Simon Mills ... from party boy to lycra lad

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10 April 2012

Nowhere is the stark contrast between caners and trainers more obvious than on the Ibiza Town to San Antonio road at dawn on a Tuesday in August. This is chucking- out time for Sven Väth's Cocoon slot at Amnesia, which for many of the island's clubbers is the definitive Ibiza night out: toxic, Teutonic, shamelessly hedonistic and famous for carrying on well into the next day. I know this because pre-viously I have partied with Sven and co until sunrise. These days, rather than heading off to bed, I am up at 6am. I weave my way around pie-eyed staggerers as I push on into the hills on my bike, leaving the main road behind for the climb up to Sant Mateu and Santa Agnes.

How did I make the transition from inveterate rock'n'roller to semi-obsessive rouleur? It's my age: I'm 48. The ravages of booze and nocturnal toxins have wreaked long-term damage and, like many middle-aged men, I've realised that the time has come to change my ways.

I've been cycling for over 20 years, but due to my champagne-lifestyle commitments (I used to be a party columnist on this magazine and it still says 'Simon Mills Social Editor' on the GQ masthead), I would go for months without swinging my leg over a crossbar. During those dark days, I would stare forlornly at my bike feeling guilty; wine glass in hand, belly expanding.

My Damascene moment came a few years ago, halfway up a short climb on the Richmond Park circuit. I'd dusted off my bike, cycled off to meet a couple of pals and quickly discovered that I couldn't keep up. It's only seven miles around the park, but I was wheezing and sweating. I felt old. Worse still, with my top-end bike and expensively minimal clobber, I'd become that most awful of yuppie clichés - an all-the-gear, no-idea loser. I decided to make a profound lifestyle change, dealing with the most important issue first: a new bike. Spending £3,000 on a new frame would prove to everyone I was serious.

'I see this sort of thing happening so much,' says Professor Greg Whyte, the fitness guru who helped David Walliams achieve his incredible Thames swim. 'I'll meet 40-year-old guys who've spent years abusing their bodies and who want to make a dramatic change.'

Most often that change will be effected on a bike. Powering up the muscles and strengthening the heart has helped road cycling attract more forty-something ex-clubbers than The Priory. The media have even given us a nickname: MAMILs - middle-aged men in Lycra. Why cycling? It's less impacting on the joints than running, more thrilling than yoga and more dignified than aerobics. Most importantly, it is not golf.

And the kit is just sublime. My theory is that, being rather flash, ostentatious, detail-obsessed sorts, MAMILs first become attracted to cycling because of the gear. The clothes might look comical and unflattering to the uninitiated but quality cycling kit tends to be niche, esoteric and very expensive. Men who once thrilled to Kraftwerk and Italian piano house get a thing for cycling gear because it reminds them of their original Balearic jaunts and harks back to Weller during his Cappuccino Kid days. They are delighted to discover that you can easily splurge £700 on an outfit by Rapha, regarded as the Gucci of cycling clobber. The Rapha range is beautifully made and logo-free. It's worn by the pros but also offers collaborations with Paul Smith and Timothy Everest.

Cycling convert Gary Kemp, Spandau Ballet's guitarist, remembers the first time he clocked the carefully art-directed photography of the Rapha website four and half years ago. 'It was like the time I saw the Sex Pistols at The Screen on the Green and swore I'd never wear flares again. Here was a new tribe and I knew that I had to be part of it. Within minutes I was buying clothes from this supercool English company, and I didn't even have the bike!'

The bikes themselves are even pricier and more alluring. You'll be shelling out upwards of £3,000 for a decent, Campagnolo-equipped carbon-fibre bike. Forget about that naff Harley-Davidson Fat Boy. The ultimate midlife-crisis machine is now a super-light Pinarello or a Colnago.

Hopefully, after the thrill of the big purchase wears off, it becomes evident that cycling is one of the few sports that a man can enjoy well into later life. For the ageing, yuppie aesthete it is the perfect way of offsetting one's toxic footprint, maintaining an indulgence/achievement balance, a spiritual and physical bipolarism.

Cycling offers a bigger rush than Ecstasy. Why? When you cycle, the pituitary gland releases great whooshing quantities of endorphins, chemicals that can produce overall feelings of euphoria. You don't get the same high from, say, weightlifting (or golf) and the more you cycle, the better the rush.

Take a ride around Richmond Park on a Sunday morning and you'll see dozens of expensively clad MAMILs. Through the tint of my £200 Oakley sunglasses I often recognise the haggard faces of men whom I have previously seen only through the bottom of a cocktail glass. My own circle of cycling partners is typical of this demographic, comprising three rock stars, a big-name DJ, a VIP room maître d' and several members of the original Groucho Club committee.

Gary Kemp, one of our weekend MAMILs, is prone to making comparisons between the spandex of rock stardom and the Lycra of cycling. He idolises the (now dead) shaven-headed Marco Pantani, an Italian rock-starish climber of the 1990s known as il Pirata (the Pirate), who once tore off an earring during a big ascent, throwing it to the ground to lighten his load. As with music, Gary discovered, drugs are never very far away from this sport. 'I quickly realised it was tougher than rock'n'roll. And God, was it as vain,' he says.

Gary and I are, as we were in our nightclub days, quietly hardcore. Mid-ride coffee breaks are full of compliments on each other's weight loss and new kit. We will swap stories of 100-mile jaunts to the Chilterns, the 21km climb up France's Col de Mont Ventoux, the grit of L'Etape du Tour (an amateur stage of the Tour de France), the perils of the strada bianchi on the annual L'Eroica in Italy's Chianti region. Anywhere there are big hills, expensive hotels and nice restaurants, basically. We go, as we once did to Soho bars, as a group - a gang of over-pampered rock'n'rouleurs.

The phenomenon of the caner/trainer is nothing new. Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton have both ordered custom bikes from Condor Cycles in Clerkenwell. Cycling also counts members of The Stone Roses and Jesus Jones in its ranks. With its roots as a peasant sport, finding early popularity in countries known for fine wines, big mountains and liberal attitudes, carousing has played an important role in cycling ever since it became popular in the Victorian era. Before stage 14 of the 1964 Tour de France, French cycling legend Jacques Anquetil stayed up all night, boozing at a pre-race barbecue. Next morning, knowing that Anquetil would be fragile, his rivals set off at a blistering pace. Soon Anquetil was over four minutes behind the pack. But his team director had a plan; he half-filled one of the struggling athlete's water bottles with a reviving dose of champagne. Anquetil attacked like a man possessed, catching the peloton and going on to win the Tour.

In modern-day pro cycling, the cane/train hero is David Millar, captain of the Great Britain team that masterminded Mark Cavendish's victory at this year's World Championships in Copenhagen. Millar is a three-times yellow-jersey winner at the Tour de France, who came second in the recent Tour of Beijing, just days after his wife gave birth to his first son. He also has something of a reputation for good times. His autobiography Racing Through the Dark is a roller-coaster ride of punishing races, doping scandals and hog-whimperingly big nights out. He name-drops not just Lance Armstrong but also DJ Erick Morillo, describes the zigzagging 20 per cent climb of Alpe d'Huez on one page and thrills to the delights of Paris's Les Bains Douches nightclub the next. He's that rare breed of sophisticated, worldly and articulate gentleman sportsman who wants to win in life as well as on the road.

But the truth is, cycling now takes up more of my time than carousing ever did. Instead of nights out, it's weekends or whole weeks away. A simple Sunday ride can last six or seven hours, and unlike nightclubbing, the achy aftermath is blissfully euphoric instead of painful and shameful. Yes, my 12-year-old daughter thinks I look embarrassing in my Lycra, but cycling gets me out of the house and this time round my wife loves it.

Next week, for instance, she'll be happy to see me off on an amateur ride with 20 other cyclists, mainly MAMILs. We've signed up to pound the Tarmac shoulder to shoulder with David Millar, doing a 100-mile-plus route from London to Somerset. It will be a little bit gruelling but also, crucially, rather pleasant. There will be hills but no mountains, plenty of coffee and a longish pub lunch, and we'll be ending up at that cane/train mecca, Babington House. Moët in our water bottles for the return leg, naturally. ES

Simon Mills ... from party boy to lycra lad

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