges.

But here’s the key thing:

I finished feeling energised.

Not shattered. Not collapsed on the sofa questioning my life choices. Just… good. Alive. Like a cyclist. I’d almost forgotten what that felt like.

That was the moment I knew the indoor work was transferring. The base was real. The winter wasn’t wasted. It was doing its job.

Mallorca: Now Close Enough to Smell

And now we’re into the real build again.

Z2 anchors that leave me feeling better than when I started. Tempo sessions that don’t require a lie down afterwards. A proper Sa Batalla simulator block at 185W that feels like work but not suffering. Low cadence “Mallorca legs” sessions that genuinely let me imagine climbing again instead of surviving climbs.

I’ve even got a cadence sensor now, which means I can no longer pretend I’m “probably at 85rpm” when I’m actually doing some panicked 96rpm spin that sends my HR into the stratosphere.

Everything is pointing in the right direction again. The momentum is back. The plan is alive.

And most importantly, the thing that has quietly become the real victory, I’m starting to look forward to sessions rather than dread them. I’m finishing rides feeling like I’ve gained energy, not spent it. The bike is becoming what it’s meant to be: a place where effort makes you feel better, not worse.

The Point of All This

Winter training isn’t about brilliance. It’s about continuity.

The year doesn’t get won in January. It gets built through January. February. March. The messy bits included.

Especially the messy bits.

So yes, Yorkshire derailed things. A chest infection tried to evict me from my own routine. The weather did its best to make cycling feel like an administrative burden.

And still… I’m here. Still turning up. Still building. Still heading toward the Tramuntana.

Mallorca is a few weeks away now.

And I intend to arrive with lungs that work, legs that remember, and a smug little sense that the BronchoStop era is over.

Running Away With The Circus…

A Drop Bar Diaries dispatch from the Royal Albert Hall, where I spend a few days filming physical perfection… then go home and towel my face at 180 watts.

January had barely started and it immediately did that thing where it grabs you by the collar and says, “Right then mate, let’s see what you’re made of.”

Which is a bold move, given what I’m made of is mostly Gu dessert, good intentions, and a man in his mid-fifties who is still slightly surprised when he wakes up and his knees feel… present.

The festive period, against all odds, didn’t scupper my fitness. The mince pies came. The Quality Street came. The red wine definitely came. And yet I emerged without that familiar post-Christmas sensation of being sealed inside my own body.

I put that down to two things: I didn’t treat December like a moral test, and I now have an AI coach who, as you know if you’re familiar with these ramblings, speaks fluent restraint and refuses to panic when real life happens.

Which is fortunate, because the opening weeks of 2026 didn’t just happen.

They arrived wearing insect costumes and safety harnesses.

The glamour, the grind, and the great human pretence

This month started with a proper circus run. Not metaphorically. Literally.

I was down in London working with Cirque du Soleil at the Royal Albert Hall for OVO. Red carpet premiere. Camera set-ups. Quick turnaround content. One of those jobs where you begin the day feeling professional and end it feeling like a slug that has learned to drive.

The pace was… brisk. The kind of brisk where your brain opens 37 tabs and none of them are helpful.

In the middle of it all, I somehow slotted in a weekend away with my oldest school friends. Cheltenham. Big Regency house. Nige’s birthday meal. Wine. Karaoke. Darts. A basement games den that felt like a parallel dimension where time doesn’t exist and “recovery” is treated as a quaint rumour.

It was brilliant. 

It was also not what you’d call optimal athletic preparation.

Then it was straight back into the circus machine.

One day became sixteen hours. Quick turnaround editing, locked away in the Rausing Circle. After the show, after the final push, after that last little surge of adrenaline that convinces you you’re fine, I drove home on three hours’ sleep, which is always a thrilling experience if you enjoy hallucinating entire conversations with motorway signage.

By the time I got back, I felt like I’d been gently tumble dried.

And the thing is, that wasn’t even the most humbling part. The most humbling part was where I’d been tumble-dried.

Because while I’m there, at the Royal Albert Hall for heaven’s sake (pinch me), trying to look vaguely competent behind a camera and a portable edit suite after a weekend of friendship, karaoke and interesting Hotel Du Vin wall art, I’m surrounded by people who could warm up by doing things I’d need a signed waiver to attempt.

Why Cirque makes you feel like a weakly-designed human

Here’s the thing about working around Cirque performers: you spend the day filming people who look like they were built in a lab by scientists who got carried away.

They backflip because it’s Tuesday. They hang upside down like gravity is a suggestion. Their warm-up involves movements that most of us would reserve for a near-death experience.

You watch them and think: I’m also a cyclist. I, too, enjoy physical activity. Surely this shouldn’t be too hard to do?

Then you remember your most recent athletic achievement was standing up after an hour on Zwift without making a noise that would worry a cat. If I had a cat. Sometimes I’m glad I don’t, as my post-Zwift noises would have sent it straight out of the cat flap and into a witness protection programme.

Being around that level of physical perfection is humbling. Not unpleasant. Just… revealing.

They’re younger. Bendy. Athletic. Probably able to sleep eight hours without waking up to think about pensions, or needing a midnight toilet stop.

And weirdly, it didn’t make me feel defeated. It made me feel determined. Not to become them (I wish), but to become the version of me who can ride a long day and still enjoy the last hour. The version who doesn’t dread climbs. The one who finishes with a smile instead of negotiating with the laws of physics.

My AI coach assures me that version is available at 55. But it doesn’t come from hero sessions. It comes from doing the work in between all this chaos.

The training plan vs real life

The question I kept asking myself was simple: have I undone everything I built before Christmas?

And the answer, surprisingly, was no.

Fitness doesn’t evaporate because you have a late night and a long drive. It fades when you stop showing up completely. It disappears when you decide the plan only counts if conditions are perfect.

This year, my AI engineered plan is designed to survive imperfect weeks and adjust to my unpredictable diary.

So instead of trying to “make up” for travel and wine with something heroic, I did something deeply unglamorous. Something as far away from a red carpet premiere as possible. I simply got back on the bike and did the work I could do. Not the session I “should” do in an imaginary world where I sleep perfectly and never drive to London. The session that made sense for the body I had that day.

One tempo-lite session later, it was obvious: the engine is still there.

Heart rate, heat, and the great indoor swamp

If you read the last Drop Bar Diary you’ll know I’ve also added a new character to the story: a heart rate monitor. Which sounds like a sensible upgrade, but is in fact a portable anxiety generator that straps to your chest.

To recap, my first rides with it were a masterclass in over-attention. Watching the numbers rise, trying to lower them through breathing like I was defusing a bomb.

The reality is less dramatic and more useful. Turns out a big chunk of my ‘high heart rate’ indoors is heat., as my AI coach explained. (Side note: my AI coach probably needs a name.)

I’m a hot-running human. I would sweat in a fridge. I’ve dealt with hyperhidrosis my whole life. If there’s a world championship for “creating a puddle beneath your own bike,” I’m podium level.

And Zwift doesn’t give you a cooling wind. It gives you a screen, a Heads Up Display and a constant reminder that you’re still nowhere near the end of whatever interval you’re hoping will end. Soon.

So I’ve started taking cooling seriously. I moved the fan closer, aimed it at chest and neck, and suddenly it felt like a different sport. Less swamp. More control. I’m now flirting with the idea of a second fan for my face, partly for performance, partly because there are only so many times you can towel your eyes mid-interval without feeling like you’re running an amateur car wash.

The best bit is that heart rate, once you stop trying to win it, becomes genuinely useful. It tells you what you already feel: when you’re stable, when you’re drifting, and when heat is hijacking the effort. It doesn’t judge you. It just tells the truth.

Which is almost as annoying as my AI coach, who keeps asking if I’d like its recommendations for more optimal fan placement.

The circus trick I’m learning

If there’s one thing this early-January mayhem has reinforced, it’s this: the training isn’t the challenging part. The consistency is.

Anyone can do a big session when they’re fresh and motivated. The real trick is doing steady work when you’re busy, tired, mildly chaotic, and one email away from a breakdown.

That’s the trick I’m actually learning. Not just watts. Not just fitness. The ability to keep turning up.

Sometimes it’s Zone 2. Sometimes tempo. Sometimes “get on the bike, do something sensible, get off before you do anything daft.”

It’s boring. It’s also working.

Lincoln: the route is set

There’s now a real line on the horizon. The Lincoln sportive. End of May.

Alan and I had a brief moment of confusion where I thought it was 161 miles, which turned the whole thing into accidental ultra-endurance terror. But the good news is it’s actually 161 kilometres, which is still a proper ride, but no longer requires you to write your will.

So the objective is clear: build steadily, stay consistent, arrive in May feeling capable. Not flawless. Not superhuman. Just ready.

Berlin: the “taper” curveball

The weekend before Lincoln, I’m going to Berlin for a lads’ weekend.

Now, in most athletic programmes, the week before an event is called the taper. It’s where you reduce load, sharpen up, and arrive rested.

In my programme, it might be called: The Pre-Sportive Controlled Chaos Experiment.

We are planning a cycle tour around the city, which I would like to hereby officially classify as “training.” Not because it’s structured, but because it involves bikes, movement, and the possibility of mild suffering if Walters insists we “just pop over this bridge” for the tenth time, trying to relive his halcyon mountain-biking days.

Will it count? Yes. In the same way pork pie fuelling counts. Not scientifically, but spiritually.

Besides, if you can’t enjoy riding around Berlin in late May without worrying about your TSS, what are we even doing here?

Curtain call

So no, the busy start to the year hasn’t scuppered anything. If anything, it’s been the proof-of-concept test.

The plan didn’t collapse when work got heavy. It flexed. I still rode. I still banked the work. I still came out feeling like a cyclist, not a person who used to be one.

The route to Lincoln is set. The fans are multiplying. The sweat is… present. And while I’m in Berlin doing my “taper”, Cirque have a new show there too, which means I can potentially top off the weekend by watching even more bendy people doing impossible things with their bodies.

Either way, May is coming. The miles are quietly stacking. Winter is now just winter riding: steady sessions, sensible progressions, and a growing appreciation for the fact that discipline isn’t grim, it’s simply the habit of showing up.

See you on the road to Lincoln.

And if you spot me mid-ride wiping my face for the 400th time, just know this: I’m not struggling. I’m performing.

Mince Pies, Metrics and Monkeys … The Great Festive Negotiation

A Drop Bar Diaries Christmas-to-New-Year special in which I attempt to train like an adult, supervised by a small primate called Moogy Boogie.

Christmas is a fascinating time of year for a cyclist. Not because of the weather (usually damp, dark and engineered to erode your will to live), but because December turns training into an annual negotiation.

On one side: the version of you that wants momentum… steady work, consistency, a quiet sense of progress.
On the other: the version that sincerely believes a mince pie counts as carb loading and that Quality Street is recovery nutrition if you eat it soon enough after standing up.

Both versions live in me. And this year, they’ve got witnesses.

Moogy Boogie and the Red LED

Picture the scene. Zwift is glowing on the screen, the fan is doing its best, and I’m producing that uniquely indoor-cycling sweat, the kind that starts in your scalp and ends up in your socks.

On the bars, like a tiny director on a tiny set, sits Moogy Boogie. One of the PG Tips Monkey soft toys Jake and I started collecting when he was little. We ended up with a whole gang of them, named, each with their own cheeky character, ridiculous in the best way, and they’ve somehow become part of our family story.

Jake’s 29 in March and still keeps Bing Bong and Zugga Zugga with him in Bristol. Bing Bong even has his own Facebook page, which has been posting holiday snaps and nonsense updates for sixteen years. In our defence, this world needs more harmless daftness, not less.

This Christmas, Charlotte (Jake’s girlfriend, and now an enthusiastic recruit) gifted us two new monkeys released for Comic Relief in November: Cedric Chimpinson, apparently Bing Bong’s long-lost cousin, and Nigel Stevenson. Naturally.

So the gang grows. Which is fitting, because Christmas also brings back another character… the chimp in your head.

The Chimp in My Head

Professor Steve Peters’ Chimp Paradox has done the rounds in elite sport for years, and once you’ve met your own chimp you can’t unmeet it. The gist is simple: you’ve got a rational brain that can plan and pace, and you’ve also got a chimp that deals in feelings, urgency and self-preservation.

The important bit (the bit I didn’t fully appreciate until recently) is that the chimp doesn’t have just one voice. It’s not always the same character shouting the same instruction. It’s more like a shape-shifter with a little box of costumes.

Sometimes it’s mischievous. The Zwift chimp. The one that sees a segment, a rise, a passing rider and goes: “Go on then. Smash it. Prove yourself!”

That chimp is basically twelve years old and fuelled by ego.

But sometimes, and this is the one that’s much more convincing, it’s persuasive. It sounds sensible. Reasonable, even. It turns up mid-effort, looks at the time remaining, and starts making a calm case for why you should stop.

I’ve met that chimp many times, but more recently on one of the longer sweet spot sessions, when the second block suddenly felt like a different sport. The first interval was fine. The second started fine. And then, somewhere around the point where your brain realises there’s still a long way to go, the chimp slid into the passenger seat and began its presentation:

“You’re not feeling 100%. You’ve slept badly. You’re going to blow up. There’s no point. Just pack it in and try again tomorrow.”

That voice used to win. I’d either bail completely, or I’d do the other classic chimp move: surge at the end purely to prove I could, then crawl off the bike like I’d been evicted from my own legs.

This time I did something that felt almost suspiciously adult.

I didn’t quit. I didn’t fight. I didn’t turn it into a moral drama. I just dialled the watts down in ERG mode and finished the time. Not because I’d “given up”, but because I’d decided the actual goal was to bank the work and keep the habit intact, not to impress an imaginary jury of cyclists in my head.

It’s a small shift, but it’s the one that changes everything: listening to the chimp without obeying it.

And that’s why this festive period feels different. Because the main negotiation here is about resisting both chimp impulses: the one that wants to smash every ride, and the one that wants to bail the moment discomfort starts bargaining.

Which brings us neatly back to mince pies.

The Mince Pie Protocol

No, mince pies aren’t the enemy. The enemy is the thinking that arrives with them.

There’s the “it’s Christmas so training doesn’t count” approach, which tends to drift into “it’s Christmas so I’ll do absolutely nothing for two weeks.” Then there’s the “I must offset this” approach, which leads to people doing maximal intervals on four hours’ sleep purely out of guilt, then eating half a tin of chocolates while insisting they’ve earned it. I have been both these people.

This year has been more considered. Some days I train properly. Some days I spin easily. Some days I rest because, well, it’s Christmas Day and I’m cooking for eight and my mum’s kitchen resembles a military operation.

I keep the habit alive without turning it into a performance. Which turns out to be… surprisingly effective.

Heart Rate: The New Anxiety Generator

Christmas also brought me a heart rate monitor. A sensible person would clip it on, ride normally, and glance at the data afterwards like a calm adult.

I did not do that.

I spent parts of my first ride watching the number like a stock market ticker, trying to bring it down using breathing techniques and what I can only describe as mild spiritual negotiation.

The problem with heart rate is that it tells a story, but it also tells several unnecessary subplots. You slept badly. You’re warm. You’re dehydrated. You had a drink. You’re thinking about heart rate too much. It adds another, unwelcome psychological layer to an already demanding situation.

So my AI coach (who we now know speaks fluent restraint) and I have agreed that heart rate is currently observational. We collect it, we learn from it, and we don’t chase it like a dog after a tennis ball.

The Last Ride of 2025

New Year’s Eve arrived and, partly needing to decompress after a challenging twelve months, I decided to end the year quietly. No big party. A controlled session earlier in the day. No heroic “earn your indulgence” nonsense.

The ride itself was tidy: two twenty-minute blocks at 195W, steady as a metronome. The first block settled nicely; the second block ran hotter, as it should, and towards the end I lifted cadence slightly and saw my heart rate monitor’s LED go red.

I’d covered the heart rate number on the Zwift HUD so it wouldn’t distract me, but the LED sits there in my peripheral vision like a tiny traffic light for my nervous system, and red has a way of waking the chimp.

The old me might have panicked, surged, proved something. The new me stayed smooth and kept the power steady. I finished feeling like I could have done a third interval if I’d had fuel to hand, not because I was trying to impress anyone, but because I genuinely felt strong.

I ended 2025 buoyant, not battered. Which is not usually how I exit December.

New Year’s Day: Choosing the Sofa (… “the sofa, let me lie here on the sofa”)

January 1st arrived with a slightly fuzzy head (a few glasses of red, nothing heroic) and, confusingly, legs that felt ready. That “prepped” sensation that normally triggers the chimp’s favourite thought: we should ride to prove we’re still on track. I didn’t.

I visited mum, lazed in front of football, and let the training settle. Adaptation doesn’t happen while you’re heroically sweating. It turns out it happens afterwards, quietly, while you live your life.

As Lisa, an ex professional cyclist, concurred after reading my first blog: “rest, rest, rest!”

Rest looks like nothing, which is why the chimp mistrusts it. But rest is often the most productive thing you can do.

Pork Pie Endurance

A couple of days later I did the steady endurance anchor: sixty minutes at 160W, controlled and oddly easy, the kind of ride you could hold for ages, which is the entire point.

The only complication was that I’d had a pub lunch a couple of hours earlier: cheese and onion roll, pork pie, scotch egg, pint. Oops. Obviously not traditional cycling fuelling. More “British endurance folklore.”

Heart rate sat higher than it probably would on a clean day, which is fair enough when your digestive system is staging a small conference. But the interesting part was how stable everything stayed within the main block. Smooth power, minimal drift… the kind of steadiness that suggests the engine is getting more durable even when real life is interfering.

If nothing else, it’s comforting to know the plan can survive a scotch egg. And it was a delicious scotch egg, to be fair.

The New Context: Lincoln

And then my buddy Alan, in a move that I can only describe as “optimistic friendship”, entered us into the Lincoln sportive at the end of May.

Not the polite distance. Not the sensible option. The full 161 miles, out and back… with the comforting clause that we can turn at the 100-mile point and still claim a respectable century without needing therapy or replacement limbs.

So, that’s the new context. That’s why the festive negotiation matters. Not because I need perfection now, but because I need continuity. Winter isn’t about hero days. It’s about stacking ordinary days until spring arrives and you realise you’ve quietly built something.

Back to the Monkeys

The monkey gang has always been a reminder that the best things in life aren’t always the sensible ones. They’re a thread from Jake’s childhood that’s endured into his adulthood, a little pocket of shared ridiculousness that still makes us laugh.

Bing Bong and Zugga Zugga in Bristol. Moogy Boogie on film shoots and sat with me in the edit suite. Cedric and Nigel joining the story like long-lost relatives turning up at Christmas.

And in a strange way, they’re also a reminder of what this training approach is trying to do: keep the story going.

Not reinvent everything. Not punish yourself for enjoying life. Just keep turning up. Keep building. Keep it sustainable.

If Moogy Boogie can sit through a twelve-hour concert shoot day without losing morale, then I can survive January without declaring war on bread.

Happy New Year from The Drop Bar Diaries.

And remember: if you’re going to use Quality Street as recovery nutrition, at least do it within the anabolic window.

Follow the heroics on Strava

If you’re on Zwift, you’ll find me riding as Tim Sidwell — usually somewhere in Zone 2, riding off the mince pies.

I Hired an AI Cycling Coach…

Apparently, This Is What Midlife Optimisation Looks Like

There are various recognised responses to turning 55.

Some people take up yoga.
Some buy expensive watches.
Some carry on regardless, staring quietly into the abyss.

Sounds dramatic

I, on the other hand, have decided to outsource my cycling fitness to artificial intelligence.

Not because I was broken. Not because I’d hit rock bottom. But because, somewhere between Zwift races, Mallorca climbs, and the creeping suspicion that gravity was winning, I began to wonder whether my long-standing training philosophy of ride hard, hope for the best was perhaps no longer scientifically sound.

Also, if I’m being honest, there was a subliminal ambition humming away in the background: to feel again like the version of myself who, in 2013, rode from Le Havre to Paris to watch the Tour de France, rolling around the Champs-Élysées a few hours before the pros. Fit, motivated, and utterly convinced I’d cracked cycling forever.

Spoiler: I hadn’t.

The Problem With “Just Riding More”

I’ve loved my cycling for the best part of twenty years. Really, it began much earlier, specifically the moment my parents bought me a Raleigh Arena for Christmas. That bike carried me through childhood adventures and into my first job as a paper boy. Freedom on two wheels, paid for in newsprint, dirty hands and early mornings.

Somewhere between sixteen and thirty-five, I lost my way a little when it came to physical fitness. Life happened. Then, thanks to a really cheap and really heavy mountain bike, cycling found me again.

What followed were more adventures, this time shared with friends who, like me, were becoming increasingly aware of the passing of time and the quiet expansion of waistlines.

More recently, the bike has meant Mallorca trips, iconic climbs, long days with friends, and solo rides where it becomes a therapist with wheels.

But training-wise, I’d fallen into a familiar middle-aged groove.

Zwift races. Hard sessions. Chasing watts. Treating rest days like a moral failing.

I was still reasonably fit, but everything felt slightly… brittle. I could go hard, but not often. I could survive tough rides, but recovery took longer. And beneath it all lurked the uncomfortable thought that maybe this - slightly fading, slightly fatigued - was simply how it was going to be now.

Enter AI (Via a Petrol Station)

The idea of using AI crept in quietly rather than arriving as a grand plan.

I was in Mallorca in October and discovered, halfway up Sa Batalla, that enthusiasm had once again outpaced preparation. I ran out of legs, then energy, and finally excuses; a reminder that fitness, like optimism, needs supporting properly.

I was ultimately rescued by the last bite of Anne’s protein bar and a couple of Sue’s jelly babies, while Richard, who had been racing ahead of everyone in his unofficial role as trip photographer, dropped back and gently nursed me up to the infamous Repsol petrol station at the top of the climb.

No, I’m not sharing those photographs.

That evening, slightly humbled, I started asking ChatGPT some straightforward questions about nutrition. When I shared the next day’s route, it suggested a fuelling and hydration approach that was practical, specific, and, crucially, doable.

I followed it. The difference was noticeable.

Back home, the thought lingered. If it could help me think more clearly about what to eat and drink, could it also help me train a little more intelligently? I decided to find out.

Human, Assisted 

I started feeding it ride data from Zwift and Strava. I explained what I’m working toward. In an almost daily dialogue I talk to it about time constraints, work, travel, sleep. Real life.

What comes back isn’t a rigid plan. It’s something far more unsettling.

Restraint.

Zone 2 rides. Tempo sessions that feel suspiciously manageable. Sweet Spot workouts that end with me standing up normally rather than crawling toward the fridge like a wounded animal.

It actively encourages rest days. Celebrates them, even. Calmly and persistently explains that adaptation happens when you recover, not when you bury yourself heroically for the fourth time in a week.

This is deeply inconvenient information because it runs completely counter to everything I’ve spent years believing about fitness. That progress comes from suffering. That if you’re not empty at the end of a ride, you haven’t done it properly. That backing off is weakness, and rest days are something you earn only after near-collapse.

AI, it turns out, has no interest in those narratives.

Conversation, Not Commands

The biggest change isn’t the sessions, it’s the interaction.

I’m not handed a plan and told to comply. I talk through how rides feel. I question stats. I admit when I’m tired, busy, or mildly resentful of Lycra. I explain late nights filming gigs, long drives, disrupted sleep.

And instead of the plan collapsing, it adapts.

Miss a day? Fine.

Feel flat? Back off.

Feeling strong? Hold steady — don’t get greedy.

For perhaps the first time, training feels adult.

Flexible, but not vague. Structured, but not punitive.

The Results 

Let’s manage expectations. This is a work in progress.

I have not woken up looking like a mid-50s Geraint Thomas. I still possess a perfectly respectable layer of winter insulation.

And yet…

Zone 2 feels easier.

Tempo feels comfortable.

180 watts now feels like somewhere I arrive, rather than wrestle into submission.

Sweet Spot sessions leave me energised instead of wrecked. I’m finishing rides feeling revived — which, at 55, feels suspiciously like witchcraft.

Even my belt has noticed. Tentatively. We’re not making any promises yet.

Zwift, Reconsidered

Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s fantastic but I’ve always suspected Zwift was part of the problem. Too virtual. Too gamified. Too easy to turn every ride into a race against strangers called things like PainCave69.

But it turns out Zwift wasn’t the issue - I was.

By riding free rides properly - coasting downhill, easing off, riding terrain as I would outdoors - it’s become a genuinely effective training tool. Not a simulation of real cycling, but a controlled environment for practising restraint.

Which, frankly, has never been my strongest suit.

Why Coach AI Actually Feels Like It’s Working

AI isn’t magic. And it’s not replacing good human coaches any time soon. But what it does brilliantly is remove ego from the equation.

It doesn’t care that I once rode the Champs-Élysées.

It doesn’t flatter me.

It doesn’t panic when I miss a session.

It doesn’t get bored when I ask the same question three times in slightly different ways.

It just quietly nudges me back toward consistency.

And consistency, it turns out, is devastatingly effective.

The Long Game

This isn’t about chasing KOMs or reliving youthful glory. But there is, undeniably, a ghost riding alongside me … the 2013 version of myself who felt light, strong, and utterly in love with cycling.

I don’t need to be him again. But if I can meet him halfway - fitter, wiser, less obsessed with suffering - I’ll happily take that deal.

The immediate goal is simple enough: a couple of spring sportives with my mate Alan, threading our way through the Yorkshire Dales. Long miles. Honest climbs. Steady effort. Good company. The kind of rides where you’re not racing anyone, but you still want to feel capable … strong enough to enjoy the day, and sensible enough to finish it with something left in the tank.

Which brings us neatly to Christmas.

Late nights. Big meals. Social obligations. The festive period’s well-worn promise to loosen routines and soften resolve.

Will discipline survive mince pies and red wine?

Will AI intervene?

Will January be a calm continuation or the traditional, slightly sheepish “reset”?

That, I suspect, is where this experiment starts to get properly interesting.

Merry Christmas — and welcome to The Drop Bar Diaries.

Next time: festive excess vs artificial intelligence. Place your bets.

Follow the heroics on Strava

If you’re on Zwift, you’ll find me riding as Tim Sidwell — usually somewhere in Zone 2, practising restraint.