By Martin Sigrist
15 years ago when I was fat and unfit I was inspired by a forum post that attained legendary status. From memory it went like this.
It was a dialogue between a 60 year old American (I’ll call him Tokyo Joe) who was living in the middle of Tokyo and a US coach. The post was over 100 pages long.
Tokyo Joe only had access to a gym with and exercise bike. His first post was a question. He had just done a workout and averaged 160W or so for 60 minutes. His question was whether it was possible for him to get up to 300W.
The coach said it depends and then took him through weeks of training. The main drill was 2×20 minutes. Week by week Tokyo Joe and the coach swapped posts and others added their comments and support.
Tokyo Joe would do a full 60 minutes every now and then and his power slowly crept up and up. It started getting into the high 200s and then progress got harder.
But finally one epic day he broke 300W for an hour and the thread exploded with congratulations.
I’ve searched for the post but I can’t find it. It’s a shame because it made me believe I could do the same and eventually I did. Just now Youtube suggested the video below.
The exercise is different but the message is the same. You are never too old to make a change for the better.
Now among the world’s fittest sexagenarians Martin Sigrist started riding on doctor’s orders in 2005 and had to push his bike up his first hill. Next year he soloed the Tour de France. He has since experienced every form of road cycling from criterium to ultra endurance. His ongoing mission is to use the latest in science and technology to fight a, so far successful, battle against Father Time.
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